Empire of the Petal Throne original draft and Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (Margaret Weis Productions)

Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game
(Margaret Weis Productions)

$13 on RPGDriveThru
http://bit.ly/MarvelHeroic

I had a whole mini-thesis written in rough about superhero games, but we'll leave that for now...  One of the biggest pieces of news this week on DriveThru and RPGNow was the launch of Margaret Weis's Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game.

Clobberin' Time!
Sample Hero Card from the Basic Game

In summary, it's beautifully presented, lots of graphic novel art.  System: plot points and dice pooling will appeal to modern players - it looks pretty fast play, if you remember the right fomulas for mixing up the abilities dice - some help is provided by a couple of handy prompt sheets.  There's plenty of the more popular heroes to choose from, but being a basic game, there's not much in the way of adversaries beyond the scenario included - so curious referees will feel obliged to buy more material pretty quickly.  I like the fact that the hero stat cards are also provided in a grey format which may hurt colour printers a little less than the high contrast glossy colours of the manual.

http://bit.ly/MarvelHeroic

(EDIT: Courtesy of Aramis on Trollbridge: 1980's MSH:
http://classicmarvelforever.com/cms/basic-game-and-modules.html ! )
 

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EPT (original ms)
$15 on DriveThru
http://bit.ly/EPTearlydraft

Empire of the Petal Throne (Original Manuscript)
(M.A.R Barker's World of Tekumel)


If you have a mental entry-point to the world named "Tekumel" or "EPT" then you may get rather excited about this document which was originally released prior to TSR's 1975 release of this D&D based game.  I like to class these types of products as "archival" or (to coin a trademarked cliché) "unearthed arcana".  ;)

I remember very little of this game, except perhaps seeing the box in Nottingham's Games Workshop (before they killed role-playing in the UK - long story).  At the time I must have filed it under "Weird" along with Sky Realms of Jorune.  I'm aware that it's been reborn again in different editions with different systems, but the next time I heard of this was across a handful of blogs and then cited again in the hobbyist retrospect, The Elfish Gene.

For me, PDF texts of the older games are a lot of fun to read (as opposed to games you buy to actually play), especially when you compare these to other games from the same time, especially for gaming hobby assumptions and dice system similarities - much of which to modern players' eyes may seem very alien, or quaint.  The way some of the early editions are written can differ greatly in formality (My copy of Monsters!Monsters! is almost too friendly! - but that's T&T for you, all of the authors were clearly drunk).

Erik T. of Tenkar's Tavern makes some interesting game comparison observations here.

The earlier the edition of many a game in the 1970s, the more like a fanzine they look (like the white/brown booklets of OD&D).  What is delightful about this 1974 manuscript is that it is both a facsimile and an e-text book.  The odd numbered pages reminded me of the pre-photocopy spirit duplicated worksheets we had in primary school - rendered readable by the digital text on the even pages.  This is an artefact from gaming history, so very close to the genesis of the tabletop role-playing game.   Dedicated EPT fans will possibly be very charmed by this, the earliest of the editions and will possibly not think twice about the $15 price tag.  I was lucky enough to have a review copy and I decide to give it a good read.  I'm going in blind.  Slowly but surely I realise why players of this game always sounded like they had joined a cult:
  

The earliest records now preserved by human scholars date back only some

25,000 years (and dating here is dubious at best) to the half-mythical Empire of

Llyán of Tsámra, now lost completely except for a few fragments of half-remembered

technology and an inscription or two [reference: “Kabár hiLlyán lél Máisurmra

Kolumébabar” (the Story of Llyán and His Empire), by Messilu Badárian,

preserved in manuscript in the Temple of Thúmis at Khéiris.]. Somewhat later

in the area now occupied by the southern regions of Tsolyánu, there is reference to

the Three States of the Triangle, another human enclave which did battle with the

fearsome nonhuman Chyrstállu {Chyrstálli} to the northwest (another Ssú-derived species)

and with the Mihálli (humanoid aliens introduced by mankind as a trading colony) in

the east. To the south the Hlýss ranged out from their island fastness and did battle

with another species brought in by man, the powerful Shén. In timeworn Ssuganár

the Ssú bided their time... 

(p2 - 200.THE WORLD OF “TÉKUMEL”)

Brain melts... and not a die has been rolled.

They weren't kidding about the impact of language in the background.  Never trust a creative anthropologist!

Realising that I was way in over my head I decided to pick up the actual TSR rules.  Then further research told me that the original box set (depicted here) included two sets of maps as well.  A graphic of the box art  from my memories is included towards the end of the rules.  So if you want to download the full 1970's EPT-in-box experience you'll need to purchase the following:

1. Empire of the Petal Throne (TSR1975) $11.00
   Rulebooks and box art
2. Maps for Empire of the Petal Throne  $4.00
3. Jakálla, The City Half as Old as the World! $8.00
4. Polyhedral dice!

 $23 USD in total (£14.61GBP appx) -The prices are currently slightly reduced price.  I feel that this is well worth the price, since I feel I'll probably never be able separate a seller of the original for under $150 - not to mention the threats I'll get and bounty hunters sent by other collectors....

I'm assuming that quite a bit of the material in M.A.R. Barkers World of Tekumel storefront is usable as source material for the different versions of the game since every line in every product is imbued with Tekumel phrases and lore.

In summary, if you're already a player or fan of EPT then you may want to take a long educated look at the Original Manuscript;  if you're researching a genre or looking for the quintessential old-school gaming experience then you're probably better off downloading the TSR1975 rulebook and maps first. :) 

Thanks for reading. :)