Twenty-five years ago Jeff Grubb and Margaret Weis dared to come out with the first 
comic book based role-playing game taking place in the Marvel universe. Now, in 2012, Margaret Weis Publications has taken it upon themselves to refine and build upon what was started so many years ago. Now you can play the X-Men, the Fantastic 4, and your favorite Avengers as they do their part to save the world and even the galaxy from evil in all its forms.
The book is beautifully illustrated and written well, especially for new players. As a PDF form, you will want to print it up in black and white due to the amount of color on every page of this artistic masterpiece. The mechanics of the game are a little tricky due to the sheer amount of dice rolling required for most actions and reactions required by your character. You use large dice pools and take the best two or three from the roll in order to see how well your hero succeeded. The way the story develops for your characters is very fluid and involves more creativity than numbers crunching. Basically, the game master and the players are creating the story together to tell a cohesive narrative that is very satisfying for everyone involved.
My role-playing group helped me play test the Marvel Heroic Role-Playing Game so I could accurately review how playable it was. We had a good time learning the rules together and got to pick out some of our favorite X-Men to pit against the villains of The Raft that just broke out of their extra secure prison cells. The Watcher, the game master, sets the scene and puts choices to the group of heroes as they decide how they want to deal with the tense situation. Players take turns describing what they want to do and giving some idea of how it will help them out if they succeed or hurt the group if their actions fail. Rolling dice against the Watcher determines how well you pulled off your action or what consequences befall you. This game is different as well, because stress is what is used as a measure of how well your hero deals will getting hit by a steel fist to the face or having your brains mangled by an ambitious telepath. You are out of the fight when you become too stressed out to continue, so just like the comic books characters very rarely die or stay out of the fight for very long.
All in all, the group I played with really enjoyed themselves and want to play again, so I have nothing but great things to say about the new Marvel superhero game. It’s a lot less complicated to learn than the rules heavy Hero System and it’s freeing to not have to use miniatures to figure out line of sight and range. The only problem I had was with all the dice that needed to be rolled and kept track of during combat, but it flowed well and you could keep the combat moving along at a fun pace. Check this game out if you love comics or want to have something that can be quickly put together and played on short notice. Also, have fun with the random power generator for some truly unique fun!
-Jason Rahm
