OSR Commentary On Flames of Doom MX4 By David 'Zeb' Cook For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg

 "Citizens of North America!" "It is your right to live free of fear! It is your right to choose your future! Do not support the evil work of an illegal government!" "The end of the Terror is at hand. Humans and mutants alike are rising up against the criminal agents who have usurped the rightful positions and duties of our government. Now is the time to strike! Only guns can free mankind!" "The Canadian Resistance Army is your ally. Strike down the Sentinels! It can be done!" --by order of Nick Fury, commander, Canadian Resistant Army It's no longer a game."

" It's not a fight for survival. It's not even hitting back at those who have hurt you. Now, it's all-out war. You have the chance to go from hunted mutant to leader of the revolution. Are you up to the challenge? How does the future end? Here is your chance to shape the world in the image you want. This adventure presents the end of a nightmare future, the fourth in the MX series of giant robotic mutant hunters versus super-powered resistance fighters. Can you prevail over the forces of tyranny and evil? Can you face the Flames of Doom?"  This blog entry picks right up from our coverage of MX3 Reap The Whirlwind. 

Flames of Doom MX4 By David 'Zeb' Cook is the fourth module in the series and the one where things got seriously weird for our group during the early Nineties. Flames of Doom appeared in Eighty Seven and acts as a bookend for the Nightmares of Future Past series. Make no mistake events, things, and sentinels are desparate. According to the Flames of Doom Wiki entry which has an adventure plot break down; " In the adventure, Mystique has become aware of the player characters, and sends the Sentinels to kill them. If this fails, Mystique meets the characters in disguise, and sets up an ambush. If this fails, Mystique offers a cease-fire in order to safeguard civilian lives if the characters will join her cause. If the characters reject her cease-fire, she declares all-out war." 

The USA is under Sentinel control but the Resistence has a plan involving the Iron Man armor. And the PC's are in the middle of it. Bear in mind that by this time our party of adventurers had been deeply involved in this campaign. We had been running resistence operations, blowing up Sentinel factories, running mutants through the underground. Flames of Doom has the PC's literally turning the war on it's ear. The PC's are the movers and shakers here. 
And this also means that the PC's are in the crosshairs and the sentinels as well as the Resistence.Even if the Resistence wins there's going to be decades of rebuilding of the world. And this means years of playablility & we went for another two years of actual Marvel Super Heroes Rpg Advanced play. 
David 'Zeb' Cook keeps his writing tight and the world building high with lots and lots of details on the Canandian Resistence, the Sentinel control zones, and more. Attitudes & reviews  towards this module go mostly postive; "  In The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, Rick Swan called the Marvel Super Heroes game "a smooth introduction to role-playing for fans of the comics, and as such it's an qualified success." Swan went on to highly recommend Flames of Doom and the other adventures in the Future in Flames series, noting they "feature a future Earth where super-powered mutants are hunted down and imprisoned in camps." However, Swan warned that this adventure was not for the faint-hearted but rather for "ambitious players.""  We did a Hell of a lot with the Nightmares of Future Past series of modules from preventing the release of Sentinel Prime in the past, too taking out pockets of Human Supremecy cells, and taking out desparate mutant Resistence revenge weapons. 

OSR Commentary On Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) By Caroline and Warren Spector For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg

 ""You've been hounded by jack-booted, white-shirted vigilantes. You've been hunted by killer robots."

"You've lived like an animal."
You've had enough.
Now it's time for mutants to fight back, time for the hunted to become the hunters. You've learned to survive, to thrive, by striking from the shadows. A thrust here. A blow there.
Now word has begun to circulate of a mutant with power enough to frighten the sentinels ... of equipment which can give mutants a fighting chance against their oppressors ... of a man with a vision, a vision of a mutant army capable of overwhelming any foe.
You'll strike like a whirlwind and reap what you can. Your lives will never be the same.
The thought appeals to you."

 Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) By Caroline and Warren Spector For Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Rpg amps up the themes & tone of the other modules that we've covered in this series to eleven. The PC's are at the center of the Resistence & come in as experienced operators & agents. The plot according too the MX3 Reap The Whirlwind wiki entry goes something like this;"In Reap the Whirlwind, the player characters must find and free a mutant woman whose power allows her to mask her mutant abilities as well as the abilities of mutants near her from Sentinels. The woman, Gilda Ginsel, was accidentally captured by a Sentinel and is being sent to a research facility where her power will be unmasked unless she is rescued. Once the player characters have freed Gilda, they must make take her to the relative safety of Canada via an Underground Railway, where they will meet up with Nick Fury and Wolverine." 
Make no mistake MX3 Reap The Whirlwind is a campaign module in every sense of the word. Not only are the PC's embroiled in Underground Railroad for mutants smuggling into Canada. But they find themselves  taken to the Canadian headquarters of Stark Enterprises, and have to fight off a cross-border raid by Sentinels.Then there's also the mini adventure in which the PC's have to join a mutant army down in Texas to overwhelm the local Sentinels! 
 Reap the Whirlwind (MX3) is a campaign module in which the world & campaign of Nightmares of Future's Past come vividly alive. The PC's are heavily invested in & a part of this world. They are a party to the future of this Earth in every sense of the word. The MX series of modules isn't for the faint of heart and are highly flexible. Even if the Resistence wins there's going to be decades of rebuilding of the world. 
Are the Future in Flames series modules worth the download especially MX3 Reap The Whirlwind? According to the module's wiki entry;"In The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games, Rick Swan recommended Reap the Whirlwind and the entire "Future in Flames" series as an excellent introduction to the super hero genre, but warned that these adventures were for "ambitious players."" 
We were one group of  "ambitious players." back in '91 or so. We took our PC's and played for through months of operations, assignments, sabotage, heroics and more in order too thwart the Sentinels. We lost a ton of PC's through this series of module but they were a blast. 

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. 

OSR Commentary Marvel Super Heroes Module Rpg MH9 Gates Of What If By Roger E. Moore

 ""You have passed through of the Gates of What If - into a divergent universe, where things are almost the same, with a few changes. VICTOR has plans - and you're invited. GATES OF WHAT IF? is an adventure for use with the MARVEL SUPER HEROES role-playing game. You must have the MARVEL SUPER HEROES role-playing game to play this adventure. This package includes a 40-page adventure book and a full-color map of DOOMSTADT and other areas."" 

"You are in a world where Reed Richards did not live to become Mister Fantastic! Ben Grimm is the Thing, but he's not rocky and orange - he's wearing a power suit! And wait just one minute - you say that Victor Von Doom is a HERO?

Where are you?

You have passed through the Gates of What If - into a divergent universe, where things are almost the same, with a few changes. Victor has plans - and you're invited." 

 Marvel Super Heroes Module Rpg MH9 Gates Of What If By Roger E. Moore was the prelude module for us in 1987 to dive into the MX1 Nightmares of Future Past By Steve Winter. Let me explain why. We had just gotten roped into the lead in events of MH9. The module clocks in at about 40 pages in which the PC's are used by a heroic Victor von Doom to gain revenge against Mephisto. Our group had a blast with this module. 
The world was so very much like our regular Marvel Super Heroes campaign but there was something very 'off'' about it. According to the Gates of What if Wiki entry; " As Guide du Rôliste Galactique notes, "Much of the interest of the adventure comes from the confrontation between these characters and those of the parallel world. Some [of the superheroes in this parallel world] are dead, others have never been superheroes, or their costume is being used by someone else. The reactions of the public and the heroes of the parallel world therefore risk unsettling the characters.""
My uncle modified MH9 so that the module would work with our Marvel Advanced PC's. According to his notes Mephisto sends us sideways in time to MX1 and our own campaign's possible future! 

Victor is the one who eventually saves our party from the possible future of the events of MX1. Of course we had to go back to MX1 but we'll get to that. Roger E Moore's MH-9 is a tightly written and designed module. According to the Gates of What If wiki entry; "In Issue 4 of Adventurer, Ian Marsh called Gates of What-If? "a titanic adventure for Marvel Super Heroes which pits the Fantastic Four and Spidey against a formidable extra-dimensional opponent. Would you be surprised if Doctor Doom appeared too? Nope, nor would I."" And this review captures the feel of MH9. According to Kevin Derby's July 2016 Amazon review; "This is an interesting module for TSR’s classic Marvel RPG from the mid 1980s as the importance of Reed Richards is on display in this adventure. It’s an interesting twist on the Marvel Universe and GMs will have to be pretty well versed on it. This is one of the more comprehensive modules with plenty of character profiles and a few good maps. A solid choice though it does require quite a few heroes to beat it" My uncle's Marvel Super Heroes group had nine players at the time. Recently playing through with six PC's was a bit of a slog. Is MH-9 worth the download? Definitely because it highlights what can be done with the FASERIP Marveil rpg. 
After the events of MH-9 Mephisto became a regular thorn in our party's side. We had some runs ins with him & he cost us the life as well as the soul of one of our PC's but that's a blog entry for another time. 

OSR Commentary On Marvel Super Heroes rpg MH AC2 Avengers Assembled By Bruce Nesmith

" The greatest collection of heroes, ever, annouced by their famous battle cry: Avengers Assemble! Includes a 32-page sourcebook with complete information on 30 past and present Avengers, 22 of their enemies, the Avengers mansion, and SHIELD! "
 The year is 1984, and we're deep into Marvel Super Heroes here comes Marvel Super Heroes Avengers Assembled by Bruce Nesmith. This blog entry is going to pick up right from here on the blog.  This supplement was a bit of a game changer for our group of players. Why? Because of the fact that all of the original Avengers and thier foes plus equipment, SHIELD, & more were laid bare. 

According to the Marvel Super Heroes rpg Avengers Assembled wiki entry; " Avengers Assembled! is a supplement presenting game statistics for 30 characters that have been members of the Avengers team, as well as 22 of their enemies, the Avengers Mansion, and the organization S.H.I.E.L.D.^[1] Avengers Assembled is a 32-page book, with a removal cover that has a detailed map printed on it of the Avengers' mansion.^[2] The supplement explores the mansion, S.H.I.E.L.D., and Nick Fury, 30 team members (two of these characters have additional secret identities, meaning there are actually 26 separate characters), and two Avengers associates.^[2] Each character has an illustration, as are some S.H.I.E.L.D. equipment and personnel" 

 Marvel Super Heroes rpg MH AC2  Avengers Assembled By Bruce Nesmith really has all of the makings of a first class campaign for the Marvel Super Heroes rpg. This supplement really sets the tone for the basic MSH rpg in spades. This is a sentiment echoed by Imagine magazine reviewer Pete Tamlyn; ""Avengers Assembled! will be an essential product for most players of the game".^[3] He stated: "Personal preferences aside, the Avengers are probably the ideal group to choose if you are going to run an extended campaign using MSH. There have been so many members and roster changes that your players are almost certain to be able to pick a character each without conflict over who plays which particular favourite, or someone getting lumbered with a character that doesn't suit their style of play."^[3] He continued: "There are a few grossly powerful characters among them, and I'd recommend that Thor in particular be kept as an NPC who can rescue the players in times of dire emergency, but the only real wimps, Wasp and Hawkeye, are among the most interesting characters to play. My only complaint is that many of the villains are also very tough, the sort of folks who take on the Avengers single-handed and are normally only defeated thanks to their arrogance and over-confidence, and will therefore be quite difficult for the GM to handle."^[3] Tamlyn concluded by saying: "Overall, a much-needed publication which will sell very well."
Sell well it did and laided the foundation for many of the Marvel Super Heroes rpg supplements that would follow.

What MH AC2 does so well is lay out the Avengers, SHIELD, etc into a usable format for both new players & DM's respectively. Sure Avengers Coast to Coast has it over MH AC2 in spades but Avengers Assembled came out first and laided out the blue print for the classic FASRIP rpg that we've all come to know and love. 
So is Avenger Assembled still useful today?! In a wood of course, this is a classic supplement & it's easy to use with all of the 1960's and 70's Avengers and thier villians! 

OSR Commentary On Marvel Super Heroes Rpg Project Wideawake By Jeff Grubb

 "They are the children of the atom, the next step in human evolution. They are mutants, hated and feared by mere humans. Some, like the X-Men and the New Mutants, are protectors of humanity. Others, such as the Hellfire Club and the Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, want to be the masters of humanity."

"Now, the major marvcom mutants, well-meaning and malign, are collected in one book. More than 50 heroes, villains, and interested parties... are described inside, along with notes on the X-Men's mansion, important non-mutants, and the fearsome Sentinels -- mutant-hunting robots created by the United States government to deal with the mutant menace."

So the year is 1987 & we're in the middle of our Marvel Super Heroes rpg campaign & this add appeared in several Marvel comicbooks. Because mutants were such a big deal in certain circles of comic book readers.  A year earlier Jeff Grubb had written Marvel Super Heroes Rpg Project Wideawake &  it was the start of the Fall of the Mutants adventure line for our group. According to the Project Wideawake wiki entry;"MHAC5 Project: Wideawake was written by Jeff Grubb, with a cover by Kerry Gammill, and was published by TSR, Inc., in 1985 as a 32-page book"

For us this was the supplement that launched our group of heroes into the Days of Future Past comicbook world when we stumbled through an alternative Earth gateway created by a mutant kid with reality warping powers called Second Guess. This mutant kid not even ten years old could create doorways into alternative universes.Given my uncle proclivity for using the Marvel comics as reference & we soon found ourselves saving Second Guess from a group of Friends of Humanity supporters.
And then we found ourselves on an Earth so very much unlike our own. And it was not an easy slog back to save Second Guess from the Sentinels. Most if not all of the stats for the mutants that we met along the way came from Project Wideawake.
For me Project Wideawake is a great little supplement and Jeff Grubb's writing and design is tight. Not everyone feels this way however;
"Pete Tamlyn reviewed the supplement in Imagine magazine.^[2] He comments, "OK, X-Fans, this is the one you've been waiting for [...] if you have any interest at all in the X-Men and related groups then this product is essential."^[2] He found that the floor plans "are not really clear enough for any serious use without considerable work on the GM's part."^[2] Tamlyn added: "The coverage of Marvel mutant-kind is reasonably comprehensive. Quicksilver and Scarlet Witch have been left out as they were in the Avengers booklet; Beast was as well, of course, but they could hardly miss one of the original X-Men. Phoenix is in and, as might have been expected, is tough enough to take on everyone else in the booklet put together and win easily—the booklet sensibly recommends that she only enter games as an NPC. There are, however, some surprising omissions, including the Starjammers, Shi'Ar Imperial Guard and Alpha Flight. There are not many mutants in that lot, but they're all part of the X-Men circle. Another book, perhaps?"^[2] He continued, "I have got a few gripes as well. One or two boobs seem to have slipped past the proofreaders; for example we are told that Magma regains health points each round as long as she is in contact with the ground, but we are not told how many points per round. However, if you want to run MSH as it is designed to be run, some things are essential, and this is one of them."^[2] Tamlyn concludes the review by saying, "Final point: the booklet introduces a new rule to MSH. Supervillains now have negative popularity which is a measure of how easy they find it to cow hapless civilians. A nice idea."" 
Do I personally agree with Mr. Tamlyn's review?! No,because it seems unduly harsh and Dragon magazine would later have it's Ares section cover Alpha Flight and the Shi'Ar Imperial Guard. What Project Wideawake does is introduce the Xmen and thier enemies into the Marvel Superheroes rpg and it could easily be used with the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg. 
Project Wideawake was a product of it's time and as such easily introduced the Xmen. I was later on replaced by the superior Children of the Atom supplement but for it's time Project Wideawake did it's job easily and with bells on. 

OSR Commentary - Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg & MX1 Nightmares of Future Past By Steve Winter

 "Picture, if you will, a world gone insane. A world where you cannot attend school, buy food or clothing, or even walk down the street without risking capture of imprisonment. Add to that picture, if you can, the specter of giant, killing robots programmed to hunt down and destroy you and everyone like you.This is the world waiting for you in Nightmares of Futures Past. Mutants have been declared outlaws and enemies, stripped of their constitutional rights, and condemned to quick death in battle or slow death in concentration camps. The heroes of our time are gone, either killed fighting oppression, stripped of their powers and locked away, or hiding in shadows…"

Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg has a ton of good and solid memories for me back in the 90's. There was one set of adventures that caused two TPK's. This was where we as a group of players proved our mettle. MX1 Days of Future Past is a very popular campaign and one of the foundational classic Marvel storylines for the X-Men & Marvel super heroes in general. 

 
MX1 Nightmares of Future Past by Steve Winter is only a thirty two page module but as an over arching campaign it's absolutely free roaming. According to scidhuv@ican.net's October 1998 Amazon review; "This set of rules is incredible I have used it many times. It presents a world where the characters have full control. There is no set story, but the book helps to setup different ideas in the GM's head. A must have for anyone who's tired of the same old boring campaigns but likes to have a nice set of rules to work with." 

MX1 Nightmares of Future Past can be set in your own hometown & the events can have an impact on your own hometown. The Sentinels take over the world and suddenly your own hometown is caught in the middle of events. For us it was the fact our DM made our hometown a Sentinel repair node and storage facility for the Eastern sea board. Heroes by the score were killed from Boston to Florida and thier uniform colours were  worn by the Sentinels adding insult to injury. 
How does this relate to the Marvel Super Heroes Advanced rpg? Marvel Super Heroes Advanced allows you as the player to generate the heroes you want as a PC. The system if it's properly worked with really takes full advantage of it's D100 roots & this customization really shines through. The MX series of modules however are brutal. And these modules play for keeps! My uncle was a brutal DM & we cameback for more. 

Make no mistake we've played through MX1  seven  times & we've gotten to this alternative timeline in countless ways. Messing with cosmic artifacts was one, another exiting a time/space gateway, accidently killing a timetraveller was another, etc. Each time we ended up back in Days of Future past where we were kicking behind on Sentinels. Which almost always seemed to catch up to our PC's?!