If you were reading Dragon magazine in the mid-1980s, advertisements for TSR's Marvel Super Heroes like this one were ubiquitous. The company worked very hard to get the word out about their new RPG and rightfully so. Though I was never (and still am not) much of a superhero guy, Jeff Grubb's design is so clever that I always had a blast playing MSH. That's no surprise: aside from (obviously) Dungeons & Dragons, Marvel Super Heroes is the only truly influential game TSR ever published and its impact on the hobby outlasted the game itself.
" is the only truly influential game TSR ever published"
ReplyDeleteProvacative!
Id say Dungeon! as a rules light Dungeon Crawler influenced that genre.
Tell me more.
DeleteOoh! Great point! "Refereeless Blackmoor" would be an oxymoron were it not for David Megarry's invention, and I think this innovation alone in Dungeon! made RPG video games from EAMON to Diablo possible.
DeleteI mean Arneson used Table T from Strategos to resolve combat, too, but the game relied on adjudication at the end of the day. Dungeon! was the first one to implement it as a mechanical automatic resolution.
"[MSH] is the only [other] truly influential game TSR ever published" I don't disagree, but would love to hear you unpack that.
ReplyDeleteThis might be worth a longer post, but my basic is simply that MSH is the only other TSR RPG whose design – the Action Chart specifically – was hugely influential on subsequent games.
DeleteI'd argue that Dungeon's adaptation of Table T for refereeless play is a design innovation, even though it completely relies on what was being reffed in Blackmoor, BUT I don't know if that means the entire design of the game is influential, because, yes, in most other aspects it is a nicely dressed up board game.
DeleteIn other aspects, though, of course FASERIP alone is massively influential, and then the fact that Marvel Superheroes (coming from a kid who had a mail subscription to Hulk comics from the time he was three!) the RPG was dead solid perfect in its "play the comics" execution, both backwards and forwards: you could play Spiderman's origin story from the old days OR gather everyone for a mass Secret Wars battle royale OR catch the Scourge of the Underworld (or be victimized by him!) OR fight the Mutant Massacre...or do them all in about 4 sessions, if you really wanted to. It was the ultimate "Do EXACTLY what YOU want game," and I don't think for that purpose it has been surpassed.
ReplyDeleteHuge FASERIP/MSH fan...to this day I still find enjoyment is rolling characters via Ultimate Powers and then trying to cobble together a hero/villain with a plausible vision from the results. I always liked the characters and the system (with the exception of the VERY slow progression)...in fact played a brief PbP of the MSH last year!
ReplyDeleteHowever...do I recall correctly that Pacesetter's Chill had a similar resolution mechanic? They were of like age...
Yes, the Pacesetter games did have a similar mechanic and was released the same year. Pacesetter was staffed by ex-TSR employees, so I'm not sure what this means. Perhaps I should ask Jeff Grubb about this at Gamehole Con ...
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