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 - 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?! 

OSR Commentary - MX1 Nightmares of Future Past By Steve Winter For The Marvel Super Heroes Rpg & Other FASERIP Rpg System

 ""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."

Yes I totally stole this the from Wayne's Books for this photo http://www.waynesbooks.com/MEMLAMLBAMSLMTMXseries.html

"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..."

1987 ... Steve Winter ... 32 pages + fold-out map ... TSR 6873 ... ISBN 0880384026

The Winter of 1987 we were deep into Marvel Super Heroes advanced and our heroes had been playing through several of the various what if worlds after MH9  ' Gates of What If'. And the players were looking for a challenge and my uncle gave it to us. 

We ended up going through a gateway in one of the major local depressed cities after a super villain's lair had been located by the police. They called us in and we found an interdimensional gateway. Little did we realize it was literally the gateway too Hell. And where we ended up was the backend of our local towns & cities turned into a nightmare given form. Ruins of town after town greeted up with major roads being turned into horse pathways. 
We came into a world that had suffered some form of EMP event and or solar flare. We were convinced it was a solar flare. 
And then we ended up surrounded by Sentinels! Three Sentinels surrounded our party and then it was game on. We swung into action and got our answers from the memory banks of the Sentinel. A solar flare had took out all of the major electronics of this world and this was followed by the Sentinals taking out all of the major super heroes. Our area of Connecticut had become a Sentinel repair facility with the rest of the state becoming manufacturing and parts facilities. And originally the target of the sentinels was mutants but soon it was extended to all super humans. 

MX1 Nightmares of Future Past literally enabled you as the DM too set the campaign in your hometown area and my uncle took advantage of this. My uncle was a huge Chris Clemont fan and the classic Bronze age Xmen titles. Now for the past couple of months I've been running the Ascendant rpg..

As the year wore on we found out the Sentinels were looking to expand thier crusade to other universes. And we couldn't have that. It literally took two years to unseat them. But there were other universes where they hadn't been unseated and we came across one and came face to face with an upgraded Sentinel that were actually based on DC comics Manhunter robots. There's a whole time twist factor here & I don't wanna go into it. 
We're using public domain super heroes in our current Ascendant rpg campaign. And there's been a piece of outta of place technological artifact that might in point of fact be a sentinel zero point power source. And the cybernetic organisms come looking for it! 

Commentary & Review Of 'The City That Dripped Blood' Adventure For Swords & Wizardry by Steve Winter

"Temelpa, an ancient walled city on a forgotten trade route, thought to be abandoned ages ago, and now, the adventurers find themselves besieged within. 

Unable to leave their refuge, the adventurers will quickly discover the city is inhabited, not deserted as initially believed, by an ancient society. They will soon be embroiled in the affairs of a twisted caste system built on servitude and cannibalism and headed by an inter-dimensional vampiric overlord.

This open-ended adventure allows the GM to unleash an array of unique monsters, factional power struggles, and intriguing plots upon the characters as they fight and scheme to stay alive, entrapped in a hostile city where they are viewed as useful pawns or a tasty exotic meal.

Can the characters hold out until the siege is broken and escape with their lives? Will they champion the cause of the downtrodden and upend the social order? Or will they be the main course for the next cannibalistic feast?

Welcome to the City!"

So I was looking for a good Sword & Sorcery adventure that I could port over to my OSR campaigns. Last night I came across 'The City That Dripped Blood' by Steve Winter  for  the Swords & Wizardry retroclone but easily adaptable to other OSR systems. This adventure could be completely ported over to Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea or Castles & Crusades. 
This is a short but solid adventure clocking in at twenty three pages of factional blood chilling terror. The dungeon master is going to have to be careful not to wipe the party out! Pay attention to the level cap on the adventure because your going to need five & above level adventurers to handle the Sword & Sorcery come down that echoes in on your players.
The wise dungeon master would look to John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct Thirteen for inspiration for running 'The City That Dripped Blood'. The PC's are going to get involved in the factional wars of the city of Temelpa. Extraplanar vulture-men  skelzis became vampiric with the help of the magical blood orchid of the area. With the help of their weredactyl servants rule over the forgotten desert city of Temelpa. The human resistance is in dire need of adventurers & the party can get themselves into deep trouble ala  John Carpenter's Assault on Precinct Thirteen

'The City That Dripped Blood' could become a tight & deadly campaign starter with the right group of players. The DM can adjust the monster action & encounters in  Temelpa as they need it. The whole of  cloth of the NPC inter-dimensional vampiric overlord could be used as a reaccuring threat to the party for a mini campaign for quite sometime. 'The City That Dripped Blood' by Steve Winter feels like a good & solid effort by Frog God games. The whole affair & cloth of 'The City That Dripped Blood' by Steve Winter  feels like a great starter for a long term campaign. And this is where I think its strength lies. The cartography & writing are snappy, the zip along & get the adventurers into the thick of the affair of violence & black magic horror  in in Temelpa.
For Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea this is the perfect adventure to continue on right after the events of 'The Anthropophagi of Xambaala' by Corey R. Walden. The PC's start in Xambaala. The events of 'The Anthropophagi of Xambaala' unfold & then the PC's  embroil themselves into 'The City That Dripped Blood'.
"Furtive and odious tales circle through various Hyperborean ports of call. Rumours whisper of an ancient occult city, Xambaala, clinging to the edge of the Zakath Desert. Perhaps the hideous horrors said to assail the city in the darkest hours are exaggerated. Maybe too another explanation can be found for the foreigners who are said to have disappeared to some uncanny fate. But the whispering tongues also hint that gold glints in the shadows of Xambaala, ready to be taken by the bold."



Later on they can face down The Beasts of Kraggoth Manor by Tim Callahan  why? Because the party learns that  the NPC inter-dimensional vampiric overlord from 'The City That Dripped Blood' has ties to the desert ruin house & its dungeons. This is the strength of the  'The City That Dripped Blood'. Its adaptable & easy to integrate into existing campaigns. This is the strength of a good mid level module for an old school or OSR campaign. But I've got a lot of criticisms of 'The City That Dripped Blood':

1. One this module needs a bit more exposition with the whole Temelpa's history & background. 
2. The district's descriptions need far more Sword & Sorcery punch to them. 
3. 'The City That Dripped Blood' needs far better organization of its contents as a whole & more adventure meat on the bones. I was expecting more treasures for the player's PC's that the life blood of experience points. 
4. The DM is going to have to work to adapt 'The City That Dripped Blood' for their home campaign as a kick ass Robert E. Howard type of adventure. This is a mid level adventure & needs the kick to rate it up to a four star. 
5. The module's premise doesn't live up to the actual product unfortunately. 
6. With a shove of a good editor & journeyman this module could be easily integrated into "The Lost City" (1982) by Tom Moldvay easily. 

'The City That Dripped Blood' can easily be turned into a kick ass campaign but its gonna take a bit of work. A three outta of five star module that could have been four or five.

'The City That Dripped Blood' by Steve Winter  is available right here.