Mutants and Masterminds...can it BE Fantasy?

[JohnnyArkham]

I've had the first edition of Mutants and Masterminds sitting on my shelves for years now and never used it.
But a curiosity entered my noggin of late, and so I wonder; could M&M be used to play a fantasy game?
If so, what would need to be done? How much 'wiggle room' does M&M allow for in terms of customization?
I'm just curious if one could run a solid fantasy campaign with just that single book.

[Skyserpent]

Wiggle room?

Mutants and Masterminds has so much wiggle room you could engage in a John Woo fight sequence with Batman, Jesus and Mechagodzilla and STILL have elbow room to throw in some Bullet-time dodging.


The Sorcery power is kinda OP, but that's very D&D, so that doesn't necessarily have to be your concern.

One of the issues though is that M&M is designed that the characters don't really GAIN anything through adventuring aside from Experience. You don't see Green Latern looting corpses that often. But aside from that the basic weapons, powers, and all those other rules can TOTALLY do good old Dragonslaying Adventures.

Monsters will take a bit of work to build but all in all it shouldn't be too tough.

M&M 2e is a little more balanced but I spent a few years playing 1e and it was still frikkin' sweet.

[Dairun Cates]

Wiggle room?

Mutants and Masterminds has so much wiggle room you could engage in a John Woo fight sequence with Batman, Jesus and Mechagodzilla and STILL have elbow room to throw in some Bullet-time dodging.


The Sorcery power is kinda OP, but that's very D&D, so that doesn't necessarily have to be your concern.

One of the issues though is that M&M is designed that the characters don't really GAIN anything through adventuring aside from Experience. You don't see Green Latern looting corpses that often. But aside from that the basic weapons, powers, and all those other rules can TOTALLY do good old Dragonslaying Adventures.

Monsters will take a bit of work to build but all in all it shouldn't be too tough.

M&M 2e is a little more balanced but I spent a few years playing 1e and it was still frikkin' sweet.

Yes. That's pretty much the sum of it. Magic weapons become MacGuffins, but otherwise it can work just fine. I've seen just about everything done in M&M character wise.

[JohnnyArkham]

Excellent! I don't suppose anyone has any experience with the d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels?

[Dairun Cates]

Excellent! I don't suppose anyone has any experience with the d20 version of Silver Age Sentinels?

I've played BESM d20. It's essentially a more fleshed-out version. It works pretty well, but it definitely requires a GM's touch on balancing. There's some powers that are just so stupidly powerful at some times it's not even funny. All in all, it's not a bad system though.

Edit: I personally prefer M&M but a couple of my players probably like BESM d20 a bit better.