So I stumbled across this game for the first time about a year ago. I flicked through the rules, rolled a couple of characters; and it generally looked like a lot of fun. So after one of my players suggested running a superhero campaign the other day, this was my first thought. Now looking around the site, there's a number of different versions of the game, as well as a bunch of homebrew content; so I'm wondering, whats the best set up to play with? I was planning on running with the Advanced Players Book, Advanced Judges Book and The Ultimate Powers Book; But after finding the Netbook and Enhancements page, I'm wondering if there's anything from there I should be including or using instead? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

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Oblivion
So I stumbled across this game for the first time about a year ago. I flicked through the rules, rolled a couple of characters; and it generally looked like a lot of fun. So after one of my players suggested running a superhero campaign the other day, this was my first thought. Now looking around the site, there's a number of different versions of the game, as well as a bunch of homebrew content; so I'm wondering, whats the best set up to play with? I was planning on running with the Advanced Players Book, Advanced Judges Book and The Ultimate Powers Book; But after finding the Netbook and Enhancements page, I'm wondering if there's anything from there I should be including or using instead? Any advice would be greatly appreciated

It is really up to you, friend. Our group prefers a minimal ruleset approach to our campaigns due the fact that the fewer optional rules we have to administer or unnecessary complexity of rules tends to slow the game down, we prefer a game that can be arbitrated quickly to help match the fast action of MSHRPG. This leads to our group consisting of The Revised Basic Ruleset, The Ultimate Powers Book, Realms of Magic, Ultimate Weapons Locker and The Lands of Dr. Doom boxed set. Using these as the backbone ruleset covers all the basics for character creation, technology and magic use for a campaign.

By choosing The Revised Basic ruleset over the Advanced set you immediately remove a lot of unnecessary Universal ranks that you don't need and most likely characters can't advance through with karma advancement anyway. The Revised Basic boxed set also helps to clean up and re-write a few older ideas and concepts in the game to help make things easier and quicker to run, most notably Resources. I find having a Rank instead of Resource points to be a godsend that opens up your heroes wallet and eliminates a lot of messy record keeping and mathematics. The Advanced set has it's uses as it still has a few talents and powers not in the Revised Basic set, however, the modified Ultimate Powers Book has all of the powers in it, I believe Skycutter's version also has them all listed. There is also a netbook for talents, so adding those two resources to the Revised set can all but eliminate the need for the Advanced set.

With that being said, I know several people who do prefer using the Advanced set. It could take yourself and your group of players a few games to experiment and decided which set your group prefers to play under and how much of the game you wish to alter with house rules provided by the many wonderful people at CMF who have added to the game in their own way over the years. Our group consists of multiple judges and has instituted the rule that who ever joins must do their fair time behind the Judges Shield as such, using the more simplified version of the rules helps our group to stay more consistent with each Judge and game rulings.

Welcome to CMF, and I hope you find the MSHRPG enjoyable, remember that it lends itself equally well to almost any type of theme or genre from The Hyborian Age to the 31st Century and beyond. I also would like to leave you with this link in case you ever need help with any canon or history resources for the MU.

The Appendix to the Handbook of the Marvel Universe

Thanks, I'll have to give the revised basic a look. What I found really odd with the advance version, is the ultimate powers book actually take some out from the Players book; meaning there's no single table with ever power listed. (Not talking about the addenda powers which skycutter added in, but some fundamentals like Ultimate Skill and Immortality just are never mentioned in Ultimate Powers Book. I think I'm going to go through both books at some point and list all the powers that are taken out in Ultimate, and draw up table that adds them all in for use in my campaign at least.

Oh and thanks for the link; my current marvel lore is somewhat limited. I'll have a scan through when I get back from work :p

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Oblivion
Thanks, I'll have to give the revised basic a look. What I found really odd with the advance version, is the ultimate powers book actually take some out from the Players book; meaning there's no single table with ever power listed. (Not talking about the addenda powers which skycutter added in, but some fundamentals like Ultimate Skill and Immortality just are never mentioned in Ultimate Powers Book. I think I'm going to go through both books at some point and list all the powers that are taken out in Ultimate, and draw up table that adds them all in for use in my campaign at least.

Oh and thanks for the link; my current marvel lore is somewhat limited. I'll have a scan through when I get back from work :p

Yes unfortunately David did have a few things left out, in part because he was on a rushed deadline and was retooling material he'd originally intended for the DC RPG at the time (which is why you see a number of DC references in the material). With all that things like including a new write-up for Immortality and Ultimate Skill in his book just didn't manage to get squeezed in.

No worries. On second glance, most of them are there; just with some heavy rewording. I just kept a list of the missing powers to one-side, and offered them whenever a rolled power just didn't fit with the rest of the character, which worked pretty well.