I'm a little late to this topic, but I am happy to see that Mighty Protectors can be discussed here. Personally, as a 'sequel' to V&V, i feel like it should be discussed by those of us who loved the original.
As a teenager in the 1980s, I played both V&V and Champions extensively. I wouldn't personally say that Champions was "sub par" compared to V&V. V&V was much quicker to learn, and character creation was simpler. But Champions had that then-novel point buy character creation system. It took a lot of time, but that was the trade-off. Multi-party combat in Champions could take a lot longer to resolve than in V&V. But the core mechanic of all task resolution, including combat, was actually simpler, and required reference to fewer tables. So once you knew the Hero System, and house-ruled combat to streamline it, it was every bit as playable as V&V, and in my experience was an even more playable and balanced system, actually. But that initial 'learning curve' was, no doubt, a deterrent. And the early editions of Champions featured very amateurish artwork and typewriter-like layout, which simply could not compare to V&V supplements with polished, professional artwork by Jeff Dee and Bill Willingham and Bill Reinhold and Pat Zircher, and more.
I haven't had the opportunity to play Mighty Protectors, but I bought a copy of it 6 months ago.
I havent played it because, in all the years it was delayed, I came to play a super hero RPG with my elementary school age daughter using Icons. we had a great time with it. But she has since moved on and grown, and only recently asked to play D&D with me, as she and several of her friends noiw like a show called, I think, "Stranger Things," in which the game is apparently referenced repeatedly.
So i can't comment on the playability of MP. And even if I could, I can't imagine that i would have anything insightful to add on top of Doug's feedback.
But for whatever it's worth, my own opinion is that, reading it, the game felt to me like a successor/sequel to V&V, as opposed to merely a revised new 'edition'/iteration of V&V 2.0. If anything, I would've preferred a lot more details about the MP universe. I never personally got the sense that Jeff Dee and Jack Herman set out to 'revolutionize' the state-of-the-art of super hero RPGs.
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