First: The new Marvel Superheroes game. I keep seeing it on the shelf at the gaming store and it beckons to me but I have resisted thus far. All the talk of stones and such worries me some. I have a lot of the old school marvel games but I just want to know is the new stuff worth it?

Second: A friend keeps wanting me to try BESM and I have thus far resisted. He keeps telling me I am a perfect person to play a Jurai prince but I have no clue on that. Anyone have experience with this system?

On a side note. Recently gave Champions 5th Ed. a try and it isn't to bad. It seems to be a bit more complex than needed but overall fun.

Marvel,is too pansy to be hard core,and to hard core to be pansy.The morals are either not black and white enough to just sit back,and be good guys.And at the same time,not grey enough to have any real debates of moral realism.

So, it's not four color,and doesn't have shining heros.But at the same time,the things it has bad guys,that are evil because,evil is fun!

I haven't played the latest incarnation of MSH, but I'm not that impressed with what I've read about it. Diceless games always intrigue me, and unfortunately no group that I've played with for any period of time has ever been willing to try one out. It received decent to good reviews on Amazon, so it's sort of a toss up to it's value.

Hopefully Endeavor will come in and answer some of your questions about BESM, as that's a game I know he enjoys.

I never cared for Champions. We played around with it way back in the day, but I always prefered the old Marvel system to it, primarily because of the complexity that you mentioned.

Well there are several advantages to BESM.

1: Easy to learn fast-baced rules that can have quite alot of detail.

2: Compatibility with every genere imaginable without needing new rulebooks/sourcebooks.

3: All you need is 2d6.

Of course, I find myself being a Silver Age Sentinels player. It uses the same system as BESM, but more complex.

Of course, the Tri-Stat system is WAY customizable, and if you're looking for what you could call the "ground floor" of BESM, and SAS, check out TriStat dX

Okay, that's enough pimping...

Diceless systems can work quite well, it's just that conflict resolution starts to become more strategic.

With the random factor of dice removed, it means that you're effectively down to resource management - do you want to use up all your resources now, to take down this annoying punk, or are you going to wait for something big to pop up before you unleash the big guns?

Most systems have a combination of Dice rolling and resource management, going diceless just makes resource management that much more important.

I should know. Nobilis is a Diceless system (why should you roll if you're a god, after all?). The switch to resource management can be accomplished very easily.

But all this said, I've yet to play Marvel Super Heroes, so I've no idea exactly how their system works. But don't disregard it simply because it's diceless. Diceless can rock da house in a big way.