Old School Gaming – Marvel Super Heroes RPG
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This is a subject I’ve wanted to talk about for a long time. It is basically was inspired by Greywulf and his various posts about it. Then watching Iron Man the other day really kicked the entire thing off in my head. That subject that I’m talking about is the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game.
TSR first published the Marvel Super Heroes RPG in the mid-80’s. Anyone who ever played it probably remembers the best acronym ever created to remember you character’s attributes, FASERIP. This corresponds to Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. The superpowers, talents, resources, and popularity rounded out the rest of your character. You could choose to play a classic Marvel character if your game master would let you. Or, you could go off on your own and create a crazy mutation of your very own. Marvel Super Heroes certainly did not lack in the character development options and the creations department.
Greywulf’s Lair did an awesome series on the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game that I suggest you check out. Even if you never played it, you should at least read about it. Heck, you can download the books all for free. How many games can you do that with?
This is Greywulf’s seven day crash course introduction to one of the most underwhelming roleplaying games out there that had the potential… the potential… to do something really freakin’ big.
Marvel Day 1 – Innovation
Marvel Day 2 – Generation
Marvel Day 3 – Revelation
Marvel Day 4 – Resolution
Marvel Day 5 – Expansion
Marvel Day 6 – Exploration
Marvel Day 7 – CollationThe link http://www.classicmarvelrpg.com/ connects you to a list of all the books that were available during the time they were printing. Now you can conveniently download them all for free to your computer. Free books, means free Marvel game!
Here http://zap.to/zans/features/software/index.php you can find Marvel Super Heroes character generators and dice rollers.
And here at the Gamer Dome http://thegamerdome.com/marvel-super-heroes-netbook-greywulf-addendum-edition/ you will find a link to download the Netbook.Compiled.Marvel.Supplemental.Articles
With the above readings you should be able to get a very good base with the Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying Game. For some of you playing it again may be a blast to the past. Creating characters will remind you how random they can turn out if you really go by the rules. And with these new characters you can explore a universe that you’d always read about. A universe where there are good and evil people struggling against humanity. And you are part of that struggle…
The Marvel Super Heroes RPG will remind you why you love (and hate) generating random characters. It will remind you about all of those bad-ass, obscure super heroes that you’ve forgotten about for years. And it may just even drag you out of a fantasy, or sci-fi game that you are playing, into the greatest superhero campaign you’ve ever played.
UPDATE: Check out my new post about the game, Marvel Superheroes RPG – The Return. It includes new information on where to download the original books in PDF format, as well as an active Marvel Superheroes RPG forum.
Leave a Comment
February 23, 2009 at 11:25 am
I played Heroes Unlimited for a really long time. How, with that system, I managed to do that, I don’t know. What I do know is that super hero games can be a little harder to run, but a lot more fun.
I need a cool, modern-day, good super hero game with a good system. I’ll look into Marvel, but anyone got any other suggestions?
February 23, 2009 at 11:56 am
Wow. Thanks for all the link love!
@Chris Mutants & Masterminds. Hands down the best superhero system (if not THE best system, period) I’ve ever played.
February 23, 2009 at 2:09 pm
I remember playing the Marvel Super Heroes RPG a few times a very long time ago. We had some fun. We questioned the rules (you get more xp for doing what!?). Playing as known marvel superheroes (which most of us did) had it’s pros and cons. “I don’t know if Spider-Man would do that…”
It wasn’t too long after that I made my first attempt at creating my own RPG, that one being superhero themed. It never went any further than our group playing it a dozen times or so.
spellchrome’s last blog post..Darths & Droids: A look at roleplaying
February 23, 2009 at 3:04 pm
@Chris: Perhaps try Silver Age Sentinels. It’s very nice…
February 23, 2009 at 4:50 pm
I don’t remember how I stumbled upon to your series, Greywulf. But I remember following a link and finding out those Marvel RPG books were free to download and I thought, “SWEET!” I went and downloaded them, and all of these old gaming memories flooded back into my head seeing the different pictures and rules.
My old gaming group probably had about three Marvel campaigns of varying length. I remember a few of the adventures and NPCs fairly well (even though it was like 15 years ago). But overall, I just remember having a great time with the game. Even though the system is a little clunky to play with, they just don’t make games systems like this anymore. And hell, it’s Marvel?! I mean, how much better can you get?
February 24, 2009 at 10:21 am
I remember playing Marvel….was a lot of fun creating your characters and even trying to RP your character based upon his role in society.
June 29, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I was trying to follow the link http://www.classicmarvelrpg.com/
to download the books, but it looks like
they’re gone. I’m getting alot of 404’s.
Do you know where I can get my hands on these pdf’s?
June 29, 2009 at 1:21 pm
@ Wayne – Wow, I hope they fix that. I just checked it out and you are correct. I downloaded a lot of the books about a month or two ago (again) and it was working then. Hopefully they fix those links…
June 30, 2009 at 12:04 am
@ Wayne – Check out ClassicMarvelForever.com.
August 22, 2009 at 3:13 pm
You can download all of the original Marvel Superheroes RPG books for free at http://www.classicmarvelforever.com/.
The Skycutter {Admin}
November 3, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Marvel Heroes was fun. A goofy system that I didn’t really like all that much, but it was still fun when we played it.
But, in my opinion, NOTHING beats DC Heroes (or it’s non-DC Universe remake, Blood of Heroes.) I STILL make up characters for it even though I haven’t had a group to play it with for ages, just because the character generation system is so good and fun, and because I found a really spiffy character generator utility online several years ago that kicks ass. And because there is STILL a very active online community dedicated to the game, who continues to make up stats for comic characters and post them online, with a huge database of characters from Marvel and jst about anything else you can imagine. (Writepus.org)