Quote from: Obeeron;686932I actually meant the "Intangibility Issue".  If you have d12 in Intangibility, which is described as, "At d12, the power makes you completely out of phase with reality, including even energy waveforms. You're essentially not even there." you can still be hurt by any attack that gets "through" your pool.

That is odd. I guess you're supposed to come up with some handwavium to explain or assume that, for some reason, you became corporal at just the wrong moment. I guess you could get the Invulnerability special effect to cover your ass too.

Quote from: Panjumanju;686876And I agree, to an extent. The level of abstraction is very broad. You're only really meant to use Marvel Characters - the whole thing kind of breaks down when you use your own. With the dice range being so narrow it was hard to get excited about characters, because they all ultimately felt the same - like a big bag of dice being rolled.

Now this is a major check in the "Con" column for me and my current group. In supers rpgs we prefer to make up our characters and settings.

Quote from: Nexus;686947Now this is a major check in the "Con" column for me and my current group. In supers rpgs we prefer to make up our characters and settings.

There are guidelines to create your own heroes, but not a real system in place.  Players work with the Watcher and you use the characters listed in the book as a guideline of what to do.  It wasn't that bad creating a character.

Quote from: RunningLaser;686950There are guidelines to create your own heroes, but not a real system in place.  Players work with the Watcher and you use the characters listed in the book as a guideline of what to do.  It wasn't that bad creating a character.

I've seen a few threads about that; it wasn't encouraging. But it was more than the previous post confirmed a concern. Specifically that the game doesn't work well with original characters and they can start to feel very similar. I really like mechanical diversity among characters. It's a problem I've run into with a number of systems particularly rules lite (thought MHRP doesn't seem to fall into that category).

Quote from: Nexus;686934That is odd. I guess you're supposed to come up with some handwavium to explain or assume that, for some reason, you became corporal at just the wrong moment. I guess you could get the Invulnerability special effect to cover your ass too.

In comic books, that stuff happens a lot, illogical as it may be.

The Flash, who is so fast that someone like spiderman would appear utterly motionless to him, gets hit when the writers feel like it.

The guy could make a sandwich and enjoy lunch while keeping ann eye on a laser barely moving toward him

But Captain Boomerang is going to hit him?

I supported the system, conceptually, until newer supplements came out and I realised that they were giving every character Enhanced Reflexes and Enhanced Durability what-have-you, just so they could have something to roll in every situation. I grew very discouraged that they were trying to shoehorn Statistics into a game without Statistics.

Already most of our play time was spent with players trying to figure out how to shove some characteristic or another into an action just for another lousy dice, and like previews at the beginning of a film by the time they got to rolling all that dice they usually forgot why they were rolling. I thought that would get better after a few sessions, but no.

One advantage to the system is that you can have J. Jonah Jameson in your party along with Spider-man, and it works. My players told me the characters that were more fun to play were the simpler ones, rather than ones with powers to cover everything. If you do plan to run this, I suggest - keep it simple. Keep the dice numbers low.

I feel like the system had a lot of potential, and it needs a really good hack.

//Panjumanju

In MHRP Daredevil can fight with The Sentry and hold his own.

That's either awesome or terrible depending on what you seek in your supers game

Quote from: Bill;687065In MHRP Daredevil can fight with The Sentry and hold his own.

That's either awesome or terrible depending on what you seek in your supers game

I think this is a remarkably succinct summary review of the whole game.

To this day, I haven't decided whether that is good or not, but I lean strongly towards not.

Quote from: drkrash;687154I think this is a remarkably succinct summary review of the whole game.

To this day, I haven't decided whether that is good or not, but I lean strongly towards not.

For me it depends what hold his own means exactly. Win a straight victory should be damn near impossible but outwit, out maneuver delay, evade or otherwise deter from what he was trying to stop Sentry from doing even if its by talking and playing to Sentry's (numerous) psychological issues. I can see that. That's heroic and awesome. I like to see that in my own supers games.

But just punch him out? Not for me even though that could  happen in the comic book. I don't go for that level emulation of comic book narrative logic.

Aunt May vs Galactus: The Herald Wars!

Quote from: Panjumanju;686876I think it's interesting that the system encourages two criticisms on the polar opposite of the RPG spectrum.

"It's too much of a story game"

and

"It's too much of a dice game."

That's exactly the problem.  But it goes to what Piestro said- at a certain point the "narrativism" required of a storygame becomes a game in itself that some of us aren't really up to playing.  And in Cortex, at least this game, it really seems like all the dice "steps" make it that much harder to grok.

JG

Quote from: Nexus;687164For me it depends what hold his own means exactly. Win a straight victory should be damn near impossible but outwit, out maneuver delay, evade or otherwise deter from what he was trying to stop Sentry from doing even if its by talking and playing to Sentry's (numerous) psychological issues. I can see that. That's heroic and awesome. I like to see that in my own supers games.

But just punch him out? Not for me even though that could  happen in the comic book. I don't go for that level emulation of comic book narrative logic.

Sentry is good example of a character that can be defeated mentally and socially fairly easily.

But the physical matchups in MHRP emulate the worst of the comic book battles

Like Batman kicking Darkseid in the head

Quote from: Bill;687244Sentry is good example of a character that can be defeated mentally and socially fairly easily.

But the physical matchups in MHRP emulate the worst of the comic book battles

Like Batman kicking Darkseid in the head

Or Batman hiding from Darkseid's Omega beams.

JG

Without a list of attributes that all characters have (some don't have strength, for example) questions like "Can Daredevil move that fallen wall off the innocent bystander?" always puzzled me. Sure he can, by adding a die from solo, one from his trait things, one from his stick and something else. Man without fear D4 or whatever.

So wait, this wall weighs like 300lbs. Can he lift it? *clatter of dice* Yes.

How? Can he lift 300lbs? What about if it were 600lbs? *shrug* clatter of dice. Yeah.

It's that vague 'roll some dice to see if they can do it' thing and 'get dice from anywhere to do stuff' that always had me squirming some. I played it, but I never got the confidence to GM it.

Even to this day I scoop the core book up, read through it a few pages and hit a mental stumbling block. I don't know if its the system, the way it's explained, lack of examples or even a dislike of the game. I want to like it, I always did, and had plans to scoop everything up... But the aforementioned botch job of distribution meant I could get hold of the core book and nothing else. Think I got a few PDFs, but they have sat dormant on my Hard Drive for months.

A missed opportunity, and I think the game system could be made to fit a generic supers game (which I think is planned) but otherwise it's another case of the 'Curse of Marvel'. The last three Marvel games have all been playable and got their fans to some degree, and all were canned within about a year.

That's Marvel for ya, and now with Disney Execs poring over numbers, vulture like, you can bet there will be no more traditional RPGs from them. There isn't the money in it that justifies it at board level.

"Ok, next item. What's this? A role... playing.. game? What's that?"

"A game where people play in their imagination, with dice and such."

"Ok, how much profit did we make from that?"

"$8,453. It did really well in its field."

"You're fired."

Another major problem I had was the bunching of characters. Everyone who is superheroic in some way is rated from D8 to D12. That's it. Other games that were criticised for making characters look too similar have nothing on this one.

It's a shame. I don't hate it, I wanted to love it... I just can't, and it bothers me because I played and enjoyed all the other marvel games.

To one degree or another I've liked all the Marvel RPGs except for MHR. Marvel Universe was a brilliant system that desperately needed just a bit more (any?) playtesting and a strong editorial hand to clean up presentation. Otherwise it's the only diceless system that I'd consider playing. Saga had a lot to recommend it, but just from a purely personal taste standpoint, I didn't care for the card mechanic. Don't care for them in general, just find them too distracting from immersion. Meanwhile my favourite (actually favourite published rpg system in general), MSH / FASERIP was also the only one that could be considered a success.

That doesn't happen often with me. If I like a TV show, it's highly unlikely it will last past 2 seasons. If I like a film, chances are it won't make enough money to warrant a sequel.

But I think that MSH took an approach to the game that ensured its success that the other three, MHR especially, would have done well to have learned from.