Will there ever be another Marvel or DC superhero RPG?

[Cthulhudrew]

Jack Emmert, the guy who is fundamentally behind CoX, is still with Cryptic, but most of the CoX staff left to go to NCSoft and the game they'd developed (including Sean "Manticore" Fish, who had left NCSoft to go with Cryptic, but is now jumping back). What this means for the development of the Marvel game, with all the people that made CoX such a success, I don't know.

Wow- no sooner do I speak it, than the portents come to the fore!

Is Marvel Universe Online Dead?

Let's see, for my next act... *wishes for a million dollars, wishes for a million dollars*

 

[InVinoVeritas]

The original Marvel Super Heroes game was art in its simplicity.

You had the rankings mentioned above.

You had scales of success and failure with a single die roll (and conveniently color-coded table).

The "ability scores" were in Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche, in that order. I will never forget this because the acronym is FASERIP.

Distances weren't measured in feet, inches, velocities... They were in areas. A room might be one area. One end of a hallway might be an area. This side of the street might be an area. If you were in the same area, you could punch your opponent (unless you're Mr. Fantastic!).

You had every single last villain and hero that may have appeared in the early 80s available with stats.

The game was fun, simple, and action-packed!

Oh, and those snarky editors made Beast explain how animals worked in the game.

 

[Felon]

The nine abilities were pure win:

3 phyisical, 3 mental, 3 spiritual (magic). Each type had one "to hit", one "to deal damage" and one "to resist damage".

Doesn't sound like pure win to me. Everybody has a physical attack, even if it's a weak one. Not everyone has a mental or spiritual. Having general attributes for stuff that isn't general to most characters doesn't make much sense, and is obviously a major avenue for min-maxing. All those DC Heroes they gave stats for actually had scores above the minimum for attributes they had absolutely nil use for, just as a way of turning a blind eye to the dump-statting loophole.

Skills had a kind of bizarre way of working too, particularly martial arts. IIRC, once you had martial arts skill, it took the place of ability scores, which again led to obvious dump-stat possiblities.

 

[Felon]

The original Marvel Super Heroes game was art in its simplicity.

You had the rankings mentioned above.

You had scales of success and failure with a single die roll (and conveniently color-coded table).

The "ability scores" were in Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche, in that order. I will never forget this because the acronym is FASERIP.

Distances weren't measured in feet, inches, velocities... They were in areas. A room might be one area. One end of a hallway might be an area. This side of the street might be an area. If you were in the same area, you could punch your opponent (unless you're Mr. Fantastic!).

You had every single last villain and hero that may have appeared in the early 80s available with stats.

The game was fun, simple, and action-packed!

Oh, and those snarky editors made Beast explain how animals worked in the game.

To me, Jeff Grub is the epitome of a good game designer. Even back in the eighties when game design was purely arbitrary, with no widely-accepted theory or best practices involved, he got that first and foremost, a game should present itself in a fun and flavorful manner. It shouldn't feel like reading a manual.

The one thing I would've like to have seen was to incorporate a defense-bypassing mechanic, using the green, yellow, and red degrees of success. It was totally house-rulable, of course, but official rules save one from having to seel a fellow 13-year-old on the right way to do stuff.

 

[Felon]

M&M is the best superhero game out there, IMO. I'd rather just look for some fan conversions of iconic Marvel (or DC) heroes and use non-gaming source material.

I'm dubious about that, simply because most gamers have a "close enough for government work" outlook about such things. And when it comes to superheroes, they also tend to perceive absolutes a little too quickly (a popular one is "Captain America is the peak of human perfection because of the super-soldier serum, while Batman is merely the product of intense training, so Cap should have better ability scores than Bats!").

 

[Twowolves]

It had some downsides, of course. It was not a good system for low-powered characters like Punisher or Daredevil., and using fixed numbers for damage and defenses meant that you were bound to wind up in situations where two evenly-matched characters couldn't hurt each other (and this extended to classic hero/villan combinations, like Iron Man and Mandarin).

It's funny, my friends and I started out with the base set, then came up with a tonof houserules... only to have nearly every single one make it into the Advanced game.

One rule that didn't make the jump that would solve one of the problems you mention above was using Karma to up damage 1:1. I was pretty sure that was in the base rules but not in the Advanced rules. But yeah, it really didn't help with the Punisher or Daredevil much. Shooting someone for 10 damage was useless when the average joe had 24 health.

 

[Thurbane]

FASERIP

 

[pawsplay]

Marvel has "The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game." Or did, at least, I don't recall how long ago I picked this thing up.

d20 it ain't, however.

It's fine, for people who don't like rules. I don't mean rules lite, I mean, don't like rules. There are rules, it is simply that they are unclear, hard to understand, and when you finally do understand them, you discover they don't lead to consistent play.

 

[Felon]

One rule that didn't make the jump that would solve one of the problems you mention above was using Karma to up damage 1:1. I was pretty sure that was in the base rules but not in the Advanced rules. But yeah, it really didn't help with the Punisher or Daredevil much. Shooting someone for 10 damage was useless when the average joe had 24 health.

Right, TSR MSH was all about having a reasonable offense. Heck, outside of passive defenses like body armor, you basically never defended. Characters like Spider-Man (with his agility and spider-sense) and Captain America (deflecting attacks with his shield) didn't get much mileage out of their defensive abilities, because to actively defend meant to abandon offense altogether, and that's always going to be a losing propisition.

M&M is a great system, I'm becoming more and more convinced. I think it still overlooks some basic problems for recreating comic book scenarios, such as how to throw a single powerful opponent at the player---like Magneto, Juggernaut, or Molecule Man--without suffering from the "action defecit" that lets players outmaneuver them easily (i.e, even a powerful character still only gets one action). I think 4e D&D is getting closer to addressing with their "solo" monsters, and M&M would do well to pay attention.

 

[DrunkonDuty]

Jeff Grubb's old Marvel game was the best Supers game for fast, rambunctious fun. YEah it was rules light and you ahad to hand wave stuff or make it up on the spot. Frankly these are good points IMO. The no real defense thing was a problem. It made being Spidey difficult. And I always wanted to be Spidey.

If I want a more mechanical supers game I play Champions. Rules for everything. No need for shorting yourself on defenses or the BBEG not having enough actions. You can model what you need and find out how much it costs relative to others for a rough idea of comparitive power.

Of the 2, I prefer Champions. But if a few of my old buddies popped in and said "let's play a game" I'd break out the Marvel and the beers and a great night would be had by all.