Marvel RPG

For those of you who are keeping track, Gerry is now 3 years old. As befits a nerd like me, the first thing that I started to think about was how I was going to get Gerry interested in RPGs.
:)

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Gerry will be able to get involved in any kind of role playing until 4-5 years old. However, during my research, I came across this website - http://www.marvelrpg.net/. Basically, the Marvel Super Heroes RPG is now available as a free download.

When I was a kid playing RPGs (many many moons ago), we predominantly played D&D but we did branch out briefly into some other RPGs - of which Marvel Super Heroes was one. At the time, this seemed like a great idea. I was (and still am) a big fan of Marvel comics and the opportunity to play Spider-Man, Iron Man or any of the other big super heroes seemed like a great idea.

Unfortunately, the Marvel RPG never really took off for us (for various reasons which I won't go into here) but it did leave me with one memory in particular which stands out.

It was a long long time ago so I can't remember the scenario which we were playing or which hero I was controlling at the time. All that I can remember was that we were in our base and were "visited" by some villains. In the best Marvel tradition, a fight broke out.

Being a super hero base, our home was obviously strengthened to deal with the additional punishment of heroes practicing their super powers. As a result, the walls were made out of adamantium. In the Marvel universe, adamantium is the strongest possible substance and is considered indestructible. In terms of numbers, the strength of adamantium was rated at 1000. For comparison, many heroes had strength ratings in the 10's (although the Marvel RPG mainly used descriptors like Amazing, Incredible etc).

Anyway, during the fight, one of the heroes gets really creative and decides to throw one of the villains up against the wall. Not that I'm a violent guy but you have to admit, this action is in keeping with the time (this was during a time when TV was dominated by shows like A-Team and Knight Rider - basically, shows where people get regularly thrown through windows and walls and tables etc in slow motion).

The villain flies through the air, spinning gracefully head over heels in slow motion before going splat against the wall. Beautiful, right?

Unfortunately for us, the Power Nazi DM decided that this action ended up killing the villain and penalised us by reducing our karma.

"No way" we all screamed, "his strength was only Amazing! The villain should have had enough hit points to survive!"

The DM looked at us distastefully before replying "Ah, but the wall is made of adamantium and so you did 1000 damage to the bad guy".

Despite out pleading and cajoling that the damage should be based on the heroes strength and not the sturdiness of the wall, the DM stood firm. The villain was dead.

The stinkiness of that decision sticks with me to this day...