History TabletopGame / MarvelSuperHeroes

* ButThouMust:In the supplement ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set "Adventure Book" in the chapter titled "Nightmare in New Guinea". The [[PlayerCharacters PC’s]] have an audience with the Mandrill, who makes a WeCanRuleTogether offer. If the players refuse or even ''hesitate'', Mendrill orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner. If the heroes actually accept his offer, Mandrill says "You agree too quickly. You therefore can't be trusted," and then orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner.

* ButThouMust:In the supplement ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set "Adventure Book" in the chapter titled "Nightmare in New Guinea". The {{PC}}s have an audience with the Mandrill, who makes a WeCanRuleTogether offer. If the {{PC}}s refuse or even ''hesitate'', Mendrill orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner. If the heroes actually accept his offer, Mendrill says "You agree too quickly. You therefore can't be trusted," and then orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner.

* AbsurdlySpaciousSewer: In the ''Deluxe City Campaign Set'', the sewers of New York are described as being up to 30 feet across.

** Somewhat likewise, Wolverine was the only hero besides Spider-man to be playable in more than one of the {{Gamebook}} adaptations of the system, although the second one did have him sharing the spotlight with Storm, Rogue and Nightcrawler.

** The game came out near the height of his popularity, so besides appearing a lot, he gets some unique abilities like his KarmaHoudini status and his claws get a unique benefit. Normally the Claws power gives damage equal to a character's strength (improving it just increased how tough your claws are to damage and it's ability to damage to non-living things), under these rules Wolverine should only do Good damage (Wolverine is as strong as the Wasp and Dazzler in this game). Instead he does Monstrous damage to living things with his claws (hitting them as hard as Colossus) and he does even more damage to non-living things and he can damage anything with less than Class 1000 resistance to physical attacks.

* RapidAging: in "Judge's Book", Hela can fire Aging Rays that instantly age the target by 100 years.

* MyRulesAreNotYourRules: There's a rule where superheroes are not allowed to have any power or stat beyond the Shift Z ranking, except with Invulnerability powers which get ranked at Class 1000 for superheroes (Cosmic Beings could go higher). Jean Grey as the Phoenix had powers and some stats that were in the Class 1000 and Class 3000 ranks, making her largely unique in the game. Justified in that she's considered a much a CosmicEntity as she is a superhero. Another superhero who breaks this rule is Black Bolt who has Sonic Generation at Class 1000. Then there's Wolverine and his unique features...

* ButThouMust:In the supplement ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set "Adventure Book" in the chapter titled "Nightmare in New Guinea". The {{PC}}s are at an audience with the Mandrill who makes a WeCanRuleTogether offer. If the {{PC}}s refuse or even ''hesitate'', Mendrill orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner. If the heroes actually accept his offer, Mendrill says "You agree too quickly. You therefore can't be trusted," and then orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner.
* ColorCodedForYourConvenience: The five card suits in the 90's version. Green=Strength, Red=Agility, Blue=Intellect, Purple=Willpower, Black=Doom

** Here, experience points are called Karma, which players receive at the end of every adventure chapter if they accomplished mission objective, and which they could spend to raise attributes or abilities or to modify dice rolls, or even to contribute to a community pool to help the group. Conversely, heroic characters lose karma by failing objectives or doing heinous things like killing (even villains, even by accident), thereby preventing players from creating a usable NinetiesAntiHero-type character.
** An interesting exception to this is Wolverine in the Secret Wars adventure who "has no bad feelings about killing in combat. In this adventure, Wolverine suffers no Karma penalty for slaying an "Evil" opponent. Inform the player running Wolverine of this in his first fight. Wolverine will still lose Karma for killing heroes (including Magneto), or for letting innocents die." This exception effectively makes Wolverine a GameBreaker character in this game as he doesn't need to follow the most important rule of it. Compare this with more conscientious heroes like Colossus, Reed Richards and Cyclops, who in the same adventure automatically lose 10 Karma points a day simply because they miss the people they love back on Earth. By making this exception, the authors of the game have unintentionally rewarded Wolverine's [[SociopathicHero Heroic Sociopathy]] and punished other heroes for having empathy!

* WolverinePublicity: The game came out near the height of his popularity, so besides appearing a lot, he gets some unique abilities like his KarmaHoudini status and his claws get a unique benefit. Normally the Claws power gives damage equal to a character's strength (improving it just increased how tough your claws are to damage and it's ability to damage to non-living things), under these rules Wolverine should only do Good damage (Wolverine is as strong as the Wasp and Dazzler in this game). Instead he does Monstrous damage to living things with his claws (hitting them as hard as Colossus) and he does even more damage to non-living things and he can damage anything with less than Class 1000 resistance to physical attacks.
** Somewhat likewise Wolverine was the only hero besides Spider-man to be playable in more than one of the {{Gamebook}} adaptations of the system, although the second one did have him sharing the spotlight with Storm, Rogue and Nightcrawler.

* SecretTest: In the ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set, the PCs are attacked by a SpiderTank while eating lunch with the Beast. The Beast arranged the attack to determine if the PCs are worthy to be superheroes.

* SecretTest: The spider tank attack in the ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set, outlined above under CombatTentacles.

* SpiderTank: One of these attacks the [=PCs=] during lunch in a SecretTest to see if they're worthy to become superheroes.

* KnockoutAmbush: Happens to the heroes several times in the ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set, twice via...
* KnockoutGas: lots of traps, villains and even superheroes made use of this weapon. But in the game, characters who had at least Incredible Endurance gained ever better immunity to poisons (Spiderman had Incredible Endurance and so he isn't harmed by snake venom, characters who were more enduring than Spidey could be immune to knockout gas).

* KarmaMeter: The Karma system was rather unforgiving, rewarding HonorBeforeReason rather obsessively and penalizing heroes for everything from killing people (even villains, even in self-defense, even accidentally, even to save lives, even if the dying character is a willing sacrifice for some greater good) to missing a press conference. Villains had their own karma system that rewarded them for being stereotypical villains.

* DemiHuman
* EvilGloating: Indulging in this is one way for villains to earn extra Karma.

* FunWithAcronyms: FASERIP.
* GameMaster: In this game the game master is called a Judge.

* HornAttack: Another trait of Ramhorn, mentioned in DashAttack above.

* JetPack: Two examples here:

** In the ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set Adventure Book, Chapter 9 pits the heroes against Arcade. If they don't find him within 15 minutes after the end of the basketball game he will put on a jetpack and try to escape.

* ExperiencePoints: Here, experience points are called Karma, which players receive at the end of every adventure chapter if they accomplished mission objective, and which they could spend to raise attributes or abilities or to modify dice rolls, or even to contribute to a community pool to help the group. Conversely, heroic characters lose karma by failing objectives or doing heinous things like killing (even villains, even by accident), thereby preventing players from creating a usable NinetiesAntiHero-type character.
** An interesting exception to this is Wolverine in the Secret Wars adventure who "has no bad feelings about killing in combat. In this adventure, Wolverine suffers no Karma penalty for slaying an "Evil" opponent. Inform the player running Wolverine of this in his first fight. Wolverine will still lose Karma for killing heroes (including Magneto), or for letting innocents die." This exception effectively makes Wolverine a GameBreaker character in this game as he doesn't need to follow the most important rule of it. Compare this with more conscientious heroes like Colossus, Reed Richards and Cyclops who in the same adventure automatically lose 10 Karma points a day simply because they miss the people they love back on Earth. By making this exception the authors of the game have unintentionally rewarded Wolverine's [[SociopathicHero Heroic Sociopathy]] and punished other heroes for having empathy!

** The only exception to this is Wolverine who in the Secret Wars adventure "has no bad feelings about killing in combat. In this adventure, Wolverine suffers no Karma penalty for slaying an "Evil" opponent." Wolverine's so special that he breaks the most cardinal rule of the sytem, while more conscientious heroes like Colossus and Cyclops are actually penalized 10 Karma points every single day of the adventure simply because they have loved ones that they miss. This wouldn't be the first or the last time that Wolverine has outdone Cyclops.

* TimeToUnlockMoreTruePotential: The game allows you to improve your character's powers or stats by using Karma points. It also allowed you to buy completely new powers or develop "power stunts" - techniques with your existing power to mimic other powers (for example if you had plasma generation, since plasma is a mix of various energy types - you could develop a weak form of electricity generation). One reason this game requires you to regularly build up your abilites is that your superheroes often can't harm enemies at their current power level (for example if Colossus who has Monstrous strength punches a rampaging Hulk, he won't hurt the Hulk. That's because the Hulk has Monstrous resistance to physical attacks and it's just enough to completely cancel out Colossus's attacks. But if Colossus improves his strength by even a single rank, he'll be at least at Unearthly strength (Thor or Hercules's class) and be able to hurt the Hulk).

The system was also spun off into a {{Gamebook}} line that ran for 8 installments, each featuring the player controlling a prominent Marvel hero (with one featuring the player jumping between the roles of four of the X-Men) using a version of the same attribute system with simplified number values.

** Somewhat likewise Wolverine was the only hero to be playable in more than one of the {{Gamebook}} adaptations of the system, although the second one did have him sharing the spotlight with Storm, Rogue and Nightcrawler.

The system was also spun off into a {{Gamebook}} line that ran for 8 installments, each featuring the player controlling a prominent Marvel hero (with one featuring the player jumping between the roles of four of the X-Men) using a number-based version of the attribute system.

* StunGuns: Several of these are used throughout the ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set to knock out the [=PCs=] without killing them.

* ButThouMust:In the supplement ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set "Adventure Book" in the chapter titled "Nightmare in New Guinea". The {{PC}}s are at an audience with the Mandrill who makes a WeCanRuleTogether offer. If the {{PC}}s refuse or even 'hesitate', Mendrill orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner. If the heroes accept his offer, Mendrill says "You agree too quickly. You therefore can't be trusted," and then orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner.

* ButThouMust:In the supplement ''Uncanny X-Men'' boxed set "Adventure Book" in the chapter titled "Nightmare in New Guinea". The {{PC}}s are at an audience with the Mandrill who makes a WeCanRuleTogether offer. If the PCs refuse or even 'hesitate', Mendrill orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner. If the heroes accept his offer, Mendrill says "You agree too quickly. You therefore can't be trusted," and then orders his henchwomen to attack and take them prisoner.