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Mutant City Blues (MCB) is, essentially, NYPD Blue with superpowers – a sort of Marvel-ish setting of superheros with everyday problems as seen by the police officers who investigate mutant-powered crimes. The setting is modern-day, about 10 years from the present, in a typical American city. (The book, oddly, does not address suburban or rural policing, which seems especially odd when one considers that a large number of American police work in departments with 10 or fewer officers.)
The setting assumes that in the very recent future, there is a widespread disease the results in about 1% of the population developing superpowers. Interesting, there is not a huge reaction to this – for the most part, super-powered mutants have fit into everyday life rather than donning tights and becoming masked avengers. The law adapted quickly to regulate, as needed, superpowers and developed specialized units to investigate super-aspected crimes and arrest super-powered subjects. That’s where the PCs come in – the game assumes the PCs are members of a specialized Heighten Crimes Unit akin to specialized units like the Vice Squad or SWAT. (Or perhaps older units like the pre-1960s segregated African-American units or the pre-1970s women’s police units which were found in some U.S. cities.)
MCB does a nice job of coordinating the game mechanics with police procedural adventures and clearly explains those choices in boxed Design Notes text. One key idea is that superpowers have predictable interrelationships and characteristic disadvantages — this makes it hard to replicate many well-known comic characters, but also makes it much easier to solve a mystery by limiting the field of potential superpowers and combinations of same. The basic capacities of powers are well-understood — characters can create minor new effects, but it is assume that such effects are not secrets, but have been observed in others and are easily replicated. Certain genre-busting powers like teleportation and time-travel are just not allowed in this setting.
In addition, there is a list of Investigative abilities, with a discussion about how to use them in game play. GUMSHOE makes the interesting design choice of not having a lying skill – lying is a way to use other skills and abilities. There is a “Bullsh*t Detection” ability for detecting deception as well as the more typical Interrogation and Intimidation skills. There is also a useful section in the Procedure chapter on how to interrogate a suspect.
Interestingly, there is a Read Minds power, but not no discussion of the fallibility of human memory. Certainly, it makes things easier to solve mysteries if one assumes that human perception and memory work like a video camera and that the unaltered memory is in there somewhere if one can just extract it, but this can create some suspension of disbelief problems and limits the GM’s use of honest-but-mistaken witnesses, good-faith disagreements about events, and other standard mystery fodder. A Design Notes about perception and memory in GUMSHOE would be useful in future editions.
Forensics in fiction are generally faster, more reliable, and more free from ambiguity than their real-world counterparts. MCB openly discusses this conceit, and others, and how they affect gameplay. This is a useful game convention, but ignoring real-world limitations and criticisms of forensics may deprive a GM of mysteries that depend a bit on ambiguous information or intentional efforts to deceive crime scene analysis. (Anyone interested in a criticism of real-world forensics will find a decent summary of concerns in the recent National Academy of Science report on Forensics.)
MCB also does a nice job of explaining how to run a mystery-based adventure and how it differs from, for example, a dungeon-crawl. For the most part, characters get clues easily and must get at least one core clue in each scene. (This means the GM must think about the structure of the adventure and make sure that scenes have a purpose – thus limiting the risk of characters floundering without an idea what to do next.) There is a concurrent risk of railroading – having an inflexible adventure that does not allow enough character flexibility, which is also discussed in the text.
In combat, MUTANT CITY BLUES makes it somewhat easier to restrain foes in unarmed combat than other systems, reasoning that because the characters are police officers they are unlikely to mis-use these rules to capture and execute foes. However, it also limits the use of Tasers because the designers felt that quick incapacitation abilities make action sequences too boring and short. More information on when police characters can legally use force and when civilians can do so within the setting would have been useful.
Oddly, in this generally well-researched game, there is glaring mis-statement in a text-box about what happens when an aggressor tries to charge an opponent with a drawn-ready gun standing more than 5 feet away. The text states that the ready foe will badly injure the charging character before he or she can reach the foe. It is a staple of police training that an aggressive foe within 21' feet of an armed police officer can reach the officer with a tackle or knife before the officer can draw and fire. Other studies show that an aggressor can, in some circumstances, out-draw an officer with an aimed, ready gun and shoot the officer before the officer recognizes the threat and can react. Thus, many departments use a cover and contact system where one officer talks to the suspect and another observes from a safe distance and angle, ready to act if the suspect (or one of his buddies) becomes aggressive.) If this was a deliberate design choice, it could use a Design Note.
The section on police culture and procedure takes an interesting approach to police culture, the acceptability of the blue wall of silence protecting internal misdeeds, and the difference between written policy and acceptable practice. The advice fits within the dramatic conventions of police work, but seems to discourage characters who might try to expose corruption or other misdeeds.
All-in-all, MCB does an excellent job of adapting superpowers to police procedural adventures. It contains some very good advice for creating and playing mystery-oriented adventures, especially in a police-setting. Its main weakness is its strong orientation towards big-city American urban policing – perhaps an expansion could expand on federal agencies, suburban and rural policing and/or foreign settings. Those interested in adapting this book to other settings or looking for additional ideas might wish to consider Hogshead Publishing’s Crime Scene line; GURPS Cops, Mysteries, and SWAT; or even AFMBE’s Pulp Zombie.
For those interested, there’s an interview with Robin Laws about the game at Meanwhile..The Super Gamign Podcast (Meanwhile14.mp3) http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/MeanwhiletheSuperGamingPodcast/~3/qwTPeEVuMaI/meanwhile14.mp3
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