Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

[kidnicky]

So we just played this this weekend and loved it. I was "watcher" with 2 PC heroes. I jad read the book, but never played, they had never read the rules or played. We had all played regular "roll a d20 to attack" D&D style games, but never anything like this.

All 3 of us totally understood the mechanics in about 5 minutes. We never looked at the rules during the 2 hour play session. The players never needed pencils. There's no "loot",there's no levelling up to a level 20 paragon Spider-Man, there's no charts to look at or anything that bogs down play. The entire focus is on being creative,having fun, and collaborative storytelling.

The only real faults I could list are
A. You kind of need a lot of dice. People who would read a board like this probably have enough, though.
B. There aren't as many top heroes/villians in the book as you would hope (and they only got one sourcebook out before the lost the license) . That said, they're easy to make from a character's wikipedia entry, and there's tons online if you google. The sites Exploring Infinity and Plot Points have a lot of resources you can use, like chars and adventures.

In short, if you like superheroes, you should probably buy this.

[UndertakerSheep]

I bought the PDF for one of my players for GM's Day (hey, if they don't buy me stuff I can at least celebrate GM day by giving them GM related things so they can give GMing a try). Sadly I don't think he ever looked at it.

I've wanted to give it a try since forever. How long does character creation take? And how does combat work?

[Friv]

In short, if you like superheroes, you should probably buy this.

Unfortunately, you can't.

MWP lost the license to make Marvel Heroic because their sales figures, despite being what a normal RPG company would consider good, weren't as high as Marvel was expecting. All existing books had to be pulled from their stores.

You can, though, buy the Cortex Hacker's Guide, which has the basic rules for Cortex Heroic (which is MHRP) as well as Cortex Drama and Cortex Action.

[CarpeGuitarrem]

I've wanted to give it a try since forever. How long does character creation take? And how does combat work?

Character creation is technically instantaneous; Marvel told MWP that they needed to use a pregen-heavy model of distribution, so every book is chock-full of superhero characters.

If you want to make your own, it takes a little longer and you need a strong superhero concept; you basically use existing traits and special "effects" to build a hero from scratch, and you have to eyeball it.

The Civil War Premium book, however, includes a random character generator that you can also use to help your eyeballing.

Combat is just a series of opposed rolls, so it's not very different from the rest of the game. You can mix up combat and non-combat actions pretty easily. The cool part is, initiative is very free-flowing and tactical. After a player takes a turn, they get to pick what character goes next. This lets you set up combos really easily.

(And before you ask "what prevents the players from picking one another to go next?", realize that this lets the villains potentially get two full turns in a row before the heroes can act again.)

Unfortunately, you can't.

MWP lost the license to make Marvel Heroic because their sales figures, despite being what a normal RPG company would consider good, weren't as high as Marvel was expecting. All existing books had to be pulled from their stores.

You can, though, buy the Cortex Hacker's Guide, which has the basic rules for Cortex Heroic (which is MHRP) as well as Cortex Drama and Cortex Action.

You could also hunt down copies at your local gaming store, or on eBay. They're still out there.

But the Hacker's Guide is amazing.

[obryn]

I have heard only good things about this.

However, there's always an alternative. FASERIP forever!

-O

[CarpeGuitarrem]

Side note: I'm very pleased to hear that the rules ran smoothly for everyone. There's been a history of people having trouble with how the rules work, and there's a lot of ways that the rulebook could've presented things better.

It's a fun system once you get a chance to put it into play, and I suspect that gamers have an easier time of it once they're able to start playing it at the table, instead of trying to conceptualize it apart.

[kidnicky]

Unfortunately, you can't.

MWP lost the license to make Marvel Heroic because their sales figures, despite being what a normal RPG company would consider good, weren't as high as Marvel was expecting. All existing books had to be pulled from their stores.

You can, though, buy the Cortex Hacker's Guide, which has the basic rules for Cortex Heroic (which is MHRP) as well as Cortex Drama and Cortex Action.

I bought it on Amazon a week ago for 8 dollars. There's plenty of copies for sale.

[kidnicky]

I bought the PDF for one of my players for GM's Day (hey, if they don't buy me stuff I can at least celebrate GM day by giving them GM related things so they can give GMing a try). Sadly I don't think he ever looked at it.

I've wanted to give it a try since forever. How long does character creation take? And how does combat work?

Character creation is either picking a hero out of the 20ish they give you (orthe hundreds online) or just picking appropriate powers. I'd say it would probably take like 15 minutes. There's no point buy or randomness or anything, it's just what makes sense for the character.
Combat is done by deciding what you want to do, then using the appropriate dice.
Let's say Spidey is going to webswing into a jumping kick. Well he'd use his Solo die (he's not with Daredevil or anyone else today),his web shooting die, and his combat die. He rolls them, then picks which two are the result. Carnage would roll HIS solo, super agility, and combat dice to dodge the kick. Now of course it goes on and on from there, and you can have darkness,cover, oilslicked floors, rain/snow, whatever.

The best part is, once you learn the mechanic, you're doing all this with your character sheets and dice. No charts, no thumbing throigh the book, you don't even need a pencil, you just slide a paperclip for damage increments. You're spending your gametime pretending to be a comic character, not deciphering rules.

[kidnicky]

Side note: I'm very pleased to hear that the rules ran smoothly for everyone. There's been a history of people having trouble with how the rules work, and there's a lot of ways that the rulebook could've presented things better.

It's a fun system once you get a chance to put it into play, and I suspect that gamers have an easier time of it once they're able to start playing it at the table, instead of trying to conceptualize it apart.

Honestly, the first readthrough of the book made it seem like I wouldn't be able to run it. Exploring Infinity has a great one player Spidey adventure that explains the rules a little better. I literally explained the rules to the two PCs in 5 minutes and we were playing. One of the PCs was someone I had never met before,I said "do you like Marvel comics?" and five minutes later he was playing the game.

Like I said, we had all played "move then roll a d20 to attack vs. Armor Class" type games before, but never anytbing like this.