Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, slice by slice

[Baz King]

Lots of really interesting stuff here. I think the initiative system is ace (and profoundly stealable) and the Doom Pool is really intriguing. Solo/buddy/team is a really neat idea and using different datafiles for different 'events' is going to be interesting in practice.

At the risk of invoking a boardgame comparison and all that entails, at first glance what is really intriguing to me is the relationship between players and GM (aka Watcher). There's an almost boardgamey style (as in Mansions of Madness or Middle Earth Quest for example) set up where the Watcher is both limited and enabled by the Doom Pool that will test the Watcher's abilities as much as the players'.

It looks like a lot of fun and it also looks like MWP are trying at least via things like Cheat sheets to give the game a learning curve on a par with a complicated boardgame. It does feel to me that at a time when the rpg hobby is under massive economic stress that there's a massive amount of creativity being stirred up.

Good summary. In fact I think you might have saved me the bother!

[Baz King]

Chapter 5, understanding events.

Maybe I'm just getting warmed to the book after so much close reading, but the tone is getting livelier and more engaging by the page. I actually think the art is getting better too. The pieces are more dynamic than in the early chapters anyway.

Now then, events with a capital E. These are adventures, built around the comic mega plots that have become a regular occurrence in recent years. Civil War, Planet Hulk, Secret Wars that sort of thing. This summer in Marvel land is all about Avengers v X men, which I imagine will trickle down to the RPG if the game is successful enough.

This section takes you through the structure of an event. It's a short section and really only differs from any other books commentary on adventures by emphasising the in media res technique and suggests inserting unlockables into the event (look out! It's a video game thing! Save yourselves!)

All this is really a preamble to the introductory scenario (I'm dating myself with that term) which is a mini event based on the New Avengers story, Breakout. My personal bias is to published adventures, I love them, yet they generally repay that love by being made of arse. With a game like this, I'm going to need this event to be great, and to be a template for my own games. If its not, I would really feel all at sea with the mechanics, and might not get far beyond playing out a few test fights.

In the interests of spoiler alerts, I don't thin, I can be too explicit about this event. Having said that, I linked to the original comics which are free to download, so it's not like it's all under wraps. One of my questions before jumping in is, what if you've already read the event in its original form? Will it matter? I would think it would in any other genre. I can't imagine playing out the events of a D&D novel that I'd already read, that would be weird.

Tell you what, I'll read it through, then make a call on whether to reveal the details.

[Baz King]

Skipping ahead to the bit that many readers would start with, here are the heroes you get.

Armor
Beast
Black Panther
Black Widow
Captain America
Colossus
Cyclops
Daredevil
Emma Frost
Human Torch
Invisible Woman
Iron Fist
Iron Man
Luke Cage
Mr Fantastic
Ms Marvel
Sentry
Shadowcat
Spiderman
Spider woman
Storm
Thing
Wolverine

As with any such thing, I guess you're either a glass half full or a glass half empty type. No Hulk or Thor is a downer, and who was clamouring for Armor exactly? But a decent mix of Avengers, X men and the FF can't be all bad.

[Tim Gray]

The game will sell on its own merits. What I have a problem is that ridiculous site's (RPGnet) constant love in with the fad game of the day. If MHR sells well that's great, I have no problem with that at all, but there are plenty of games that don't meet their standard of coolness that dont' get the same exposure. They are the problem not the game. The only real issue I have with the game which is a complete dealbreaker is the lack of character creation rules. There is no excuse for that whatsoever and it also suggests a design aesthetic I am not happy with.

The site doesn't post. Its users do. If lots of people are enthusiastic about a thing, that thing gets lots of coverage for a while.

What you're saying basically amounts to objecting to people talking about what they're interested in, which is kind of the point of a forum.

And you're dead wrong about "the game will sell on its own merits". Games sell because people hear good things about them, not because innate quality oozes out across the ether into their brains. That forum talk is the providential marketing that creates the payoff for the work people put into the game. (And yes, I wish I had a tenth of it.)

[Tim Gray]

Ah, apologies, turns out I was wrong about what the layout on the Metals page signifies. The Marvel game's appearance at the top "only" means it is the latest to achieve Platinum status: over 1000 sales (within two weeks).

You guys might dig this. I just spotted that the Marvel RPG has become the best-selling game of all time on the DriveThruRPG storefront. Within two weeks of release. That's amazing.

(You find this stuff out by clicking on the metal sales level badge, which takes you through to a page with the Gold and Platinum products listed. Mongoose's Legend had previously climbed rapidly to take the top spot. Which, btw, is currently on sale so it's less than $1, which I don't think makes sense but go for it.)

[Neil Gow]

As with any such thing, I guess you're either a glass half full or a glass half empty type. No Hulk or Thor is a downer, and who was clamouring for Armor exactly? But a decent mix of Avengers, X men and the FF can't be all bad.

Its a snapshot of the MU at the time though isn't it - Whedon's X-Men, the FF and the flotsam and jetsam of the Bendisverse that will be hilariously forged into the Avengers when, six month later, Captain America remembers about being an Avenger *snark*. I believe Hulk is *ahem* 'off planet' at the time and Thor had been disassembled into death at Ragnarok iirc.

[Baz King]

Ha! Didn't know you were paying so much attention!

Neil and Bendis sitting in a tree......

[andreww]

Hmm, in the context of chatting about the MHRPG I wondered if anyone had seen this and had a view about the likelihood or otherwise of it being true.

[pedr]

Levi's opening line, 'Here's a thing' is about right.

Given the axe which Ben L appears to have with anyone who works on (or buys, I guess) things which aren't creator-owned, I think he's an utterly inappropriate person to raise the issue (and anyway a pretty poor place to host the discussion).

The polemic in the opening post (and the ott anonymous follow-up) hides any sense of the possible truth. The statement that MWP 'uniformly' gives freelances the run-around, refuses to pay etc appears provably false, even if there are ongoing disputes between some freelancers and MWP. Are people calling for boycotts of football clubs or car manufacturers who have trouble paying their bills? I've not seen any.

It struck me as ridiculous even if there was truth behind it. That I first heard of it via a (cryptic) and anguished tweet from Cam Banks may have coloured my impression of the post, but it is difficult to understand how anyone could consider it appropriate to post such an accusation in such a form.

Edited to add: this analysis seems pertinent: http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?617 ... st15128796

[Neil Smith]

On a happier note, I've been inspired by the freewheeling style of game implied by the Marvel rules. Despite not being into superheroes or comics at all, I'll be running a game of Marvel at Concrete Cow on Saturday. It'll only be the Breakout scenario from the book, but that should be plenty for people to have fun with.

[John Anderson]

I'm in the same boat, Neil. Not a huge fan of supers comics and running a game tonight. I'll also be running Breakout, but I just can't run a New York-based game and have moved things to the UK.
John

[Neil Smith]

Let me know how it goes!

[Baz King]

Time to sum up.

This is a bold game. Its not afraid to be a game, with its dice and its actions and its stress tracks and all that. It's grown up too. It's determined to emulate the stories in the comic books, but with not a hint of silliness or irony. It makes no concessions to anyone new to gaming or to the source material. It's almost brutal in its focus. Almost.

Where it slips is in its concession to the ardent hobbyist. This game is crying out to be hacked, and not necessarily into a supers game. If you like the costumed capers, then there's not much here that makes it Marvel specific. You could run any supers stuff you wanted with this. MWP have earned their credibility by writing mechanics around specific genres like Leverage and Smallville, but this one has a broader reach. I am a big Marvel fan, but apart from the Doom Pool, where's the Marvel play book? I think the writers know this, and I don't think they mind. They wanted to write a great game engine, and they did, and the Marvel stuff came second.

The writing changes over the course of the book. It starts as a Haynes technical manual of dice handling, and turns into the sort of game that has exclamation marks! And asks you to read a different chapter, then come on back do you hear?! Weird. It could have done with another editing pass too. The chapters don't flow, and sometimes important rules are casually tossed into an otherwise unprepossessing sentence. And the art, how could they make Marvel art look so.... functional?

But absolutely none of that matters. They are all criticisms of the book, and the book is not the game. This game quite obviously needs playing, and those who have played it are arguably the wrong people to have written it. I can see the rules systems and the tropes embedding themselves in your consciousness pretty quickly, and pretty deeply. The learning curve from an expert Watcher will be a lot easier than the death defying learning plummet of having to read it cold.

I want to play this game. This is the only superhero game I want to play. It's the only one I've seen that puts weight on the role, the play and the game. Make Mine Marvel.

[Baz King]

And with that, there endeth the review. Thanks for sticking with it, the discussions have been ace. Let's keep that going with some actual play?

How did the slice by slice format work for you? I'm happy to do more if there's an audience. Any suggestions?

[Kaiserjez]

How did the slice by slice format work for you? I'm happy to do more if there's an audience. Any suggestions?

D&D 4th Ed please