Alright, so the poll ended in a tie, which means both books will be run eventually. Since pragma gracefully allowed his vote to be counted as half in such a situation, the MSH adventure will be run first.
As I mentioned in the previous poll thread, this book actually has a significant difference from the others in this series, in that there are 4 PCs instead of 1. But there are still some common rules and mechanisms. These are the stats we need to keep track of:
Health Points:
This is probably one of the most familiar stats in RPG game(book)s, no matter what it may be called (Stamina, Endurance, Life Points, etc). Basically we need to make sure this stat stays a possible value, and ideally as high as possible, and once it hits 0 or less, it's Game Over. There are no structured combats in this book, but we will lose HP when we make a bad decision or fail a FEAT roll (more on that when we come to Abilities). In this book, since there are 4 PCs, each has their own individual HP score to keep track of. The bad news is that we need to keep all 4 of them health - if one of them dies/passes out from lost HP, the game is over. Like most other RPG game(book)s, the maximum HP score is fixed for each character, and the current value can never go higher than that unless specifically told otherwise by the book. As you can see from the score card above, each PC has a different maximum HP value.
We can also decide to substitute Karma loss for HP loss as long as we have some Karma left, which brings us to the next stat:
Karma:
Unlike HP, Karma is a single
pooled score shard by all 4 PCs. Also unlike HP, there's no maximum ceiling for Karma, and while we start with 30, it's possible to gain more than that. Since this is a Superhero book, according to the text, we earn Karma by "doing heroic deeds, making right decisions and generally being a good person". If we do the opposite, we may instead lose Karma.
Karma can be used in 2 ways:
1) Used to substitute HP loss. it's a 1 to 1 trade (if we lose 4 HP, we may choose to lose 4 Karma instead). It can also be a partial substitute, meaning we can split the loss between HP and Karma (e.g. lose 2 HP and 2 Karma). This can obviously be a life-saver in a pinch.
2) Used to increase our chances at attempting a FEAT. This is kind of similar as spending Honour in combat in the Cretan Chronicles series, where we spend a certain amount of Karma and use that amount as a positive modifier for our dice roll. An important similarity is that we need to decide whether or not to spend the Karma
before we make the dice roll, which means it's possible that we may end up wasting Karma if we still fail the roll despite the modifier.
To elaborate more on FEATs, let's proceed to:
Abilities:
In the other books in this series, all the (lone) superheroes PCs have a long list of abilities all to themselves. Because there are 4 PCs in this book, each of them only has 3-4 Abilities each. You can refer to the score card above for the different Abilities each PC possesses.
Anyway, this is where FEAT comes in. It's basically a single die roll test with a specific Ability score as modifier (plus whatever Karma you may spend) depending on whatever task your PC is trying to accomplish. Like for example, if Rogue is trying to move some heavy object, the FEAT will probably require her to roll a die and add her Strength (which is 10), and the text will provide a qualifier value that determines whether or not she succeeds. If, for example, she needs to roll 20 or above to succeed, then she must roll 10 or above on the die, which is of course impossible, so she definitely needs to at least spend some Karma to succeed. (OTOH, if she only needs to roll 12 or above to succeed, then again, she almost definitely wouldn't need to spend any.)
So, as you can see from the score card, the characters we'll be playing will be Wolverine, Rogue, Nightcrawler and Storm, and more the most part their unique abilities are what you would more or less expect (e.g. Teleport for Nightcrawler), and of course there are some Abilities that most or all of the PC possess (some better than others). . Most of the Abilities are self-explanatory by name, and in any case, the book always chooses which Ability you are tested on, not the reader, so not too much explanation needed for each. Just a few extra notes:
1) Storm, who arguably would have been the most powerful mutant of the 4, as you can see, has no superpowers listed. This is because the story timeline for this book happens at a period after she was hit by a mutant-power-draining weapon by government agents, so she has no weather-control powers in this book. Thus, her main unique value in this adventure is her Leadership Ability.
2) Wolverine has 2 different Fighting scores, as you can see. The difference between the 2 is that fighting w/o claws is less likely to be lethal, so depending on who he's fighting, it's sometimes necessary for him to fight without them, because unnecessary killing is bad for Karma (literally, since it's an actual stat).
3) Just because Rogue has no Fighting Ability listed at all doesn't mean she's useless in a fight. It's just means she'd be rolling with other Abilities when she's fighting. This version of Rogue has already absorbed Miss Marvel's powers, so a lot of times Strength is all she needs to squash opponents. Similarly, Wolverine not having an Agility stat certainly doesn't mean he's not agile, it's just to his advantage generally to use other Abilities for his FEATs.
4) Wolverine's Fast Healing unfortunately doesn't quite work like Lone Wolf's Healing, and while he may recover HP from this Ability (sometimes rolling a FEAT to determine how much he recovers), the effect is not automatic, but instead only at points specified by the book.
5) Those familiar with the X-Men franchise would know this, but Rogue's Power Absorption Ability also carries the risk of the absorbed victim's will overwhelming Rogue's, or its memories being so repulsive to her that it may incapacities her temporarily (or on rarer occasions turn her into a threat to her own team).
POV:
This doesn't really matter much in terms of gameplay, but it doesn't affect the flow of the story. The book will be shifting POV between the 4 different PCs (sometimes they would also be split up), and the letter beside the section number would indicate the initial of the PC's name (for example, section 3W is from Wolverine's POV, 4S is from Storm's etc).
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And that's it for the rules and mechanisms. However, I will also be adding some House Rules for this LP:
Even though this is not an FF gamebook, I will be using a certain "boon" mechanism due to the flavour of this book.
With 4 PCs in this book, I will allow the players to start the game with 4 boon "cards", each of a different power. There are 4 types of boons, each relating to one of the PCs, and can be used to save your game from early failure in different ways:
1) Wolverine card - once during the game, you may use this card to activate a Super Healing Factor to instantly restore any 1 PC's character to his or her maximum value. This obviously saves you from failure via HP loss.
2) Nightcrawler card - once during the game, you may use this card to "teleport" (aka rewind) to any previous section you'd already been to in this adventure. This saves you from any failure, but most notably the only one that saves you from auto-death sections.
3) Rogue card - once during the game, you may draw on superhuman ability to overcome any FEAT, and auto-pass any single FEAT roll without any roll of dice. Saves you from pass-or-die rolls.
4) Storm card - once during the game, you may activate your powers of Leadership Foresight, and anticipate exactly what happens in the immediate future - meaning you may read 1 section ahead to determine whether an option is a good or bad choice, OR whether failing a FEAT test is lethal to your or not (in the latter case, it will also help you determine whether and how much Karma to spend on the FEAT).
As I said, you will start with 4 cards, and you may choose to start with 1 of each or you may choose to forego certain powers for multiple uses of another.
The LP will officially begin once you've voted on how many of each card you wish to start with.
Hope you'd have fun with this one!