New Salem: Revolution - module retrospective on Marvel Super Heroes modules

I know these aren't connected to V&V, but I feel like I'd be doing this project a disservice if I didn't do a little compare and contrast on what competing products were being published. So here are the three Marvel Super Heroes adventures I have on hand. (I also have some DC Heroes adventures that I'll look at next week.) These are for the Basic version of the game and all came out in 1984. I know I owed the first 5 of the adventures but my copies of Breeder Bombs (for the X-Men) and Murderworld (For the FF) are lost to history. But if memory can be trusted, they don't bring much different to the table. 

Hot Damn do these look pretty, but when you can get John Byrne to do your cover art
in the 1980'syou have hella more resources than FGU...

The three modules are Time Trap (Kang pretends to be Immortus to get the Avengers do undo their own history), Lone Wolves (AIM is planning several attacks on the city and Daredevil/Black Widow/Heroes for Hire stumble on a thread of the threat), and Cat's-Paw (Alpha Flight deal with the Leader's complex plan, and things past that). Each of these is designed to look and feel like the adventures of their target heroes, which since it's MSH is to be expected. I go back and forth on playing existing heroes, but generally if you're playing Marvel Super Heroes of DC Heroes my experience is the game runs better if you're playing existing characters. YMMV

But the question is are these any good? Ehhhhhhh.....

Time Trap is GREAT when it comes to tying in existing Avengers lore. All of the sequences link to certain moments in Avengers history, and in one you can point to the actual damn issue where the PCs are messing with their own timeline. As a comics nerd this is just golden - I used the skeleton of this adventure in my own X-Men game as an "annual" where the current PCs got to team up with the original team where Kang was manipulating them (plus Scarlet Witch, who was on site) into undoing the Avengers. Wonderful, so much fun. 

The module as writ is a straight line railroad of nothing but fights: Immortuls (secretly Kang) shows up, explains a "problem" and sends the PCs off to fight Mimic. Win or lose he whisks them back, and then sends them to fight Drax. Then Super Skrull, Then Grey Gargoyle. The the real Immortus shows up and sends them to get a dohicky to undo this. Then they fight Kang and Dragon Man. Yay. There's no space for the PCs to breathe, no role playing, no detective work, just fight after fight. It's a mess. 

Lone Wolves does feel like a crossover of 2 issues, or two annuals, of the Power Man/Iron Fist and Daredevil (working with Black Widow) of the mid 80's. It's still VERY linear, with AIM/MODOK having hired Kraven to run a field test of their rage-toxin, and Kraven using Sabertooth and Vermin to front line the event. The book acknowledges the heroes have Contacts, and the general data those contacts give, and then a lot of possible clue trails for them. The module sets up how those clue trails lead to Kingpin as the last information source, but that the Punisher is also murderously running this to ground and several places where he and the heroes can fight. The assumption is that the PCs will get Kraven's hideout from Kingpin but you don't have to. I really think it's better if you don't. 

Having used their actual in character skills to get to Kraven the PCs have to break into his predator infested base and defeat him (and Sabertooth and Vermin if either got away) to find out who hired him and created the rage toxin. This gives the name MODOK, and now the PCs have to do a bunch of detective work to find the AIM base, which again loops back to Kingpin and a much more in keeping "I'll tell you where MODOK is if you stop this crime being perpetrated by one of my rivals" quid pro quos that feels VERY 1980's street level Marvel. Once they have AIM's address it's a sneak/fight into the base and deal with Taskmaster and MODOK. 

There is a lot to like here, in that it feels like a Feng Shui module of set piece fights held together with investigations. The GM is given various options, the players can use various paths, and as long as you edit out the first Kingpin instance (though the PCs might go there for questioning) it's no more or less railroady than a classic Call of Cthulhu adventure. Yes, there are strong assumptions that the PCs will get involved (too much verbiage in how the riot in scene one gets ever out of control until the PCs do something) but not the abuse of PC stuff that we saw in some of the contemporary modules. Rereading this now, I kinda want to run it. 

Cat's-Paw opens with the PCs being sent on a mission by their government contacts; an old manor house that contains high tech equipment guarded by Sabertooth and Constrictor. Yeah, Sabertooth again. This was before his X-Men Days, but at least he and Constrictor have worked together in the comics (Power Man & Iron Fist) and in Canada (in Iron Fist's solo book). Win or lose the heroes find one clue that leads them to the James Bay Hydroelectric Dam, where they are caught between two different villain groups - Mauler and the Raiders, and a pair of Synthetic Hulks - and a just introduced NPC gets kidnapped no matter what the PCs do. Interestingly, if someone is playing Sasquatch he might also be teleported away and the PC provided a different Alpha Flight hero. That's an interesting comic book twist. 

In any event the only trail leads to Justin Hammer's base, where they fight a bunch of his revamped tech villains before he hologram monologues at them about "The Other", the person responsible for the synthetic hulks. But there are no leads until a new villain shows up, created from the NPC inevitably captured 2 fights ago. This gives the heroes one clue to get to the Leader's base, to fight him and find that he is being manipulated by a new Great Old One, the big bads in the Alpha Flight comic. Cue big fight. There's even a "how the NPCs solve the problem if the players fail twice to make sure this doesn't end the world." 

Yeeeah, this one I have no interest in running or modifying. Yes, it has some Alpha Flight elements in it, but the plot is completely linear, the players have nothing to do with solving the mystery, and the collection of opponents makes very little sense. 

What do these adventures tell us? Tune in soon, true believers!