Marvel to Launch Official 'MARVEL MULTIVERSE' Tabletop Role-Playing Game in 2022

Matt Forbeck announced on Twitter that he’s working on a new in-house D616 Marvel RPG due for a 2022 release! It looks like there will be an open playtest.



What’s the D617 System? “… the all-new D616 System, an accessible and easy-to-learn system for newcomers to tabletop RPGs and a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop role-playing games on the market. Use Might, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic to win the day, and discover your true abilities as you face impossible odds!”

Marvel to Launch Official 'MARVEL MULTIVERSE' Tabletop Role-Playing Game in 2022

Use the all-new D616 game system to embody your favorite Super Heroes and Super Villains like never before!

www.marvel.com

 

[Greg K]

I don't specifically need random, or point buy.
I do specifically want a system that implements some balance in the game, and doesn't shift that burden entirely on the GM's shoulders making them into the villain who has to personally implement all limits. Let a system do some of that work, please.

Also, modeling only works if you start out with a complete image of what you want in your head. It fails to provide guidance or inspiration to the player.

I acknowledged to another poster that it might not have been user-friendly for some people. However, that is not the same as not having character creation. As for balance,I had enough people with actual play experiene tell me that the system balances characters in play and works for having Hawkeye and Black Widow on a team with Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk. Similarly, I was told that a street level character could hold their own in a team-up with someone with all d12 powers in power set.

 

[THEMNGMNT]

I'm just about to finish my first mini-campaign of Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. It's fantastic. I'm a bit shocked at the criticism of it in this thread.

On rpg.net, Cam Banks noted that M.A.R.V.E.L. is just ASERIP without Fighting.

Hoping that this is a cool game!

 

[Von Ether]

A d6+d16 wouldbe the same TN ranges as d20.

But two dice would make a bell curve, a very flat one between the results of 7 to 17. Bell curves and leveled advancement is ... interesting.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

It's wild no one's mad that a Disney company is charging to playtest a game.

Paizo charged to playtest Pathfinder, one or both editions, I don't remember for sure. And WotC charged $20 to playtest Eberron. We would have never gotten the hardcover for Eberron if enough people had not bought and tried the $20 PDF.

 

[darjr]

Paizo charged to playtest Pathfinder, one or both editions, I don't remember for sure. And WotC charged $20 to playtest Eberron. We would have never gotten the hardcover for Eberron if enough people had not bought and tried the $20 PDF.

Eh... uh...

While I don’t have a big issue with paying for that marvel play test, I don’t, the Eberron book was more of a test product and less an alpha or beta playtest.

but point taken

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

I acknoweldged to another poster that it might not have been user-friendly for some people. However, that is not the same as not having character creation. As for balance,I had enough people with actual play experiene tell me that the system balances characters in play and works for having Hawkeye and Black Widow on a team with Thor, Iron Man and the Hulk. Similarly, I was told that a street level character could hold their own in a team-up with someone with all d12 powers in power set.

By "balance" there I think he meant maintaining that balance and not letting someone design a broken character
It moved maintaining balancing onto the GM who had to say "no, you can't have a power that does X" and made them the bad guy
The book literally says:

 

[Umbran]

But they also had books announced and ready to print - IIRC I remember people talking about books they had written, had submitted for publication, and had been paid for (particularly the Annihilation Event Book), but were not published.

Whether they were ready to print does not mean it was Marvel's action. Licenses typically have yearly/periodic fees, due on some date. If MWP didn't want to pay the fee, their license would end, and they'd not have rights to print further materials past some date, ready or not.

It sounds like a choice in which they avoided the sunk cost fallacy - what they had already paid to creators does not mean they'd earn money back from continuing forward.

 

[Umbran]

Similarly, I was told that a street level character could hold their own in a team-up with someone with all d12 powers in power set.

While I can speak for myself, Disgruntled Hobbit got it correct.

I am well aware of how Cortex (the base system in question) generally plays. While someone might "hold their own" alongside a nominally more powerful character, it still leads to spotlight management issues - few players want to be playing second fiddle all the time.

Now, when the game really was primarily presented to play pre-generated canonical characters in published scenarios of storylines already known to the players, I can accept that this isn't a major flaw. IIRC, they didn't even advise that the same person plays the same character scenario after scenario. If Iron Man is in the game, you play him in one adventure, but in another, someone else in your group might play him. Having no character ownership is one way to handle power disparity.

But, I suspect "build and play your own" is the approach players would really prefer, and then the modeling approach placing all balance responsibility on the GM is simply not great design. It puts burden on the GM they do not want, and leaves people who don't have a fully-formed concept to model without guidance.

The game played well. But the character generation advice really wasn't up to snuff, even by the standards of the day, and I'm pretty sure it would fly even less well now. I am happy if it worked for you, but I suspect this point, and the laser-like focus on publishing previous comics events as the primary adventure offerings, hobbled the success of the game.

And while I would not expect MWP or Mr. Banks to ever say otherwise, it really does sound like a decision to drive a business model that turned out to not work very well.

 

[Greg K]

The game played well. But the character generation advice really wasn't up to snuff, even by the standards of the day, and I'm pretty sure it would fly even less well now. I am happy if it worked for you, but I suspect this point, and the laser-like focus on publishing previous comics events as the primary adventure offerings, hobbled the success of the game.

And while I would not expect MWP or Mr. Banks to ever say otherwise, it really does sound like a decision to drive a business model that turned out to not work very well.

Ultmately, we decided not to play it and continue our campaign using M&M 2e without trying MHR. The issue for us was not character creation of new characters. Once I understood how certain powers from other games were handled by specific SFX, I converted several heroes from the M&M homebrew campaign I was running. The issue was the Event based format (I strongly dislike Marvel events), unlockables, and the implemenation of milestones.

These days, Icons: Assemble and BASH:UE are the first two systems I would choose for supers (well, BASH: UE will be of the two once they finish the last two Awesome Power supplements). However, I still want to give MHR a try (thanks to a website that discussed using the game for non-Event based games) and it the first system to which I would turn for a certain style of game/campaign depending upon the players.

 

[JEB]

It's wild no one's mad that a Disney company is charging to playtest a game.

I'm not mad about it, but I also don't have any intention of paying a company to help playtest their game, then paying a second time for the final product. I'll certainly keep tabs on the development and am looking forward to the final product, though...

And I wouldn't be surprised, between the thinly veiled D&D six stats, the references to "a natural evolution for those familiar with the most popular tabletop role-playing games on the market", and the unparalleled current popularity of D&D 5E, if this is very D&D-esque in structure (maybe even including class archetypes). Though personally I'm hoping for something more like Mutants & Masterminds (basically classless D&D 3E).