For RPG-a-Day 2026 I am republishing Mirk the Meek's collaborative episodes on different genres. You can read all about that here: https://podbypost.com/nerds/rpg-a-day-2026
But for the blog I will be somewhat following Anthony's lead (read his post here: https://castingshadowsblog.com/2026/07/31/rpgaday2026-starts-tomorrow-my-plan/ )
Basically that means I will post a character on each Sunday of August. this week I will create one for the Advanced Box Set of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes.
My favorite super hero game is TSR's Marvel Super Heroes. I actually prefer the original yellow box Basic Set with a few rules ported over from the Advanced Set but for today's character we will use the advanced set rules as written.
(There is also the controversial, and fairly broken, Ultimate Powers Book that has its own generation tables, I'll do a character with it midweek as opposed to extending this already long entry.)
Before we get started let's talk about the Universal Chart.
The above chart is where all the action happens. You find your ranking across the top, roll the dice and find the result on the left hand side. Cross reference them and the color tells you the result. Some things will have you do a column shift (CS) to the left or right. That in a nutshell is the core mechanic of the game.
Two other things, first you should know that to help the game feel more like a comic book ranks have names, from the worst to the best they are: Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift X, Shift Y, Shift Z, Class 1000, Class 3000, Class 5000, Beyond. As far as most characters go Unearthly is the top, the others are for column shifts and cosmic beings. The last thing to know is that the ability scores (Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intution, Psyche) spell FASERIP which is a common nickname for this system.
There are a couple ways to get characters in the advanced game but we will use the Generated Characters method to randomly roll one up. There are five steps: generate an origin, generate primary abilities, generate secondary abilities, generate special abilities, and lastly fill in the blanks.
When you generate your origin you roll percentile dice and have a chance to get the following: Altered Human, Mutant, Hi-Tech, Robot, or Alien. I rolled a 60 which gives us a Mutant, here is the what the book says about them:
Mutants are members of the race of Homo Superior, a new race of man born from the race of Homo Sapiens (that's us). Mutant powers often (though not always) first manifest themselves in the teen-age years. Mutants are generally feared and disliked by the populace at large. Examples of mutants include the X-Men, X-Factor, and New Mutants. When creating a mutant character:
• Random ranks are rolled on Column 1 of the Random Ranks Table.
• Mutants gain one additional Power, up to the total number of Powers available to the Hero (maximum of 5).
• Resources are reduced by one rank.
• Starting Popularity is always 0.
• Mutants gain and lose Popularity at a slower rate than other character types.
• Endurance is raised by one rank.
• The majority of a mutant's Powers are inborn as opposed to equipment-based.
• They may be affected by mutant detection and mutant nullification devices.
Now we need to generate primary abilities. The chart is pretty neat as each origin type has different maximums, for example normal humans max out at Excellent, Mutants at Amazing, but Robots and Aliens can have abilities that are Monstrous. Let's see what we get:
Fighting roll 58 for a score of 16 Excellent
Agility roll of 79 for a score of 26 Remarkable
Strength roll of 05 for a score of 1 Feeble
Endurance roll of 82 for a score of 36 Incredible. Because the character is a mutant we raise this by one rank to 46 Amazing.
Reason roll of 93 for a score of 36 Incredible
Intuition roll of 68 for a score of 26 Remarkable
Psyche roll of 12 for a score of 5 Typical
Next step is to generate secondary abilities. To get our Health we total the rank numbers of the first four abilities and to get Karma we total the rank numbers of the final three abilities.
Health 89
Karma 67
Initial Resources are set at Typical and then adjusted by a roll on the Ability Modification Table, I rolled 72 for an increase by two ranks to Excellent. That is reduced by one rank to Good because we are creating a mutant. You can further reduce Resources to gain extra Powers, Talents, or Contacts but I'm going to forgo that for this character.
Resources 8 Good
The last step is to generate the character's Popularity. Normally this starts at 10 and can be modified by whether the character's identity is public or secret, if a non mutant is known to hang out with mutants or if they are deemed unpopular for some reason. Since we are creating a mutant ours automatically starts at 0. This is also the point to decide if the character has a secret identity because if they do they will have two Popularity scores, one for the hero and one for their secret identity. I am going roll a d10 to give us a 50/50 chance of a secret identity or a public one, I rolled a 7 so it will be public.
Popularity 0
The next step is to generate special abilities. We roll once on each of the following tables: Powers, Talents and Contacts.
For Powers I rolled 53 which gives 3 out of a possible 4 powers and because we are a mutant we get one additional power, up to the maximum, so we will start with 4 powers.
For Talents I rolled a 50 for 2 out of 5 possible talents.
For Contacts I rolled a 81 for 2 out of 4 possible contacts.
Let's generate those Powers!
The first roll is 81, Body Alterations/Offensive, we roll another d10, 8, and find we have Claws. I roll 99 to get a rank of 63 Monstrous. I'll post slightly edited versions of the power descriptions after each.
Claws are... well, claws. Sharp pointy items that inflict damage on the Edged Attack column of the battle effects table. As with most sharp things, they inflict the listed amount and effect, and cannot be reduced in damage or effect. The Power rank lists both the damage inflicted by the claws and the material strength.
The second roll is 05, Resistances, we roll another d10 for 8 which is Resistance to Mental Attacks. I roll 45 for a rank of 16 Excellent.
Any mental attacks that affect the Psyche from psionic (but not magical) sources.
The third roll is 91 for Body Alternations/Defensive. The d10 is 4, Water Breathing.
This is a wimp Power. Face it. When the great hero parties take place, and Ulterior-Motive Man asks you what you do, if you say, "I breathe water" you end up wearing a full fishbowl. This Power allows you to breathe water (fresh or salt) as if air. No Power rank is needed for this Power. In addition, this Power allows the hero to see underwater as if on land (vision is reduced in the underwater realm), and survive at great depths. The hero's next Power may be either Swimming or Animal Communication and Control (Sea life). The hero may choose both, but then only breathes water, and will "drown" on dry land (reverse of characters drowning in water).
I copied the quoted text above in full for your enjoyment. Because I have the option I'm going to go ahead and take Swimming as the final power, I roll 23 for 5 Typical rank but that is raised to 63 Monstrous due to the text below.
All heroes are assumed to be capable of swimming (or at least remaining afloat and treading water) if free of impediments (inability to swim would be a minor limitation in the Talents section). The Swimming Power shows that the hero can move through the water at high speeds, as in the Lightning Speed Power applied to water. (Lightning Speed lets the character move as a vehicle with a speed equal to the power rank. The power will always be at Endurance +1 column shift, raise it to this if you roll lower)
Next we'll generate our Talents. Two rolls on the table, 62 and 29, for Professional Skills and Fighting Skills. The professional skill is Pilot and the fighting skill is Acrobatics.
Pilot: The character with this Talent has a working knowledge of most aircraft, and receives a + 1CS for all FEAT rolls involving an aircraft that character is controlling (including Control FEATs, Agility FEATs, and Reason FEATs involving aircraft handling and design). A character with a background that would permit it (a hero who is an alien) may extend this Talent to spacecraft as well.
Acrobatics: The hero with this Talent is very limber and as such gains advantages when under attack. The hero has a + 1CS when dodging, evading, and escaping.
Because I'm taking an Atlantean Contact in the next step I'm hoping the Judge will allow my Piloting Talent to apply to Atlantean Aerial-Submarines and other flying machines as well as human ones.
Lastly we would generate two Contacts, I'm going to pick a Hero Group (the X-Men) and a Other National contact, someone from Atlantis, probably a member of the royal family, that the character has helped and knows.
The last thing we need to do is fill in the blanks. The book provides the following checklist to help, we'll launch right into the narrative write up of the character to answer them:
• What is the character's fighting name?
• What is the character's alter ego, if any?
• Is the character male, female, or what?
• How tall is the character?
• What does the character look like? Is the hero physically good-looking or strange-looking (note Popularity shift in the latter case)?
• Where does the character operate? Where does the hero live?
• Does the hero have any Contacts other than the ones provided by the generation system?
• Check the hero's Resources. Where is this guy getting money like that?
• Does the hero wear a costume? What does it look like?
• Last, and optionally, what is the hero's specific origin? If you, the player, make up an origin, it saves the Judge the trouble of creating one for you. Judges by and large create very nasty backgrounds for heroes without stated origins, so when super-powered organizations come hunting for you, at least you know who they are.
Sven Sorenson was born in the harsh environment of Norway in a fishing village. When he reached puberty his mutant powers manifested themselves while he was on his father's fishing boat and it was attacked by pirates. No one was more surprised than Sven that he didn't drown when a pirate threw him off the side! His reappearance on the boat and sharp claws sent the pirates packing but not before they dealt his older brother a mortal wound. Soon afterwards the X-Men arrived looking for the new mutant. He trained with the X-Men but didn't join them as he wanted to combat crime on the seas.
Sven picked the name The Silver Seal but his identity is public. A tall, handsome man with shoulder length blond hair he makes an impressive appearance. His costume looks like a silver wetsuit with a seal on the chest although thanks to his friends the X-Men it is more durable than a regular wetsuit. He doesn't live in one place but moves around from fishing village to fishing village helping where he can. Between money he earns and the gratitude of those he has helped he lives a spartan but decent lifestyle, after all he doesn't need much. He has dual citizenship in Norway and the United States of America (his mother was American) but he doesn't identify strongly with either.
The last thing I want to do is show how the character would be expressed mechanically in a module.
The Silver Seal
Sven Sorenson, Aquatic Mutant
F Ex (16)
A Rm (26)
S Fb (1)
E Am (46)
R In (36)
I Rm (26)
P Ty (5)
Health: 89
Karma: 67
Resources: Gd (8)
Popularity: 0
Known Powers: Claws (Mn), Resistance to Mental Attacks (Ex), Swimming (Mn), Water Breathing
Talents: Acrobatics, Pilot
Contacts: X-Men, Atlantean member of the royal family
Background: Sven Sorenson grew up in in a fishing village in Norway. After his mutant powers manifested themselves he trained with the X-Men before setting off on his own. He mostly sticks to the ocean and the coasts and keeps a friendly relationship with both the Atlanteans and many coastal fishing villages. His passion is fighting piracy and other crimes on the water.
That is all for this week, see you midweek for the Ultimate Powers Book and next Sunday, 23 August, when I create a character for Cyberpunk 2020!
