U is for Underperforming Supers RPG's
All right, I can do this. Back on the "A-to-Z" thing.
I just saw some news over at The Other Side blog that Margaret Weis Productions will no longer be making books for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Tim, the blogger at The Other Side, speculated that it was because you needed the right group to make it work. I've been playing it a few times with my group, and he might be right.
I'll also go one further and say that the game's lack of rules for building your own character and advancing that character, both staples of most RPG's, probably didn't help.
I own the core rulebook and the Civil War supplement in hardback. (I'm not a fan of pdf's for reasons I'll go into on another day.) But I pre-ordered The Initiative through my FLGS, and now they won't be releasing the book. Here's the news release, by the way.
Naturally, not having a game in print doesn't mean you can't play it, and I'll probably continue on with MHR for a while, at least until its novelty wears off. I have noticed a bit of fan backlash about this, by the way, mostly on the grounds of the pre-orders that won't be fulfilled and that MWP got in bed with Marvel, which hasn't really had a successful RPG license since FASERIP, and whose expectations may have been ridiculously high.
In other, non-supers related news, I've been hanging around today working an a fantasy RPG project that'll probably keep me occupied for a few weeks, in anticipation of getting both my Blade Raiders game and my Reaper Kickstarter package. I'll post some news about it if I can make a little headway on it first. I wouldn't want to start something without being able to finish it... Oh wait, it's still April and I'm only on "U."
I just saw some news over at The Other Side blog that Margaret Weis Productions will no longer be making books for Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. Tim, the blogger at The Other Side, speculated that it was because you needed the right group to make it work. I've been playing it a few times with my group, and he might be right.
I'll also go one further and say that the game's lack of rules for building your own character and advancing that character, both staples of most RPG's, probably didn't help.
I own the core rulebook and the Civil War supplement in hardback. (I'm not a fan of pdf's for reasons I'll go into on another day.) But I pre-ordered The Initiative through my FLGS, and now they won't be releasing the book. Here's the news release, by the way.
Naturally, not having a game in print doesn't mean you can't play it, and I'll probably continue on with MHR for a while, at least until its novelty wears off. I have noticed a bit of fan backlash about this, by the way, mostly on the grounds of the pre-orders that won't be fulfilled and that MWP got in bed with Marvel, which hasn't really had a successful RPG license since FASERIP, and whose expectations may have been ridiculously high.
In other, non-supers related news, I've been hanging around today working an a fantasy RPG project that'll probably keep me occupied for a few weeks, in anticipation of getting both my Blade Raiders game and my Reaper Kickstarter package. I'll post some news about it if I can make a little headway on it first. I wouldn't want to start something without being able to finish it... Oh wait, it's still April and I'm only on "U."
I recently bought the Marvel RPG for my daughter, who is in college. It is disappointing to hear that MWP will not be continuing with it. My daughter and I really liked the Supernatural RPG, another MWP product.
ReplyDeleteApparently they can't sell anything after the end of the month. Their pdf's are really overpriced in my mind, so I will probably be taking a pass.
DeleteI think the main problems with the MWP game were (1) it was poorly written to the point of being confusing--it's the ONLY game I gave up trying to learn, and (2) the modules were simply reenactments of crappy storylines published a few years earlier--if you've read the stories, there's no suspense or surprise.
ReplyDelete