tl;dr

If you're into a more old-school or freeform style that doesn't get bogged down with too many rules, Astonishing Super Heroes is an immaculately clean super hero game and is definitely worth the $5.

Overview

Astonishing Super Heroes (ASH) is a retroclone of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes (MSH) with some minor changes for the sake of streamlining and modernization.

To sum up the game in 2 sentences, ASH is a lean but comprehensive d100 game that utilizes a color-coded matrix table called the Universal Table or "Uni-Table". A Character's Abilities and Powers have "Ranks"; the better the rank, the lower the roll needed to succeed on the Uni-Table.

Using the Uni-Table will take some adjusting for new groups, but ultimately I think it adds a lot of flexibility and variable power levels without the need for a laundry list of bonus/penalty modifiers that some of ASH's contemporaries use.

After spending some time studying the differences between ASH and MSH, I believe ASH's most notable innovations include:

• A revamped experience system (AKA "Karma") that allows for a broader set of incentive goals for your character.

• Brand new Social Interaction rules for when punching isn't necessarily the answer.

Feedback

• The real star of ASH, in my humble opinion, is the superb layout. The rules are presented in a crystal clear way which makes ASH significantly more approachable than its ancestors.

• My only piece of constructive criticism is that there should be an alternate Uni-Table for folks with Red/Green color-blindness. Maybe Blue/Yellow/Red? Or White/Gray/Black? The alternate table could just exist as a downloadable resource and get a brief mention/hyperlink in the book.

Conclusion

In summary, ASH is awesome. I'm super excited to try it out and see how it runs. Great job to all and excelsior!

Tim and his team have really made something to be proud of here. If you like Supers RPGs, GET IT. This is a really fantastic product with impressive clarity and effect of presentation.

I am new to FASERIP but not new to Supers RPGs. I'll go through some of the things I appreciated:

First, Safety Tools & Session Zero are nicely documented. These are new concepts and they are covered well. In my line of work it's become clear that ethics frameworks are a really important thing to make clear when teams get together. They don't have to be a drag, and they can help everybody move beyond huge pitfalls that could easily derail a campaign.

The explanations provided are VERY clear from the start, it's really quite impressive.

The design and illustrations are evocative and pique the imagination. I found myself stopping to think out some of the story concepts they brought to mind.

Summary sections are a big win for this book. Summary sections are not often found in TTRPG books, and in this case they are very helpful. You can't miss much of what's important, and if I understand correctly, using the Summary sections to peruse the books gives new learners a +2R bonus for devouring the content.

The core gameplay mechanics are simple, but include some really interesting additional aspects providing narrative depth.

Some additional included downloads are the Uni-table PDF (a chart to see how well your actions went), the Uni-Table and System Reference, and the Spectacular Origins PDF which goes into some additional options which look really useful, such as "Narrative Character Creation" which is a concept-focused character build method in which one's Primary Abilities "can be eyeballed," which I admit I sometimes like to be acknowledged directly by RPG authors.

Random Character Creation is also in there, and if you like random table crunch, you'll really appreciate this section which has just short of 30 random tables! It looks detailed in a fun and engaging way. I look forward to the upcoming Point Buy, Archetype, and Life Path systems the author mentioned as well.

GM tools and extra profiles are also here.

"Profiles" make a lot of narrative sense and I look forward to trying them out.

The rest of the rules and provisions are also very clear. The Gear, Powers, and Talents sections provide generous and well-organized resources for gameplay.

Overall it's a generous provision that ought to please any gamer. I bought the softcover POD and it is really nice to have. I'm excited to run some tests and play the game. Thanks to Tim & the team behind this new RPG, I look forward to whatever you may have planned for the future.