This is the original 1984 Marvel Super Heroes: The Heroic Role-Playing Game box set, created under license by TSR. Jeff Grubb designed the system. I have a lot of nostalgia for this game which probably clouds my judgment of it, so be warned.

The game is pretty straightforward, using percentile dice and the Universal Table to resolve conflict. The Universal Table works a bit like the resistance table in Call of Cthulhu, cross-referencing skill value and die roll to get a result. Karma points, sort of the game’s equivalent to experience points, could be used to modify failed rolls. It is a quick system in terms of resolution and it scales nicely for the various levels of super powers.

Is it too simple? Maybe. While it scales well, power differentials can be tricky. But it matches the bombastic pace of the comics. And since the intention was for players to take the roles of existing Marvel characters, there isn’t a robust character creation system (I mean, why make a faux-Wolvering when you can just, you know, play Wolverine) or the in-depth rules needed to support custom characters. That probably means it lacks the crunch of other super hero games, but whatever. Sometimes it is nice to be free of all that (super hero games I think naturally tend toward points buy systems, which require a lot of math on the back end).

Another fun thing: the game was obsessed with bits. This box has little cardboard character tokens for (kind of required) use on the big, extremely detailed maps (with characters in costume on one side and in street clothes on the other). Later boxes had little fold-up standees. Hard not to love that.