Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game Three-shot Recap (Pt 0.5) Timeline

Nine months ago(!) I ran a game of TSR's old Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (MSHAG), also known as "the SAGA system" or "the one with the cards".  Months later I started a recap on this blog and never got past Part 0, the intro.

So, here I am trying to shift my sleep pattern for an upcoming week of night-work and looking for stimulation to keep me awake... perfect time to knock the cobwebs off the old blog. 

My first recap post mentioned the use of Microsoft OneNote as a campaign organization tool.  One thing I did in OneNote was create a timeline (and update it as the PCs interacted with it).  I've cut-and-pasted the timeline below right out of my notes so it's a bit rough and stream-of-consciousness.  The only changes I've made here were to delineate which parts of the timeline are canon (i.e. actually published in comic book form or real-world events), versus non-canon.

Text in bold indicates canon material (with source).  Text in italics indicates background material created by the Narrator (the MSHAG equivalent of the game master, me in this case).  Underlined text indicates events that happened in-game.  Brackets around the name, i.e. [NPC name] indicate non-canon non-player characters; <PC names> sit between wedge symbols.  Any other character (and place, organization, etc.) is canon.

The timeline in my OneNote is actually much longer than this but only because I updated it after each session to keep myself straight.  In the presented timeline below, I've included only that portion prior to Session 1.

Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game January 2022 Three-shot Recap Timeline    

1960 Wakanda scientist blasts off a full year before Reed Richards' crew and encounters the same cosmic rays.  Brother is stowaway in the capsule and also is altered.  Capsule crashes into the Atlantic and scientist falls into suspended animation, her body altered to become sentient water.  [Evil brother] becomes serpent-like and near-mindless, using crashed capsule as lair.

1971 (Iron Man 36-37) The Changers come, IM destroys "Ramrod", one of five robots but four scatter around the globe; one in China, one in Africa, one in the Arctic, one in Central America.  The robots' controller, "the Foreman" dies in NYC, freezing the four remaining Changers in their far-flung locations; his spaceship is abandoned where IM's fight with Ramrod took place in Midtown Manhattan.  What happened to the spaceship and control-helmet?? (Project Pegasus got the spaceship (or parts) and helmet).  The robots are still frozen at their locations (except... see below). 

1972 The African robot mysteriously reactivates in a border-nation to Wakanda, wreaking havoc as it approaches that country.  Wakanda scientist, [Dr. Nsansa] deciphers the technology and deactivates the Changer after Wakanda armed forces manage to subdue it.

Spring 1980 Low-security portion of Project Pegasus (think display case in the entrance lobby) broken into; thieves steal Atlantean weapons, which were captured from Atlantean soldiers during a previous invasion (Fantastic Four Annual 1). 

Summer 1980 Members of Atlantean colony find the Wakandan capsule and drive off the [serpent-being] but only after it wreaks havoc.  A delegation from Atlantis sets off for the UN in NYC to argue for compensation, bringing the capsule.

Unknowingly the Atlanteans also released the Wakanda astronaut from her suspended animation, and she becomes the unintentional superhero known as the [Aquanaut].

Wakanda genius [Dr. Nsansa] dispatched to NYC to examine the capsule.

The B-grade supervillain known as the Atom Smasher hatches a plan to kidnap [Dr. Nsansa] and take him to site of the Central American Changer to activate it in a mad scheme.

Not having the resources to directly attack the Wakanda Embassy (and wanting a diversion), the Atom Smasher stokes a racially-motivated gang war.  Using the Atlantean/Wakanda relations in the news, Atom Smasher plays on paranoia and temporarily unites the Russian, Irish, Italian, and skinhead gangs.  Perpetuates the "Black and Blue" takeover myth by stealing old captured Atlantean weapons from Project Pegasus and giving them to non-white street gangs.

13 August 1980: Atlantean delegation arrives at the UN; Democratic National Convention wraps up Primary selection of Jimmy Carter as candidate.

Evening of 14 August 1980 (Campaign Present day):  Fate brings PCs together, beginning the events of Session 1.

Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game Three-Shot Recap (Pt 0)

Part 0: Intro

Dropping clues for the PCs...

I pile almost all my creative energies into the Christmas/New Years holidays, basically because that's the only period I get enough free time. Case in point: I ran a three-shot of Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (MSHAG) over the holidays and I'm only now finding the time to talk about it.

My enthusiasm for running MSHAG again for the first time in over 20 years, coupled with an average reading pace of three comics a day, resulted in a pretty dang good game if I do say so myself. Sure, I was pretty rusty at GM'ing but at the end of my second session one of my players said "that was like a movie!" Music to any GM's ears.

A firm grasp of the source material and motivation isn't enough for RPG success. I think three more factors played key roles in the positive outcome of this three-shot: proper scope, willing players, and good prep.

Proper Scope: I knew that other time pressures in my life would prevent me from running an ongoing campaign but I also realized that I wanted to develop the story more than a one-shot. I settled on a rough outline of a story, with enough material for four sessions, anticipating (correctly it turns out) that we'd probably lose one session.

Willing Players: Only two of my AD&D group had the time to play and both were unfamiliar with MSHAG. Not only were both of them willing to put aside their skepticism of the card-based mechanics, both players had strong concepts for their PCs and a love for the Marvel Universe.  One of the players was mostly familiar with the MU through the Marvel Cinematic Universe, while the other player shared my fondness for 70s and 80s comic books but without any recent reading.  Each player therefore found plenty to discover during the game but also familiarity in the iconic characters in Marvel New York.  Most importantly, both players "got it" when it came to our time constraints. They knew implicitly that this was a three-to-four-shot and eagerly pursued the adventure hooks I dangled in front of them.

Good Prep: My prep work consisted of choosing a setting and fleshing out all the places the PCs might end up, based on the hooks presented. I settled on NYC since that's where most of the Marvel Universe action seems to take place; it helped immensely that one of the players had familial ties and familiarity with Manhattan. I chose 1980 as the timeframe because I wanted to play in that era of Marvel, with the established characters as I remembered them from my childhood. My players of course generated their own heroes... as it should be.


Microsoft OneNote helped my prep work immensely; OneNote is definitely my new RPG campaign management standard. Since I was running weekly sessions, the Tags in OneNote worked beautifully to keep me on track with to-do lists of prep tasks.

NPC generation was a snap with OneNote. I download huge databases of names from public records (Yellow Pages, building permit applications, etc.) and randomly swap out first and last names so I'm not using real people in my games. I can very quickly generate a list with scores of names and I keep this on a OneNote page labeled "Master Name List". When I need NPCs, I'll cut-and-paste from this list onto another appropriate OneNote page. For example, if I'm fleshing out the cops the PCs may meet, I'll have a "NYPD" OneNote page and I'll cut-and-paste maybe seven names on that page. I can very quickly write short descriptions for each person right after the names or take it one step further. Sometimes I'll use the "Link to Pages" option which allows one to generate multiple new Pages, each linked to an entry in a list. So with my NYPD example, I'd just highlight the seven names and use "Link to Pages" and instantly each cop would get their own hyperlinked page. It's amazing how quickly one can generate details for an NPC when one has a whole page to play with.

My story revolved around the aftermath of Iron Man issues 36 and 37, from 1972. Basically a throwaway story, the issues featured four alien robots so immensely powerful that, working in tandem, they could level the surface of the Earth into a global plain of glass! Despite their power, the robots needed direction from a humanoid alien, the Foreman. Iron Man barely defeats a fifth robot, the scout known as "Ramrod", before trashing the Foreman's control helmet and freezing the four "Changer" automatons in their far-flung locations around the globe, just before they could activate their world-leveling power. The astounding thing about the story is, despite their awesome power, the Changers never surface again in the Marvel Universe. At the end of issue 37, the Foreman is dead in midtown Manhattan with his interstellar craft landed in the middle of the street and the four robots stand motionless in distant lands.  Issue 38 starts with a totally different storyline with no reference to these life-altering events.  

Answering the "what happened" regarding these abandoned plot points gave me a perfect touchstone to the canon Marvel Universe with some ready-made tools of mass destruction just waiting for a super-villain to find (and my PCs to thwart). Adding both Atlantis and Wakanda to the mix obfuscated the real plot while providing more Marvel flavor.

With a story outline in hand, I kicked off the three-shot by pushing my players a front page of the Daily Bugle over Discord a few days before our first session. I created this handout not only to provide clues but, using real world events from that week in history, to establish the exact timeframe and atmosphere. The newspaper worked better than I imagined...my players thought every word was a clue and provided their own red herrings! I included the Carter/Kennedy story just to establish that it was 1980 but the players immediately assumed the plot was political and thought Ronald Reagan was behind the dastardly events in the city!

Online MSHAG board; PC Card highlighted

Since one of the players lives in another city and the other player joined in from work, we needed a way to play online.  The site Playingcards.io was perfect for this, and I built a custom game board for MSHAG, complete with my DIY Marvel SAGA cards, character cards, areas for the Doom Bank and Narrator card, and buttons for auto-draw for when the players play matching suits (we don't use the "T" word around here).  Voice comms were via a Discord server created for the game.

Custom Fate Deck: Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (Full Deck)

 Here it is: my custom Fate Deck for the old 1998 Marvel RPG from TSR.

Now go buy (preferably old) Marvel Comics.

Custom Cards: Marvel SAGA (Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game)

I’ve been reading a lot of comic books recently, still going strong at two a day. All this comic goodness, plus a healthy dose of the ongoing MEGS campaign on Jay Murphy’s The Vanishing Tower podcast has got me thinking again about super-hero RPGs. 

My absolute favorite RPG of all time, super-themed or not, is the Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game from TSR in 1998, also known as the “SAGA System” or “the one with the cards”. 

Although I have a pristine copy of MSHAG with the cards still in the wrapper, playing the game is extra-problematic in these pandemic days… until now. 

I’ve recently discovered one of the greatest services to mankind in the wonderful website playingcards.io. I don’t know how the site developers make any money, if at all, for their services but this site is phenomenal! Totally free, synchronous, and you can make custom card decks. You see where this is going: MSHAG in the age of COVID. 

Instead of just scanning my official MSHAG cards and uploading them to a custom table on the playing card site however, I thought this would be a perfect opportunity to make custom cards. 

You see, despite my love for MSHAG I’ve always wondered about some of the character and art choices TSR made. Meltdown? Who even is that character? And that card art for Hercules? Woof. And where is Rick Jones, the ever-present sidekick at so many pivotal Marvel events?  I decided if I was going to make custom cards, I might as well replace some of the characters and find my own art. 

I used Microsoft PowerPoint and lots and lots of hours to make these puppies; amazing how powerful simple Office software is in 2021. Visual Basic for Applications macros also proved useful, allowing me to just build a single card template and then populate the card-specific text, textures, and suit icons. Unfortunately VBA would not populate the comic art work so that was a tedious placement and cropping affair. 

I present a few samples here, including the card back image I created as well as a screenshot of the virtual tabletop over on PlayingCards.io.  I'll edit this post later to show some comparisons to the official cards.

Custom Card Back

ROM Spaceknight replaces Adam Warlock

Virtual Tabletop showing a few cards

I’m happy with how these turned out. I wish I could make them available for download but the characters and associated art are Marvel’s and even if I offer them for free I don’t have the right. It’s not my intellectual property. I’ll certainly use them in my own private games however.

I replaced characters and chose art to reflect my personal tastes and my own journey as a Marvel Comics reader. My primary reading years were 1983-1998 with the most intense period being around ‘86-‘94. Significantly, during this time not only did I buy a lot of contemporary comics but also frequented comic book stores to get back issues from the 60s and 70s.  Accordingly, I have my favorite artists and storylines and the custom cards reflect this.

Personally I think Keith Pollard is an under appreciated illustrator who does the definitive Doctor Doom. And of course although Gene Colan is known for his work on Doctor Strange, I don’t think anyone can touch Steve Ditko’s original otherworldly mysticism. John Buscema’s work features prominently because…seriously, do you have to ask? Just look at those pictures! And his brother Sal always did the perfect Hulk in my mind, apologies to any Herb Trimpe fans out there.

I want to stress that I don't own any rights to the likenesses of any Marvel characters depicted here and I'm displaying them without permission.  I will say however that by showing the characters I hope to inspire other gamers/comic book fans and hey, maybe by seeing my blog a few people will go purchase a subscription to Marvel Unlimited.  Yeah, that's it.  Come to think of it, Disney should be paying me for the advertising... 

EDIT: I've added a picture comparing the back and front of an official MSHAG card featuring the Leader, and one of my own.  Please excuse the shininess on the official cards: I still haven't taken the shrinkwrap off them.  As you can see, the aspect ratio of the custom cards differ from the official ones, since mine are optimized to use on the playingcards.io site (160 pt x 103 pt size).

I prefer my cards to the original but I'm a bit biased!

Official cards left; custom cards right

I’m planning on actually running this game online at some point and am working out how best to use the playingcards.io site.  The virtual table allows multiple card decks: a neat aspect that facilitates character sheets in card form by giving each player a one (or two or three) card "deck" for constant reference.

Character sheet card front

Character sheet card back.  Shitty formatting courtesy Blogger.

Solo RPG: Marvel SAGA (TSR) Custom Card Update #2

I finally finished the custom homebrew Fate deck for TSR's defunct Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (MSHAG, also known as "the SAGA System") which I started years ago.

Preview: not to scale.  Deck features 100 cards

The cards are posted on my downloads page and I've also submitted them to RoleplayingGameGeek (RPGGeek) for upload into the Files section of the game.  The format is a .pdf and it is designed to be printed onto blank label sheets, then cut out and fixed to card stock (or old playing cards).


As highlighted in the previous post, the cards have dispensed with the character art and instead include a large open area to write campaign/adventure notes.  The cards also feature a random letter, following the Scrabble letter distribution, for random word generation.  I'm hoping to use these cards for some solo-gaming as I always found the MSHAG gave both the GM and player more narrative control than most other games in the same era.

Enjoy and please give me feedback.  I created the cards using MS Excel, using macros to quickly build each card from the raw database of information.  As such, I can make changes and regenerate the entire deck with the click of a button.  My next plan is to make a fantasy version of the cards (custom ones, not recreating the Dragonlance Fifth Age cards however).  I've also contemplated making a Star Wars Fate deck as I've always felt the Star Wars universe is very comic book like.

EDIT: RPGGeek rejected my submission on the grounds of "submission contains scans of copyrighted images).  Nope.  The cards were handmade by me on Powerpoint, including drawing all those little black circles to emulate the "Kirby Crackle".  Of course all the information on the cards (suits, auras, values, etc.) are copyrighted but I derived this information from an Excel file already existing on and downloaded from RPGGeek!

Solo RPG: Marvel SAGA (TSR) Custom Card Update

Just a short update… making progress on my cards, as shown below.

First ten cards done

In a future update, I'll describe how I use the letters on the bottom left-hand corners to generate random words for adventure ideas.  It works better than I could've hoped; I'm done with my old dice method.

Solo Super Hero Gaming: Custom Cards for Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (SAGA)

One of the stupidest things I've ever done was sell my comics and my games.  Over 10 years ago I purged my collection and left gaming behind.

Since then, as evidenced by this blog, I've discovered solo gaming and rekindled that passion for creating stories as only role-playing games can do.

A reading of the first volume of Jack Kirby's Fourth World Anthology has got me in the mood for creating super-hero tales.  It's also got me pining for my copy of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game (MSHAG), using the SAGA system, which I sold off long ago.

Looking for a copy of the game online has left me speechless, as I had no idea how rare and collectible and hence pricey the game is.  While I might be able to get my hands on the rulebook, the cards necessary for play seem to be extraordinarily hard to find.  That got me thinking…do I need those cards?  Why can't I make my own?

Thanks to great RPGGeek user Almafeta, I know all the important details of the cards (Callings, Auras, Events, Values, Suits).  Using this data, I am working on making my own cards which will allow me to play this game again.  A picture of one of the cards is below.  I left off the character because frankly, that was always useless in our campaigns (Doctor Doom is just going to randomly appear?  Or worse, Sabra?  Come on.)

Borders need trimming

I'm making the cards with a Kirby feel, complete with cosmic crackle.  I've added a large white space in the center.  My thoughts are as the campaign develops, I can write certain key words (as the cards will be covered in plastic) in this space, reflecting additional information gained as the plot develops.  For example, after a pitched battle with strange creatures our heroes learn the monstrous adversaries are Deviants.  I would then write "Deviant(s)" on the card and if the card came up again, it could result in another revelation, or perhaps another battle.  These words could be especially powerful when combined with the Event on another card, or with a random word.

Speaking of random words, the other thing I added was the letter in the left hand corner.  The letters use generally the same distribution as Scrabble since there are going to be 100 cards.  The thought here is that these letters can be combined (randomly however, not like Scrabble) to form words.  These words, once formed, could then be transferred to the big white area (Plot area?) of one of the cards.  The next time this particular card with the random word is drawn, it could be used to send the story spinning off in a totally unexpected direction.

The SAGA system will be used for action resolution, but for "roleplaying" I need some additional mechanics since I'm playing solo.  I plan to use a house "magic eight ball" system I've cobbled together using ideas from the FU RPG as well as inspiration (but no real mechanics) from the Mythic GM Emulator.

EDIT:  The entire deck of cards is completed and now available on my Downloads page.