I've got interested in trying Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, the years out-of-print game based on the Cortex Plus system, and we were between games in one of my groups so it seemed a good time to give it a try. As MHR is geared to playing characters in the Marvel Universe, I decided to adapt a module from TSR's old Marvel Superheroes game, and since I could find MHR stats for all the characters online, I went with possibly the only MSHRPG module I ever played, The Last Resort by Kim Eastland, which stars the West Coast Avengers--a team I have some nostalgia for, since I subscribed to their comic.
Paul, Aaron, and Andrea were the group or the season playing Hawkeye, Wonder Man, and Tigra respectively. The stats, unfortunately, weren't period perfect, being based on the versions of the characters from 30 years later, but that's to be expected and only mildly offends my sense of nostalgia, really.
The story involvements Iron Man and a group of Boy Scouts going missing during the hero's appearance at a Jamboree in Idaho. The other Avengers must investigate, and of course, discover nefarious doings.
I'll reserve my full judgements for both the system and the adventure until we've completed the latter, but some initial thoughts on both: I liked MHR on my read through of it, and so far it has held up well in play, moving fairly fast despite our lack of familiarity with it, but for the simplicity of its base mechanic it does have a lot of exceptions and options to keep track of. The module is silly in concept and detail, and not silly in a way that is congruent with what would be likely to occur in the comics, but it has thus far served its purpose of allowing us to test out the system.
5 comments:
If you haven't done so already, I'd recommend trying the Sentinel Comics RPG when you're done with your MHR experiment. It's got some obvious similarities to Cortex but is also very much its own thing, and despite the designer's probable intent for it to be used in their own universe, I've found it to be very good for any comic setting including Marvel. If you like MHR, SCRPG deserves a look as well.
We ran a short campaign in SCRPG. I talked about it a bit here: https://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2021/04/sentinel-comics-role-playing-game.html
MHR is still one of my favorite supers games out there. Reputedly there's a non-IP related version coming out.
Have you tried Icons? If so, what's your take?
I haven't run Icons, though I've played it in a GRIDSHOCK game run by Paul. I like it, though I don't think it would become my go-to supers game, which is something I thought might happen when I read it.
Post a Comment