First Time Watcher: Marvel Heroic Role Playing Actual Play Report

This past weekend I had my first chance to run Margaret Weis Productions'  Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game as the game master (the Watcher, in MHRP parlance).  I have played RPGs off and on for over 30 years, but I had not yet run MHRP.

Some friends of ours generously host a game day at their home about three times a year.  The focus is mostly board and card games, but my son and I decided to take MHRP to see if anyone would sit down and play a brief event with us.

Fortunately, last week MWP released as bonus content, a "What if" scenario based in part on New Avengers issue 6, which happened to be one of my favorites from that era of Brian Michael Bendis' run.  The original story had to do with a batch of the New Avengers (Spider-Man, Spider Woman, Luke Cage and Wolverine) ending up having to fight The Wrecker (who is constantly reminding them that he has successfully fought Thor) and having quite a hard time of it.  The mini-event gives you the opportunity to run an encounter with The Wrecker, but also provides datafiles for the rest of the Wrecking Crew, as well as Thor, and provides some ideas on how to run an alternative scenario from how it played out in the pages of New Avengers.  Quinn Murphy wrote the action scene and Cam Banks and Dave Chalker (Dave the Game!) developed the bonus content download.  Amanda Valentine edited.  I mention all these folks, because they provided something that I was able to immediately jump brand new players into with minimal effort and prep and we all had a really good time.

Before I go into how things ran, I want to send a few more shoutouts to the professional and fan community surrounding MHRP.  I have been watching the development of the game by following Cam Banks (lead designer), Philippe Menard (The Chatty DM)  and Dave "The Game" Chalker on Twitter, and I had the good fortune to go with my son, Ian, to a launch event at Labyrinth Games in Washington, DC and sit at a table with Dave the Game as Watcher.  I have learned a lot from them.  Further, I have been really impressed and learned a lot from the fan base of MHRP.  Especially helpful have been Dr. Doom and Marvel Plot Points who through posting support materials, actual play reports and events (adventures) have really fired my imagination.

I have to give major prop supports to Plot Points, because I printed out a bunch of their unofficial hero datafiles to add to the official ones from the basic game in order to have an even broader appeal for my potential players. 

One pro-tip on printing datafiles from Plot Points: the image files will kill your printer as is.  They are beautiful and would totally work if you are using them off of a tablet (e.g. iPad), but to print out they are a challenge.  However, here is how I solved it.  I use Picassa 3 (free from Google) as my photo-editor.  I imported the datafile images into the program, and then I transformed them using Picassa's "Pencil Sketch" tool.  Just a little fiddling with the intensity of the "sketch" and I had very legible sheets that did not kill my printer FTW.

So, how about some actual play in the actual play report?  [This is what happened to the best of my recollection]

We arrived at the game day, and immediately, my son, who is 14, looked to recruit players.  He immediately had 3, our hosts' two sons (12 and 9) and the younger son's good friend (also 9).  I sat them down and they all selected heroes.  We soon had a team consisting of Captain America (my son), Mr. Fantastic, Iron Fist and Rogue (thank you Plot Points!).  I started to do my best impression of someone who knows what he is doing (thinking back to playing at Dave the Game's table) and explained how the basics of the game worked and how to read the datafiles.  Then two more boys sat down, each about 13.  We were happy to add them, and they picked Spider-Man and Iron Man.  Aside from my son, I think all the kids were pretty new to RPGs and most I did not know well, if at all.  However, we got everyone up to speed and launched into the mini-event.

In the wake of the Breakout at the Raft, heroes had been assembled to try to recapture the many Super villains who were at large.  SHIELD intelligence had identified a collector of super villain and super heroic memorabilia who might have acquired dangerous technology/gear that belonged to some of the escaped villains.  Heroes were dispatched to secure the items and set up to try to apprehend any evil doers who might show up. 

Captain America had the lead.  Reed Richards was the scientific advisor, since they were unsure as to what they would encounter in this collection, Iron Man was along to provide firepower (both scientific and physical) and Spidy, Iron Fist and Rogue were there for their versatility, experience and ability to punch things hard.  They touched down in a Quinjet on the cul-du-sac near Ed Gross' McMansion.

They quickly split into three groups.  Iron Man was flying over watch, Cap, Rogue and Mr. Fantastic went to the front door, and Spidy and Iron Fist went around back.  Cap asked Mr. Fantastic to do some kind of scan to give them an idea of what to expect.  Dr. Richards quickly jury rigged something and soon had a full schematic of the house and its secure sub-basement filled with all sorts of super-tech and mystic junk.  Also, Richards could tell they some super-powered individual was already in the basement with someone else.

At this point Iron Man got bored, or at least the kid playing him did.  I felt a pang of failure as a watcher for not being able to immediately engage him and keep him interested.  However, no one gave him a bad time about deciding that this was not for him, and he went to find a more conventional game.  Later, my host told me that he actually doesn't like to play games that much, but he comes to the game days because all the other neighborhood kids come and he does not want to be left out.  So, not an epic fail, but, so long Iron Man. 

I informed the players that Iron Man had to respond to an emergency at Stark Enterprises and they were going to have to deal with things on their own.

So, then we switched to Spider-Man and Iron Fist.  They detected the intruder as well, but the old fashioned way, since someone had come in through the rear, ripped out the sliding glass door and stomped through the house and down to the sub-basement.  Spidy and Iron Fist followed the trail and soon heard some mean guy threatening a teenage girl.  The heroes immediately leapt to action.

I chose Spider-Man to act first since he seemed the most tentative of my players and I wanted to give him a moment to shine.  We talked about what he thought Spidy would do and I showed him how to form a dice pool.  He had a great role and he leaped into the room, web-shooters blazing and quickly had webbed Wrecker's face and feet!  I then explained how action order worked in MHRP and he wisely chose to let Wrecker go next, so Iron Fist could bat cleanup.

Wrecker, who can at least go a few rounds with Thor, was not going to let some web slinger do more than annoy him.  He ripped the webbing off his face and teleported away from the webs on his feet and behind Spider-Man, recently recovered magic crowbar raised to strike.  The collector's teenage daughter (being held hostage by The Wrecker) really started screaming at this point.

Into this calmly stepped the Living Weapon of K'un Lun.  I turned to the nine year old playing Iron Fist and said, "What do you want to do?"  "I think I should kick that crowbar out of his hands."

Okay.

One terrific role later, the crowbar was out of the Wrecker's hands and imbedded in the wall across the room.

Iron Fist graciously picks Spider-Man to act next.  He was not sure what he wanted to do next.  Bullpen style, we all gave him some suggestions.  Next thing he was rolling to grab the crowbar with his webbing and swing it upside Wrecker's head.  "Hey Wrecker, I think you dropped something!"

PTANNNGGGG!!!

Spidy K.O.'s the Wrecker with his own crowbar (d12 physical stress). 

Wrecker falls onto a pile of alien technology, mystic artifacts, and superhero fan magazines.  Sparks start to arc and there is a little smoke curling from behind his head.

The teenage girl continues to scream.

Back to Cap's group.  They briefly consider knocking down the door after the house foundation jumped when Wrecker hit the floor, but then they did decide to check the door, and low and behold, the collector's (Ed Goss) daughter has left the door unlocked (much like many a forgetful son and daughter I have known).

The heroes rush down to the basement, led by Mr. Fantastic’s holographic schematic and arrive to find one ex-hostage teenage daughter near hysteria, one unconscious super villain lying on top of some stuff that probably should not have been crushed together, and two very satisfied heroes (Spidy and Iron Fist).

Suddenly, Wrecker's limbs start to spasm, and before anyone can take an action, his right hand grasps the crowbar and he vanishes [yes, this was some mean old Watcher fiat, and I can explain that I had planned to have Loki (thank you Plot Points!), masquerading as the Norn Queen, manipulating things; I was going to follow the flow and decide if he would take a direct hand at all, or if he was just jerking everyone around.  At this point, he was just making mischief and putting Wrecker back into play with the rest of his Crew.

Reed Richards quickly scanned and could tell that Wrecker was being joined by three other like powered individuals and they all seemed to be approaching the parked Quinjet.

Uh oh.

In this brief transition scene, everyone besides Spider-Man decided to spend plot points to make assets based on picking up useful things from Ed Gross' collection.  Everyone made up what it was they were taking.  Cap picked up a Hydra pulse rifle.  Mr. Fantastic picked up a pocket mass canon.  Iron Fist picked up a mystic staff.  Rogue picked up an energy baton.  Then, they all raced topside, except for Cap, who took a moment to calm the distraught teenager who was sure her dad was going to kill her when he saw his collection.

Cap reassured her, and she said he was kinda hunky for an old guy.  Cap beat a hasty retreat and sprinted to join the rest of the heroes.

Spidy leapt from the front door to a lamppost and saw that the other three of the Crew (Bulldozer, Piledriver and Thunderball) had arrived in a huge dump truck.  Wrecker was back on his feet.  Thunderball, the genius, was cracking the code to get into the Quinjet.  Spider-Man acted decisively and leaped to the front of the dump truck and flipped it at Bulldozer and Piledriver.  He only rolled well enough for one effect die (and I got to add a d8 to the doom pool!) and he smashed the engine block onto Bulldozer's head, additionally exploding the gas tank and spraying burning fuel around the neighborhood (DOOM POOL, YAY).

Mr. Fantastic notified SHIELD authorities than an evacuation of the local neighborhood might be warranted.

Iron Fist got himself in position to stop anyone from escaping in the Quinjet.  He was unable to create an effect die to help him by melting into the shadows, but he still was in good position.

Bulldozer said "You are dead Spider-Man!" and attacked.

At this point, Spider-Man's player, unfortunately, was stating that he was tired (I think he spent the morning at the pool) and was thinking about going home.  I told him we would miss his participation, but if he needed to go, we would be okay. 

Bulldozer then hit Spidy so hard he went flying out of the neighborhood and into a nearby playground jungle gym.  The Bullpen decided that Spidy probably would see some folks trying to get out of the neighborhood that needed rescuing and would get caught up doing that before he could get back to the fight.

Piledriver then went after Iron Fist, saying he was going to plant that old Bruce Lee wanna-be six feet under.  Iron Fist easily evaded.

Thunderball declared that Mr. Fantastic was clearly the most serious threat given his intellectual superiority, so Thunderball put everything he had into catching him with his huge ball and chain and flinging Reed Richards out of the neighborhood.  Despite a valiant attempt to evade the attack, Reed Richards soon found himself having avoided damage, but under the complication of "hurled far away".

Rogue went after Wrecker directly, flying straight at him (gloves, literally off), grabbing his face, flying up with him, leeching his strength, and then pounding him into the ground.  How do y'all like that Sugah!

Wrecker's attack was ineffective against Rogue. 

Reed Richards halted his flight, crashed into someone's skylight, but then (again literally) began to spring back to the action.

Then, Captain America hit ALL the bad guys with his shield.  He made sure that he put two effects on Thunderball.  One was physical stress, but the other translated to mental stress.

While I could spend from the Doom Pool to activate invulnerability for Wrecker and Thunderball, I had to sacrifice and take some stress on Bulldozer and Piledriver.

Iron Fist then continued his fight with Piledriver.  Somehow, the battle took them up onto the Quinjet where Iron Fist swept Piledriver's feet out from under him and made sure that Piledriver's crotch hit the wing (hey, this was a nine year old narrating).  More physical stress to the Wrecking Crew.

Wrecker then teleported behind Captain America and laid him out with the crowbar.  Cap was down, but not out.  Rogue in turn took Wrecker down with his own stolen strength. 

Iron Fist easily leaped over Bulldozer’s charge, but could not counterattack. 

Cap caught his second wind and threw the shield to hit Bulldozer and Thunderball again.  Bulldozer went down, but Thunderball sucked a die from the Doom Pool and ignored the physical stress. 

"I'm smarter than all of you put together" declared Thunderball.  "You'll never take me down!"

Ian, playing Captain America did a facepalm and said, we have to stop hitting him and stress him out mentally!  We need Mr. Fantastic!

At which point, in sprang Reed Richards!

"Take him down with SCIENCE!" yelled Cap!

Cut to brilliant and funny nine year old playing Mr. Fantastic: I make my head really big, and I explain to him what the many probable outcomes of his continuing to fight with us.  I tell him he is going back to maximum security and tell him his intellect is nothing compared to mine!  Also I shoot him with my pocket canon.

One roll later, Thunderball collapses in a pile of overwhelmed nerves and neurons.

Cap: "You talked that guy into unconsciousness!  Way to go!"

After that, it was all cleanup.

“When do we fight Loki?” asked the kid playing Iron Fist (who had noticed the sheet in front of me). 

“Not right now,” I had to say.  We needed to break and everyone wanted to try some other games.

There was a lot of interest in doing some more, but we did not have time then.  But, I would totally sit down with those kids again, probably in one or two action scene and one transition scenes at a time.  My core group of 4 totally understood the game and really got into it.  They were uninhibited, creative and enthusiastic!

My Reed Richards proudly declared "Mr. Fantastic is definitely my favorite superhero ever!!"

For me, these kids epitomized why I play RPGs.  We went to a different world and had a whole lot of fun by cooperating together to tell a really interesting and exciting story.

It was a blast.  I don't know when my next opportunity is going to come, but I am definitely running this game again!

Marvel Heroic Role Playing actual play fron "A Taste of Marvel"

Sunday my son, Ian, and I had a great time at the launch party at Labyrinth Games for Margaret Weis Productions new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game.  As with Labyrinth's other demo events, this was termed a "Taste of" and it certainly was a lot of fun, even though it definitely left us wanting more.

I am not going to try to recount our experiences moment by moment as I lack the time to do it justice, but I hope that I can give an overview of the thing we experienced and convey why we had such a good time.

Ian and I drove down to Labyrinth yesterday and arrived in the area 10 minutes early.  Unfortunately, it took another 15 minutes to find a parking place and another 10 or so to get back to the store.  Labyrinth has a great location in Eastern Market on Capitol Hill, but parking is a challenge.

So, there were two filled tables (being run by Rob Donoghue and Nate) and our two reserved spots left at Dave Chalker's (aka Dave the Game) table.  We had somewhat missed the preliminaries and did not manage to really properly introduce ourselves or catch the names of everyone at the table, though Tom Cadorette was playing Iron Man; I am sorry to say I did not catch and retain (typical for me I'm afraid) the names of our fellow players who had Ms. Marvel and Daredevil).  Ian got the hero he hoped for, Captain America.  I had planned to take Daredevil, but he was taken, so I grabbed Spider-Man.

Dave quickly outlined the basics of taking actions, how to build a dice pool from various character attributes and how to roll and read the dice, and then we were off and running.  The game "event" was the adventure that comes with the basic book, and it, in turn, is based on the storyline of "New Avengers 1-6", a story arc called "Breakout."

The heroes had to start in different places when the breakout started.  DD, in his civilian role as Matt Murdock, defense attorney, was with Ms. Marvel at a supervillain prison called The Raft.  He was going to see some guy who claimed he was a former hero called The Sentry who wanted to be locked up because he believed that he killed his wife.  Captain Americal was on a helicopter, returning from addressing the Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington, DC.  Tony Stark/Iron Man was addressing a corporate gathering, and I, Spider-Man, was just about to cuddle up to my wife, Mary Jane, on the couch for a romantic comedy and our first quiet night at home in forever.

Having sketched out these beginning scense, Dave, as The Watcher (the term for the game master in MHRP), quickly launched into the central problem of our first act.  Lightning seemed to strike The Raft, and to go on to overload the entire power grid, backups and black out not just the prison, but all of New York!  Captain America was able to observe that a bolt of lightning also seemed to leave The Raft and head away.  The residual energy fried the helicopter flight controls and it was going down!

Inside The Raft, Matt Murdock, his law partner Foggy Nelson (NPC) and Ms. Marvel suddenly found themselves in the middle of a maximum security block where all the cells were suddenly open!

Tony Stark (played hilariously by Tom, who channeled a lot of Robert Downey, Jr. for his portrayal) found his meeting suddenly cancelled by the blackout, realized that this was a huge outage that might be the result of some kind of attack and went Iron Man (while posting on Twitter, checking Stark Industries stock numbers overseas and making sure that 1000 lawyers were on retainer if this was somehow tied at all to Stark Tech).

I, as Spider-Man had to profusely apologize to MJ, put on the Wall-Crawler tights and zip off.

I quickly spotted the helicopter in trouble and swung onboard.  Cap was able to take care of himself, but I rolled well to grab the SHIELD pilot and get us down safely to The Raft.  This gave me an "asset" of being able to call on the pilot for help in a later roll which was a cool game effect.

Down below, Ms. Marvel was throwing thugs back into cells as much as possible, while DD as Matt Murdock did his "helpless" blind man deal while knocking around, tripping and "running into" the mob of woud-be escapees.

Up top, enter the first Super Villain.  Just as Ian, as Captain America, looked into the smoking elevator shaft, he spotted the evil Count Nefaria rising out of the prison.  His reaction was what any red-blooded American hero would do in his place.  He jumped into the elevator shaft shield first to take out the evil-doer (and he would figure out how to survive the rest of the fall later).

Let me just say a little about how action flows in the game.  There is an "action order" system, which basically has The Watcher pick someone to go first (often with input from the table), and that person finishes the character's action and picks someone else, friend or enemy, to go next, until everyone has had a turn.  Last person to go, hero or villain, decides who starts the next order.  This is fun, allows for fluid, yet tactical play, and really feels like the organic flow of action in comic book panels.  As we played, I could visualize the action leaping off the page.  It was pretty impressive.

So, for any attack, you build out a dice pool based on various attributes (see my earlier posts to describe the attributes), and then roll to try to produce a high base number and pick a leftover die, as large as possible, for an effect.  Once again, simple, once you are doing it, fun (picking from the menu of what your character can do), creative, imaginative, evocative and relatively fast.

So, Cap rolled his action (attack), and Count Nefaria rolled his reaction.  One thing is that the reactor knows the number to beat, so it pushes the actor to try to do as well as possible to put success out of the reactor's reach.  Anyway, that was not how it worked out.  Nefaria blasted Cap to the side, and suddenly he had to come up with how to survive the fall down the elevator shaft.

Fortunately, this allowed him then to choose your friendly neighborhood Spider-Man to act next.  I told the SHIELD pilot "cover me" made some dumb joke about Count Nefaria breaking out for good Italian food, and started shooting webbing like crazy.  I managed to create a web-trampoline under Cap to save him, and it gave him a bonus on his next action as he sprang up from behind Nefaria.  Second, I completely webbed Nefaria's face, so he was blinded.

I think we bounced back to Ms. Marvel and DD, and they were holding their own against the mob, but Foggy got taken away. 

Then, in comes Iron Man and Tom played him just as overconfident as possible.  He tried to fly into the shaft and basically put Nefaria through the back wall.  Instead, Nefaria managed to beat his roll and get the opportunity to activate a counter attack.   So, basically, Iron Man flew in, and there was a huge explosion and Iron Man flew out, not under his own power, after almost being taken out.  Tom and Dave did a great job of describing how the suit's alarms were all going off and the heads-up display was filled with error messages and everything was reading "offline."  Again, I could totally see it both on a comic book page, and on screen.

So, it was just me and Cap against Nefaria.  I had my doubts, but while distracted Nefaria who failed to blast me, Cap completely clocked him by surprise with a shield blow to the temple.  Moments later, we had him safely webbed up and had rebooted enough of Iron Man's systems to go down into The Raft to join up with DD and Ms. Marvel in the hunt for Foggy and to try to reactivate the systems onboard.

I need to metion, that during this whole action sequence, the main game currencies were flowing freely.  These are Plot Points, which players receive for voluntarily taking penalties in their dice pools (rolling d4s), based on their personal foibles which are sometimes advantages and sometimes not, and also for rolling 1s, which add to The Watcher's source of currency, The Doom Pool.  Players speend Plot Points to get bonuses, activate special effects and opportunities, take counter attacks, change the way dice get counted or to create stunts, among other things.  The Watcher uses the Doom Pool in a similar fashion for the antagonists, but can also sometimes just roll the Doom Pool as the difficulty in a situation that calls for an challenging roll, but there is no opposing force, except for how dire the situation is.

This gives the game lots of tactile and visual goodness.  When building a dice pool, you get to pick up the dice that represent the powers/skills you use.  You see the Doom Pool growing or shrinking based on your actions.  You can count Plot Points with hash marks, but more often (and more fun) with poker chips, counters, or some other thing you can gather in piles to see how ready you are to take on the opposition.  If you are out of Plot Points, you need to start adding in some disadvantageous dice or accepting other limits to bank those for when things really count.  On the other hand, there is no sense in hoarding the points.  If you need to KO Count Nefaria, you need to spend and spend big (go big or go home) so you either force The Watcher to deplete the Doom Pool to save the villain early, or to allow him to go down to conserve the Doom for what else is in store.  It makes the game fun and fiddly in a good way.

So, to go with my promise of not going blow by blow, after our first battles, things just continued to be fun and awesome.  While Cap and I rappelled down into The Raft, Iron Man, of course, just flew underneath and punched in through the bottom to get to the control room, kinda because he could.

We played through searching for Foggy, found Foggy, got attacked by Carnage, who apparently just has a "totally disable Spider-Man" power, which got used on me.  We found out that Captain America is REALLY COOL and he basically was two for two in taking out Super Villains.  DD held his own and rescued Foggy.  I learned about "trauma" and that is is not a fun thing for your hero to have.

Iron Man and Ms. Marvel ended up fighting Graviton.  This was not Graviton's day however.  For one thing, Dave's d12 kept rolling 1s, which made Graviton less of a threat.  Iron Man and Ms. Marvel totally capitalized and took him out.  Then Iron Man convinced him to help us, and he told us who engineered the escape and for whom (Electro for Sauron (not the big flaming eye from Middle Earth, but instead a mutant energy vampiry guy who can turn into a fire breathing Pteradactyl; go figure).  We also talked to Sentry who seemed pretty crazy, but said he could help us if we called on him.

Then we went to talk to Electro.  We had learned that much of the hit first and then talk had not worked so well the first time around.  However, when Cap tried to talk to Electro, DD decided instead to try and take him out.  I said something like, "wait, we're going with the punch first plan?"  Iron Man rescued Electro's ex-girlfriend from the scene and flew off, lightning bolts started shooting around, Ms. Marvel ended up charging up Electro, and just when it seemed to be all going south, Iron Man flies back and hits Electro like a ton of, well, iron, taking him out.

We had fun interrogating him, and I told him he was going down with the Bad SHIELD guys, not the ones that worked with Captain America.  They guys that did waterboarding.  He said he'd spill it all if we promised minimum security Club Fed.  We made the deal and off we were to find Sauron in The Savage Land.

There was a lot more fighting (I helped KO a T-Rex) and merriment (Ms. Marvel chose SHIELD over the rest of us and tried to take Iron Man out) and the game went really well.

I will spare you the details and just say, it was a heck of a good time, so I can get this posted.

Excelsior!

Into the Marvel Universe pt 4

Despite good intentions (Road to Hell paved?  Check!), I have been less than constant in my blogging this week.  Nonetheless, I will play a little catch up today while my son practices with his Pipe and Drum band.

So, I have raised a lot of questions about how the new Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game about to be released this next week by Margaret Weis Productions is going to play, and I have expressed various hopes while mentioning misgivings, many tied to my former experience with TSR's old Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) RPG.

However, I think that my hopes are pretty much going to be fulfilled and my worries allayed based on this terrific post (Collateral Damage #0: The Making of a New (Marvel RPG) Series) by the Chatty DM over at Critical-Hits.com.  He outlines some of his challenges even though he is working on the game and goes through the start of a new ongoing campaign and the creation of the new player characters.  It is a great write-up and showcases what can be done within the framework of the basic rules.  While what he describes is not without a speedbump or two, it is a clear demonstration of the robust and flexible character creation possible.  This is very heartening.  I was pretty sure such would be the case, but, sadly, even good companies sometimes make major mistakes, especially with licensed properties (which are just no easy thing to work with (Fred Hicks has some good thoughts on them here).

So, now that I need not hold my breath on the game, what is left to say?

Hey folks, this is the blogosphere, there is always something to say.

The core of the system looks extremely sound and I see it as seriously more malleable and functional than the old MSH system (as much as I enjoyed playing it).  The question I do have is how does it operate on the extremes.  For example, is it going to work at the very low powered end (say you want a S.H.E.I.L.D. campaign inspired perhaps by DC's Gotham Central or Checkmate type approach (why yes, I am a flaming Greg Rucka fan))?  I think the answer is yes, but I'd like to see a test drive.

Also, how does it work at the very high level side?  Can you do something like the Incredible Hercules run by Greg Pak and Fred Van Lente or the classic Thor stories by Walt Simonson?  A campaign like these inspirations require some major city demolishing, cosmos shaking, dimension bending power to be available, and more importantly, it needs to be interesting.  I think one of the problems with old MSH, was that the system just might have made the high level stuff uninteresting.  Okay, you take 1000 points of damage, and we're done.  Obviously, a good GM could do a lot more, but the system did not provide a lot of support.

I am thinking that in both cases, for the highs and the lows, you can get very good play from the system, but I am still hoping to see some actual play and first hand accounts.

One of the reasons that this is important to me is my own experience.  One of the things that worked incredibly well in the old campaign (so very long ago (and hey here's an article about my old GM), was that it wasn't the powers that made us heroes, it was the fact that we were heroes and happened to have powers (sometimes).  So, for example, we had an armored hero, who was still working hard on his I-want-to-be-Iron-Man suit.  It started off fitting in a really big box and had to be carried around in a van.  Sometimes, there was not enough time to don the armor.  That did not stop the player.  He was ex-military or law enforcement, and, for example, when Hydroman was rampaging, he was more than willing to shoot up a gas station with incendiaries (BOOM) and drive him off.  Another time, a huge Sentinel robot attacked our fellow hero who was a mutant weather controller.  Once again, the need to don armor was a hindrance to going "super", so the player just grabbed the nearest semi truck and rammed it into the robot, allowing me to do a little laser surgery on its head (if I recall correctly (and I had been, at that point, transformed from a ROM the Spaceknight clone into a Justice clone)).

So, the moral of the story is that, I want that feeling that the players are the heroes of the stories, powers or not, and that they have something to do, that is easily modeled by the rules.  Cortex+ looks like it will do it, but I am still at the "show me" stage.  After all, we are about to get The Avengers and the quote is

"Big man in a suit of armor, take that away – what are you?"

"Uh... genius, billionaire, playboy, philanthropist,"

That needs to work.  I will be looking at Chatty DM, my own experience upcoming at Labyrinth Games, and other actual play reports to see how things play out.

But I would say things look very, very good.