Mutants & Masterminds Levels Up With 4th Edition Update

One of the most iconic superhero-themed tabletop roleplaying games in the market is getting a significant update to its rules that will make gameplay go faster, make bad guys tougher and hopefully attract new fans to the game.

Mutants and Masterminds is an award-winning superhero-themed TTRPG written by Stephen Kenson and published by Green Ronin Publishing. The book’s author, Steve Kenson, announced this month that he’s working on the fourth edition of the game, nearly 14 years after the last major rule update in 2011. The update technically began with the Valiant Adventures RPG, where Kenson and Green Ronin adapted Valiant Entertainment’s superhero timeline to M&M’s rules and experimented with ways to make the game easier to play. Kenson then chose to take those changes to the core game.

“It was finally time to update the game,” Kenson told TTRPG Insider. 

M&M is built on its version of a d20 system, where players roll a d20, add modifiers and see if it can beat the appropriate check or hit at the proper levels, making it feel very familiar to D&D for most players. Players have “archetypes” rather than classes, which offer flavorful interpretations of certain superhero types that someone might want to play. They also have hero points for going above and beyond in combat, ranks for determining a character’s skill and advantages for confirming a skill’s set of abilities.

Kenson’s plans for M&M 4e include “trying to unify some mechanics to improve gameplay, update terminology, and generally make things more consistent, more understandable, hopefully easier to use, and more accessible overall.”

One of the most significant changes in the playtest will be to a player's core stats. Kenson has brought the number of ability scores down from eight in the third edition to six in M&M with the removal of Dexterity and Fighting abilities from the sheet.

“We're trying to make as much of the rule language as clear as possible, aiming to simplify and make things more consistent,” Kenson said. “We've taken out a couple of the abilities from the third edition and brought the number of abilities down to six and folded those into a sort of general attack and defense rank that characters have, so that it's easier just straight up to determine a character's fighting abilities when putting them together.”

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Mutants and Masterminds 4e Adds Archetypes, Menaces

Kenson is also expanding the M&M 4e Hero’s Handbook to include fifteen archetypes at the start (two more than the 13 featured in the original Third Edition core rulebook.) That’s not to say that old archetypes and things will not be compatible, however. Kenson assured fans that a significant portion of the game’s content will be backwards compatible, although some elements may require additional conversions to accommodate the new playstyle.

“We're trying to lean into the use of the hero archetypes for character creation, provide some more options and customizability there so that folks who are a little intimidated by the point-based character creation system have a choice they can use right off the top,”

There are plans for a conversion kit to help with that translation, Kenson confirmed. 

He’s also incorporating a new set of rules for storytellers, which he calls the “Menace system.” This system “is intended to make opponents more threatening or more dangerous,” Kenson said, noting how it will help solo villains to hold their own better when taking on heroes.

The new edition will release in playtest form this month. A limited edition of the playtest will be available in physical form, with a select number of copies for sale at Gen Con. Players will also be able to purchase physical copies of the playtest online if they wish.

The playtests are scheduled to run from August 2025 to September 2025 to gather sufficient player feedback to confirm that the changes are desirable.

There are no set dates for the release of M&M 4e, although Kenson estimates that it will be released sometime in the second half of 2026. It’s unclear if the company intended to crowdfund the project or not.

Green Ronin is currently raising funds to fight distributor Diamond Comic Distributors’ bankruptcy claims in court with the hope of acquiring its inventory from the company and avoiding losing money.

Thanks to Kenson and Green Ronin for the interview! You can learn more about all the individual archetype updates over at Green Ronin’s blog.

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