In the minds of the designers, a dice-based RPG is clearly one where Spider-Man could fall to his death at any moment based on a bad roll. The typical “what is an RPG?” intro seems to spend as much time making subtle jabs at traditional, dice-based RPGs as it does explaining what RPGs are for new players. This is certainly made apparent almost instantly on reading the rules. I actually seem to recall this as part of the marketing promotion at the time: they were using unknown designers without any preconceived bias toward making a standard RPG. Perhaps Marvel thought this was for the best, as none of them were “name” designers Dan Gelber worked on various Paranoia editions (and little else) and none of the others turned up in a search of RPG credits (before or since). The title credits page is simply a list of the Marvel principles, with the actual staff that worked on the book squeezed in at the very back just before the appendix. The interesting thing about the MURPG is that it set the precedent for Marvel’s later move to exert extreme control over its properties, forgoing being licensed to another RPG producer in favor of in-house development.
With a massive surge in the gamer population generated by D20, it was a no-brainer to re-enter a market where the Marvel Super Heroes RPG had previously done well relative to the last surge in D&D. Spider-Man and X-Men had just proved that the Marvel comic properties had a moneymaking role outside of the four-color page, and X-Men Legends was in development and soon to be a very well received video game compared to previous Marvel, well, shovelware. 2003 was the beginning of the era in which Marvel began really start milking its licenses.
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