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.