My Marvel Super Hero campaign reached its conclusion this week with a fantastic climax after 6 months and 18 sessions. It has been the longest campaign I have ever run. It's also been the best.

I've always been a very uneven GM; I have my good days but also a lot bad or just mediocre days. But for once it all just went well. Never ran any game so consistently good right from the start.

But don't take my word for it, it's my players who have dubbed it "the best campaign in the last 10 years"!

Anyway, there is a pointto this thread beyond strutting. First of all to thank Silverliion for his advice back in March about MSH rules on this very forum, it really helped. Secondly it's to praise the MSH game itself. It's kind of crude in places, but in a sense that helps capture the four-colour feel. And the Karma system is sensational and its effects a lot more subtle than might appear at first glance.

Wow! I'm actually a little envious. I have such a love for the MSH rpg and I hope to get a game session or two off the ground one of these days.

Did you use actual Marvel heroes or did you roll up new characters?

Congrats man. It's awesome when everything just works out great.

Brand new characters. Actually they are on an old thread http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=13555.

My original plan was to try to run a "Marvel-light" sort of game, avoiding the more iconic Marvel characters as NPCs and using moslty obsucre or second string super villians as none of the players were really Marvel readers and I thought it might be too jarring.

In actual fact the players simply loved interacting with the MU so I relented and before I knew it they were rescuing Thor in Valhalla, playing chess with Reed Richards and dating the Black Cat.

SG,

Congrats.

I'm curious, though.  Do you have any idea just what you did to make it such a great game?  What sort of things did the players respond to?  Do any of them post here and could perhaps comment?  I'd love to hear what things made it great.

I think you never really know what really made the game work. But as this kind of interested myself in find out, here's some of the things I tried for this game. I'd like to think I can keep running good games.

So here goes:

* The players really enjoyed being treated on an equal footing and having the same status as the iconic Marvel heroes and not just being treated as some sort of wannabe B-team. I list this as number #1 because it the one thing they repeatedly mentioned.

* I was very generous with Karma. As Silverlion said, it is the fuel of MSH. In a sense you could almost look at the game as "Karma based with Attributes as modifiers to Karma.

* The great thing about Karma is that is both a reward (XP) and well as a resource (like Fate points). This allows the player characters to act in a heroic fashion, but it is also self-regulating - if the yspend more Karma than they earn they will run out and can forget about advancing.

* Karma is also awarded at the end of each scene, not as lump sum at the end of the session or adventure as most games tend to do. This makes the relationship between player character's actions and reward very direct. This is particularly good because it means even filler encounters "count" and have a sense of purpose - if nothing else there is Karma to be won and Karma to be lost/spent depending on how well or poorly the players do.

* I never use miniatures, but in this case I decided to put my heroclix collection to use and I went nuts with battle maps and bits of terrain. I discovered that miniatures and props are very good tool for improvisation and a great way of abstracting things, all of which cut down prep times enormously, as well being fun.

* I also found using miniatures and battle maps as a good pacing device. In a sense the majority of the game was actually investigation, but especially in a urban setting the investigation scenes can go by really quickly. A big fight with miniatures and all in between serves to adjust the pacing, given the game some breathing space and somehow make the  investigation feel more substantial.

* I tried hard to ensure that most of the fight scenes had a point. That is to say there was usually something else at stake during the fight (protecting a witness, preventing the boss from getting away). So you could still lose the scene even if you won the fight, or win the scene even if you got beaten. It made things interesting. There were very few plain straight slugfests and even those we either a re-match or served to foreshadow future stuff.

* Over the past year I've become very liberal with out of character information when I GM. I used to think that separating in-character from out of character knowledge was the height of good roleplaying and the anything that muddied this division was bad for immersion. Now I feel it is actually more immersive is for the player to fully understand what is going on in game and the implications of their actions and I trust they can use any out of character information responsibly, which they do.  This works very well with MSH which because of the colour coded result table and the  strict initiative system tends towards very open and transparent style of play.

* The campaign was made up of three main story arcs. Each one featured a conspiracy of some sort to uncover. My prep work involved thinking about potential scenes to support the current story arc; things the super villain and his henchmen could be doing and which allow the party to get involved. Not all these potential scenes would actually be played, some might even contradict each other. Nor was the timeline fixed. These were just a set of tools to be used or discarded depending on how the game session panned out. I think this approach helped me keep flexible, able to respond to what the players were doing and introduce something fresh whenever the pace slacked.

I also posted on this other thread http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?t=14664 some of the ways my GMing style has been mutating of late, which may or may not be a factor behind this games good fortune.

Don't know if any of this helps, but its the best I could come up with.

What a fantastic post.  A great analysis of what you think worked in the game.  I particularly liked your idea of the fights not just being about the fight.

It is fantastic to hear you and your players had such a good time. It is a heartswelling thing for a game to go right.

I ran MSH for a large number of years and found it quite workable. I didn't write my own superhero game while it was being published--despite several half attempts at other rpg's of my own. It wasn't until MUCH later after the failure of the second Marvel RPG (which I liked as well) that I figured I could do one myself. Of course my game has rough spots too. I learned so much from writing my second game, as well examining what Hearts & Souls did well and didn't.

IF MSH were still published today I'd probably not have written my own. Now I still play MSH when other friends run it--and use it for a pick up "Let's just roll up some crazy heroes and have fun.."  

I can't wait to hear about your NEXT campaign.

I think I need to break it out again for a run or two myself.

I also think some "OOC" information is vital in superhero games to the players. It adds tension and some ideas of villains motivations if they have "pages" of the comic they would see as a reader.

SG,

Thanks for your reply.  The reason I was curious is I recently played in what was, for me, my greatest game ever.  In my case, what really captivated me was that our GM, instead of pushing the story with a fast pace as he usually does, slowed things way down and let us play out a lot of subplots.

In addition to saving the world from giant monsters, corrupt military madmen, and a secret army of telepaths, my character pursued romance, a career, long-term alliances, athletics, music, and more.

Another character in the campaign (a super scientist) built her own robot army and developed a clean solution to the world's energy crisis.

It took us about six months of game play.

I think getting to pursue our own goals, instead of merely reacting to the threats of the villains, was really amazingly fun.

Good luck with your next game.

Quote from: Silverlion;335796It is fantastic to hear you and your players had such a good time. It is a heartswelling thing for a game to go right.

I ran MSH for a large number of years and found it quite workable. I didn't write my own superhero game while it was being published--despite several half attempts at other rpg's of my own. It wasn't until MUCH later after the failure of the second Marvel RPG (which I liked as well) that I figured I could do one myself. Of course my game has rough spots too. I learned so much from writing my second game, as well examining what Hearts & Souls did well and didn't.

IF MSH were still published today I'd probably not have written my own. Now I still play MSH when other friends run it--and use it for a pick up "Let's just roll up some crazy heroes and have fun.."  

I can't wait to hear about your NEXT campaign.

I think I need to break it out again for a run or two myself.

I also think some "OOC" information is vital in superhero games to the players. It adds tension and some ideas of villains motivations if they have "pages" of the comic they would see as a reader.

I think Hearts & Souls has a purpose. MSH has it good points/ Beyind what i mentioned above it also very fast and easy in play. However it is a bit clumsy in places. The combat moves (like evasion or grabbing) are seem very arbitrary in theri effects, even after six months we had to keep going back to the rulebook to remind ourselves about exact effect of each one.

I am currently reading H&S and I likew what I see. It will be a while though before I get to run it.

Quote from: Silverlion;335796I ran MSH for a large number of years and found it quite workable. I didn't write my own superhero game while it was being published--despite several half attempts at other rpg's of my own. It wasn't until MUCH later after the failure of the second Marvel RPG (which I liked as well) that I figured I could do one myself.

Dude: you and I are as one, here.

You guys may be interested in downloading the '4c System', a free retro-clone of the old MSH system. It's well worth checking out. You can find it here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/4c-system-download/1352274

Quote from: Glazer;335893You guys may be interested in downloading the '4c System', a free retro-clone of the old MSH system. It's well worth checking out. You can find it here:

http://www.lulu.com/content/paperback-book/4c-system-download/1352274

Alas it is incomplete. It lacks invention rules (kitbashing,) basebuilding and a few other things IIRC. One of the reasons I'm having to make SMITE, pretty much from the ground up.