I've given it a try, and it is a good game, at least from the GM's side. I think folks used to previous supers-genre games will have to work a bit to fully grok the mechanics, as they aren't as... objective as in many other games. But, it does a pretty good job of modelling the superhero comic genre.
Agreed.
I got to try a scenario at one of our local Gamedays, using some of the Marvel Pre-Gens. It modeled the Marvel Universe well, and people were able to jump right in.
And we've since run a 6-episode arc with my current group that left quite a few plot threads dangling for us to return to. (That was a “Street Level” power game, with a bit of a “Vertigo” feel to it.) This was a bit more of a learning curve, from Character Creation to assembling the Die Pool for each action. Overall, people enjoyed it, though we may institute some HouseRules to streamline things for our particular group.
The good?
1) Price-point. At the very reasonable $20 entry point, everyone at the table had a copy of the book, which helped tremendously.
2) Know Quantity; It’s the Marvel Universe, so you pretty well know the Status Quo already. (Even if you don’t know the specifics of the last decade [Civil War, Secret Invastion, Sahdowland, etc.] you’ll still “Get It”. *But see Point 1 of “The Bad”. (In other words, it’ “Gets” the Super-Hero genre in a big way.)
3) It’s clear that this book is a labor of love from Margaret, Cam & co, and it really shows through.
4) Production Value: The book is pleasant to look at, and easy to reference. (We used clips to mark the few pages that we refered to frequently, but most everything else was able to be found with a minimum of fuss on a moments notice.
5) Scene-Ending. One of the newer things we've found we enjotyed about the game is the ability for the Watcher to ABRUPLTY end a scene in a dramatic way by using his accumulated dice pool. (Yes, the Watcher does have that ability NORMALLY, of course, but it somehow seemed really organic to the story the few times we employed it in our mini-series.)
The bad?
1)The system seems designed to use existing Marvel Characters, rather than original characters. For our “mini-series”, we opted for original, lower-power characters to test the system. While it turned out OK overall, char-gen was definitely a bit of a trial, initially.
2) Char-Gen: For creating new characters, it definitely reuires some effort. While it’s not HARD at all, it’s IS a bit vague. There are no firm “Caps” for abilities defined in the rules; it is left in the hands of the Watcher, for the most part to say “OK, this is a street-level game, so no Powers over a D10.”
3) Power Sets: While you can use the existing Marvel pre-gens as templates, it’s tough to assign yourself a Power Set that makes sense; one of our players chose the “Super Solder” template from Captain America, and was good to go almost immediately, while I had to fiddle a bit to get the powers I wanted in my “Demonic Possession” set.
4) “Starter” Adventure: Not a “”Bad”, per se, but I was surpised that they chose the starting adventure they did, which is based on a comic that came out some time ago…. And their first supplement was for “Civil War”, another storyline that panned out quite some time ago…. (I’m not sure what the lead-time is for prep/writing/printing/publishing these books, though, so that may be a necessary evil based on the lead-time.)
So, while there are a few negatives (at least for our group), overall, the experience was quite positive, and we were all willing to give the system another try, perhaps with a few house-rules added in. Almost everyone liked the informal writing style used, and the price-point and production values/artwork were also a big plus.
In short? For the price-point, this is
totally an investement worth the money if you’re interested in a Superhero Game, particularly one set in the Marvel Universe.