Interest Check, TSR Marvel Super Heroes!

[Shayuri]

Cool.

I shall name him Tetsuo.

 

[Talliw]

A bit, yeah.

Are we playing in the offiical Marvel universe? Like...the normal Marvel heroes are out there in the world doing their thing? Or are we filling that role, along with other new and original characters?

We’re in the Marvel Universe, you’ll run into other heroes and villains ( more the villains I’m sure).

As for power level you guys are on the high end Avenger/Inhuman level. Or in a more modern context, like the Ultimates. But it seems like you guys have a lot of ranks in powers. Your attributes aren’t that too far off power wise.

 

[Talliw]

A bit, yeah.

Are we playing in the offiical Marvel universe? Like...the normal Marvel heroes are out there in the world doing their thing? Or are we filling that role, along with other new and original characters?

We’re in the Marvel Universe, you’ll run into other heroes and villains ( more the villains I’m sure).

As for power level you guys are on the high end Avenger/Inhuman level. Or in a more modern context, like the Ultimates. But it seems like you guys have a lot of ranks in powers. Your attributes aren’t that too far off power wise.


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[Shayuri]

I seeee...okay that helps put things in context.

Are we established superheros, or newcomers?

 

[Talliw]

Newcomers I think. We’ll do Popularity by the book a bit later. Also as Moon Sapphire did, you can choose friends, contacts or an alter ego for free. I feel those are more narrative elements and tools to get karma or enhance story. 1-4 contacts/allies should be enough.


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[Shayuri]

Good deal, I like the newcomer angle.

For Origin, can we just select one? Also, do we apply the adjustments to attributes some of the origins stipulate?

Also...is it just me, or is Force Field not entirely dependent on the Psyche attribute, and not at all dependent on its own power rank? If I read it right, you could have Force Field at Feeble, and Psyche at Unearthly, and every important element of the Force Field...from armor strength to the roll you use to expand it's area...would be at Unearthly.

That feels very min-maxy to me, but from curiosity I want to know if there's something there I'm not aware of that incentivizes increasing the power rank of Force Field.

 

[jmucchiello]

I asked about the origins earlier. T said it's just fluff since we are doing the point buy.

As for the powers, yeah, if I were redesigning MSH I'd have the power levels be subtracted so when a Remarkable power is used against a monstrous Psyche, it would normally fail but against a feeble psyche it would usually fail. Or maybe just some +1 CSL/-1 CSL stuff it you are more than 2 higher/lower than the level of the power. But that's more work than I think the system needs.

One thing I like about this old rules vs the advanced version is that there are no sub powers. The advanced rules do things like if you have Energy Control of certain energies, you get Flight at -1 CSL automatically. That kind of thing makes sense when randomly rolling powers but not with our point buy. I'd prefer that there were fewer base powers and that each base power just had suggested powers to pair with it. (one good thing in advanced is Body Armor works on everything but mental and magic power sources.)

 

[Shayuri]

One thing that confuses me about Body Armor power is the agility ding. It makes sense with some expressions of it, like if it's a suit of physical armor, or a tough rocky hide...but what about characters who are just sort of naturally invulnerable, or use some kind of mystical defense?

Anyway yeah. I can totally see why they moved onto multiple revisions of the rules. They seem really rough to me in the first iteration.

 

[Talliw]

Yeah origins and alter egos should be free IMHO. Buying it just seems ridiculous to since like I said they’re just good for setting secondary story plots and earning karma.

In regards to body armor, I think the intention was that some people who use by Armor are usually just the big clubbers like the Thing or the Hulk, the big bruiser that are either huge orhave some sort of natural exoskeleton the slows him down. Also mechanically since body armor is a good halfway between resistances and force field and its a passive power it needed to have a little bit of a penalty.

Force field like some power really is just based on this rank; something likes psyche only comes in play if you want to expand it so I don’t know if it’s really a min max thing. Several of the powers have a weird addendum’s to them where secondary usages are dependent on another attribute score.

But much of this is based on the random nature of chargen.

One the things I also like about the basic rules is that it is broad. There is no obsession with quantifying every power and there’s no real mention of stunts which I feel gets a little out of hand a later editions of the game. The spirit of the basic game is really “I want to try this what do I roll” and we just go from there. Also, I just love the ascetics of this basic set it was the one I first owned. I love the layout and the general tone of the rules and the Bronze Age artwork so it kind of hits all the right buttons for me.


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[jmucchiello]

I was just flipping through my copy of the basic set. I found a character with powers similar to Princess Starlight, my character in GreenKarl's defunct M&M PbF game. And I found another character that I subconsciously converted to HERO in 1990s. I haven't changed much in 30+ years apparently. I found an adventure I wrote for the game. I found I had more adventure modules for MSH than I remembered. Maybe I should look at that copy of Gangbusters that was sitting next to it.