Marvels Multiverse RPG: Have You GM/Played It and Your Opinions

[overgeeked]

I ran a one-shot playtest of this with the retail release of the rules. It's not good. Even with the updates they made after the alpha/beta release and feedback, it's clunky and overblown. Just about any other version of Marvel RPG would be preferable to this one.

The power structure is overly complicated. Power selection/creation is a nightmare of feat trees with prerequisites and rank (i.e. level restrictions). It approaches the complexity of Mutants & Mastermind's power creation but offers almost none of the flexibility.

The dice are fine but weird. You want to roll high, except rolling low on that one special d6 is good. The six on that die counts as a six...and so does the one...but the one is a super-duper six, giving you the best result possible. I know they're going for "fun synergy" with the 616 universe and couldn't come out with the d666 game system...so the d616 game system it is. It's a novel dice system and the novelty quickly wears off.

The GM advice is pretty good for modern games and superhero games specifically. Not great though and not much of it.

Combat is as involved as 5E combat with more maths. To hit is based on your d616 roll + ability modifier vs TN. You get dis/advantage on dice as per 5E, adding extra d6s and taking the lower/higher based on circumstances. The target number is based on the target's abilities. If you hit, damage is based on the "Marvel die"...that special d6. Again, the 1 counts as a 6...but so does the 6. You then multiply that by some number. You then add your ability modifier to that. The result of all that is your actual damage. Armor lowers the multiplier to your damage...so you need to know that before doing all the maths or you have to do it all again. Getting a crit, rolling a 1 on the special d6, doubles your damage. But this doubling comes at the end, after the first multiplication and the addition of your ability modifier. It's weirdly convoluted.

Most of the art is stellar.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I had no clue that Demiplane existed until a month or two ago, I dont subscribe to Marvel Unlimited, and I don't remember it even being available at my local comic shop, so I was unaware of any of this.

Some comic shops weren't aware of it either when I originally went around asking about the playtest book. I found my copy at Barnes & Noble.

And watch out for Demiplane. They are expanding/upgrading their offerings slowly, but I think they will end up a pretty big player in the digital space.

 

[damiller]

Some of my players and I have test run the game in prep for an upcoming campaign.

My quick review: It doesn't bring much innovative to the table (or superhero rpgs) and I am fine with that. if you've played 5e you aren't going to notice much difference in the feel of play (in terms of Action/Movement/Reaction, and the idea of action economy - though it seems in Marvel you wont' end up with MORE actions as you advance or through powers/traits).

Longer Review: The game system is simple to implement in play, building a character is close in difficulty to 5e (but a breeze if you have either Roll20, Demiplane, or Foundry (?) ). The base mechanic works, but is not spectacular.

Ive found that when players get a success with a Marvel (a 1 on a d6, but read as a 6) it generates a nice "fiero" moment. I like that in games, and the only other one I've experienced that consistently in is Modiphius' 2d20 line.

As a GM I like not having to set Target Numbers. You can in this game, but the base difficulty is already figured and you just add modifiers if you want. The other system I know that does this is The One Ring 2e. It seems to me that the probabilities fall in line with the Target Numbers, but I don't play RPGs to do maths so I dont' really care, they feel good enough for me to eyeball.

Combat is swingy. With the use of things like Mighty a Rank 1 character can be hard to defeat. There are some guides to adjudicate building encounters, but again, not that useful since this game isn't about balancing numbers (or powers, or anything really). Again though, that isn't really my focus, I want a game that has a serviceable combat system for those times we get into combat. As the GM I am going to have to tailor the combats, in combat, to the players so that maximum fun is achieved.

In our combats using this combat matrix it was easy (if pitted against characters below their rank) or it required the players to use their Karma/Focus/Powers in creative and interesting ways (characters their rank or higher), and nearly ran out of them.

I like the fact that they have both Health and Focus (Mental hit points) and that many of the powers require Focus to use (so they can't just be spammed).

Overall I give Marvel Multiverse a B. I've only found a Supers game that is better than this Champions Now, and it gets a C because of the @#!(# writing style chosen and just general rules assumptions made.

Take away: If you want a well crafted tactical combat simulator (5e?), this aint it. If you want a baseline system that as a GM you have to interpret (OSR)*, this is more like it.

*okay, call it handwavium, but as a GM I am not that interested in a rule for everything, I like rules for anything Which I think this ruleset provides.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Haven't played or run it myself (or even read it, since no PDF version seems to exist), but none of the reports I've seen impressed me.

 

[aramis erak]

I have read enough of both the playtest and the core book that I can say the final release is so much better than the playtest material.

As for disliking the playtest not being free, do you also hate all the other companies, such as Paizo, who also charged for their playtests?

For Star Wars and Pathfinder, the playtests felt far more developed than Marvel felt

Never said I hated them, just that to me it's in somewhat poor taste to charge to playtest the product they are developing. In this day and age, I don't see a need for them to print a book and charge for it when a free pdf on their website could've done the same thing.

The need was that Disney doesn't distinguish pdfs from any other computer program... and thus PDFs are part of the computer games license, not the tabletop/books market.

This is partly because the PDF standard is basically post script with additional features; post script is a Turing-complete programming language, and is one of several that are allowed within PDFs; the basic page functionality is, however, purely done in post script. So, PDFs really are programs, run on one or more virtual machines.

It's an understandable but very narrow view.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Its also a good way to not get any money from people who don't routinely buy physical product these days.

 

[Lord Shark]

I have read enough of both the playtest and the core book that I can say the final release is so much better than the playtest material.

As for disliking the playtest not being free, do you also hate all the other companies, such as Paizo, who also charged for their playtests?

If you're referring to the Pathfinder 2E playtest, that was free. Paizo also printed and sold a physical copy of the playtest rules, but that was aimed at collectors and completists; you did not have to buy it to participate in the playtest.

 

[R_J_K75]

I ran a one-shot playtest of this with the retail release of the rules. It's not good. Even with the updates they made after the alpha/beta release and feedback, it's clunky and overblown. Just about any other version of Marvel RPG would be preferable to this one.

The power structure is overly complicated. Power selection/creation is a nightmare of feat trees with prerequisites and rank (i.e. level restrictions). It approaches the complexity of Mutants & Mastermind's power creation but offers almost none of the flexibility.

The dice are fine but weird. You want to roll high, except rolling low on that one special d6 is good. The six on that die counts as a six...and so does the one...but the one is a super-duper six, giving you the best result possible. I know they're going for "fun synergy" with the 616 universe and couldn't come out with the d666 game system...so the d616 game system it is. It's a novel dice system and the novelty quickly wears off.

The GM advice is pretty good for modern games and superhero games specifically. Not great though and not much of it.

Combat is as involved as 5E combat with more maths. To hit is based on your d616 roll + ability modifier vs TN. You get dis/advantage on dice as per 5E, adding extra d6s and taking the lower/higher based on circumstances. The target number is based on the target's abilities. If you hit, damage is based on the "Marvel die"...that special d6. Again, the 1 counts as a 6...but so does the 6. You then multiply that by some number. You then add your ability modifier to that. The result of all that is your actual damage. Armor lowers the multiplier to your damage...so you need to know that before doing all the maths or you have to do it all again. Getting a crit, rolling a 6 on the special d6, doubles your damage. But this doubling comes at the end, after the first multiplication and the addition of your ability modifier. It's weirdly convoluted.

Most of the art is stellar.

Thanks this is the info I was looking for. I had trouble following your text so if thats any indication of the actuall rules...Anyone want to buy a discounted Core Books and some others. I hate thst modern RPG design is bogged down with superfluous rules and hundreds of options. I just want a quick system to play, have fun without needing an I didact memory. Good advice thnaks!!

 

[R_J_K75]

Some comic shops weren't aware of it either when I originally went around asking about the playtest book. I found my copy at Barnes & Noble.

And watch out for Demiplane. They are expanding/upgrading their offerings slowly, but I think they will end up a pretty big player in the digital space.

Im not social media guy so I miss 7/8 of news unless its posted on EN World so this all flew under the radar for me.

 

[R_J_K75]

The need was that Disney doesn't distinguish pdfs from any other computer program... and thus PDFs are part of the computer games license, not the tabletop/books market.

This is partly because the PDF standard is basically post script with additional features; post script is a Turing-complete programming language, and is one of several that are allowed within PDFs; the basic page functionality is, however, purely done in post script. So, PDFs really are programs, run on one or more virtual machines.

It's an understandable but very narrow view.

I appreciate the explanation; these were things I didn't know. In my mind I thought it was a matter of creating a text doc then converting it to a pdf. Never knew there was more programming involved behind the scenes. I piss and moan sometimes without being properly informed, so I apologize.