Review and Commentary On The X Men Days Of Future Past Trailer For Your Old School Super Heroes Campaign

Its 11:53 and I've just rewatched the pilot for Agents of Shield so you don't have to. Instead, to the trailer for Xmen Days of Future Past was released and we've seen a hell of a lot of speculation, arguments, and internet blab, blab. 

Bottom line we've got a new X men movie on the way and it ties directly into the backbone of Xmen First Class as well as renaming itself after the classic 1981's iconic Xmen comic series.


According to wiki : The storyline alternates between present day of 1980, in which the X-Men fight Mystique's Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, and a future timeline, taking place in 2013, caused by the X-Men's failure to prevent the Brotherhood from assassinating Senator Robert Kelly. In this future universe, Sentinels rule the United States, and mutants live in internment camps. The present-day X-Men are forewarned of the possible future by a future version of their teammate Kitty Pryde, whose mind traveled back in time and possessed her younger self to warn the X-Men. She succeeds in her mission and returns to the future, but despite her success, the future timeline still exists as an alternative timeline rather than as the actual future.

The Marvel Movie tie in seems to tie directly into the end of  Xmen First Class and bobbles and weaves through time to redefine some of the weirdness that X men II & III caused.
Here Wolverine played by Hugh Jackman is sent back in time to guide a young Professor Xavier whose beginning to form the second wave of the X men. I t looks to me like this one is going to go back and forth with time.
Major Spoiler Warning ahead.
According to wiki : 

"The upcoming sequel to The Last Stand and First Class is titled X-Men: Days of Future Past. Several actors from the past of the franchise are confirmed to return, including Hugh Jackman, Halle Berry, Ian McKellen, Patrick Stewart, Anna Paquin, Shawn Ashmore, Ellen Page, Daniel Cudmore, Michael Fassbender, Nicholas Hoult, Jennifer Lawrence, and James McAvoy. Newcomers Peter Dinklage, Omar Sy, Fan Bingbing, Booboo Stewart and Evan Peters have been announced to play Bolivar Trask, Bishop,Blink, Warpath and Quicksilver, respectively. Although the trailer reveals that Wolverine will be the one to actually return to his "younger" body, director Bryan Singer described Pryde as the prime facilitator and that Pryde's phasing ability enables time-travel to happen" 

I've seen tonight a whole bunch of my friends this evening looking at the trailer going 
"Crap I'm in on this one!" 
So the fans are divided on this one. 
The trailer looks fantastic but we've been deceived before and so I have my usual let's wait and see with this one!

Using The 

The X Men Days Of Future Past Trailer For Your Old School Super Hero Campaign 

Get The Entire Series
MX Modules right Over
HERE

The trailer has certainly stirred up the fans but this isn't the first time that Days of Future Past has gotten the pulse of Marvel fans racing.
Back when the Marvel Super Heroes game was in full swing the Days of Future Past Modules came out. MX1: Nightmares of Futures Past was a big deal and a direct tie in with your Marvel campaigns.

Nightmares of Futures Past is the first of a series of four Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) adventures inspired by the classic X-Men story "Days of Futures Past" (X-Men, issues 141 and 142), that continues with The X-Potential and Reap the Whirlwind before concluding inFlames of Doom. The PCs are heroes in a dark future ruled by the giant robot Sentinels, where mutants are being herded into death camps and most of the established Marvel Universe characters were killed long ago. 

This heavily diverges from the normal MSH setting, so the module spends the first 20 pages laying out the history and providing variant rules, game stats for the most common adversaries, and equipment used by the mutant underground. The next two sections detail a mutant interment camp and specific NPCs. The last section is the meat of the scenario, and uses the Search Flow Chart (included on the inside cover) to simulate the the PCs being hunted by the Sentinels (masking, spoofing and jamming their "mutant signatures" are very important). Various events occur, mostly non-combat related, which introduce the PCs to elements of the setting (like meeting an internment camp escapee, running into children calling them "dirty muties", or the government issues new IDs forcing characters to get new ones). The events will eventually lead to their incarceration in a mutant interment center, where a different set of events can occur before the PCs have a chance to escape

These modules where very cool because they put the PCs center stage for the action of the Nightmares of Future Past Timeline right in their home towns and a virtual police state run by the Sentinels.
These modules were advertised right in the back of various Marvel comics and allowed the players a direct line into a time line that their various favorite characters had died.
 The adventures were deadly in a sense with an over all sense of foreboding that seemed to go throughout the entire series and they were hard and hence the 'advanced' level to them.
I've used these over and over again as different incarnations of the Future Past timeline has turned up in cartoons, the Ultimates universe, and even when the Sentinel  head popped up in X men II as part of a danger room simulation.
 You can find more information about the Days of Future Past timeline and its various branches HERE

After completing the modules back in the 90's I was able to take some pretty heavy duty mutants and throw them into the deep end of the gene pool. I had them land in the North America of the 'Age of Apocalypse'.

That campaign kept my players going for many months in their home town until things lit. Just in case you'd like to do a bit of exploring in that direction.
You can find much more information on wiki which has a very nice little breakdown of  Earth 5701.
 Right over HERE
 I think the trailer looks grand.I will be seeing the movie with some trepidation. I miss the days when Marvel didn't belong to Disney and the company took risks.
This movie might inspire some OSR super hero  stories for your players!