Taking a cue from S. John Ross’ Google+ post, I plan to be flexible with the RPG a Day questions from time to time.

I would like to be playing TSR’s Marvel Super Hero game again. While working on The Red Concordant, I re-discovered my love for this game. I only played it once in college, but I’ll never forget it. I would like to say that I was a master of the rules, but I wasn’t. Fact is that I floundered my way through our adventure. I was the tank of the group relishing in spending Karma points to obliterate cars, chunks of buildings, and alien robots. You see, I didn’t need to spend the points, but I wanted to have the highest success possible. My dream was to be have Shift-Eleventy Billion Endurance to take down cosmic threats like Ego, the sentient planet.

If I were to play again, I would be a magic wielding character. In studying the magic system again, I noticed that even the weakest wizard would have guaranteed spell effects. One example is Alteration – Appearance. With this spell, you could also change your face and appearance to be someone else with a similar face and build. Anything beyond this required a roll. I read this to mean that I could change my hair color, add a small scar, change clothes, and/or freckles and not require a roll. I figure that it is the easiest way to maintain a secret identity. I cast Alteration – Appearance as a means to get into costume. Presto! I change my hair, add a birthmark, and change eye color to keep from being easily recognized in my normal form.

As I improved my magical abilities, my costume would become more wild. It would require a roll, but if my character has really improved, it shouldn’t be too difficult to change height, have freakishly blue skin, scales, and/or a tail.

Yes, I use and/or frequently.

Maybe I could transform into Mogo one day and challenge Ego to a duel…

Anyway, I would love to play this classic game again. There is a facebook group that loves the game. I believe they play online on Mondays. (Need to check.) As I can’t do Mondays right now, so playing will have to remain a dream.

Wait Five Minutes

Another game that I’d love to play is Microscope. I would really love to play this game. I read history and love many of Turtedove’s alternate histories. I know almost nothing about this game except that you and a bunch of friends make an epic history thousands of years long. The part of me that loves the next big shiny would seldom get tired of generating multiple epics.

This is the Flexible Part

What I’d really like to do is play both of these games. If Marvel can have mutants from Ancient Egypt, I can have an epic history with the rise and fall of supers. Who knows what the other players would generate. A primitive supers society falls to the dinosaurs? Neanderthals had mental psi powers that could counter supers making it so that modern humans with some Neanderthal DNA are collected together in an underground school to learn to fight supervillans? Magic is a force that rises and falls to meet the threat of mutants? Would there be any mutants at all?

Once the world is defined throughout history, generating characters to fit into this history becomes easier. This magic wielding person? She would fit in the world’s Middle Ages where magic ran high and an organized college of wizards hunted so-called monsters. A tank? A dinosaur killer fighting to keep an ancient civilization from destruction. Modern times could have just about anyone with teams of Neanderthal descendants, regular humans with super-tech, cosmic enemies that unite the various factions of supers, etc.

So my short answer is that I would like to play two games. Microscope to set up playing FASERIP.

Excuse me while I go read the books again.

Epilogue

Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I would probably use Zak’s house rule to use 3d20 instead of the resolution chart. Don’t get me wrong, I love the chart. It’s art! However, as I get older, I really enjoy hearing the rolling of dice for everything.

Until next time, true believers…