OSR Commentary - Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg & MX2 The X- Potential By Mark Acres

 "One Hundred Thousand to Attend Mutant Execution," one headline screams. "Senator Hints at Link Between Mutant, Commie Plots!" shouts another. In the Streets, white-shirted men wearing distinctive armband of the Knights of Genetic Purity march in lockstep, treading underfoot any suspected of being soft on mutants. In the public schools, kindergarten children raise their arms in clenched fist salute of the National American Social Improvement Party and chat the party slogan, "One People, One Blood, One Nation!"

"Is this but a super hero's nightmare? No. This is America; home town U.S.A., 25 to 50 years in the future. In this America, constitutional government is all but gone. Real power is held by the sentinels, a group of powerful robots programmed to seek out and capture or destroy all human mutants and all beings with any hint of super poewrs. Sharing power with the sentinels are a handful of political demagogues who keep the population whipped into a constant frenzy about the mutant menace. Any super heroes who survive in this hostile environment do so by constantly facing the full military, political, and technological might of a new totalitarian state in the making."

Marvel Super Heroes rpg Advanced holds a lot of nosolgia especially from the Nineties. We pick right up from where last left off from MX1 Days of Future Past on the blog here.  From Gates of What if we jumped to our home town right into the arms of The Knights of Genetic purity along with representives of  the National American Social Improvement Party. 
Our party hid right away only to be told that we'd have been killed by the Sentinel purges that swept through New England. As critic James Wallis noted in his review of MX2 The X- Potential;"a change from most Marvel Super Heroes adventures, the player characters are not fighting crime but fighting for their lives."  And fought we did because this was our hometown were the Sentinels had taken hold. Our own hometown is a repair depot and facility for the Sentinels. There were jobs aplenty as long as you don't mind working for the bad guys. 
The representives of  the National American Social Improvement Party run the day to day business of the Sentinels. The rest of the town had two manufacturing plants for parts, weapons, and sensors for the Sentinels. When we gated in the Resistence in our hometown had been crushed. We took thier place almost seemlessly. 
According to the MX2 wiki entry;"The X-Potential is the first of three adventures set in this bleak future. It adds more details of the world, then describes the events that will happen around a large political demonstration over several days. The players are free to intervene as they see fit. At various times, the gamemaster supplies them with front pages of "The Daily Journal"." 
What MX2 The X Potential does is take what we saw in X1 Nightmares of Future Past adventure/supplement and then adds to it by bringing the nightmare to the PC's home town or campaign city. MX2 adds in too the feel of 'the old town goes to Sentinel Hell' and then some. The face of The X-Potential is your PC's faces as the party becomes embroiled in these nightmare campaign world.What this does is give the player's agency and accessibility within the campaign. The struggle for the PC's lives leads there to being much more at stake. These nightmare campaign worlds were places that we adventured in and affected on a much more base and basic level. 
MX 2 The X- Potential shows that the PC's could and would affect the world on a far more campaign effecting level. The PC's actions have significant effects on the campaign world especially thier own home town. There's a dedication here in MX2 that allows the PC's influence to add an extra layer to the player's actions during play.
All in all MX2 The X-Potential is a classic larger then life adventure that hits the vibrarant notes for classic Marvel Super Hereoes rpg Advanced. There's someting really sastifying about busting the heads of Sentinels & destroying thier plans. We played through MX2 The X-Potential many times and it continued to have a solid play value as both adventure and supplement.