RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 21 Favorite Licensed RPG

I've already talked about it.  It is, was and probably always shall be Marvel Superheroes by TSR. I guess I  will link to my own earlier blog entries.

https://markthemadbaron.blogspot.com/2023/08/rpg-day-2023-10th-anniversary-edition_13.html

https://markthemadbaron.blogspot.com/2023/08/rpg-day-2023-10th-anniversary-edition.html

I'll use this space to rant about superhero nowadays...

So, at the time when the original and advanced versions of Marvel Superheroes came out, comics were still good. They were largely affordable and the focus was on entertainment and not some veiled (not so veiled) preachy message. For the most part, Marvel--the younger of the two major American comic companies--had not become the convoluted mess that DC was. Unfortunately, as it turns out these things seem to be unavoidable the longer the continuity goes forward. I dropped off the wagon during the 90's Spiderman clone  saga. I liked the Ben Reilly character. It was a good way to reboot Spidey without dropping the plot, but the writers flew too close to the sun by revealing that "Peter" was always the clone--which would have covered the entirety of my years as a collector,  and I started at an early age--while Ben was the original Spidey returned after decades in real-time. This went over about as well as one would expect especially with fans who were older than I was. The backlash was so bad that everything got sent by to status quo as quick as Marvel could make it so. Had they presented Ben as the clone and had Peter retire off in the sunset with Mary Jane, we could still be reading about Ben's adventures today...but that's not how it went down. For me it went downhill from there and apart from a brief stint--Superior Spider-man--I've never looked back. This unfortunately has bled into removing any desire to play superhero games. No matter how good a licenssed game may be--I've read not so good--I'm not going to play it if I have no interest in the license. 

BTW--I did follow Marvel and even DC during the movie years. Marvel of course had some good ones so I couldn't deny myself that as a longtime fan.  The Spiderman movies remain pretty good, but otherwise the superhero fatigue is real, and the cinematic universe has gone the way of its print universe only it fell apart more quickly. 

 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 14 Favorite Convention Purchase

 Last week of vacation. I knew filling out these things would make time go by too fast >:(

I've already mentioned my favorite convention purchase. It's the Marvel Super Heroes Role Playing game by TSR. Not only was it the first TTRPG I really played, but as a huge comic book fan back then, it was right up my alley. I would love to get at least physical copies of the advanced sets, but until that time I count on https://classicmarvelforever.com/cms/ They have almost everything. These books are out of print and in the public domain now, so if you usually have reservations about sailing the seven seas, you shouldn't let it hold you back in this case. For my money this system is among the best for the superhero genre and the modules came out at a time before most American comics took several missteps and forgot what their role in society--if any--should be. I argue the sales prove that. Anyhow, we won't talk about that anymore in order to stay positive, but IYKYK. In other words, the characters may be a bit outdated but it's a feature and not a flaw. 

I really miss conventions. I have fond memories of going to Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA primarily. I also managed to attend a couple of anime conventions in GA as well. Every year when it came to town you  could almost count on it like clockwork that I would be broke. I never spent the night in an actual room there, but instead hung out in the 24hr anime room. Sometimes the rest of the bums and myself would fall asleep watching the anime until someone would have to wake us up...then we would pretend to be awake and then fall asleep again until they had to come back around. I probably mentioned it before, but it was about the smelliest place you'd ever want to encounter in a civilized world. If you sat in there for a long time you'd become acclimated to the funk, but upon first opening the door you would be hit with a wave of odor that would knock out a buzzard. I remember that there used to be a lot more gaming going on out there in the earlier years. I suppose I was too young to get involved with it, but for a time it was Dragon*Con and Atlanta Comics Expo. The Dragon referred to D&D. They also had a smoking con-suite and a non-smoking one. Supposedly, you would get snacks and the like with your convention badge, but I remember always having to buy my own food. I think I had a free donut and a coke or two on one of the long stays. I really can't remember how many of those cons I attended but I miss them. 

Living overseas I have more money, but less cons come around. In my UAE days I attended the Middle East Comicon a couple of times, and one year they had their own anime con, but it's never been the same. So far in China--especially in the Wuhan Flu Era--there haven't been any cons that I'm aware of. My school year runs in such a way that I'm never home for conventions, renaissance festivals, or NFL seasons. Sometimes I wonder what good this money is doing me. 

RPG a Day 2023: The 10th Anniversary Edition--Day 2 First RPG Gamemaster

I think I've told the stories of my first gamemaster and my first attempt at game mastering in previous RPG a Day years, but in case I'm misremembering, I'll recount them again this year or at least how my Mandela Effect addled brain remembers things now in 2023:

For a while in my teen years I used to go to Dragon*Con in Atlanta, GA every summer. I was always broke. In the late teens/20's I spent the night in the Anime Room like a lot of the other broke guys did. I tend to remember this as an earlier visit before I was old enough to stay out there overnight. In those early  visits my brother and I went out there just to go into the dealer's room and we didn't know enough about the con to realize there was a lot more to do. I'm hoping my memory serves me in thinking we didn't have to pay for a full membership to get in there because if we did it sure would've been a waste of money. 

I remember wanting to buy the TSR Marvel Superheroes Game, but I was unsure about getting it since we had unsuccessfully tried to play D&D sometime before. My first gamemaster then is an unnamed TSR vendor who sold me on the game. I remember being Ben Grimm and going down the street wrecking some kind of havoc. Later that day I had my first run as game master as I  ran a short game for my dad, mom and brother. My dad played as the Hulk and--I'm positive I mentioned this one before--he played in such a way that would have gotten him canceled in that day and age, let alone in today's world. Absolutely one of my favorite memories with him. 

RPG A Day 2022--Day 8: Who Introduced You to RPGs?

 I have some Mandela Effect memories going on now at age 48. From earlier this year I mentioned watching the D&D cartoon during its first run and how that was my first interest in the hobby. That cartoon started in 1983 when I would have been nine years old. I distinctly remember trying to buy some kind of something D&D that may have been a thieves character kit--of course, you couldn't play the game with just that so it was lost to me. Looking it up online the one I remember getting early was released much later, so I'm wrong there somewhere. Nevertheless, there was one attempt early on that didn't quite click, but the interest was there. 

I have memories that can be confirmed of reading the 'Choose Your Own Adventure" and the 'Time Machine' books that were reader directed novels. Those apparently came out in '84 according to the Google. Later, in 1987 I encountered books with even more gaming elements involved with the 'Fighting Fantasy' and 'Wizards, Warriors, and You' books. I was living a very disastrous year in Alabama at the time so I distinctly remember those books being a help in getting me through it. I also recall other peers in grade 7 playing in D&D groups allegedly, but I was never a part of them. 

The next part gets a bit hazy. At some point after the family's return to Georgia, I got to go to Dragon*Con in Atlanta. It was during one of these Dragon*Con visits that I picked up the TSR 'Marvel Super Heroes' Advanced Set. From that time I really played and for the most part never looked back in one way or another. There were two older guys at a table in the dealer's room that sold me on buying it. I can give these unknown dealers the credit of really introducing me to the hobby proper. I remember my younger brother being with me, but I'm not sure if mom and dad were with me at the time or not. I did play with them later in an infamous game of Marvel Super Heroes that I related in a different RPG A Day blog entry back there somewhere, but what my dad did as the Hulk would have surely gotten him cancelled today. 

It was like this but a whole lot more...let's say politically incorrect. Hulk lost a lot of Karma points that day.