So I introduced our Saturday play group to Marvel Heroic Roleplaying over the past couple weekends. It was awesome! Without any introduction, without any guidance, I just handed the players a stack of datafiles from the core book. I told them to pick out any character, preferably one they knew best or identified with the most.

I figured I’d let everyone pick out their PC, then I’d plan out the Event. Out of the five players, four immediately chose mutants. Okay – an X-Men story then! My mercurial wife chose Storm, the most knowledgeable computer geek decided on Beast, the player who’s previously played psions and alt-forms took Emma Frost, the perennial druid snatched up Shadowcat (with Lockheed), and our monk/ranger player felt right at home with Black Widow.

Sentinels killing humans!?
Black Widow, huh? I thought. Ok, so some SHIELD involvement. But X-Men. So I had Sentinels take out a human town. That brought them together real quick! We started the action en route from upstate New York to rural Virginia aboard the X-Jet (which was a d8 Resource, and though I planned on dropping into Complication territory, the players didn’t let me), with an attack from three Sentinels! Ok, ok, kinda cliche, yeah. But it was both my first time as Watcher and their first time with the Cortex Plus dice pool.

Here’s something I’ve found explaining Cortex Plus to d20 players. “Wow. That sounds really complicated. I dunno, James.” This was a pretty universal feeling. Then we started playing. With the exception of some SFX, they jumped right in and kicked ass. We have one player (almost every group has one of these, I’m sure) who constantly asks what to add, what die to roll, rolls hit dice for damage, “Initiative… so I roll my Int?” (I think you get it). She grokked the narrative dice system just as well and as quick as anyone else.

Storm lightning blasted the Sentinels, Emma handed out Mental Acuity Assets like candy, Beast and Black Widow made a few EMP and Targeting Countermeasure Complications, and Shadowcat did some fancy flying (spent a PP to turn a Sentinel’s beam back on itself). Yeah. The Sentinels didn’t even stand a chance.

The last little girl in Anytown
Arriving at the destroyed town, our heroes found many piles of ash, too burned to even give up DNA data. They found a single survivor, a traumatized little human girl hiding in a closet, who was coaxed out by Storm (who couldn’t stand seeing her holed up in such a tiny space). The Doom Pool decreed that even Emma couldn’t bring her out of shock, so they had to find clues elsewhere. One of the Sentinels they’d shot down was in a nearby field, and with Beast’s direction Shadowcat retrieved the Sentinel DataCore (d10 Resource).

After dropping the girl off with Xavier, the coordinates from the Sentinel led the party to a chemical plant on the eastern seaboard. Beast whipped up a Security Network Hack (d8 Resource) and assigned Black Widow and Shadowcat the task of installing it. Now, Black Widow, Shadowcat, Storm, and Emma Frost all infiltrated this factory individually and completely differently through the narrative, but made very similar dice rolls against the Doom Pool. I’m still not sure whether this is an endorsement or criticism of the system, but it’s interesting to note.

Sinister and his minions
Once inside the server room (having passed a workroom with half a dozen incomplete Sentinels), our two heroines installed the hack easily, but caught the attention of the sysadmin within. It was easy enough to tie him up, but before they could gag him, he let out a screech that gave Black Widow a massive headache – d12 Mental Stress. They were dealing with Ruckus.

I won’t go into every aspect of the battle, but the highlight clip should do. Turns out Mr. Sinister, Ruckus, Slab, and Ramrod (datasheets here) were modifying the Sentinels to attack humans! Sinister and Emma traded psychic blows (creating/destroying assets/complications), Storm used lightning, ice slicks, and gale force winds to take out Slab, Beast used his environment (factory machinery and coolant lines) to freeze up Ramrod, and Black Widow took out Ruckus with serious help from Shadowcat. By the end of the fight, pretty much everyone was carrying a d12 Stress of some sort. The very last moment of the fight was Shadowcat installing the modified Sentinel DataCore into the most complete Sentinel, and Beast using it to take out Mr. Sinister with a d12++ Physical Stress.

Retrospective
I got to use the “all the bad guys go twice” trick. But! As a result, Storm was left out for a full 12-14 turns or so. That, my friends, is the dark flipside to the otherwise awesome Marvel initiative system. I only really got a full playtest report from Storm’s player, so I’d love feedback from the other players. She said the mechanics were neat, but being left out of the fight for so long was frustrating, and having a nebulous d12 Weather Supremacy was going to be an interesting narrative hurdle to get used to.

Also (granted, this was a one-shot adventure) Milestones and XP seemed pretty difficult to maintain attention towards. I think with the core mechanic mastered, and custom Milestones, we’ll be able to keep a hold on them. Right now, the whole system is still fairly unfamiliar to a bunch of d20 players – I’m sure it’ll solidify with practice!

PS
Something I totally forgot to mention in my original post! Instead of turn tokens and post-its, I used a white board for certain game elements. On the left side were written all the PC names in black, and the Watcher characters in red, and I would put an “X” next to each as their turn went by. On the right, I had scene distinctions written up, and below that assets in green and complications in red. This totally helped facilitate gameplay. Highly recommended!