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Review: Mutants & Masterminds Golden Age sourcebook
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After I decided to run Adventures Into Darkness (the Mutants & Masterminds version) at RinCon '09, I purchased a PDF copy of the Golden Age sourcebook. I didn't end up using it for that one-shot game, but I've been leaning on it heavily for the longer campaign I'm planning. The Golden Age, of course, refers to the Golden Age of comic books, which is defined in this book (if not necesarily by comics collectors and historians) as the period between 1938 and 1955. The first chapter goes into a history of the comics themselves, from the initial reproductions of newspaper strips to original features to the birth of the superhero. The Chapter 2 discusses the world, including society, economics, entertainment, and technology. It also breaks the Golden Age down into three sub-eras: The Great Depression, the War Years, and the Atomic Age. Chapter 3 offers up the crunch, with new feats, equipment, vehicles, and archetypes. Chapter 4 is on gamemastering, Chapter 5 is about the Golden Age in the game's official setting, and Chapter 6 offers up an introductory Golden Age adventure.
Because my reason for buying the book was to help me with campaign preparation, my interest lay mainly with the history and game mastering sections, so those will be the focus of this review. My initial goal was to put together an Atomic Age campaign set in 1953. McCarthy was conducting witch hunts, Wertham was publishing Seduction of the Innocent, the first hydrogen bomb tests were going on, and Stalin died leading to a new regime in the Soviet Union. The world was changing rapidly, and I wanted to build a campaign around that upheaval. Naturally, I skipped right to the Atomic Age portion of that chapter, and quickly learned I'd made a mistake. When building a historical game, it's important to know the events that led up to game time, so that there's context. Because so many of events of the Atomic Age were a reaction to World War II, and so much of World War II took the shape it did because of the Great Depression, I found it hard to separate them. But rather than forcing me to start my game back in 1938, I found that those earlier points in the Golden Age provided me with plot hooks for the Atomic Age. That's the strength of this chapter, if not the entire book: if you can't mine enough story ideas out of this to support a couple of campaigns, you're doing something wrong.
The gamemaster section talks about the tropes and themes found in Golden Age comics, as well as a little bit of the history of why they're there, tying back into the first chapter on the history of the comics. I found it useful not just to be reminded that a lot of superheroes had kid sidekicks in that era, but why they had sidekicks; it's going to help me to set up situations where those kid characters show up, as well as in playing them as NPCs. It covers the changes in tone, with dark, nearly amoral avengers becoming champions of politeness and hygiene, the outside forces that caused those changes, and presents some thoughts on why that change of tone might happen in-game. It also goes into what it calls the "Postmodern Golden Age", those grim-and-gritty reimaginings seen in things like Watchmen's Minutemen where the Silver Age angst and more modern realism have been imposed on those early heroes. That's a nice touch, because I think most Golden Age games are going to be infected to some degree with this approach, as in most cases the contemporary vision of the era and he modern style of portraying these characters will be the one most people are familiar with.
The gamemaster section also has support cast archetypes including stats for Hitler, who did show up on numerous comic covers of the day getting socked in the jaw by the book's hero. He's assumed not to have superpowers, but there are suggestions if you feel the desire to give him some. He's also assumed to have unlimited Equipment and Minions. It's a decent write-up, fairly historically accurate (or as much so as one wants in a superhero game). Villain archetypes include an Alien Invader (for the Atomic Age), Evil Mentalist, Malevolent Magical Entity (who looks like an odd cross between Cthulhu, Wilbur Whateley, and a Mi-Go), Master Spy, and Mob Boss (who looks appropriately like a deformed Dick Tracy or Batman villain).
I have to give this book a positive review, as it meets all of my needs and more. Understandably, other peoples' needs may lie more with the sections not covered here, but rest assured that the entire book is solid and of like quality with the core book and most other M&M sourcebooks.
A word about reviews and ethics
Buy Mutants & Masterminds Golden Age (softcover) at Amazon
Buy Mutants & Masterminds Golden Age (PDF) at RPGNow
Buy Adventures Into Darkness (PDF) at RPGNow
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