We came up with some good ideas and I think some of the newer and/or quieter players gained some confidence as well. I find that building PCs in a group is a lot more fun than individually: we were all sitting down, bouncing ideas off each other, and it became far more of a social activity.

I basically set aside an afternoon at ORC to generate the PCs, which was just as well. Character generation is quite involved but it makes for some very interesting characters once completed. I got the players to roll up their stats then gave them the opportunity to re-roll their stats or their origin. I also chose to use the Ultimate Powers book which provides a huge variety of powers for players, as well as adding a variety of origins to the basic builds. Rather than go for the current vogue in assigning points to stats, I decided to go for a completely random approach towards the stat generation and powers, as featured in the book. For example Iron Man has Excellent (EX 16) Resources as the millionaire playboy Tony Stark Spider Man (Peter Parker) struggles with Poor (PR 3) resources as an impoverished Grad student. These ranks cover everything else including things like wealth and other assets (Resources).

Depending on the superhero’s type (which can include undead, angels or demons, minerals, pure energy, as well as the more familiar mutants and robots), stats and their Powers range from Feeble (1) to Unearthly (100). It is based upon seven basic percentile-based stats: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche (abbreviated to FASERIP, hence the name). The ruleset is an interesting one, often referred to as the FASERIP system. Although there are (and were) other RPGs such as MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS and DC HEROES, I’ve always liked how the MSH RPG worked. I’m quite fond of the original Marvel Super Heroes RPG. TSR (later Wizards of the Coast and Hasbro) lost the Marvel license in later years.

The game (both the Basic and Advanced set) was originally produced in the mid-1980s, so the artwork looks a little dated (being from the comics of that era) and pre-dates movies like the X-Men series. Years ago, I participated in the Nightmares of Futures Past series of modules for the MARVEL SUPER HEROES RPG, referred to now as the Classic Marvel Roleplaying game. The recent superhero movies got me fired up to try running a Marvel Super Heroes game.

Marvel faserip character generator