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

[Micah Sweet]

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.

To be fair, a lot of this looks to me like your bias in favor of very rules-light games. People have different tastes, and many of the issues you mentioned are not issues for others.

 

[aramis erak]

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.

Forums are social media, R_.

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.

Additional programming: not by the user.
From a UX (User eXperience) perspective, it´s often literally just that (" I thought it was a matter of creating a text doc then converting it to a pdf. ")
90% of PostScript's power is unused within the typical PDF. But it's still part of the Portable Document Format's specifications.

 

[R_J_K75]

Portable Document Format

You learn something new every day

 

[R_J_K75]

To be fair, a lot of this looks to me like your bias in favor of very rules-light games. People have different tastes, and many of the issues you mentioned are not issues for others.

I think you said what I was thinking when I posted this thread, but I couldn't find the correct words...is it an overly complicated system? By pursuing the book, I thought that it seemed to be, but I could be wrong

 

[damiller]

I think you said what I was thinking when I posted this thread, but I couldn't find the correct words...is it an overly complicated system? By pursuing the book, I thought that it seemed to be, but I could be wrong

I do not think it is an overly complicated system. I would say it is simplier to create characters than in 5e (just a reference point: here's another: it may take 10-20 minutes to create a Rank 1 character)

 

[R_J_K75]

I do not think it is an overly complicated system. I would say it is simplier to create characters than in 5e (just a reference point: here's another: it may take 10-20 minutes to create a Rank 1 character)

Have you read the book, how's it laid out as to...is the book linear, do I need to flip pages to find what Im looking for and how's the table of contents and the index?

 

[Micah Sweet]

I think you said what I was thinking when I posted this thread, but I couldn't find the correct words...is it an overly complicated system? By pursuing the book, I thought that it seemed to be, but I could be wrong

How one feels about complexity is subjective; it depends on what you're comfortable with and what kind of game you want to play. I would say that's about as complex as 5e, maybe a touch more in some areas. This is a level that works for me, but you might not feel the same. To be fair, I haven't played it, but I've played other games of similar complexity and enjoyed them.

 

[R_J_K75]

How one feels about complexity is subjective; it depends on what you're comfortable with and what kind of game you want to play. I would say that's about as complex as 5e, maybe a touch more in some areas. This is a level that works for me, but you might not feel the same. To be fair, I haven't played it, but I've played other games of similar complexity and enjoyed them.

I agree that the answer is subjective. I'll read it and see if the delivery sticks in my head True Believer. 5E was like reading a calculus book

 

[damiller]

Have you read the book, how's it laid out as to...is the book linear, do I need to flip pages to find what Im looking for and how's the table of contents and the index?

I have read it. Like most RPG books I find it boring. But Between the artwork, and the layout design, it was functional. The chapters are all rather short. I have not felt like it was hard to find anything that I did not understand. In fact in the back there is a glossary/index. Here you will find all the major ideas/rules in a short simple synopis, along with a page number where you will find the rule explained in more detail. I do not remember for sure, but some of the rules are explained with examples, but not all. The book is a joy to look at as others have said for the artwork alone.

edit: I didn't see you asked about the table of contents. Its okay. Its two pages long, and looks like there might be like 100 entries (10 total chapters) listed, with the average page size for each chapter looking to be around 5-6 pages (powers are the obvious outlier)

I will note again: this is not a game for people who want a tightly integrated set of rules that interact with little GM input. It is a pretty simple system that doesn't really account for the synergies between powers/traits. And it is almost certainly not "balanced". And I don't think it promises any of that at all (and honestly I dont' even know what the heck that means). It is a framework (in a lot of ways very similiar to the original TSR game) to allow you to tell superhero stories, feel like superheroes, and specifically marvel stories.

 

[R_J_K75]

I have read it. Like most RPG books I find it boring. But Between the artwork, and the layout design, it was functional. The chapters are all rather short. I have not felt like it was hard to find anything that I did not understand. In fact in the back there is a glossary/index. Here you will find all the major ideas/rules in a short simple synopis, along with a page number where you will find the rule explained in more detail. I do not remember for sure, but some of the rules are explained with examples, but not all. The book is a joy to look at as others have said for the artwork alone.

This is encouraging. Yes the artwork and books themselves, contents aside. are great looking. I think I'd be OK with this being a short version 1 of the RPG if they needed to clean up problems and revise to get to a better product in a few years.

edit: I didn't see you asked about the table of contents. Its okay. Its two pages long, and looks like there might be like 100 entries (10 total chapters) listed, with the average page size for each chapter looking to be around 5-6 pages (powers are the obvious outlier)

I did ask about the ToC but I know its hard to miss things reading all the thread entries. So it seems that the book is organized into smaller easily digested chapters.

I will note again: this is not a game for people who want a tightly integrated set of rules that interact with little GM input. It is a pretty simple system that doesn't really account for the synergies between powers/traits. And it is almost certainly not "balanced". And I don't think it promises any of that at all (and honestly I dont' even know what the heck that means). It is a framework (in a lot of ways very similiar to the original TSR game) to allow you to tell superhero stories, feel like superheroes, and specifically marvel stories.

Kind of what I'm after, I'm not interested in balance or adhering to the rules to a tee, and I just want to play a superhero RPG and tell marvel stories. How can this game be balanced; I mean who do you think would win in a battle vs the Wasp and Galatus? Think I'll start giving it a read through soon after the holidays.