[Marvel Heroic Roleplaying] Pretty cool.

[Particle_Man]

Loved The Avengers movie so got this. It takes a while to get used to the new jargon, and a few things inside. Definitely a "narrativist" game (so more "you describe you action and then pick dice that are appropriate to the description). Also, you don't go from zero to hero. You start as Spider-Man (or whatever) with a character sheet provided and always within the context of an event (like Civil War) and then while you can progress within the event, for other events, the Spider-Man character sheet would be "reset" to be appropriate for that other event. So in effect you play short-term games, rather than one character evolving through a long campaign (which makes sense of comic book characters that basically don't permanently change that much or that often - Spider-Man sometimes gains new powers (like with the Symbiote) but then reverts to "normal" Spider-Man after a while.

I sort of see it as a cross between Savage Worlds and Dogs in the Vineyard.

That said, I like it, I think, but it will take me a while to grok it. Still reading through it. I think it will be simple in play once I grok it though.

[Xefas]

I'm diggin' the Shadow of Yesterday/Solar System/Lady Blackbird "Key" experience system, all Marvel-ified. Tony Stark gets XP for being a lying drunk. Colossus gets XP for being excessively Russian. Captain America gets XP for acting in a leadership role. Spiderman gets XP for screwing over his Peter Parker persona in favor of helping the superhero team.

I haven't gotten a chance to play yet, but I'm thinking I may give this a whirl once my IRL group is done with our current Mouse Guard game.

[LibraryOgre]

We've played a few sessions, usually with me as Beast... who advances fastest when he does something dangerous and borderline unethical to help a mutant.

EDIT: That said, I find it resonates most with people who know and love the characters. Our non-comic people were going through the motions, but they didn't seem to enjoy it as much as those of us who could appreciate weird takes on the character (like the guy who played Deadpool who argued that he should be able to argue with the "editor", in-character, and succeeded in having Ms. Marvel and Black Widow get into a mud-wrestling match... which was broken up by She-Hulk).

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah, the game is definitely made to portray iconic characters, and to act as a toolset to let you portray iconic characters. As someone who's not terribly familiar with some of the characters statted out in Breakout, it bugged me a little, the research I had to do. (Mostly so on the Breakout villains, actually.)

But, really cool game. I love the dice mechanic, it's pretty robust, even if it does take a bit of effort. I wanna play it in person sometime, because it'd just be fun to grab all those dice, yaknow?

[potatocubed]

I picked it up the other day as well - I think a lot of the nuances won't come out until I get to play it (or, more likely, run it) so I'm holding off final judgement until then. I'm thinking of trying it as a PbP first, so I can get the hang of the rules before trying to do it in real time - how easy is it to explain the basic dice mechanic to people who haven't read the book?

[Particle_Man]

Hmm . . . "Describe what you want to do. Pick one die type from categories A, B, C, D, and E, as appropriate to that description. Spend PP to add dice to roll. Roll the dice. Set all die results of "1"'s aside for now. Of the remaining dice, take two dice's die results and total them (called the "total" it measures whether or not you succeed). Spend PP to get to add another dice's die result to the total. Of the remaining dice, take one and use its die-type and use that as your "effect". Spend PP to add another dice's die type but this means you have two different effects, not one bigger effect. If for some reason you have no dice left to be the effect dice (say all but two dice rolled "1"s, so you used the only two dice remaining for you total and could not use them for the effect) then the effect is treated as a d4 die type. Then the Watcher might activate those "1"'s you set aside, which would give you PP but also cause the Watcher's doom pool to get nastier."

Clear as mud? :smallsmile:

[Bastian Weaver]

Does it include Jubilee?

[Particle_Man]

Sadly not in the basic game. Maybe in one of the "Event books" coming out later.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Yeah...and I hate to be that guy...but MHRP is easy to use to stat up a character. Especially if you're statting up an established character: you literally don't have to worry about making it fit any specific character creation process. Just stat Jubes up in whatever version you desire, with whatever powers you want to focus on.

So, the random generator is great fun. I saw a game on MythWeavers that was advertising for villain characters (running a reverse Breakout), and so I made my first random character: Unseelie (http://www.myth-weavers.com/showthread.php?p=5670551#post5670551). What I love is how the random traits and even specialties came together, suggesting a character. When the Science specialty unexpectedly popped up, I had an element to tie everything together.

[JoeMac307]

I purchased the basic game last week... Just finished reading the rules... Half my regular gaming group is unavailable for our next gaming session, so I plan on trying this out with the remaining half, and also running some DDN game testing.

I like how the game seems to make someone like Captain America still relevant standing next to Thor... But I'm curious to see if that is true when we actually play.

[LibraryOgre]

I like how the game seems to make someone like Captain America still relevant standing next to Thor... But I'm curious to see if that is true when we actually play.

It was, in our game. Beast was relevant beside She-Hulk, Reed Richards, and Ms. Marvel. My dice just sucked.