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The Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) RPG was published by TSR under license from Marvel Comics in the 1980s and early 1990s. Later, as second edition was published as Advanced Marvel Super Heroes (AMSH) RPG.
It is a game with very descriptive attributes that allowed the Amazing Spider-Man to have Amazing Agility and The Thing to have Monstrous Strength. The gaming system lent itself to games that flowed well because the core mechanics were represented on a single colour-coded table. Effort was obviously put into making the game simulate the comics and the games designers did a very respectable job.
The Advance Marvel Super Heroes RPG used a four-color color-coded resolution table, which was based on the orginal table, but much more complexity and with greater versitility in its application.
For the MSH edition, gamers could generate their own characters with a fairly simple random generation system. Character generation was more complex for the AMSH RPG edition, and later supplements gave much greater diversitility of powers and character generation.
The original MSH system dropped rather quickly and the AMSH took priority. The AMSH RPG was then supported with a considerable number articles, from the 1980s to the 1990s, published in Dragon Magazine as AMSH gaming supplements.
Before loosing the MSH license back to Marvel Comics, TSR published a third version of the game using their SAGA game system. This version was published in the 1990s as a Card Collector Game version of the AMSH game.
Later, after the gaming license reverted back to Marvel Comics, another edition of the game was published by Marvel Comics. This edition uses a totally different game mechanics than previous MSH editions. Still, this version was more in-line with many traditional pencil & paper role-playing game systems and leaned with tendancies towards a "Story Teller" type of mechanics. It was no longer a CCG. Since initial publication, a few additional supplements have been published by Marvel Comics, but since the promotion of this RPG was poorly delivered to a substantially younger public, that initial public interest has dropped off for this latest RPG offering of the Marvel Super Heroes universe. An underground revival of the Advanced Marvel Super Heroes RPG from TSR seems to come and go, but tends to be faithful. If you are persistent, you can find it on the Internet.
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