I just finished reading the Freedom City 3rd Edition PDF for Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition and here is a quick review of the book.
I've been a big fan of Mutants & Masterminds for a long time and followed the line over three editions, and I was able to read the two previous editions of Freedom city. So I can compare too, at least in terms of memories.
In terms of layout, the PDF is divided into two books, the first book is mainly for the players (including the GM) and the second for the GM only.
The player section is very interesting because it finally covers the basic premise of this campaign setting but also the whole history of the city. The most interesting chapter for the players remains for me the chapter 2 "Life in Freedom" where the players can learn everything about the local life: business, education, arts and leisure, health, media, military, parks and recreation, restaurants, science and technology, social life, sports, city life...it's a lot of information that clearly allows the players to make the city their own and to feel at home there
What has changed in terms of chronology (and without spoiler because all this is in the part for players). The timeline of the 1st one stopped in 2002, the 2nd one in 2005 with the construction of the Lighthouse in orbit by the Freedom League after a repulsed invasion, so the Freedom City timeline is now in 2015 and a lot has happened in Freedom City: there is no longer a Master Mage on Earth, Seven has unwillingly become a Dark Lord, the Republic of Lor has fallen after the appearance of an entity called the Collapsar, and Star Khan has allied with the Grue shapeshifters to create a Stellar Empire, Freedom City served as a staging area for alien refugees who were parked on Star Island causing great tension until Daedalus relocated them to Starhaven, a former Preserver habitat on Europa, one of the moons of Jupiter. Local financial magnate Jonathan Grant became a two-term mayor and was murdered on his way to revealing who was behind the creation of the alien hybrid creature that killed his daughter, an alien rights activist, Captain Thunder lost his powers and his son is now a living electrical form who needs a suit to stay coherent, the new Lady Liberty is transgender, Siren is no longer an active member of the Freedom League but a reservist, in short, a lot of changes.
The players' section ends with different types of possible campaigns and some proposals for alternative versions of Freedom City.
The GM's part is much more interesting, but of course the players are not supposed to read it. Without being a secret universe, this is superhero lore and not Vampires the Masquerade, there are grey areas that players are not supposed to know about, unless the background justifies it. For example, if a player wants to play the new incarnation of the Scarab (a legacy hero), his or her base is described as well as an archetype of powers (even if all freedom is given for a player who would like to change a little the powers of the new incarnation). Without going into spoilers, there is a much more complete timeline than the two previous editions but also descriptions of factions, organizations and places that were in different books of the second edition: the Claremont Academy, The Scarab I mentioned before, SHADOW, AEGIS (the SHIELD of this universe) etc.
Note that this chapter also includes many proposals to change Freedom City to your liking; You want there to be less superhero NPCs? Simple, during the Terminus invasion in 1983, all the heroes died and poof settled.
The next two chapters cover the heroes and villains of Freedom City. So what can I say, there have been some changes, I mentioned the changes in the Freedom League or the death of Master Mage Adrian Eldrich, but they are not the only ones. Some villains I liked like Maestro are gone, others have changed like The Silencer and Tarot (and in case I'm playing in this universe, I'd rather not reveal anything)
What about this book? Well, it's a more than complete campaign setting to take your players on a superhero adventure, there's a lot, I mean, a lot of information... Where the Superverse chose to describe mostly the things that relate to the four adventures of the book and leave the GM's and players' imagination for the rest, Freedom City chose to deliver a complete turnkey city. I like this aspect but it makes for a lot of reading and choices to be made.
However, some things in this book refer to other books of the M&M3 series. You want to know more about Collapsar or the Stellar Empire, we refer you to the Cosmic Handbook supplement which has a chapter on that. Want to know more about the Claremont Academy? Then buy Hero High Revised, which has a chapter on it. Want to know what's going on in France? Buy Atlas of Earth-Prime. Well, I happen to have these supplements in PDF and it's still dispensable for a campaign taking place only in Freedom City.
As stated in the introduction: Freedom City is a campaign setting for superhero adventures using the third edition of the superhero role-playing game Mutants & Masterminds. But it can be used with any superhero RPG and even though a GM doesn't need permission to adapt a campaign setting to another RPG, I think it's cool that Green Ronin Publishing states this in full, it clearly means that they think their setting is so good that you might want to play it with any super RPG
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