Contributor, RPG Superstar 2008 Top 6
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I'm playing Champions Online (since open beta) and still have lots of fun with it.
I'm a lifetime sub on Champions Online, and still play from time to time. Taking a break for other projects, though :) I hope now that there's a free option people give it a shot, it's got great combat and an amazing costume creation engine.
Hiya.
Marvel FASERIP all the way here. :) Tried DC Heroes (by Mayfair games at the time)...wonky system that. If I remember correctly, Batman could normally press 800 lb, but if he "really tried" (re: "Pushed" was the term I think), he could press 12,800 lb. o_O (each 'point' doubled the value before it, and you could 'push' up to 4 points higher than you had...something like that).
Made a couple of Champion characters at one point. Then I saw it in action at a con ("CalCon" in Calgary AB I think). They just started a battle with a super villain and his one or two minions. It was about 10am. By the time I left that night, about 10pm, they were *still playing that combat*! o_O (x2!) Vowed I'd play Champions if I never had to do any actual rules look up and just tell the GM what I wanted to do and he could tell me what to roll.
Even tried (and still own), a short lived (very!) generic super hero rpg called "Heroes & Heroines". The companies goal was to have supplemental books detailing various comic book worlds and settings. They started with Image, believe it or not, and put out a single book based on The MaXX. Simple system, potential for lots of dice, and I liked the genericness of it. Even started to create my own super hero setting/world using it. I kinda liked the feel, but the rules needed a lot of tweeking/adding.
So, back to Marvel Super Heroes Advanced and the FASERIP system. :) Fast, simple, and can cover everything from Aunt May to the Beyonder. Oh, and the I am kinda partial to the Marvel universe. :)
Last time I played? About 4 months ago or so. A 'mini-campaign' of about 4 or 5 sessions of 5 hours each. I used The Master; he had returned with his Plodex technology and, after the heavy butt kicking he got last time he tried something, he was all very 'subtle and behind the scenes'; the game was fairly detective-ish to start. Lots of fun, and with MSHA, nothing (save Basic D&D) is as easy to just pick up on a whim, whip up new PC's in 10 minutes, and get to some dice rolling. :)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
Hiya.
Marvel FASERIP all the way here. :) Tried DC Heroes (by Mayfair games at the time)...wonky system that. If I remember correctly, Batman could normally press 800 lb, but if he "really tried" (re: "Pushed" was the term I think), he could press 12,800 lb. o_O (each 'point' doubled the value before it, and you could 'push' up to 4 points higher than you had...something like that).
Yes, i rememeber that system. Superman had strength 50 O_o putting him in the 30,000,000,000,000,000 tons league or something like that
The costume creation is good; but no where near as good as COH/COV; that is the best character creation engine I have ever seen or used.
I'm a lifetime sub on Champions Online, and still play from time to time. Taking a break for other projects, though :) I hope now that there's a free option people give it a shot, it's got great combat and an amazing costume creation engine.
I'm playing Champions Online (since open beta) and still have lots of fun with it.
Champions fights dont usually take that long in the paper/dice game, though supervillans can be built like that; it is not typical. I can basically think of two that you either have an attack that can hurt them or you cant do much at all and both are robots.
What turns most people away from the game is character creation; which is some peoples, myself included, favorite part; can take hours if not days to work on a character to get him to fit a good hero conception; really a good game for a guy that likes to tinker with a character and the game has a lot of options so you need GM approval along the way and a very good character conception.
The online game completely skips this and is very cookie cut and paste and fights in the online game are over pretty quick on way or the other.
I am really wondering how the Marvel Online game; if it ever comes out; is going to work; look; feel when played and about character creation and if the costume module is going to really rock; sometimes just making a character look great is lot of fun; I know in COH/COV I used to spend hours just in the character creation module because it was so much fun.
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Yes, i rememeber that system. Superman had strength 50 O_o putting him in the 30,000,000,000,000,000 tons league or something like thatHiya.
Marvel FASERIP all the way here. :) Tried DC Heroes (by Mayfair games at the time)...wonky system that. If I remember correctly, Batman could normally press 800 lb, but if he "really tried" (re: "Pushed" was the term I think), he could press 12,800 lb. o_O (each 'point' doubled the value before it, and you could 'push' up to 4 points higher than you had...something like that).
The only down side to that system was it did not handle the lower power levels well...
Bats and most of the rest of the BatFamily all ended up with identical stats.
Yes, i rememeber that system. Superman had strength 50 O_o putting him in the 30,000,000,000,000,000 tons league or something like that
The only down side to that system was it did not handle the lower power levels well...
Bats and most of the rest of the BatFamily all ended up with identical stats.The FASERIP system had more or less the same problem.Ever tried to play with normal humans ? All have power ranks ranging from Poor to Typical....maybe one Good
Hiya.
The FASERIP system had more or less the same problem.Ever tried to play with normal humans ? All have power ranks ranging from Poor to Typical....maybe one Good
Actually, normal human ability topped out at Excellent (at least for FASE...I think RIP had a limit of maybe Remarkable). If you were making a "normal human hero", they could have decent stats, but their Talents would give them the edge. You could get up to +2CS for those; so your Excellent agility archer dude could be shooting his bow at Incredible/40. Toss in some explosive tips and you're looking at some decent damage potential (perhaps Ex/20 to In/40). And, in case you're wondering, Iron Man's stats and abilities generally sit around Incredible to Amazing.
Anyway, when you make a character for MSHA, it's generallyl assumed you are making a HERO, and not a "normal guy". He may have a normal guy alter ego (and may even have 'normal' stats, transofrming into his 'super' verions via a word or suit of armor). I've run and played in MSHA campaigns for probably close to two decades (came into it a bit late in my gaming carrer), and run everything from Inspector Halibut (a sub-normal human, really...quite pathetic...but that was the point), up to Attu the Sun God (my ancient deity of the sun...with stats and powers to match).
Ahhh....I still think MSHA is the best super-hero RPG out there. :)
^_^
Paul L. Ming
The FASERIP system had more or less the same problem.Ever tried to play with normal humans ? All have power ranks ranging from Poor to Typical....maybe one Good
Yes, i rememeber that system. Superman had strength 50 O_o putting him in the 30,000,000,000,000,000 tons league or something like thatThe only down side to that system was it did not handle the lower power levels well...
Bats and most of the rest of the BatFamily all ended up with identical stats.
I liked the WEG DC Heroes game more...It showed a more realistic portrayal of the bat-family and characters in general, but the powers were listed individually(IIRC), so the "Powers" aspect of the sheet was really, really long and it was easy to forget what powers one had in the shuffle.
I played the heck out of the FASERIP system throughout college, and me and my friends did a lot with that old system.
Balance? What's that? That system preceded the rules-enforced balance that is so important in modern games. The game's random character generation not only makes weird characters, but wildly different power levels.
But the randomness is fun! Usually, with a little refinement, you've got a workable hero in short order. Just don't bring your plant-talker to the cosmic game or you might feel ineffective.
One other thing about "normal" humans: Excellent is the max for strength only. I think it goes, fighting- Amazing, agility- Incredible, strength- Ex, Endurance- Remarkable. Just look at Captain America's stats.
Also, Martial Arts talents allows a character to slam or stun foes that they can't otherwise hurt because of body armor or vulnerability. Hence, Cap can give the Hulk a run, even though he can't out-damage him.
Wow, this takes me back. I need to get back into playing it.
I played the heck out of the FASERIP system throughout college, and me and my friends did a lot with that old system.
Balance? What's that? That system preceded the rules-enforced balance that is so important in modern games. The game's random character generation not only makes weird characters, but wildly different power levels.
But the randomness is fun! Usually, with a little refinement, you've got a workable hero in short order. Just don't bring your plant-talker to the cosmic game or you might feel ineffective.
One other thing about "normal" humans: Excellent is the max for strength only. I think it goes, fighting- Amazing, agility- Incredible, strength- Ex, Endurance- Remarkable. Just look at Captain America's stats.
Also, Martial Arts talents allows a character to slam or stun foes that they can't otherwise hurt because of body armor or vulnerability. Hence, Cap can give the Hulk a run, even though he can't out-damage him.
Wow, this takes me back. I need to get back into playing it.
My only real complaint against the system was the sheer number of powers required to emulate a single Marvel or DC hero.
That is why I gravitated towards the Heroes Unlimited system from Palladium. With only 4 house rules there was no character I could not emulate in HU (well powers wise anyway, power levels on the other hand.... but then no system truly can handle the power levels of plot. heh.)
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Another person who enjoyed playing the game. I would join a new game in a heartbeat. As for Chmapions fights lasting long. They usually do not last an entire day. Not unless both the Gms and players are incomptant. Starting to wonder if there was not a little exaggeration there. No one plays one fight in an rpg for one day. Not unless it's supposed to be that long.
Another person who enjoyed playing the game. I would join a new game in a heartbeat. As for Chmapions fights lasting long. They usually do not last an entire day. Not unless both the Gms and players are incomptant. Starting to wonder if there was not a little exaggeration there. No one plays one fight in an rpg for one day. Not unless it's supposed to be that long.
I'll second this. The only champions battle i ever had run that long was a 3-way battle royale with my poor group of PC heroes, the Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and PRIMUS. Each of the players was running their main PC(in the same superteam), their character in an alternate group from when we changed things up (Team PRIMUS special agents), and a non affiliated "solo" hero. that would put it at about 30 full blown superhero combatants plus Agent grade support. THAT only took 1 solid marathon day, at 12 hours.
This was the first roleplaying game I played... which is odd as I started playing less than 5 years ago.
Still one of my all-time favorites, and surprisingly good for non-marvel adventures.
i loved that game. Still got it somewhere in my attic.^^
Bought and tried recently Marvel Heroic RPG, but found it hard to play- maybe it's because i'm 20 years older that when I start playing MSH, lol!
Too bad there isn't any Marvel Pbf here.
i loved that game. Still got it somewhere in my attic.^^
Bought and tried recently Marvel Heroic RPG, but found it hard to play- maybe it's because i'm 20 years older that when I start playing MSH, lol!
Too bad there isn't any Marvel Pbf here.
I played a few games of the MWP Marvel game. Any individual turn takes a bit longer to resolve than it should, because of the mechanic of adding dice to a pool from wherever you can grab them, but it lets you narrate what feels like a panel or two of a comic book fight. I found that part to be the best aspect of the game. It's really better for the GM to determine a point at which the fight is over, rather than have the players fight it out to the last hero/villain standing. But when I played it, everyone around the table was really interested in everybody else's turn, which is more compelling than a lot of games. I was sad to see it get cancelled.
But as to the MSH FASERIP game of old, I tried it when it came out in the 80s, and couldn't really get the hang of running it. But when I played in a game run by a guy who really was into it, we had a blast. That was over 20 years ago, and I haven't played it since. But I took a look through it when I was packing up my game shelf for my move this month. Now I got a serious MSH jones.
i've lost sight of what happened in the marvel Universe, too many changes.
But my players liked to play their own characters anyway, not the "official" ones. Remember we had a Secret Wars campaign which was fun, back in the days...
*casts thread revive*
I've always wanted to learn this game. I have all the advanced set rulebooks, but I wanna keep it simple. Would anyone be interested in running a game of this on the forums or on Roll20 to teach me and others how to play?
One year day for day after my last post?
I'm impressed, Souldragon!
I've always wanted to learn this game. I have all the advanced set rulebooks, but I wanna keep it simple. Would anyone be interested in running a game of this on the forums or on Roll20 to teach me and others how to play?
Do you mean the old FASERIP Marvel or newest Heroic Marvel game?
MSH really isn't very complex. Generally, every attribute has a number and a column. The column is for all numbers in a certain span, and comes with a name like Good or Amazing. When making a check, you roll on the table and see what happens, fail, green, yellow or red. If you really need a certain success level, you can decide to pay karma points to cover the difference (roll 45, need 80 would cost you 35 points) for auto success.
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Fantastic that this thread has been reanimated just as me and my kids have got into it..! I am a long time lover of the system, it's feel, it's randomness! My kids are both into DC cartoons like LoSH and even Teen Titans Go...so as you can expect our games can be a bit bizarre and hyper! Perfect for MSH - any more complex and it would ruin the fun!
Anyone else interested should really check out Ben Reilly's site and of course Classic Marvel site...
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Here's the Classic Marvel RPG website
All the old books and resources are there for free, and there's a ton of good fan content too. Have fun.
Would be fun to play it again on the forums...
Would definitely love a PM if someone makes this happen.
Fantastic that this thread has been reanimated just as me and my kids have got into it..! I am a long time lover of the system, it's feel, it's randomness!
I still say the Classic Marvel game has the best "random" character generation rules of any game I've seen, especially when the Ultimate Powers Book is thrown into the mix. You can roll up any character from Aunt May to Thor, which helps with the comic book feel. I mean, would anyone in their right minds have generated the original Avengers with any kind of point buy system?
I mean, would anyone in their right minds have generated the original Avengers with any kind of point buy system?
I get your point, but ... the early versions of the Hulk, Thor, Iron Man, Gi/Ant Man, and the Wasp? If the Wasp were purchased as a follower, and skills were relatively pricey, I could see it.
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In my experience that's the job of a good Judge in occupying everyone's time...so in a combat there is a mix of foes to combat...Bucky was never just sat there watching Cape beat everyone up...he joined in,but rarely against BBEGS like Zemo. Interesting looking at the original Avengers and thinking the wasp wasn't equivalent to the others. I think it just takes a different mind set...not all about character builds and game balance, much more about telling a story. You might have got a buzz about playing someone hard hitting like hulk/thor, but you also got it deciding which gizmo to invent yet (as Stark/Pym, and you also got to be creative with more limited characters like Wasp - I had a character who obsessed about his hero identity to the point that he was always changing his costume!
In my experience that's the job of a good Judge in occupying everyone's time...so in a combat there is a mix of foes to combat...Bucky was never just sat there watching Cape beat everyone up...he joined in,but rarely against BBEGS like Zemo. Interesting looking at the original Avengers and thinking the wasp wasn't equivalent to the others. I think it just takes a different mind set...not all about character builds and game balance, much more about telling a story. You might have got a buzz about playing someone hard hitting like hulk/thor, but you also got it deciding which gizmo to invent yet (as Stark/Pym, and you also got to be creative with more limited characters like Wasp - I had a character who obsessed about his hero identity to the point that he was always changing his costume!In theory maybe. In practice, I've never seen a GM who could pull it off at all consistently. Or players willing to play second fiddle over the long haul.
Either you wind up with scenarios very obviously contrived to give the weak characters something to do/render the strong ones ineffective or you really do just have some characters fight the irrelevant mooks while the others deal with the real problem.
Even then, if your players work tactically, it's likely the power players will take a turn to clear away the mooks if they're at all a threat. It's the Superman problem - often he'd be better off just dealing with the problem on his own.The inventing gizmos is definitely a role, though it often plays out as deus ex machina and would be hard to work into a game mechanically. And Iron Man at least was already at the higher power level even without specific gizmos for the current problem.
And the Wasp, in the early years, often was essentially a follower, but that's mostly cause she was a girl, not so much her power set.
In practice, it's been more fun to have a variety of power sets and scales in a single party as opposed to being young gods[I will never forget what happened whwn we tried that] or aunt mays wholesale. Then again that's just my game experience.
To be sure, the powers are nowhere near equally powerful. However, by limiting the character types available (Sorry, no half-energy, half-god, half-robot aliens for you), you can get a somewhat consistent power level for stats, and with the optional powers you can take once you have rolled one, people have choices that are usually decent. Then again, you could get energy vampirism three times and resistance to sonic attacks.
I hated the random generation characters. The combos that came up were just... so... insane. It was REALLY tough to come up with any kind of cohesion with the combos you got.
The way we did it the most was the modeling method. we had the idea of what we wanted... (and were cool enough kids not to take advantage) and described what the character was, and the stats and powers got selected. All within limits.
I was just going through my RPG shelf of the dead and had a fun trip down memory lane with all my old MSH books last night :D :D
MAN I had a lot of stuff for that...
Here's the Classic Marvel RPG website
All the old books and resources are there for free, and there's a ton of good fan content too. Have fun.
GASP!!!
They have my Ressurection chart on there!!! Not credited... but still fun to see it live on :D
That thing was written back in 1996 and I think we only had ONE player roll on it. (BOY it was hard to actually 'die' in that game... )
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I hated the random generation characters. The combos that came up were just... so... insane. It was REALLY tough to come up with any kind of cohesion with the combos you got.
Yeah, one time I had this guy who had the wackiest power array. It was regeneration, a super Intuition score, metal claws, and scent. So crazy I just rerolled.
Still the best superhero game. Using the Ultimate Powers Sourcebook, one could create any type of superhero they could think of. I miss those days.