Who's playing Marvel Heroic Roleplaying?

Hey folks! Just wondering how many of you have given MHR a try, how many of you are playing in a more or less regular game, and how many of you have been running the game as Watcher?

Cheers,
Cam

It's a gaming I've been meaning to pick up. Last year it was announced I knew I wanted to try a campaign of it, but we are in the middle of a Campaign since late February that I don't want to stop. I tried to get another group to play it as they wanted a Superhero campaign but the GM there went with Villains and Vigilantes which has been a disappointment rules wise.

It was purchased for me as a gift but I have not got a chance to check it out. Its the next game I am going to if AfterEarth doesn't pan out.

It will also be the FIRST superhero game I have played. Actually I played that one game Aeon or whatever. Man its been so long I don't know if that was the right name or not.

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.

I might suggest that anyone who wants to take a stab at Marvel Heroic might first want to try out Leverage first. The two games are based on the same core rules, and have similar concepts, but Leverage uses far fewer dice to accomplish it, making it a little simpler to get used to.

I haven't had a chance to run it in a RL game yet (sadly!) but I've been using it to run a PbP game and have been playing in other MHR PbP games. While it's not perfect (what system is?), it is the first superhero RPG that I've seen that "gets" what a supers game should be (IMO of course). I loved the old FASERIP game but I felt like I was often struggling against the system to reproduce an experience that was authentic to the source material. MHR is hands-down the best superhero game I've had the pleasure of playing and running.

Between MHR and the One Ring and Trail of Cthulhu my gaming needs are pretty much taken care of. Which is good because I'm sick of the damn D&D wars that have been raging for the past 4 years.

I haven't but I'd like to. I don't think that's on the cards for my gaming group though.

Umbran said:

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.

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My friend is looking to run a supers game and this is exactly what happened. This system threw him for a loop so now he's looking at the more "traditional" options.

I think it's for the best because truth be told we're not really interested in modelling the super hero genre so much as running amok with super hero powers. For instance, IIRC the foreword in this game mentions that a problem with the old Marvel Super Heroes game was that Captain America could beaten up by a couple of random thugs, which would never happen in a comic. I think if anything that would be a plus for us, because we'd find it funny.

Played this at Gencon and really enjoyed it, but the "weird" mechanics are definitely a stumbling block to winning over my main gaming group.

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.

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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.

Fun game! I've run a couple one-shots and played for a bit in a PbP before it died, but I haven't had a chance to run a regular game.