Check Out This Preview of the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game

On April 20th, the 120-page softcover playtest book for the new Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game by Matt Forbeck will be available to purchase for $9.99; the final game is due to be released next year, in 2023.

Marvel has revealed some of the playtest book, in which you use the new d616 system and profiles for Spider-Man, Captain America, Captain Marvel, Wolverine and more, in an introductory scenario called Enter: Hydra. The scenario involves a hostage situation at the Howard & Maria Stark Center for Galactic History.

Marvel Multiverse RPG Alternate Covers

Marvel has revealed some alternate covers for its upcoming Marvel Multiverse RPG (written by Matt Forbeck). The new covers are by Peach Momoko and Logan Lubera, and the standard cover is by Iban Coello. The game uses a new "D616" system and will be released next year with a playtest book. "“…...

www.enworld.org

The d616 system uses three d6s. Designer Matt Forbeck says "If you get a 1 on the Marvel die, you get a fantastic result and something amazing happens. If you get 6 on both of the other dice—or a 6-1-6 result—that’s an ultimate fantastic roll, which is even better."

The words MARVEL contains initials for the game's six ability scores -- Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic. Each character has an archetype, such as a striker or blaster, and the archetype combines with the abilities to give bigger attack rolls.

Here's a quick look at Spider-Man! For reference a normal human stat is between -4 and +4.

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Get a First Look at the New Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game

Plus an exclusive Q&A with game designer Matt Forbeck!

www.marvel.com

 

[dshuppert]

Edited post

 

[dshuppert]

This just all looks like they've ignored the past 20-30 years of game design and have settled on a very 90's kind of system. It's really looking bad so far.

I couldn't agree more. I REALLY wanted to like this... but, having read through the entire playtest now and even played a couple of short sessions, I have very little interest left in this. It's crunchy, slow, and doesn't feel "super-heroic" at all. This feels like a huge step backward (like 20 - 30 years)! I'll stick with MHRP. Even with all its problems, the Cortex+ system is lightyears ahead of this. MHRP played like a comic book. This plays worse than the early Palladium system (sorry to those who like Palladium. I like their settings, just not the system).

That said, a good group and GM can make nearly any game fun. Even so, none of us have enjoyed this. We enjoy crunchy systems for some games, but not games that should be fast-moving (like a superhero or maybe Star Wars game). We'll stick it out for a while and see how things develop though. As we get better with the system, I'm sure some attitudes will change.

One of our players (a 22-year-old, autistic, male) pointed out that Marvel will likely be the game that introduces many newcomers to the hobby. This is not the system you want for that. The whole 616-thing feels so forced in that it's almost funny. All the math that must be done for the simplest action will run many players off or bore them to sleep.

FASERIP ran way better than this too.

 

[MGibster]

FASERIP ran way better than this too.

FASERIP for the win! I still haven't played a superhero game I've enjoyed more than I did TSR's Marvel line.

 

[dshuppert]

FASERIP was pretty awesome!

 

[dshuppert]

Given that people really enjoyed playing many 90s RPG systems, I don't see how this is an issue by itself.

We enjoyed games in the 70s and 80s too. But that doesn't mean that we should ignore all those years of advancements in game design. That was all he was saying. If we want nostalgia, we already have a Marvel RPG from the 80s and 90s.

 

[Greg K]

I'll take Icons: Assembled, Marvel SAGA, MHR, Bash:UE, and even the original Marvel Game over this Marvel Universe game (which, imo, appears will rank among the worst superhero games being just just above Superhero 2044 and Foundation)

 

[SteveC]

I'm not going to lie: I was looking forward to this but it's starting to look like a train wreck.

The fact that characters at different power levels have trouble interacting is something that should have been dealt with. Marvel characters of different tiers interact all the time. They battle each other all the time. Looks like this will need some major work to salvage it. I just wonder why no one thought to answer these questions before people had eyes on it.

 

[ART!]

I now own a copy, so hopefully I'll have time to look at it this evening and having something to add to the conversation here...

 

[Dr. Bull]

It looks familiar, but (to me) not in a good way. Derived stats, movement expressed as an abstract number then as a secondary quantity (that probably definitely isn't just FASERIP's Areas). Numbers that are modifiers that also seem to be other numbers. Power-trees. Roll and add modifers then add another modifier. Mechanically restrictive "classes"/archetypes. That's what I'm taking from reading the feature, and while I don't mind familiar terms/mechanics in-and-of-themselves, it just all seems a bit clumsy and clunky in its implementation.

I do hope to be corrected by the final document, however!

Jamumu:

I think your assessment is spot-on. I've now read most of the playtest (April 20th), and I agree with everything you've written.

- Dr. Bull

 

[Dr. Bull]

I'm an old, old man and I was making a feeble joke referencing the names of attributes from TSR's version of Marvel Superheroes from the 1980s. Attributes from lowest to highest were Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift X, Shift Y, Shift Z, Class 1000, Class 3000, and Class 5000. At least that's what I think it was. Spider-Man had an Amazing Agility and an Incredible Strength. I think Captain America had a Remarkable Strength which was considered peak human.

I am old as well. I think your memory is quite good. You have identified something that this new game has not: quantifiable traits/abilities.

 

[Dr. Bull]

Darn. I hoped this was going to be a strong game with a useable system of skills and powers. After reading it for the second time, I have more doubts than hopes.

ICONS managed to capture more in fewer pages. M&M, Champions, and FASERIP make more logical sense. The crunch justifies the flexibility.

How are powers ranked? Does Wolverine heal at the same rate as Deadpool? How fast is fast? Can you build a wizard from this system? Can you create an invisible speedster? How does a genius design gadgets?

What should we do? Encourage Marvel to overhaul of the system?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

What should we do? Encourage Marvel to overhaul of the system?

Given this is a preview and effectively a playtest, a large amount of negative feedback from people who bought it about the level of crunch and general "forced" nature of the system seems like it would be the only thing likely to achieve much.

It is disappointing. FASERIP got so much right the first time around. Indeed all the previous Marvel RPGs got more right than this - FASERIP, MSHAG, and MSRP.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Do you think the designers went with the 'Marvel Die' to roll 1 instead of 6 to avoid something super happening on 6-6-6, thus avoiding the satanic backlash?

Nobody mentioned the hidden Easter Egg of Spider-Man being in the new Fantastic 4 movie, since he is listed as being part of that group.

Spider-Man has been associated with the FF since Amazing Spider-Man #1, when he broke into the Baxter Building to try and join the team. He was a full member during the brief period about 10 years ago when the Human Torch was dead.

 

[Morrus]

Darn. I hoped this was going to be a strong game with a useable system of skills and powers. After reading it for the second time, I have more doubts than hopes.

ICONS managed to capture more in fewer pages. M&M, Champions, and FASERIP make more logical sense. The crunch justifies the flexibility.

How are powers ranked? Does Wolverine heal at the same rate as Deadpool? How fast is fast? Can you build a wizard from this system? Can you create an invisible speedster? How does a genius design gadgets?

What should we do? Encourage Marvel to overhaul of the system?

Participate in the playtest process, I guess. That's what it's for.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I for one, dearly hope that Marvel doesn't decide to bow to the sea of narrativists out there and make a game more like MHRP. I think this is a solid base for a supers game. At least if they do cave in I have the copy I bought yesterday.

 

[Greg K]

I for one, dearly hope that Marvel doesn't decide to bow to the sea of narrativists out there and make a game more like MHRP. I think this is a solid base for a supers game. At least if they do cave in I have the copy I bought yesterday.

While I like a lot about MHR (based on a reading), my favorites are Icons, Marvel SAGA, BASH: UE, Mutants & Masterminds 2e. Personally, as I wrote earlier, based upon the previews I have seen and the discussions I have read t I have read, I think the mechanics place it among the worst superhero rpgs that I have seen. It is not Enforcers, Foundation, or Superhero 2044 bad, However, I do consider barely a step above those games- ranking along the lines of both Heroes & Heroines and Heroes Unlimited: Revised and the worst of the Marvel rpgs (yes, even below MURPG with the stones).

 

[Jer]

I think it's an interesting experiment. Supers games typically try to go for some kind of disassociated mechanics for power systems because trying to cover the vast swath of possible superpowers is viewed as too unwieldy - to cover all possible powers you can define a handful of possible effects and then have players "theme" those effects to be what they want to express as a power. The ur-example is Champions, but Mutants and Masterminds and Icons both follow this pattern. Then you have the more narrative approaches like Masks or Sentinels or MHRP where the powers are really abstracted, which also allows you to represent lots of powers with a small amount of rules.

I haven't seen anyone try to make a supers game without one of those two approaches to powers in a while. Big long power lists went out of style, and it's interesting to see someone try to bring them back with a different take on it. I'm hoping to get a few of my regular group together to try it out - I've got my Marvel Heroscape minis and Heroclix minis that we can dig out and try - it seems like the kind of game that would benefit from minis instead of theater of the mind, even though the rules say it could be played TotM. I wish they included some supervillains in the playtest tho - I'm going to have to make some with the playtest rules alone to have a real test of the system. (I'm also curious to see how the dice system works - it seems interesting on paper, I want to see how it works in practice).

I doubt that it'll replace Icons with the regular group - that's been our supers game of choice for a while now - but it's such a weird almost retro approach that I'm really curious to see how it plays at the table.

 

[Anon Adderlan]

Participate in the playtest process, I guess. That's what it's for.

Not really.

The only feedback our rodent overlords are interested in is how many buy the playtest, and how many participate in feedback. Everything else it irrelevant. They're already locked into major design choices which won't be changing no matter how poorly they work. And contrary to intuition people who pay to participate are more likely to continue doing so regardless of how satisfied they are with the initial product.

The design priorities are as soulless as them come. Like hey, how about we use the #Marvel logo for critical successes, because that would condition folks to feel excited whenever they see it? How about we have the stats spell out #Marvel, because that's what #FASERIP does? How about we have classes and levels, because that's what Dungeons & Dragons does? How about we push folks into using our digital tools with unnecessarily convoluted and pedantic charts and power trees, because virtual tabletops and actual plays are all the rage? Because we don't know what makes these successful, only that they are.

Ultimately they're attempting to compete with Mutants & Masterminds, which is already the most popular supers RPG on #Roll20 and only growing. What they fail to realize is unless Green Ronin pulls a 4e they will never achieve a similar market share because there are already established products which fill that niche better than they do.

Expect the final product to be virtually identical, sport multiple variant covers, be aggressively tied into digital tools, and then silently disappear once #Disney discovers it isn't making enough money for them. Again.

 

[Morrus]

Not really.

The only feedback our rodent overlords are interested in is how many buy the playtest, and how many participate in feedback. Everything else it irrelevant. They're already locked into major design choices which won't be changing no matter how poorly they work. And contrary to intuition people who pay to participate are more likely to continue doing so regardless of how satisfied they are with the initial product.

The design priorities are as soulless as them come. Like hey, how about we use the #Marvel logo for critical successes, because that would condition folks to feel excited whenever they see it? How about we have the stats spell out #Marvel, because that's what #FASERIP does? How about we have classes and levels, because that's what Dungeons & Dragons does? How about we push folks into using our digital tools with unnecessarily convoluted and pedantic charts and power trees, because virtual tabletops and actual plays are all the rage? Because we don't know what makes these successful, only that they are.

Ultimately they're attempting to compete with Mutants & Masterminds, which is already the most popular supers RPG on #Roll20 and only growing. What they fail to realize is unless Green Ronin pulls a 4e they will never achieve a similar market share because there are already established products which fill that niche better than they do.

Expect the final product to be virtually identical, sport multiple variant covers, be aggressively tied into digital tools, and then silently disappear once #Disney discovers it isn't making enough money for them. Again.

OK.

 

[aramis erak]

I for one, dearly hope that Marvel doesn't decide to bow to the sea of narrativists out there and make a game more like MHRP. I think this is a solid base for a supers game. At least if they do cave in I have the copy I bought yesterday.

For whatever reason, in the last week, Amazon cancelled my preorder (without notice!).
For the reason of the various descriptions of it, I'm almost glad.