Cortex for Marvel? (or Why BASH Rocks!)

kroh · Post by **kroh** » Sat Mar 10, 2012 5:44 pm

As some one who has played Marvel Heroic Role Playing and BASH (as well as most other supers games out there) i can say that Marvel accomplishes what it sets out to do. You play great games of MSH with your friends aimed at creating the experience of playing in the marvel universe.

Want to play in your universe, I still recommend BASH! Nice easy good clean fun with a decent community and a creator / author that is accessible to the fans.

Regards,
Walt

urbwar · Post by **urbwar** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 2:34 am

capmarvel wrote:I've looked through it...and any game that spends just 4 vague pages explaining how to make an original character is a game that doesn't want me to play an original character.

The primary goal of the game is to play Marvel characters. It does that well. I don't think it was really designed to do original characters as well (though I understand more detailed character creation rules are being designed, as this was a big complaint by a few people). Like Kroh said, if you want original stuff, there's plenty of games, like BASH, that can all ready do that.

As much as I enjoyed playing it, I doubt I'd use it for my own stuff. To run Marvel based games, sure, but my own stuff, I'll stick to the other games I own that do it just fine.

Baelor · Post by **Baelor** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 8:23 am

A friend of mine payed at the Launch party with one of the writers that was held in Miieapolis a few weeks back. According to what he heard there, MWP had character creation rules that were ready to go into the book, but they were pulled because none of their playtesters wanted them much.

It still bugs me. As fun as playing wolverine for an evening might be, it changes the game to something more like an elaborate board game like Arkham Horror in my view. DOn't get me wrong, Arkham is a great game, but it is not an RPG. It's a boardgame with RPGish elements, which is were I would put Marvel.

I get to play it next Saturday, so I will have a better idea then.

doktorelektron · Post by **doktorelektron** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 9:10 am

At my most cynical I'm inclined to think that this is a game that is heavily tilted toward the upsell. The default assumption seems to be that people will play through the official Event books as they are released.

For me this rather negates the low buy-in price (that I keep seeing promoted as a feature of the core rules) and frankly I just find it really disempowering.

For me the ideal rpg is a toolset for the imagination. This, as has already been stated, just doesn't feel like a complete roleplaying game.

Baelor · Post by **Baelor** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 11:59 am

Doktorelektron, I agree completely. For myself I am happy with BASH for my superhero-y needs.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Sun Mar 11, 2012 8:29 pm

Dunno. Maybe it's the fact that I routinely hack games to fit my tastes, but I had no problem using what the book had to start cooking up some of my own original character ideas.

One thing to keep in mind is that the system as presented makes no attempt to fulfill the oft-used (and IMO overrated) concept of "game balance". There is no point-buy mechanics, nor random rolling. You basically describe your character using the elements presented.

Sure, that means that a min-maxing power-gamer could create the proverbial alien mutant son of a god trained by ninjas, but the system already has a decent method for having someone like Hawkeye fight side-by-side with Thor and not feel deprotagonized, so it's not that big a deal.

Like I said, it's not going to appeal to everyone.

BeardedDork · Post by **BeardedDork** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 10:31 am

What's funny about this is until I came here it never occurred to me for even a moment that somebody, would want to actually play as Spiderman. People I've played with over the many years have wanted to play a character like (insert favorite hero) but nobody ever asked to actually play (insert favorite hero).

Now for cons and whatnot, I give the players the Avengers or the Justice League, simply because the characters require no explanation, players just get them.

Nestor · Post by **Nestor** » Mon Mar 12, 2012 12:20 pm

That's not unusual for Con sessions, especially for licensed properties.

For example, when the Serenity RPG came out, the intro scenarios had the players playing as Mal and the crew.

Last GenCon, I played in Cubicle 7's demo of the upcoming Primeval RPG, with us as the members of the ARC team (Prof. Cutter, Connor, Abby, etc.)

As you said, it makes it easier since the players will normally already have a grasp as to what the characters' backgrounds are.

I suspect MHR is targeted towards the single-arc / pick-up game demographic. Not that there's anything wrong with that.