I bought the old MSH game back when it was new, but never did much with it apart from a couple beer and pretzel games. I've been taking a second look at it recently and finding something pleasing in its essential simplicity, but there are a couple of areas that seems a bit suspect to me.

Ideally I'd like anyone here familiar with this game to share their experience and views on the following.

1. Random character generation for a superhero just feels wrong. I've recently found an article from Dragon magazine with a point based system. Anyone used this system, is it sound? If not how do you handle character creation.

2. There is no concept of passive defence in the game is there?  The "to hit" chance is based only on the attacker's rank. So in the normal course of events it is just as easy to hit Spiderman as it is to hit Aunt May. There is an optional dodge rule, but it seems clumsy. How does this work out in practice.

Finally are there any powers or combination of powers which are very broken that I need to be wary of?

Tons is broken in a traditional RPG sense with MSH.  First, are we talking Basic or Advanced MSH?  I'm assuming Basic with your post.  To answer your questions.

1.  Random character generation.  I've always found its biggest flaw to be in the variation and comparing that to the standard of existing Marvel Superheroes.  Some existing heroes are broken system wise unless you've played for 10 years straight and advanced your character.  I've found the best way is to create an entire campaign around this randomness of the dice (all villains and heroes within the campaing are created randomely).  There is a lot of flexibility in the rules to create interesting characters.  

2.  Varies due to Basic or Advanced.  There are a number of passive defenses in both games, whether combat manuevers or powers.  

I like to create campaigns with random based character pools.  Make 7 characters and choose 3 to be heroes while the rest become villains.  Players will choose the most interesting or powerful to become heroes.  Villains always have the benefit of situation to even the playing field.  Villains play be different rules than heroes and can have assistance.

Quote from: Gunslinger;276344Tons is broken in a traditional RPG sense with MSH.

Way, way back in the day, that's exactly the reaction that I had to it when friends of mine showed me the game.  I just wouldn't play it, because it appeared to do so very much "wrong" in terms of traditional RPGs of the time.  Of course, what I failed to notice was that much of what appeared "wrong" for an RPG was right for a comic book, which is what the game was representing.

I don't have much else to add to the thread, except that I've had a read through the genericised version of the (advanced edition?) game that's up for free on the Net, and I'm a lot more forgiving of the game now.  It does what it sets out to do rather well, without much slavish adherence to more traditional game design and format.

!i!

(P.S. I stumbled across the MSH adventure, "Lone Wolves" in a box this weekend, a team-up of Daredevil, Black Widow, Luke Cage, and Iron Fist.  I used to buy the adventures for my other superhero game campaign.)

I recall the first experience of mine (1984?) being Thor, the Silver Surfer, the Hulk and the Thing and it was so uncontrollable as they all went ballistic in the first five seconds.

My brother kept buying supplements and nobody wanted to play after so many odd combinations like Wolverine, the Vision and Machine Man etc. just started to get whacky

The Villains & Vigilantes game was better, it had a strange nuance of it being "you" with super powers so it slowed down that initial "kaboom" tang that the Marvel one had. I tried to dig through it a few years ago and I have to say in retrspect it was a little busy and I never GMed it. The revival went south anyway as I couldn't get any players.

As Ian says, the trick with MSH is understanding that it is attempting to reproduce a comic experience, specifically a typical Marvel comics experience, not necessarily to provide you with a superhero rpg system.  While that may sound a bit contradictory at first glance, it's really not.

MSH was certainly not designed in a way that was focused on players creating their own characters.  The core conceit of the game is that 99 times out of 100, the heroes and villains will be established characters in the Marvel universe.

Which isn't to say you can't use it to play a fun, light superhero campaign completely full of original characters.  But you are kind of using your screwdriver for a hammer at that point (or at least, using a nail when you need a drywall screw).

People always overlook "Modeling" (and the charts in the Referees book) as just as much a possibility for building your own characters. The games (Advanced) allows you to roll randomly (and use Bonus powers/related powers, which was sadly not explained) to build a character from the randomness and through common sense connections of powers and abilities or it provided you with the ability to model a PC from those you saw in comics--created from the ground up.

I don't know why people ignore that, but they seem to always complain about randomness in the game, when just like V&V its only ONE option you are offered. (Now the Basic sets, weren't as aimed at this goal.)



Secondly, defenses? The game offers active defenses--Dodging for ranged attacks, and Evading for melee attacks. If someone is JUST standing there, do you think it be hard for Aunt May to get hit? or Spider-man? Of course not, if someone isn't taking a defensive action, now that's like standing stock still. Passive defenses in games assumes the caveat that someone WILL ALWAYS make a defensive actions. Marvel requires you choose to do so. Neither one is a better solution than the other.
Comics of course seem to show this out--someone standing still (Spiderman) has in the past been K-oed when he didn't actively move, by common thugs.

Now you ALSO have to remember that MSH comes from the era of "Health" and Hit Points being as much an abstraction as measuring real world "physical" abilities--after all why is Fighting AND Agility part of the math for health? Because you have a little bit of twitch involved in avoiding lethal attacks! (After all you don't roll on the column to see if your dying until a hit pushes your Health BELOW 0, or its an attack that lands a red result and can kill you if it lands at all. (Claws and Bullets.)

I am always amazed at how people blindly accept abstraction in one game, but not in another...


*shrugs* MSH is one of my favorite games, and likely the one I've most played, but even re-reading the books, I'm always stunned by how much thought went into its design, even if it isn't perfect.

Quote from: Silverlion*shrugs* MSH is one of my favorite games, and likely the one I've most played, but even re-reading the books, I'm always stunned by how much thought went into its design, even if it isn't perfect.

Same here.  When I said "broken in a traditional RPG sense", I meant in a good way that Ian, jgants, and yourself explained much better because the genre it is trying to emulate.  As my first superhero RPG, MSH proved to be a testing ground for roleplaying the genre.  A lot of beginning ill will for the system comes from not understanding how to deal with issues that don't become present in other systems.  

Quote from: SilverlionPeople always overlook "Modeling" (and the charts in the Referees book) as just as much a possibility for building your own characters. The games (Advanced) allows you to roll randomly (and use Bonus powers/related powers, which was sadly not explained) to build a character from the randomness and through common sense connections of powers and abilities or it provided you with the ability to model a PC from those you saw in comics--created from the ground up.

I don't know why people ignore that, but they seem to always complain about randomness in the game, when just like V&V its only ONE option you are offered. (Now the Basic sets, weren't as aimed at this goal.)

Granted, I'm not a huge fan of "Modeling" but that is largely a personal preference.  I can't think of a better system, for me, that allows you to do it though.  It becomes extremely intuitive with its examples of well known characters and descriptions of abilities.  

Random character generation.  Whether Basic, Advanced, or Ultimate Powers, I may have actually screwed around with this more than anyone.  After learning how to deal with issues of running the superhero genre, many of the issues of random character generation become a moot point.  The system can actually allow you to generate characters better or worse than anything you could possibly think of.  Sadly, it doesn't always allow you to generate characters that are presented as examples within the game and the comics.  They're also are a lot of nuances built in within each version of the rules.  Basic, for all of its simplicity, allows you to create more established heroes.  Advanced and Ultimate assumes you're a starting character.  Excluded from Advanced are rules for unique vehicles or weapons, intelligence weapons, or sidekicks and you can have a generous popularity stat from the start.  Rolling on the Talents table for Basic provides humorous, somewhat antiquated, and unexpected results.  The breaking down of the sciences is somewhat hilarious considering the huge abstraction you're able to apply on all other parts of the game (EX: all engineering and medicine disciplines are one skill but chemistry, physics, geology, genetics, and biology are all separate skills).  The Ultimate Powers book kills that same abstraction with powers and creates in even diverse spectrum for charactre generation hilarity (more suited to the Tick than Marvel or DC).  I've presented many players rules to navigate the random creation rules of MSH.  Only few like minded individuals appreciate them as much as I do.  

Advancement is probably the biggest problem with MSH.  I swear the writers of the game thought you were going to play as long as comic book lines run.  If its goal was to present a theme for adventures NOW and not LATER it succeeded.  

I could go on and on but I need to got to sleep.

double post

I've found that with the inclusion of point-buy plus a few minor modifications the Advanced system becomes a credible engine for epic fantasy. I even ran a few Exalted games with it.

I'm also currently reading Mike Casey's Godland, which is a superb tribute to the Lee/Kirby era of science-fantasy superheroics I loved best as a kid. If I were to ever run something like that - and yes, I am sorely tempted - then it'd be either with M&M or Advanced MSH.

Quote from: Gunslinger;276552Same here.  When I said "broken in a traditional RPG sense", I meant in a good way that Ian, jgants, and yourself explained much better because the genre it is trying to emulate.  As my first superhero RPG, MSH proved to be a testing ground for roleplaying the genre.  A lot of beginning ill will for the system comes from not understanding how to deal with issues that don't become present in other systems.  

Fair enough. I wasn't specifically aiming at your post, just the thread in general.

QuoteRandom character generation.  Whether Basic, Advanced, or Ultimate Powers, I may have actually screwed around with this more than anyone.  After learning how to deal with issues of running the superhero genre, many of the issues of random character generation become a moot point.  The system can actually allow you to generate characters better or worse than anything you could possibly think of.  

Ultimate owers is a great book for ideas, but its one I stopped using for PC generation when I rolled up a 14 powers--all defensive, character. He evolved into "Adam, the Adamantium Man", but it was just a silly random roll result that gave him all those defensive powers.)

QuoteAdvancement is probably the biggest problem with MSH.  I swear the writers of the game thought you were going to play as long as comic book lines run.  If its goal was to present a theme for adventures NOW and not LATER it succeeded.  

I could go on and on but I need to got to sleep.

Hope you slept. I think the problem with any game modeling supers is that they allow advancement in a traditional game sense. Now if you start PC's at peon level, they'll always want to advance. If you start them off as HEROES who might needs some fine tuning at best--then its relatively moot.


Just for fun, I will now rolls a random ADVANCED MSH PC.:

Origin: 01 Altered Human

Attributes are rolled on Column 1

Fighting: 84  Incredible
Agility: 29 Good
Strength: 30 Good
Endurance:45 Excellent
Reason: 79 Remarkable
Intuition: 38 Excellent
Psyche: 69 Remarkable

Altered Humans can raise one attribute one rank. I think I'll raise Agility in this case.

So we have

F In (36)
A Ex (16)
S Gd (
E Ex (16)
R Rm (26)
I Ex (16)
P Rm (26)

Health: 76
Karma: 66

Powers (69 4/4)

61 Distance Attacks:  Energy Generation

I'll look that up now and see what it does. It doesn't mention any connected powers. So I'll roll the next one.

80: Body Alterations Offensive: Energy Touch

In this case I chose the power from the category to fit the theme I rolled above.  Since rolling on the specific powers under the categories is optional anyway.

100: Body Alterations Defensive: Body Armor

I rolled this since none but Solar Regeneration specifically fit the theme, and Immortality is a bit overpowered in my mind.

40 Energy Control: Light

I decided to choose this since it seems thematic to the rest of his powers.

I'll do Talents and the rest later. I've got to run for now

I liked the magic rules that came with the Dr. Strange adventure.

QuoteIntuition: 38 Excellent

Cheater.  38 is a Good.  It's sad that I have that table memorized.  

QuoteF In (36)
A Ex (16)
S Gd (
E Ex (16)
R Rm (26)
I Ex (16)
P Rm (26)

Health: 76
Karma: 66

Health:  66
Karma:  68

Quote61 Distance Attacks: Energy Generation

I usually recommend that players roll the power rank after the category and then choose their power.  It allows for a little more damage control.  

I'm waiting for the Ultimate character.

Quote from: Gunslinger;276656Cheater.  38 is a Good.  It's sad that I have that table memorized.  

Whoops your right, I was in a hurry earlier. (Had a call, which is why I left, back to finish up later.)

However, your math is off.. 16+16=32. 32+8=40 and 40+36 is 76

Thanks for the responses. Picking up on various questions and comments.

The version I have is the Basic set.

I really don't think my group would be interested in playing existing Marvel characters. On the other hand as I know the Marvel universe far better than my players (which is not something I am necessarily proud of :-)) it is entirely possible for me to use Marvel villains as long as I stir away from the Dr Doom, Magneto or any of the main bad guys which appeared in movies.

My question about the defences was not a direct criticisms of the system. I was simply taking stock that MSH seems a little unusual in this respect as in most games I am familiar with the targets of attacks either have variable passive defence values (D&D AC) or a 'free' active defence option (the standard Dodge in D6). I wanted to know if, actual play, people found the MSH defence worked well or did they tinker with the defence rules.

Advancement is not an issue for me. I never cared for the 'zero to hero' experience and I normally don't run games in which players gain XP and go up levels.

My favourite thing about the original MSH was the format for introducing new (+ young) players to the game. Very accessible and presented the game in a more fun + thematic way than a lot of RPGs do.