MARVELous Memories

If memory serves, my true introduction into roleplaying games was 1986.  That would have made me 11 years and in 6th grade, which matches a lot of what I remember.  My soon to be best friend in the whole world was 2 years older and was heavily into RPGs, including AD&D, Star Frontiers, and even Battletech!  But he was also into a game I had vague familiarity with:  Marvel Super Heroes, the first RPG I ever bought.  To really date myself, I bought it at a KayBee Toys in the mall.  I remember pouring over that Advanced Set box, trying to understand it all.  I got character creation fairly easily and had a ball with random generation of tons of characters.  The rest was a little more complex without someone to bounce off of.  Soon thereafter, I was invited into the inner sanctum of my older friends and fully initiated into RPGs; we had some great D&D and AD&D campaigns (including Temple of Elemental Evil), but the MSH campaign is still probably my favorite.

Eventually, I wore my books out.  They were falling apart and I had moved on to things like Vampire, Star Wars, and Champions.  I really can't recall what happened to that first box set; I may very well have gotten rid of it around my first marriage in 1999.  But eventually, I remember missing it.  Oh, I had bought the Marvel SAGA when it came out, and actually played it with my first wife and a friend.  But I missed my old, first love.  As luck would have it, sometime during that time period between my first marriage and divorce, I found a used copy that was damn near flawless.  Complete, intact, barely used.  I can't remember the price, but I know it was not much; probably between 10 and 20 dollars in the early 2000s.

Then, I met my second wife.  Sometime after we got married, probably during moving in together, I realized I lacked the space to keep all these wonderful childhood books.  So I purged; HARD.  Gone were the AD&D books I first bought (orange spine PHB, DMG, and Fiend Folio); all of my Fading Suns books (basically everything ever published); and so much more.  And gone too, was my precious first love:  Marvel Super Heroes Advanced Set.

Until now.

The box is not in as good a condition as my previous one, but there are no tears.

The books are dang near flawless; a little aging, some rust on the staples, but they really don't look like they were read much.

Pretty sure this is the original map, which was meant to be connected to the map in the Original Set.

All of the standups are here, uncut.

And the character cards, uncut!

And this little blast from the past....But wait, I think I see something else under there!

And this!

That's right; I got the two rulebooks from the Starter Traveller box (another casualty of my purge).  No, no adventures or maps, but really, these two books are sufficient to run Traveller forever.

Yep, it certainly did just get better.  As I told my wife, this is the last time I'm buying this.  All of this was acquired for the paltry sum of $35.00.  Sometimes, the gaming gods smile on me.