“The Atlas of Earth-Prime” is a series of PDF supplements for Mutants & Masterminds 3e, like Green Ronin has previously offered for Power Profiles and Threat Reports (villain profiles and stats). I would be very surprised if the Atlases are not compiled into a single volume with bonus material, as Green Ronin did with the Powers and Threats, once the series is complete. For those not as familiar with M&M, Earth-Prime is the alternate Earth with many of the best-known M&M settings, such as Emerald City and Freedom City. Including USA, there are 11 Atlases currently available, which cover nations or areas of North, South and Central America; Europe; and The Lost World. Each one costs $1.99 at either Green Ronin’s online store or Drive-Thru RPG. I decided to check out the USA one, since I have enjoyed the M&M materials I already own.
The twelve page USA Atlas covers ten US cities/areas with a superbeing presence. Freedom City and Emerald City, which have their own full-length sourcebooks, aren’t among them, which is understandable. Coverage of the included places is very uneven. Some have only a few paragraphs, while several are over a page in length and include stats for 1 or more NPCs. There are also various short sidebars with GM information. Just about everything in the USA Atlas offers an adventure seed or two, but that’s it. Only the longest (2+ pages) has anything close to enough information for even a campaign arc, and would still, in my opinion, need a lot of prep work to fill out.
The USA Atlas is heavily oriented to mystic themes and NPCs, although not everything is magic/mystical. For example there is a supervillain prison, that isn’t exactly as advertised, but is totally practical and non-magical. While the NPCs are interesting, a GM may be hard pressed to move them to one of their own campaign locales. Lady Mamba and Cottonmouth, in particular, are so closely tied to a particular US subculture that I can think of only 1 other area in the country where they might be usable with few changes.
A big disappointment, considering this is part of an Atlas supplement series, was that there isn’t a map to be found. I had hoped that the brief prison description I mentioned might have one, and the most detailed city, Embouchere, Louisiana, certainly deserved one. Perhaps Green Ronin wants to keep page count to a reasonable number, if they are indeed planning on a full-size Atlas sourcebook. Still, not getting even one map was a letdown for me, after the lovely one included in the Players’ Guide to Emerald City.
Another minor annoyance was that the PDF doesn’t seem to work well with the Good Reader app on my iPad. If the PDF is just opened, or has been sitting, the first one or two pages are blank for several seconds. The fault might be with my first generation iPad or the older version of Good Reader it must use, but I doubt it. I have never had a problem with reading my other M&M PDFs on my iPad.
A single Power Profile and the few paragraphs on Emerald City hospitals were both useful and fun enough to get me to buy Power Profiles and Players’ Guide to Emerald City, respectively. But the USA Atlas doesn’t make me want to grab any more in the series. Indeed, one of my own fellow-players told me that the USA one was “the best” but after it, the “series went downhill.” Much as it pains me to say it, and as much as I enjoy the M&M 3e line, this supplement just isn’t as good as the other M&M products I’ve looked at.
Linda Whitson
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