Review of X-Men Roster Book

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The first major supplement for the new Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game, and I have to say that I'm a tad non-plussed. The book is fairly comprehensive in it's covering of the X-troops (though die hard fans will note some absences), it also does a fairly unbalanced job of it.

To start with the art - a big number in any Comic based RPG. It is very much the new toonier more anime style of marvel art. If you like it great - I admit to being ambivalent about the whole matter. Many of the pictures are quite nice - at least giving a good impression of the character, but an unfortunatly high number of them could use some serious work. Overall, however, I'll give the art a thumbs up.

The physical format follows the trade paper back size of the main game - though it is more sturdily bound and printed on high quality semi-gloss paper, and is rather a nice looking book. The colors are all sharp and crisp, and the layout well done.

The book starts out with a brief discussion of what Mutants in the marvel universe are, and goes into a quick history of each of the major X-teams, focusing heavily on current events (Thus gen-x gets as much page space as teh orriginal X-Men do). After that initial sample the rest of the book is taken up by character's - a vast number of characters getting thier own full page write up, history, personality, stats and all. Several less important characters (most of the Morlocks) get only breif stat write ups.

All in all the book is fairly well done - but there are so many glaring errors in the stats (when did Psylocke become a telekenetic?) that I have a hard time swallowing it.

Still, it's probably not going to bother non purists to much, and the book does make a fair jumping off point - it is, afterall, easier to tweak existing entries than to make your own.

Style: 4 (Classy and well done)
Substance: 2 (Sparse)