March Update: Special Effects
12 months ago
– Fri, Mar 28, 2025 at 10:46:24 AM
Hello Heroes!
Effects are the foundation of the power system of the Mutants & Masterminds game engine that powers Valiant Adventures. They define what different powers do in game terms. While Valiant Adventures makes use of most of the Effects found in M&M, we have adjusted or updated some of them, along with adding a couple to give Valiant players and Gamemasters a robust toolkit for describing their characters and what they can do.
Affliction is a key Effect when it comes to attacks that don’t necessarily inflict Damage but focus on various Conditions (we’ll look more at both Damage and Conditions in future previews). We’ve added a few new Conditions an Affliction can impose, along with providing several ready-made Effects that are specific “shorthand” configuration of Affliction to make it easier to grab just the Effect you want and have something to call it. They include Dazzle, Mind Control, Paralyze, Snare, Stun, Suffocation, Toxin, and Transform.
Obscure is a new Effect from our “Omniversal Variant” test articles on the M&M Patreon, although a familiar one for those who played the Second Edition of M&M. It neatly handles sense-blocking Effects from areas of darkness or blinding smoke to silence fields or even radio jamming frequencies.
Tether is likewise an “Omniversal Variant” making its appearance in Valiant Adventures, an Effect binding the user to a target and allowing them to exert force on it at a distance.
Those are just a few examples of the 40-some Effects found in Valiant Adventures, each with their own modifiers to enhance or limit how they work.
Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
Worlds of Valiant February Update: Session Zero
about 1 year ago
– Wed, Feb 26, 2025 at 11:49:57 AM
Hello heroes!
I’m so excited to report that we’re closing in on the finish line for these two books and I wanted to share something to help you start preparing your epic campaigns so you can hit the ground running when everything is finished.
Games set within a gritty, realistic world like the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game need a successful session zero to create a strong foundation from which to run a series. A session zero is a discussion that happens prior to the beginning of a new series in which the Gamemaster pitches their story idea to the players. Generally, character creation—at least the creation of character concepts—also takes place during this meeting, along with a discussion of content that everyone wants to and doesn’t want to see in the game.
Valiant offers a unique challenge compared to other superhero stories due to how many different types of stories fall under the Valiant banner. Is your group looking for something campy and pulpy like the antics of Archer and Armstrong or something grim and bloodstained like Bloodshot’s war against Project Rising Spirit? Are you hoping to grapple with themes of loss and death within the Deadside or the topics of persecution inherent in something like Generation Zero? All of these will call for different sorts of player characters and different amounts of emotional energy from the players themselves and it’s important to create a safe place for your players to engage with the game.
This is a big responsibility for the Gamemaster and if not handled properly, it can lead to analysis paralysis, friction in the group, or any number of negative gaming experiences. Not to worry though, a great session zero can mitigate these potential issues before they ever boil over.
The Elevator Pitch
The work for session zero begins way before you ever involve your players. Your first job is to come up with the “elevator pitch” of the series you want to run. Find a way to boil the intricate plots, grand schemes, and cast of rogues swirling in your mind down to a one to two sentence description for your players. This pitch should include the genre of superhero game you want to run, the setting, the Power Level, and the central conflict at the heart of the story. You could also use a rating system similar to those found in American film to describe the level of mature content that might feature in the story. Finally, include examples of similar superhero media—whether that’s comics, movies, TV shows, or video games—anything that can help the players get a feel for the general vibe you’re going for. For example, if you were to do this with a Generation Zero series, this would look like:
“PL 8, PG-13, Modern series in which a group of young psiots escape from their imprisonment at Project Rising Spirit and must find a home for themselves away from experimentation and persecution.”
This snapshot is enough information to let the players make an informed decision about whether or not this sounds like something they want to play and serves as a springboard for them to think about what sorts of characters they want to create. It’s perfectly fine if you only want to have one pitch to present, but it is also possible that you create three or four of these pitches for your players to consider. Once everyone has settled on what sort of game they want to play, it’s time to prepare for the discussion itself. Tell each of the players to come up with one-to-three-character concepts that they would like to play and set a date.
Bring in the Players
The actual session zero is typically broken into three parts: Gamemaster presentation of the story, player character discussion, and safety. You can tackle these in whichever order feels best and it is intended to be a full group conversation. Don’t feel like you have to be the only speaker during the Gamemaster portion, leave space for questions, ask for feedback as you’re breaking down each topic, and just lean into the collaborative spirit of everything. Roleplaying games work best when they are a group storytelling experiment, and the story that you’re building is as much the players’ as it is yours.
Prior to the session, as the players are working on their character concepts, you should be further detailing your series pitch. Layout any special house rules—or any optional rules from this book you’re looking to implement based on the setting you’ve selected—you want to use for the series, a list of locations and NPCs you want to feature in the story, and look for hooks that you can give the players to add to their backstories that will further integrate them into the series’ drama. Be sure to point out if you have any Effects or powers that are off-limits to PCs, such as Time Travel. It is also useful to have a list of supervillains that you think will feature prominently in the story. You are essentially outlining your plans and wants. These are the story beats or characters that entice you as a roleplayer and as a designer. I recommend that you come up with a series of character creation questions, to help your players brainstorm. Things like what is your character’s social life like? What is their job? How many family members do they have? How long have they had their powers? What is their opinion on superheroes prior to becoming one? Open-ended questions that can get your players imagining their characters as more than a collection of numbers on the page.
This is also where you want to list out content that can be difficult to engage with for any of the players in this group. This includes content for you as well. If you don’t feel comfortable coming up with this list or you want to make sure the list is all-encompassing, there are several online resources that have session zero warning documents. You’ll go over these concerns in the safety portion of the session. It works best if you have a three-column system in place. Green for content that is perfectly fine for the player. Yellow for difficult subjects that can happen but can’t be explicitly detailed and red for subjects that are off-limits. The heroes are going to be fighting evil for a living, but evil is a thing that exists on a spectrum, particularly in the wide world of superhero stories. Not everyone is going to be comfortable with content that pulls from our real-world and it’s important to foster a safe place for your players to escape into. It is possible that some players will want to stand up to certain evils and abuses they experience in the real world as a form of catharsis, but that should be after an open conversation with everyone who will be playing the game. Don’t forget that this safety applies to you as Gamemaster as well. If your players select a nemesis that you don’t feel comfortable playing, make sure you express your concern. The Gamemaster is meant to be having fun too!
Once the session begins, share your thoughts and plans with the players. Tell them about any areas you think they should be able to contribute to the world-building, particularly as it applies to their characters. Break down how long you think the series will last and how often you’d like to play. Share your list of villains with them and ask if anyone would like to have a previous relationship with one. Be open to the idea that the players might have a villain they want to include. It’s possible one of their villains will fill a similar niche to one of the ones from the list and you might be able to replace or merge the two of them. Ask them what sort of plots and crimes and types of adventures they would like to play. Document all of this and feel free to leave an open section in your notes labeled “Things the Players Want to See.” This can be in a document that you share with everyone so people can add stuff either anonymously or as themselves, or something you hammer out during the session. Some of you may think this is a lot of player involvement in the creation of the series and the world, but this is a surefire way to build engagement with your players before they ever even roll a die. Giving them this freedom now let’s them do some of the work and makes them excited about the game.
Finally, the players will pitch their character concepts and hopefully open a discussion. Doing this as a group prevents players from stepping on each other’s toes in terms of powers and archetypes. It also helps the team develop together, rather than as a disparate group of characters who don’t feel like they mesh together. The heroes don’t need to have a previous relationship with one another, but they should still feel like they are coming from the same universe—unless one of them is from another universe of course. The players can brainstorm important NPCs together, if they want the team to all have a team costume or if they are completely separate individuals with their own aesthetic. You can start building connections between the PCs and your vital non-villain NPCs. They can also work out if they want to spend any group Power Points on a team headquarters or vehicles, and just generally become a superhero team.
To reiterate, a solid session zero will make sure your players are primed and ready to have an excellent Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game series. Don’t skip this vital step in the process, whether you are running a series of Astonishing Adventures or your own homebrew superhero stories. It will show that you are thinking about what the players want from their game and that you are aware there are things they don’t want. Plus it will make sure all of your superheroes feel like they belong together, even if they have nothing in common.
Connecting Valiant Heroes
One of the biggest challenges to overcome when designing a Valiant story is figuring out which corner of this vast universe you want to set your story. Selecting one and having all of the player characters be native to it is the easiest method. Making them all be Roman legionnaires stationed in Britannia, psiots working alongside the Harbinger Renegades, or a gaggle of ghostly protestors trying to topple the Darques in the Deadside leads to a party that has good connections and reasons to be working together. That being said, not every game or character concept is going to fit neatly into one of those buckets, and you shouldn’t feel like you have to force that. There are stories in Valiant comics that feature crossovers of heroes. Unity features some of Valiant’s biggest names teaming up to stop massive threats. Ninjak and X-O Manowar team up on occasion and they come from completely different worlds. It’s natural to want to replicate these epic scale stories, just as it’s natural for players to love a character concept so much even if it might not fit the story at first glance.
Accommodating these sorts of stories requires extra leg work on the part of everyone involved. When you’re designing your series be on the lookout for points of intersection between the different Valiant settings. If most of your game is set in the Deadside, ask yourself how living characters might make their way to the other side. Perhaps there are areas of the real world—or the Faraway or Unknown—where the border between the living and the dead is thin and living beings might accidentally wander within.
You’ll want to make time to have this conversation during session zero (see above).
Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
January Update!
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Jan 31, 2025 at 04:08:57 PM
We're really screeching the tires on this one, but it's still January for a few more hours here in the western US!
Here's Alex again with this month's update:
Creating a Valiant Hero
Hello heroes! I hope your 2025 is off to a stellar start. We’ve been hard at work behind the scenes getting edits back and implementing feedback, and the finish line for these two books is closing in! In the meantime, I wanted to share an update all about character creation in Valiant Adventures so you can start thinking up the amazing superheroes you’ll create for your home games.
We’ve streamlined character creation in order to get players into the game and telling stories as quickly as possible. You’ll be able to pick up the Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook and create a character using our intuitive step-by-step process right off the bat.
Valiant Adventures offers a set of Archetypes you use to create your own heroes (assuming you don’t want to play pre-existing Valiant characters): Battlesuit, Crimefighter, Deadsider, Energy Controller, Immortal, Mystic, Nano-Infused, and Psiot.
Each archetype comes with a series of choices that modifies its traits. You choose: 1) A set of Abilities, 2) Sets of Skills, 3) Set of Advantages, 4) A Power Set (which might come with some choices of its own), 5) Your character’s Motivation and other Complications. That’s it!
So, for example, you might decide your Battlesuit hero is Daring (Abilities), trained in Athletics and Infiltration (Skills), is Scrappy and Sneaky (Advantages), and has the Stealth option for the Battlesuit power set. Their Motivation is a sense of Responsibility, and they also have Complications of Family Relationships and a strong Distrust of Aliens, which they picked up fighting a number of them! With those simple choices, you just note the various associated game traits and you’re ready to play!
With eight archetypes, each with at least three power-set options, plus numerous ability, skill, and advantage options, you have hundreds of potential character combinations to choose from!
But What About…?
Long-time Mutants & Masterminds players might ask: “But what about building characters with power points?” While Valiant Adventures doesn’t use that approach, all of its archetypes are constructed that way, so you can easily use the more detailed character creation rules from M&M with Valiant Adventures, if you want. We’ll provide details and notes on how to do that where necessary.
I’m excited for you all to get your hands on these books and I can’t wait to hear all about the games you’ll be playing at home. In the meantime, we’ll keep you updated as these books move into layout and then finally print! Thank you for reading and until next time, stay Valiant!
~ Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
December Update: All Conditions Go!
about 1 year ago
– Fri, Dec 20, 2024 at 09:57:27 AM
Hello heroes!
I hope you’re having a happy holiday season! We’ve been hard at work getting the final drafts of the Valiant Adventures books in place and preparing for the fun process of laying the books out and adding pieces from the amazing catalog of Valiant Comics art. I can’t wait for you to see the final product soon!
Today I want to talk about another one of the interesting changes from the core Mutants & Masterminds engine we’re bringing to better suit the gritty style of this universe. Like many RPGs, the Mutants & Masterminds game engine that powers Valiant Adventures makes use of various Conditions shorthand for the game modifiers imposed on a character’s Traits or Actions by Effects, Maneuvers, or other circumstances. Most of these are familiar to long-time players of the third edition of M&M, with a few exceptions:
● Damage Conditions: We’ve specifically called-out the Conditions caused by Damage, since they interact with recovery and Effects like Healing and Regeneration, among other things. We’ve likewise called-out specific Damage Conditions for objects, like Broken or Destroyed, as compared to Damage Conditions for characters.
● Surprised: We’ve made Surprised into a Condition characters can experience, which makes it easier to define in terms of its interactions with Effects and other game traits.
● Wounded: There’s a Wounded Condition to round out lethal Damage Conditions in the game. A Wounded character is badly injured, leaving them Dazed, Disabled, and Hindered.
There are also a few changes in existing conditions, mostly in terms of interaction with Bonus and Penalty Dice. For example, the Vulnerable condition grants attacks targeting the character a Bonus Die rather than halving Defense Ranks, for example, and the Weakness Condition means a character has a Penalty Die on Resistance Checks against certain Effects or descriptors and their best possible result on the Resistance Check is one Degree of Failure, regardless of the Check Total.
Since the Affliction Effect is strongly based around imposing Conditions, its range of options has expanded slightly with the addition of more Conditions to choose from.
We should have a bigger update for you all in January so keep your eyes in this space and as always, stay Valiant!
~ Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
Remaining Surveys Going Out!
over 1 year ago
– Mon, Dec 02, 2024 at 11:17:15 AM
Hey there Heroes!
The Backerkit smoke test did indeed reveal a couple of small issues over the weekend, so we were a little bit delayed in getting the rest of the surveys sent out, but the good news is that they are on the way this morning!
Be sure to check your spam filter if you don't see it in your inbox, but if necessary you can request another survey email at this link: https://valiant-adventures-roleplaying-game.backerkit.com And if nothing else seems to work, send us an email to [email protected] and we'll sort it out for you.
One of the issues we had was that two of the introductory survey questions were not connected with the correct pledge levels (digital vs print). If you were one of the very first smoke test backers to complete your survey after they went out last Wednesday, please double check to make sure that question has been answered now that it has been fixed. We cannot lock your order without it, even if you answered it before since the pledge manager sees it as a brand-new question for you. Fortunately, there are only a very small handful folks who ran into that issue.
Let us know if you run into any trouble at all, by emailing Customer Service at [email protected]. Sending a message through Kickstarter is not a good way to reach us, as that inbox is only occasionally monitored. Please use email, particularly if the issue is time sensitive.
