Obviously the pull of these games to me was the Marvel license. I’d liked Marvel comics as kid, starting with a Spidey/Ghost Rider UK reprint as a treat as a kid after having to go to London for various tests (the other treat being a Battle Of The Planets transfer kit). Then various second comics picked up in school fairs/jumble sales and the occasional present from my grandmother. Finally there was the UK printing of Secret Wars, Secret Wars II and Spider-Man and ZOIDS.
I kind of forgot about them when I went to secondary school, until WH Smith’s started getting US Marvel comics in. Which coincided with when I got into RPGs. So TSR’s licensed Marvel RPG was a natural draw.
Now the rules were based around this colour coded chart. You rolled percentile dice, the cross referenced the roll on the chart against the value of the statistic you were using. They used this system on various other non-D&D games that TSR released at the time. One of the Gamma World editions used it as did their Conan RPG and Star Frontiers. Possibly the Indiana Jones RPG too. I don’t think Top Secret/SI did, but I could be wrong. I’ll look it up when I get to that one.
Some people liked this system, but I found it a pain. I dislike games with unnecessary work, and cross referencing two numbers on a chart definitely count as too much work. But I still kept hacking away, trying to get a decent campaign going, because I had such Marvel love. And this really was a game for Marvel lovers.
It was essentially OHOTMU the RPG, particularly the Advanced version and it’s supplements. Most of it’s supplements were vast depositories of statistics for Marvel characters both prominent and obscure. And on top of that there were the Gamers Guide To The Marvel Universe books that at the time were arguably better than the information provided by Marvel at the time. At one point I had all but 5 products published in this line (I’ve since disposed of a lot of that material via eBay) and here’s the products I’d recommend if you were interested in playing:
Marvel Advanced Set – The core rule book. The rules aren’t particularly clear and you’ll end up winging a lot of it. Plus there’s not that much scope for character variety.
Ultimate Powers Book – An expanded character creation book. You’ll end up rewriting the character type table, as frankly it’s barking mad, but the range of powers and the rules to use them are expansive.
Realms Of Magic – This was for the Basic set, but the magic rules in the Advanced are, if anything, even worse than the Basic’s. This supplement completely replaces the magic rules and makes them workable.
The MT Modules – This was a 3 part time travel themed campaign by Ray Winninger. A great adventure with a superb meta-gaming climax.
The MX Modules – This was a 4 part campaign based on The Nightmares Of Futures Past story from the X-Men. It’s clever trick is to set the adventure in your hometown. Of course this trick works better when you are in America. I had to pretend Spalding was in Massachusetts when I ran it.
Deluxe City Campaign – This is the only supplement that actually gets around to telling you how to run your own campaign. I think TSR must have thought you were only going to play their published supplements.
Most of these can be downloaded in PDF form for free at MarvelRPG.net
It should be said a lot of my criticisms of the game are in hindsight, back when I started playing I was a lot less critical of game mechanics and more interested in settings. But I do think those flaws held me back in every getting a campaign really off the ground in my first gaming group. I’ll talk about my long-term Marvel campaign when I get around to talking about the SAGA rules Marvel RPG, but here’s some teenage brain spill about the characters we created at secondary school.
AXE-MAN – This was the first character I created using the Basic set. His power was that his hand turned into an Axe. I was 13, this seemed cool to me then. I believe he was a mutant and that his background was that he had been asked to join the X-Men but was thrown out for being too cool.
TWISTED SOULS – This was the superhero team that my players in my first group came up with they were:
MR MYSTERY – a robotic Rorschach clone, with Hank Pym powers
ACE OF SPADES – a mystic swordsman
TWISTER – a mutant with wind based powers
and there was a Captain Marvel-type whose name I forget. The twist was that he was a cat who turned into a human superhero.
THE WRESTLER – a teleporting wrestler
MEK-A-NEK – a blatent copy of the He-Man character
ALIEN SKATER – The HR Giger creation. BUT ON A SKATEBOARD!