Yanno...watching that Superhero Squad cartoon last night made me want to play MSH again -- especially seeing the Wrecking Crew in the show, because their stats came in the boxed set.

All that MSH stuff's available for free, legal download, by the way -- all of it. LEGAL. FREE.

I've made redundant copies...

WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THESE?!

I bought the Rocky and Bullwinkle game on clearance in the early '90s, I think I opened the box once.

Just fr the record (and because I know this stuff and have precious little else to do with said knowledge):

1) The Indy game DID have character-creation rules...but they came in a supplement, so you had to have THAT thing (the "Judge's Pack", I think) if you wanted to roll your own. The game was still kinda "meh", though, and there were better contemporary choices for pulp adventure gaming -- in my opinion anyway.

2) The Bullwinkle & Rocky Role Playing Party Game may have been a misguided attempt, but it wasn't a total failure (Warren Spector was on that one, after all -- click-click gamers know HIS name right away). It was a great idea, andthe hand-puppets were brilliant. I have yet to play it, but I've read it a couple of times...and I can't wait to prop up the cardboard microphone and do my best announcer voice into it.

Oh WOW these take me back. We played Top Secret, Boot Hill and Star Frontiers and they were all fun -- especially given the evolution of table top RPGs at the time (and back then, you didn't need the "table top" qualifier, because there was no other kind)

But, if I may ask: Where is Gamma World? Definitely some cool concepts in that game. (sure, there were faults too...)

Oh, yeah -- the Star Frontiers stuff is also freely and legally available for download. Point of fact, there's a group of fans doing some VERY nice work with the game, creating new supplements and a TOTALLY SWANK fanzine called Star Frontiersman. Google it up, yo.

@LAY:

Gamma World is on the "Best" list, paired with Metamorphosis Alpha. GW has been through a few editions (four, I think), all OOP; however, there's a recent Old-School game called Mutant Future which is kind of considered to be its heir.

Plus, it has spidergoats.

No Cyborg Commando? WHOSE RESPONSIBLE THIS LIST?

Damn. MSH brings back some good memories, and some not so good. My friend John was the worst RPG player ever (at least by our geeky RPG group of friends standards). He would always want to do goofy stuff like throw a coffee cup at someones head using the Hulk's incredible strength or have Wolverine stab someone else in the ass. We were so hardcore about role playing that the games would devolve into philosophical discussions about why Wolverine WOULD NOT go around stabbing people in the ass. Yeah, we were cool.

I remember reading through the module that came with the Indiana Jones game (written by Fantastic Four scribe John Byrne) and how pissed I was, because every time there was a picture inserted in the text, paragraphs were deleted mid-sentence.

Hey, I actually liked Dragon Strike granted I was only ten when it came out and my friends and I made up our own rules, levels, and Games workshop models to the game but still good times.

I never understood why people were so up in arms about no character generation rules in Indiana Jones. The game was dead simple and even as 12 year olds we knew how to make a character for the game. Roll stats, pick three skills, pick equipment. What's so hard about that? Anyway, my group loved Indiana Jones and we played it quite a bit, expanding it into general pulp parameters with psychic powers, cloaked vigilantes, and a cameo by Doc Savage.

I thought Bullwinkle and Rocky was actually pretty clever and a lot of fun, though I must admit that I only played two or three times and never felt the need to revisit the game.

One TSR game that I really didn't care for was their Buck Rogers setting, or "XXV" as I think they called it. They took everything that was light and fun and outlandish about Buck Rogers and revamped the whole thing with political drama, industrial espionage, a corrupted Earth, way too much of an emphasis on weapons and cybernetics, and a game system that was far more complex than it needed to be.

Doc

nice choices for did the execs run out of ideas when they decided on lets do a hony mooners and all my children and even a rocky and bulwinkle game. for our fan base will love them . as for the good list remmeber star fighters . and the marvel one

My god - there were worse games than the TSR Indy game?!? That thing was a total train wreck. My favorite was the canned games based on the movies.

Take the Temple of Doom game, which followed the movie EXACTLY, note for note. So lets say, since your players probably saw the flick, decided not to get on Lao Che's plane and avoid the whole trip to India. The game forced you to go there in the most ham-fisted way ever. Drive out of town? All the roads out are blocked by Che's men. Take a boat? The harbor is being closely watched by his goons. Decide to find somewhere to hide until things blow over? He searched the WHOLE DAMN CITY!

Insane. . . .

I'll go and look it up later, but I'm pretty sure Hulk's strength was either Mn(75) or Un(100). In either case, it DEFINITELY was not In(40).

You forgot the most important element of MSH: the supplemental X-Men boxed set.

That thing was incredible. It included a couple of books, one of them being a compendium (complete with stats and bio, natch) of every mutant (or mutant hunter, extra-dimensional mutant slavemaster, etc) in the Marvel Universe. I read through it as a crash course in the X continuity up to that point.

Being total nerds, my friends and I wasted countless childhood hours in lengthy debates about who would win in hypothetical fights between comic book characters. MSH and the X boxed set, aside from letting us play some sweet campaigns with homegrown heroes, gave us the opportunity to stage those matches and call the results definitive.

Matt-

Spiderman was In(40). That was good enough to lift roughly ten tons.

Hulk was Un(100). That was, like, off the hook ridiculous.

I'm glad Top Secret made the list. Actually Top Secret is how I came to RPGing; I actually bought it at the mere age of 14 at Toys R Us, thinking I was buying a slightly unusual board game. I stayed up all night reading the corny paperback book that came with it. And so a gamer was born.

Anyone longing for some Star Frontiers or Gamme World action, the D20 Future book for the D20 Modern rules has lots of concepts from these two games in it. In fact, all the Old Star Frontier races are presented in it as well.

At the risk of losing my geek license, who's that "hero" in the upper left of the MSH cover?

Ranchoth, that was Captain Marvel. Yeah, I...dunno either.

PM, Cyborg Commando wasn't a TSR product. Gygax designed it but it was after he split with TSR, unless I'm all mistaken andstuff.

Ranchoth, that's one of the many Captain Marvels of the Marvel Universe.

Ranchoth, that is Captain Marvel, but I think she was called Photon by that time. She's actually pictured prominently on a lot of the MSH materials, at least early on, despite the fact that as a character she was never all that popular. Probably a move by TSR to be more multicultural? (Though Storm would have been a better bet, especially at the time.)

Thanks, nice to be remembered in the blogosphere.

Wow. Except for #1, I had all of them.

Weirder still, I never played most of them.

I just liked reading the rules...

Dragonstrike was well worth the dollar that I paid for it. I love watching the horrible cheesy video that it came with. I'm just disappointed that the video didn't include any credits.

Ah, MSH. So many hours in the basement spent developing an insane "Days of Future Past" storyline with maps outlining every mutant relocation center in the US and a ton of "resistance" NPCs. Resulting in about 3 sessions of actual gameplay. :-/

And maybe it's sad to admit it, but I also played the MSH solo adventure they made for Thor, which used a red plastic filter to reveal the "choose your own adventure" style text as you trundled around Asgard and environs.

Gotta love the box art, though, with those four indelible icons of the Marvel Universe - Thing, Spidey, Cap, and...Captain Marvel. WTF?

As for Awful Green Things? The coolest and most frustrating game ever. Unless the crew gets off to an awesome start, it quickly turns into an interminable Risk-like fait accompli. Grab that massive area-effect weapon and roll for effect! Oh, it causes all aliens to grow one stage... The game that taught me the meaning of despair.

Oh wow! I had Dungeon! when I was a kid. I loved playing that.

You missed the "Cheers" board game. That thing sucked.

Also, when I was a kid I played "Dungeon!" with my uncle. It was awesome.

This list is dead on. The "best-of" is anyway. I never played any of the games on the worst list. We used to make fun of the Dragonstrike game though, and we picked on the one kid who bought Spellfire cards. True geek.

Alternity deserves a spot on the best-of list. In my opinion, It's one of the best role-playing games ever made; and it still influences modern game design. (Complex skill challenges in 4E, anyone?)

As the co-author of the INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM module, I thought I'd add a little backstory. We were all excited about the property, and it could have made a fun little game. However, Lucasfilm limited us to characters who appeared in the movie, and made sure that in the rules, no matter what happened, Indy couldn't die. In later modules, we were not allowed to create our own stories, but could only adapt the comic book stories. Because of this, when Lucasfilm offered us the rights to STAR WARS, I recommended against bidding, because I didn't want to deal with their licensing department again.

...and the rights went to WEG, and thus was my first -and still favorite- RPG line born.

Oh, man. Thanks for the history lesson, Michael! That's the kind of thing I eat up!

As once mocked in Murphy's Rules, the Indy RPG was infamous for some of its trademark indicia. TSR was known to be a bit IP-crazy at the time, but seriously, who thinks they can trademark the word "Nazi"?

Oops, pardon my blooper. I just fact-checked that urban legend and in fact it was LucasFilms who asserted the TM for "Nazi". Not a registration of course, just a notice of common-law trademark. Still, silly enough to deserve its place in facepalm history.

How can you not have Divine Right on that list of best games!?!

To Rick Krebs and Michael Dobson: very cool of you to comment. Thanks much for the memories, guys.

Awful Green Things from Outer Space looks like it was the progenitor of Game Workshop's Space Hulk. Now that was a cool game.

Amazing lists...oh the hours (days/months/years) of my life spend with MSH. Creating endless characters, adventures, etc. We actually did play it quite a bit for a while there.

@spazweez: I remember that Thor module too, it was awesome. Who knows how many times I went through that.

And we also used the MSH format to make our own games, the best was Seseme Street which was madness. You could be everything from a vegatable to a skyscraper building. Absolute insanity.

Bullwinkle seemed fun but I NEVER got anyone to play it with me. Honeymooners as a board game was okay, I played it with my folks quite a bit. But I wouldn't consider it a role playing game by any stretch of the imagination.

Ummmmmm Rob that was Yazirian. :-B
I should know,my one and only Star Frontiers character was Yazirian,a survivor of a horrible accident so the wingflaps
had been replaced with metal,so it was a chance to mix RPG with an element totally lifted from Silverhawks. BOOSH!

I used to love playing Marvel, and have done so relatively recently too (before we converted to M&M). I loved that game and had most of the supplements (all now that they are free, as noted). My favorites were the character supplements (the pure geekiness of knowing the stats of all the heralds of Galactus, etc.). Although, I do remember having some pretty serious arguments about the game designers screwing stuff up (such as Cyclops' blast... have a buddy who still rails on this one).

Also, I had a copy of the Buck Rodgers game, and it seemed pretty awesome, though I never have gotten to play. I do fondly remember the computer game based on it though. It should really be on this list. It was NOT related to the TV show in anything but name, and had lots of cool "aliens" (actually genetically altered/evolved humans).

I still have all of my Spellfire cards. It was (and still is) my favorite CCG of all time, and I wish I could still find the booster boxes on eBay for cheap.

And my gaming group has watched the Dragonstrike video in the last month.

Now wait a minute! The Dragonstrike video is pure nerdy, comedic gold . . . and perhaps one of the oddest things I have EVER witnessed commited to videotape. It's like the PONG of bluescreen digital graphics.

The Captain Marvel featured on the 'MSH' box was actually fairly prominent around that time. I think her name is like Monica Rambeau or something. She was actually the leader of that period's Avengers and was a major player in the 'Secret Wars' mini-series, which was one of the first supplements TSR released for the 'MSH' line, not to mention she was the only Captain Marvel in existence by that time. Her name didn't change to 'Photon' until much, much later, but she is now known as 'Pulsar'.

Geeksexy: Her name was Monica Rambeau, that's right. Good catch on the name thing. She's changed names more than a couple of times, and it's tough to keep track.

Anyway, while she was leader of the Avengers for a while (no small thing that, I admit), it during one of the worst periods for that book. I mean, it was the Dr. Druid era. Sales were low, and she as a character didn't much take off. I mean, Dane Whitman (Black Knight) was an Avengers leader too--and he's still a pretty minor character.

I don't mean to discount her position in the 616, but I still maintain that Storm was by far the better choice--this was during the heyday of the X-Men, after all, and their absence on the cover of the game box seems really odd considering their popularity.

Maybe Marvel was using the game to try to push popularity for Captain Marvel (Monica), and therefore stimulate a book currently languishing in sales (Avengers), and that's why she was featured so prominently? Just a guess.

Oh man! Thanks for the memories. Let's see, I had Indiana Jones, Top Secret, Star Frontiers, and Marvel Super Heroes. I remember I couldn't get my head around the idea of "karma points" as a kid playing MSH. I recently found an old box of my stuff at my parent's that has my old games and books.

Star Frontiers was a pretty old game, no?

@Xanthippas

Same thing happened to me! And oh, that was years ago. LOL.. But you know what? I still get to play it once in a while. Maybe you track down the best MMORPGs as well in the future.

I had never heard about the FBI investigating TSR over Top Secret, and I'm not sure how I missed it. (Reminds me of the Secret Service raid on Steve Jackson Games, on the assumption that they were running a hacker BBS because of research they were doing for GURPS Cyberpunk.)

And those minigames... I still have They've Invaded Pleasantville, and I wish I'd gotten the others. Someone really needs to get the rights to those and other classic 80s minigames and offer them as PDFs.

What about Gamma World? That game was awesome.

Oh! Sorry, there it is.

Two of the mini-games missing from #9 are "Saga" (kind of a fantasy wargame) and "Viking Gods" (which let you play out the battle between good and evil at Ragnarok). I played these, as well as "Revolt on Antares" over and over for years, both with friends and alone. And I think they only cost $10 each at the time, so talk about a great bang for your buck.

Also owned and played Star Frontiers, Gamma World, Top Secret, and Marvel Super Heroes, which were all great games. Although I preferred to make my heroes in MSH. As for Gamma World, the most fun I had with that was DM-ing a friend's D&D party through the Gamma World universe for a few months (thanks to a spell gone wrong or something) ... then bringing the characters back to Greyhawk with wings and multiple arms and mutants abilities and laser guns. When he worked his way through the entire A-module series (with the humanoid slaver ants) in less than a week, I realized I'd have to find new ways to challenge him.

Gamma world... who can forget those fantastic random mutation charts, come on guys, the players not into the game? Just inject some random mutations to freak everyone out... Pardon my poor dual brain!

I had all of the "best" and only one of the "worst".

I still have most of my old TSR stuff laying around somewhere. Frankly, I miss Boot Hill.

I used to have a lot of fun DM'ing a game of Boot Hill using D&D races. It kicked ass having a team of characters face off against a lich Robber Baron, or a troll gunfighter.

...Actually, the better "minigames" were the ones Steve Jackson put out, such as Ogre, GEV, and the controversial Raid on Iran. The latter was both well-received and well-criticized over the game's premise, which allowed both solo and competitive play in a setting where a US special rescue team manages to get past the desert and attempt to retrieve the 52 American hostages held by those scumbag towelheads - one of whom is now Iran's quasi-elected dictator - from the US Embassy in Tehran.

...On a side note, what surprised me about that "Worst" list is that it didn't include SPI's DragonQuest, which is the game that most people agree, along with Universe was what killed SPI as a reputable gaming company. In the case of DQ, the combat system was so whacked that it was possible to kill an opponent with one blow, then run around to his backside and kill him up to two more times before he fell, while Universe had a planet generation system that was clearly copied from Saavik & David's description of the Genesis Planet; arctic climates on the equator right next to Dune-class deserts, etc, etc.

Excellent list!

I had Boot Hill, Revolt on Antares, MSH, and the Illinois Jones game. I loved them all, but in retrospect, I can see how IJ doesn't seem that good anymore (reduce by 1/2, reduce to 1/4, etc.). Boot Hill was fantastic for the reason you state: Realistic gunshot wounds. One shot can kill. Revolt on Antares, those mercenaries almost seemed like real people. MSH? I eventually moved on to DC Heroes, which I thought was better, but I loved the gleeful rambunctiousness of MSH, with the rules written in character. Some folks hated that, but I loved it.

Cyborg Commando was published by New Infinities Productions Inc (NIPI) not TSR- and it wasn't that bad.

Metamorphasis Alpha rocks! And I spent many hours playing Boot Hill and Top Secret as a youth. MSH would not make my top 10- but maybe the bottom 10.

I think all of the worst games came out after 1986, right?

The best thing about the MSH system was that its excellent system came with concrete benchmarks (i.e. "a Strength stat of Remarkable means the character can lift a ton") which could be cross-referenced with the highly-specific info in Marvel's "Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe" comic series. In this way, you could generate stats for virtually ANY Marvel character. Our campaign ran for years, and incorporated lots of cool second-stringers Marvel just hadn't given a chance to shine. Eventually TSR put out their own version of the Official Handbooks, but by that time, everyone playing the game had already generated stats of their own that, thanks to the specificity in both the system and the original Handbooks, were pretty accurate.