Thinking about Marvel Heroic Role-Playing and making Events

I’m perusing the PDF, saving the in depth read for when I get the hard copy in my hands.  What I see, I dig and I’m looking forward to playing it this weekend.

And yeah, after reading about how John picked up a random comic off of the spinner racks in his living room (yes, he has spinner racks in his living room) and made his own event based on that, I’m intrigued.

The cool thing about playing events at the table is that as complete stories, they are rarely satisfying to me.  The ideas behind Shadowland Planet Hulk and Civil War thrilled me but the execution and conclusions left me rather cold.  Because I like the premises but was not satisfied with the way they shook out on the rack they would be immensely satisfying to play at the table.

Mutant Massacre cries out to me.  When I was 13 and picked up my first X-Men issue to find a young mutant girl being hunted and killed by the Marauders in a train-yard.  I was hooked.  Wolverine versus Sabretooth, round 1 in the Morlock Tunnels.  Colossus and Nightcrawler in comas.  Storm getting her powers back.  Angel crucified.  Thor’s arm broken (what was Thor doing there?).  Kitty Pryde fading away.  Wolverine versus Sabretooth round 2 in the X-Mansion.  Fun stuff.

But as much as the Mutant Massacre cries out because I adored it, Inferno cries out to be played because it never quite worked for me in print.  But playing a demonic invasion of New York City, the kind of cross-over where the Avengers, Mutants and Magic folk could all intersect is exciting.  The concept has hooks.

Suddenly, we could do things that were never done in the comic.  Ghost Rider knighted by the Goblin Queen, Madelyne Prior, hunting down lost souls who escaped hell without permission.  Punisher hunted by the demonic souls of the gangsters he has killed in the past.  Maybe Magik doesn’t lose control of her powers (because Marvel comics could use one less woman losing control of her powers and nearly destroying the world) but uses them to take down the Goblin Queen and regain control of New York City (though I admit that I like the idea of Magik falling to the dark side and marching across the U.S. at the head of a demonic army in order to lay siege to L.A.).

And of course the stuff right out of the comic, facing down demonic versions of the X-Men and eventually Mr. Sinister.

Heresy aside, the Crisis on Infinite Earths would rock and even make an odd sort of sense.  The Villain Wars would be pretty amazing with Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Magneto and Dr. Doom leading an army of villains as the multiverse re-aligns itself.

And of course, like the Breakout Event in the main book, there are smaller things that happened (or didn’t happen) in the MU that would make cool MHRP Events: The Death of Johnny Storm, Who Will Be the New Sorcerer Supreme, The Four Ghost Riders of the Apocalypse, or the Fall of the Weapon X Program.

I’m looking forward to playing MRH, getting to know it a bit better and seeing how that shakes out at the table, and hopefully kicking the MU in the teeth.