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Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game: Core Rulebook
Welcome to the Marvel Multiverse! Take on the roles of Marvel's most famous Super Heroes - or create entirely new ones - and put an end to the sinister plots of the most menacing Super Villains in the Marvel Multiverse! Written by d616 System co-creator and New York Times-bestseller Matt Forbeck (The Marvel Encyclopedia, Dungeons & Dungeonology) and includes all new chapter-opening splash pages by Mike Bowden along with illustrations from Marvel's incredible army of artists. The Core Rulebook features all the rules you need to play - including quick character creation, bombastic combat and scores of amazing powers - plus full profiles of dozens of Marvel's greatest heroes and villains. All you need is this book, three standard dice and some friends. The Marvel Multiverse is calling! Come join the fun!
320 pages, Hardcover
Published August 1, 2023
24 people are currently reading
43 people want to read
About the author
Matt Forbeck
210 books314 followersI'm an award-winning, New York Times-bestselling author and game designer and happily married father of five, including a set of quadruplets. For more on my work, see Forbeck.com.
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
October 3, 2023
Not sure when I'll get around to playing this, but mechanically it seems like a nice amalgamation of the old-school Marvel Superhero RFP and some more recent fantasy RPGs. Looking forward to diving in at some point.
November 2, 2023
4.5 stars.
It’s hard to review an RPG without actually having played it yet, but my initial thoughts after reading the core book are very positive, particularly because the “616” d6-based system seems smooth and fairly intuitive. As for the book itself, the organization, layout, and art (both quality & amount of art) are all really excellent. It’s also really cool that there is roughly 130 pages dedicated to full-page stats/profiles of Marvel heroes and villains! I’m really looking forward to (hopefully) playing it soon.
It’s hard to review an RPG without actually having played it yet, but my initial thoughts after reading the core book are very positive, particularly because the “616” d6-based system seems smooth and fairly intuitive. As for the book itself, the organization, layout, and art (both quality & amount of art) are all really excellent. It’s also really cool that there is roughly 130 pages dedicated to full-page stats/profiles of Marvel heroes and villains! I’m really looking forward to (hopefully) playing it soon.
October 26, 2023
I have always loved comic book roleplaying. My very favorite. Right or wrong I still think my first is the best (V&V). Though several — including TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes — have provided me with great pleasure.
I read the preview version of these rules - even bought two copies - before I found out they were horribly edited and filled with major holes.
Otherwise I thought they had good potential.
They used normal dice, had a reasonable point buying system, and had some balancing solutions that looked promising. Including the solution to the ‘Batman Problem’ which I’m always surprised that so few superhero RPGs have figured out.
I’m hoping the rules have been better edited and polished where they had some weaknesses.
I still find it odd to read “Play it Safe” paragraphs in RPGs that tell you how to be consider to players who might be triggered by playing pretend.
Of course, I’ve been in plenty of inconsiderate RPG groups where I didn’t stay long, but that was because they were assholes, not because someone’s delicate sensibilities were offended.
Still not sure how I feel about it. I guess the same way I feel about people who need movies rated for them and warnings on every other form of media.
If you are really that delicate, either get help or kill yourself. Your polluting the gene pool with less survivable traits.
Chapter 2 is the Core Rules and there is nothing particularly surprising there. Roll 3d6 vs Target Number or 3d6 Opposed. At abilities and modifiers. Abilities are -3 to -9 (not sure what ‘normal’ is — probably 0).
There is also Fantastic Success and Failure, but it is COMPLETELY unexplained how one gets a Fantastic Success or Failure. I assume it’s Success with a Marvel roll (#1 on a different colored dice, which is automatically 6) or a failure with a Marvel roll.
A little bending over backwards to call this the ‘616’ system, but it’s as good as any and keeps the modifiers predictable and small.
The ‘Ultimate’ Fantastic roll is of course ‘18’ with a Marvel dice.
Also are Edges and Troubles which are the same as Advantages and Drawbacks in other games. That is, you can reroll a die or must reroll the best die. As far as I know this was invented in Barbarians of Lemuria, but it’s since because standard in almost every RPG.
I like the way they handle ‘stacking’ however. Which is that they may or may not stack at the GM’s discretion. This is actually much easier and more logical than ‘they never stack’ or ‘they cancel each other out’ which I’ve seen a lot of.
So it’s a nice and solid core rule, but so what? That’s actually the easiest part of designing an RPG. The devil will be in the details which is particularly difficult in a superhero RPG. Because well, everything.
Chapter 3 is Character Profiles which seems a weird next chapter, but we’ll see.
By the way, for what it’s worth this is very pretty glossy paper 318 page hardback. I rather wish RPG’s didn’t cost $50 these days, but it’s definitely an attractive, well-illustrated book.
I’ll be the first to admit that FASERIP is not a great anagram, but the force-fitting of Marvel seems well.. force-fitted. It really stands for Fighting, Agility, Strength, Perception, Charisma & Psyche and Intelligence.
But forced or not it keeps the number of attributes reasonable and more importantly logically defined, so it’s pretty intuitive to see what circumstances they are used in.
Health is standard Hit Points and Karma is an interesting combination of willpower points, experience and ‘hero’ points. Both easily calculated and seem well done.
It looks like traditional ‘disadvantages/handicaps’ are handled as they were in DC Adventures. That is, they only give the character experience points when they come up in play. This is definitely an argument free way to do them and a good choice for superheroes who can have many obscure weaknesses.
I do notice that the example character sheet (Spider-Man, natch) includes “Non-Combat Checks” column next to Abilities and Abilities Defense that is not explained.
And apparently Logic and Ego can also cause ‘damage’ of some sort.
The combat chapter continues the simple but logical approach. It has good clarity, especially in Initiative which is tricky to do right in any system.
The first mistake I find is on page 30. “charactershas”.
The basic actions and movements seem logical and well thought out, though Lifting and Carrying seem a little hand-wavy for a superhero game.
The Falling and Damage rules seem to work well enough and I like the fact that characters can be out and out killed. It’s not easy - and shouldn’t be - but it should always be a danger.
The Focus rules being basically stress, sanity, etc. seem to work nicely too.
Damage Reduction appears to have an error in it however. Or at least some things are unclear. It gives an example where damage reduction reduces the multiplier on damage. Damage Reduction 2 turns x4+3 into x2+3.
But then the examples has an attack get a Fantastic result for double damage and calls this damage x4+6, which doesn’t seem right. From everything I’ve read before it should be the result of (x2+3) x2. These things make a HUGE difference and while the multiplier seems futzy it’s one of the only ways to account for such vastly different strengths as you see in comics (BASH! does the same thing).
All the other ways are even futzier. (Except V&V which simply has an upper limit to damage).
They also handle Knockback in a fairly elegant way as well. Another thing that’s more difficult to do simply than it seems.
Weapons are next and they gone with the solution that powers are simply and most often better than weapons across the board, which is fine.
BUT for a 300+ page, $50+ book I’d expect a heckuva lot more than 12 example weapons! And weapons a LOT more complicated. I could even have given up having the stats for Sunspot and Shuri to have more and better weapon examples!
Reloading is always free which I can see causing some trouble. I’d have said it is a needed action on a Fantastic failure because unlimited automatically weapons fire can hurt darn near anyone!
Also, a superhero game without stats for a boomerang-like weapon is simply idiotic.
Weapons can also do ‘nonlethal’ damage if they which is weird but understandable. You can’t really do Wolverine without Healing is quite reasonable, fast but not ridiculous. Though spending on Karma only allows you to make a ROLL to see if you are healed. That seems a little harsh. Failing that roll would be pretty brutal. You spend Karma and nothing happens. And you’re already badly wounded…
Conditions are next and seem fine for what they are but it seems like a superhero game could add quite a few more. Emotion control, insanity, fatigue levels, all seem like they would be easier to handle with conditions.
The Team Maneuvers is wonderful. Something I’m sure will be a part of every superhero RPG from now on — and well it should be!
Other games have tried something similar, but this seems to be a very simple, flexible method.
Objects are handled fairly well, except for the idea of the material the object is made of. “Whether or not the object is harmed or destroyed is up to the Narrator. […] When in doubt, lean in the direction that’s more fun.”
Okay, that’s immediately and unreservedly horseshit. It would take less page space than the stats of Okoye to add some relative values here and “more fun” is ALWAYS different to the player that it is to the GM. That’s just lazy game designing.
Chapter 5 is ‘Creating a Character’ and as usual for modern games, they state that it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a character unless you have a ‘Character Concept’ to start with.
The thing about this advice is that while it is ALWAYS better to start with a character concept it is completely unnecessary advice for those players who want to start with a character concept and completely useless for those players whose entire concept is based on what POWERS they want!
I’ll be the first to admit that the major advantage of V&V’s random powers was that it forced you to figure out a concept that worked. A good random system can do that. But most random systems are just terrible (Looking at you EVERY version of Marvel Super Heroes).
Under Speed:: “Spider-Man’s base Run Speed is 5. His Agility is 7, so add another +1 for that to make it 8.” Hrrm…
Backstories covers both Origins and Occupations. These are both unique solutions to complex problems that superhero RPGs have faced for a while. Origins answers the question, what if someone wants to play an Asgardian? (Or Olympion, or Martian, or Vampire, Atlantean, Werewolf, etc.). The character automatically starts with a-lot of powers and is likely already tougher than a ‘beginning’ character would be. But it’s still a perfectly valid choice in a superhero comic book game.
So Origins solves it by giving them all the powers that match the Origin for free, including a few ‘tags’ (mechanic-less descriptors) and then either restrictions or limitations on gaining other powers (sorry, if your a vampire, you’re pretty limited to being a just a vampire) and ‘must-have’ weaknesses.
I can’t quite say it’s “elegant” but it seems to be the simplest solution to the problem I’ve ever seen. Good work.
Occupations are a replacement for having to have a skill system. It’s a common dodge for superhero RPGs and for the most part it works. Superman is a Reporter, which covers him having Contacts, Writing, Investigation, Interviewing, Intuition and probably a few other skills. It only really works with superheroes in RPGs, but it does work and they seem to have done it well.
The Tags are quite interesting because many of theme are described. They don’t have mechanics per se, but it’s easy to see how they are applied in the game. I think this is a great compromise between rules-for-everything and hand-wavy vagueness. It makes it clear how these are meant to be used without trying to cover every possibility and it makes it to handle the really weird stuff (see comics).
“Immunity” is a little worrying though. It’s got potential for abuse and seems like it could have been easier to handle as a power or a tag (though the limitation on the number of both give a rationale for why it wasn’t either). Still, it seems like a it would take less space than Gorr the God Butcher took up to have a set of broad categories that could make it easier to handle.
FINALLY! POWERS!! Make no mistake, super powers are the most important rules in a superhero game and how they are handled make all the difference between how the game plays at the table. These may be only my preferences, but whatever yours are will have similar issues.
If powers are too details they become mired in minutia and easy to exploit (GURPS, Champions). Plus, that’s just not how comic books work.
If they become too vague, they can work but require a lot of trust between the GM and the players (MSH, V&V).
If the scale between street-level and cosmic is too wide, it will require every character to have equivalent powers (DC Heroes) and again, that’s not how comic books work.
If they don’t have a good reason why Batman isn’t gunned down by automatic weapons fire, they make certain character types impossible (far too many to list).
A superhero game is by definition a ‘universal’ game system and has to be able to account for a wide variety of characters.
Some games just out-and-out refused to do ‘cosmic’ level superheroes and really that’s fine - in an RPG those don’t really play well anyway and rarely ‘team-up’.
So as good as this game is so far — and I think it’s very, very good. This chapter could put it into the junk pile (next to… too many superhero RPGs to list).
Illusion is a little vague. Can you take damage from an illusion? Any kind of damage?
Magic is admittedly hard — most often relegated to another supplement — but only three types of magic seems kind of limited. Holy, Druidic, Faerie, Brother Voodoo…
But actually the Power Sets are rather pointless. Merely categories for the powers. It’s an unusual choice in that most (I can’t really think of one other that tries this) superhero RPGs have given up on. Many give lip service to giving a discount on ‘thematically related powers’ but this is just a freebie. You can take it with any set of powers. Superman’s powers aren’t related and Spider-Man’s powers are really related either. I guess it’s a way of balancing powers, though ore accurately I think it’s a way of limiting the number of power sets you can have.
I wonder if they had people building all the Marvel characters to see if this worked with everyone?
Another interesting thing is that they established prerequisites for powers. Including prerequisite ranks. In a way this keeps thing Marvel by being relatively realistic. But its another one of those things given up by most superhero RPGs because there is always one character that it doesn’t apply to. Very interesting. Not sure if it will break, but it’s an interesting choice.
One thing I notice about the Powers is that there doesn’t seem to be any room for customization. On one end, there is a clever maximization going on that prevents power creep. Breaking Spider-Mans web takes a roll of 20, as does breaking the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, as does several other similar effects. So you don’t have this huge range of power that simply doesn’t balance against anything too far above or below.
On the other hand, every Dazzle works the same. Dazzler’s is no better than anyone else’s flashbangs. And there’s no way to make it better. I’m not sure how much this will be noticed, but there’s always someone who wants to be better.
On the other hand, as much as I like DC Adventures, it’s still full of those minuscule and repetitive +1, Improved +1, +2, Improved +2, bits and bobs that make Champions games insufferably tedious, and I appreciate that Multiverse is not besotted with that kind of chrome.
I like this quote by Rob Weiland. “It wants to get D&D players to the table and punching bad guys without bogging things down with rules or trying to cram the square peg of 5e into a round superhero hole.”The lack of a decent index however is a huge negative for the usability of the book.
A common trope in superhero RPGs is that a character using gadgets is more vulnerable than a character with innate powers. This does not seem to be the case here. This is certainly a nit-picky point but I do wonder what will become ‘common practice’ with regard to such things as a flashlight/illumination power? After all, even Spider-Man has a utility belt! (Though not in these statistics).
While I can argue with some dubious inclusions in all the profiles, they are a fantastic resource for the game.
The next chapter is the “Marvel Universe” and is an interesting read about the various universes that Marvel tells stories in. Some of it is quite new to me.
I’m kind of surprised that the Microverse doesn’t get described here.
The rest of the book seems to be some pretty logical GMing advice. Running combat, when to take breaks, running ‘single issue’, ‘graphic novel’, ‘ongoing series’ sized games. The advice is definitely a cut above the usual advice of this type.
Further advice is on such guaranteed-to-come-up-in-a-superhero-RPG topics as illusions and mind control and extra dimensional travel. It’s very nice that advice on this is given right out of the gate (rather than having to pick it up on the street as us old-timers had too!).
What’s nice about this is that it is practical advice for role-playing, as if they actually playtested the game! What I mean is they give advice based on how much of a pain these powers would be if they were abused in an RPG, not whether or not they could ‘really’ happen in a comic book!
Having that point of view ahead of time can avoid alot of the headaches of allowing players to have any powers they want.
Of course, they have also greatly limited the available powers listed for the same reason. I’m personally fine with that and so should any player that wants to have fun in the game rather than try to abuse it.
Even some slight Social Interaction rules. Very glad to see these existing, even if they are just half a page.
There is a nice section on creating new powers which is much appreciated, since it’s pretty obvious that the core rulebook did not try to cover every possible power. It could use a little more detail, but it’s still nice that it is there and there is some good advice (SPOILER: Don’t allow everything anyone can think of!).
There’s a very good section on character death, though I am surprised they didn’t list all the ways Marvel superheroes have come back in the comics!
Some of the most outstanding GM advice, and especially appropriate to superhero RPGs is given here and I wish and hope it will make superhero RPGing much more popular. As much as I like the DC Adventures RPG (and I do) it is still WAY more fiddly than I think normal comic book fans would want to play. This game hits a very sweet spot and I could recommend it unreservedly.
Plus, unlike most rulebooks (which I like to read despite how plodding they usually are) this is just a joy to read.
The last bit about Monologuing adds a bit of comic-book flavor to games that encourages making them different from any other RPG. After that is a section showing “Power Trees” which shows what powers are in each Power Set and how they relate (within the power set). I’m sure this would be interesting and useful when building a character. It definitely sets the expectation that Marvel superpowers are not the hodge-podge they can be in any other game and that they all have a semi-logical flow from their lowest to highest powers. It’s interesting and definitely enforces a flavor to the world that I think works well.
A character sheet and decent glossary end the book.
So in summary, this is the best superhero RPG I’ve seen in a LONG time and until everyone and their brother could publish one on-line I collected ALL the superhero RPGs that were published until then.
I’d play and/or run this game out of the book with no changes and very few RPGs can be done that way.
I don’t think the specificity of being a “Marvel” game could really hurt too many games at all the “no cosmic” rules seem plenty reasonable to me.
I’ll give this games 5 stars for what it is, a kicking superhero RPG done the Marvel way.
I read the preview version of these rules - even bought two copies - before I found out they were horribly edited and filled with major holes.
Otherwise I thought they had good potential.
They used normal dice, had a reasonable point buying system, and had some balancing solutions that looked promising. Including the solution to the ‘Batman Problem’ which I’m always surprised that so few superhero RPGs have figured out.
I’m hoping the rules have been better edited and polished where they had some weaknesses.
I still find it odd to read “Play it Safe” paragraphs in RPGs that tell you how to be consider to players who might be triggered by playing pretend.
Of course, I’ve been in plenty of inconsiderate RPG groups where I didn’t stay long, but that was because they were assholes, not because someone’s delicate sensibilities were offended.
Still not sure how I feel about it. I guess the same way I feel about people who need movies rated for them and warnings on every other form of media.
If you are really that delicate, either get help or kill yourself. Your polluting the gene pool with less survivable traits.
Chapter 2 is the Core Rules and there is nothing particularly surprising there. Roll 3d6 vs Target Number or 3d6 Opposed. At abilities and modifiers. Abilities are -3 to -9 (not sure what ‘normal’ is — probably 0).
There is also Fantastic Success and Failure, but it is COMPLETELY unexplained how one gets a Fantastic Success or Failure. I assume it’s Success with a Marvel roll (#1 on a different colored dice, which is automatically 6) or a failure with a Marvel roll.
A little bending over backwards to call this the ‘616’ system, but it’s as good as any and keeps the modifiers predictable and small.
The ‘Ultimate’ Fantastic roll is of course ‘18’ with a Marvel dice.
Also are Edges and Troubles which are the same as Advantages and Drawbacks in other games. That is, you can reroll a die or must reroll the best die. As far as I know this was invented in Barbarians of Lemuria, but it’s since because standard in almost every RPG.
I like the way they handle ‘stacking’ however. Which is that they may or may not stack at the GM’s discretion. This is actually much easier and more logical than ‘they never stack’ or ‘they cancel each other out’ which I’ve seen a lot of.
So it’s a nice and solid core rule, but so what? That’s actually the easiest part of designing an RPG. The devil will be in the details which is particularly difficult in a superhero RPG. Because well, everything.
Chapter 3 is Character Profiles which seems a weird next chapter, but we’ll see.
By the way, for what it’s worth this is very pretty glossy paper 318 page hardback. I rather wish RPG’s didn’t cost $50 these days, but it’s definitely an attractive, well-illustrated book.
I’ll be the first to admit that FASERIP is not a great anagram, but the force-fitting of Marvel seems well.. force-fitted. It really stands for Fighting, Agility, Strength, Perception, Charisma & Psyche and Intelligence.
But forced or not it keeps the number of attributes reasonable and more importantly logically defined, so it’s pretty intuitive to see what circumstances they are used in.
Health is standard Hit Points and Karma is an interesting combination of willpower points, experience and ‘hero’ points. Both easily calculated and seem well done.
It looks like traditional ‘disadvantages/handicaps’ are handled as they were in DC Adventures. That is, they only give the character experience points when they come up in play. This is definitely an argument free way to do them and a good choice for superheroes who can have many obscure weaknesses.
I do notice that the example character sheet (Spider-Man, natch) includes “Non-Combat Checks” column next to Abilities and Abilities Defense that is not explained.
And apparently Logic and Ego can also cause ‘damage’ of some sort.
The combat chapter continues the simple but logical approach. It has good clarity, especially in Initiative which is tricky to do right in any system.
The first mistake I find is on page 30. “charactershas”.
The basic actions and movements seem logical and well thought out, though Lifting and Carrying seem a little hand-wavy for a superhero game.
The Falling and Damage rules seem to work well enough and I like the fact that characters can be out and out killed. It’s not easy - and shouldn’t be - but it should always be a danger.
The Focus rules being basically stress, sanity, etc. seem to work nicely too.
Damage Reduction appears to have an error in it however. Or at least some things are unclear. It gives an example where damage reduction reduces the multiplier on damage. Damage Reduction 2 turns x4+3 into x2+3.
But then the examples has an attack get a Fantastic result for double damage and calls this damage x4+6, which doesn’t seem right. From everything I’ve read before it should be the result of (x2+3) x2. These things make a HUGE difference and while the multiplier seems futzy it’s one of the only ways to account for such vastly different strengths as you see in comics (BASH! does the same thing).
All the other ways are even futzier. (Except V&V which simply has an upper limit to damage).
They also handle Knockback in a fairly elegant way as well. Another thing that’s more difficult to do simply than it seems.
Weapons are next and they gone with the solution that powers are simply and most often better than weapons across the board, which is fine.
BUT for a 300+ page, $50+ book I’d expect a heckuva lot more than 12 example weapons! And weapons a LOT more complicated. I could even have given up having the stats for Sunspot and Shuri to have more and better weapon examples!
Reloading is always free which I can see causing some trouble. I’d have said it is a needed action on a Fantastic failure because unlimited automatically weapons fire can hurt darn near anyone!
Also, a superhero game without stats for a boomerang-like weapon is simply idiotic.
Weapons can also do ‘nonlethal’ damage if they which is weird but understandable. You can’t really do Wolverine without Healing is quite reasonable, fast but not ridiculous. Though spending on Karma only allows you to make a ROLL to see if you are healed. That seems a little harsh. Failing that roll would be pretty brutal. You spend Karma and nothing happens. And you’re already badly wounded…
Conditions are next and seem fine for what they are but it seems like a superhero game could add quite a few more. Emotion control, insanity, fatigue levels, all seem like they would be easier to handle with conditions.
The Team Maneuvers is wonderful. Something I’m sure will be a part of every superhero RPG from now on — and well it should be!
Other games have tried something similar, but this seems to be a very simple, flexible method.
Objects are handled fairly well, except for the idea of the material the object is made of. “Whether or not the object is harmed or destroyed is up to the Narrator. […] When in doubt, lean in the direction that’s more fun.”
Okay, that’s immediately and unreservedly horseshit. It would take less page space than the stats of Okoye to add some relative values here and “more fun” is ALWAYS different to the player that it is to the GM. That’s just lazy game designing.
Chapter 5 is ‘Creating a Character’ and as usual for modern games, they state that it is IMPOSSIBLE to create a character unless you have a ‘Character Concept’ to start with.
The thing about this advice is that while it is ALWAYS better to start with a character concept it is completely unnecessary advice for those players who want to start with a character concept and completely useless for those players whose entire concept is based on what POWERS they want!
I’ll be the first to admit that the major advantage of V&V’s random powers was that it forced you to figure out a concept that worked. A good random system can do that. But most random systems are just terrible (Looking at you EVERY version of Marvel Super Heroes).
Under Speed:: “Spider-Man’s base Run Speed is 5. His Agility is 7, so add another +1 for that to make it 8.” Hrrm…
Backstories covers both Origins and Occupations. These are both unique solutions to complex problems that superhero RPGs have faced for a while. Origins answers the question, what if someone wants to play an Asgardian? (Or Olympion, or Martian, or Vampire, Atlantean, Werewolf, etc.). The character automatically starts with a-lot of powers and is likely already tougher than a ‘beginning’ character would be. But it’s still a perfectly valid choice in a superhero comic book game.
So Origins solves it by giving them all the powers that match the Origin for free, including a few ‘tags’ (mechanic-less descriptors) and then either restrictions or limitations on gaining other powers (sorry, if your a vampire, you’re pretty limited to being a just a vampire) and ‘must-have’ weaknesses.
I can’t quite say it’s “elegant” but it seems to be the simplest solution to the problem I’ve ever seen. Good work.
Occupations are a replacement for having to have a skill system. It’s a common dodge for superhero RPGs and for the most part it works. Superman is a Reporter, which covers him having Contacts, Writing, Investigation, Interviewing, Intuition and probably a few other skills. It only really works with superheroes in RPGs, but it does work and they seem to have done it well.
The Tags are quite interesting because many of theme are described. They don’t have mechanics per se, but it’s easy to see how they are applied in the game. I think this is a great compromise between rules-for-everything and hand-wavy vagueness. It makes it clear how these are meant to be used without trying to cover every possibility and it makes it to handle the really weird stuff (see comics).
“Immunity” is a little worrying though. It’s got potential for abuse and seems like it could have been easier to handle as a power or a tag (though the limitation on the number of both give a rationale for why it wasn’t either). Still, it seems like a it would take less space than Gorr the God Butcher took up to have a set of broad categories that could make it easier to handle.
FINALLY! POWERS!! Make no mistake, super powers are the most important rules in a superhero game and how they are handled make all the difference between how the game plays at the table. These may be only my preferences, but whatever yours are will have similar issues.
If powers are too details they become mired in minutia and easy to exploit (GURPS, Champions). Plus, that’s just not how comic books work.
If they become too vague, they can work but require a lot of trust between the GM and the players (MSH, V&V).
If the scale between street-level and cosmic is too wide, it will require every character to have equivalent powers (DC Heroes) and again, that’s not how comic books work.
If they don’t have a good reason why Batman isn’t gunned down by automatic weapons fire, they make certain character types impossible (far too many to list).
A superhero game is by definition a ‘universal’ game system and has to be able to account for a wide variety of characters.
Some games just out-and-out refused to do ‘cosmic’ level superheroes and really that’s fine - in an RPG those don’t really play well anyway and rarely ‘team-up’.
So as good as this game is so far — and I think it’s very, very good. This chapter could put it into the junk pile (next to… too many superhero RPGs to list).
Illusion is a little vague. Can you take damage from an illusion? Any kind of damage?
Magic is admittedly hard — most often relegated to another supplement — but only three types of magic seems kind of limited. Holy, Druidic, Faerie, Brother Voodoo…
But actually the Power Sets are rather pointless. Merely categories for the powers. It’s an unusual choice in that most (I can’t really think of one other that tries this) superhero RPGs have given up on. Many give lip service to giving a discount on ‘thematically related powers’ but this is just a freebie. You can take it with any set of powers. Superman’s powers aren’t related and Spider-Man’s powers are really related either. I guess it’s a way of balancing powers, though ore accurately I think it’s a way of limiting the number of power sets you can have.
I wonder if they had people building all the Marvel characters to see if this worked with everyone?
Another interesting thing is that they established prerequisites for powers. Including prerequisite ranks. In a way this keeps thing Marvel by being relatively realistic. But its another one of those things given up by most superhero RPGs because there is always one character that it doesn’t apply to. Very interesting. Not sure if it will break, but it’s an interesting choice.
One thing I notice about the Powers is that there doesn’t seem to be any room for customization. On one end, there is a clever maximization going on that prevents power creep. Breaking Spider-Mans web takes a roll of 20, as does breaking the Crimson Bands of Cyttorak, as does several other similar effects. So you don’t have this huge range of power that simply doesn’t balance against anything too far above or below.
On the other hand, every Dazzle works the same. Dazzler’s is no better than anyone else’s flashbangs. And there’s no way to make it better. I’m not sure how much this will be noticed, but there’s always someone who wants to be better.
On the other hand, as much as I like DC Adventures, it’s still full of those minuscule and repetitive +1, Improved +1, +2, Improved +2, bits and bobs that make Champions games insufferably tedious, and I appreciate that Multiverse is not besotted with that kind of chrome.
I like this quote by Rob Weiland. “It wants to get D&D players to the table and punching bad guys without bogging things down with rules or trying to cram the square peg of 5e into a round superhero hole.”The lack of a decent index however is a huge negative for the usability of the book.
A common trope in superhero RPGs is that a character using gadgets is more vulnerable than a character with innate powers. This does not seem to be the case here. This is certainly a nit-picky point but I do wonder what will become ‘common practice’ with regard to such things as a flashlight/illumination power? After all, even Spider-Man has a utility belt! (Though not in these statistics).
While I can argue with some dubious inclusions in all the profiles, they are a fantastic resource for the game.
The next chapter is the “Marvel Universe” and is an interesting read about the various universes that Marvel tells stories in. Some of it is quite new to me.
I’m kind of surprised that the Microverse doesn’t get described here.
The rest of the book seems to be some pretty logical GMing advice. Running combat, when to take breaks, running ‘single issue’, ‘graphic novel’, ‘ongoing series’ sized games. The advice is definitely a cut above the usual advice of this type.
Further advice is on such guaranteed-to-come-up-in-a-superhero-RPG topics as illusions and mind control and extra dimensional travel. It’s very nice that advice on this is given right out of the gate (rather than having to pick it up on the street as us old-timers had too!).
What’s nice about this is that it is practical advice for role-playing, as if they actually playtested the game! What I mean is they give advice based on how much of a pain these powers would be if they were abused in an RPG, not whether or not they could ‘really’ happen in a comic book!
Having that point of view ahead of time can avoid alot of the headaches of allowing players to have any powers they want.
Of course, they have also greatly limited the available powers listed for the same reason. I’m personally fine with that and so should any player that wants to have fun in the game rather than try to abuse it.
Even some slight Social Interaction rules. Very glad to see these existing, even if they are just half a page.
There is a nice section on creating new powers which is much appreciated, since it’s pretty obvious that the core rulebook did not try to cover every possible power. It could use a little more detail, but it’s still nice that it is there and there is some good advice (SPOILER: Don’t allow everything anyone can think of!).
There’s a very good section on character death, though I am surprised they didn’t list all the ways Marvel superheroes have come back in the comics!
Some of the most outstanding GM advice, and especially appropriate to superhero RPGs is given here and I wish and hope it will make superhero RPGing much more popular. As much as I like the DC Adventures RPG (and I do) it is still WAY more fiddly than I think normal comic book fans would want to play. This game hits a very sweet spot and I could recommend it unreservedly.
Plus, unlike most rulebooks (which I like to read despite how plodding they usually are) this is just a joy to read.
The last bit about Monologuing adds a bit of comic-book flavor to games that encourages making them different from any other RPG. After that is a section showing “Power Trees” which shows what powers are in each Power Set and how they relate (within the power set). I’m sure this would be interesting and useful when building a character. It definitely sets the expectation that Marvel superpowers are not the hodge-podge they can be in any other game and that they all have a semi-logical flow from their lowest to highest powers. It’s interesting and definitely enforces a flavor to the world that I think works well.
A character sheet and decent glossary end the book.
So in summary, this is the best superhero RPG I’ve seen in a LONG time and until everyone and their brother could publish one on-line I collected ALL the superhero RPGs that were published until then.
I’d play and/or run this game out of the book with no changes and very few RPGs can be done that way.
I don’t think the specificity of being a “Marvel” game could really hurt too many games at all the “no cosmic” rules seem plenty reasonable to me.
I’ll give this games 5 stars for what it is, a kicking superhero RPG done the Marvel way.
May 4, 2025
I think the Marvel Multiverse RPG is a solid RPG for capturing the feel of the Superhero genre. This is a proprietary system that doesn't copy any mechanics from existing games or even prior Marvel Super Hero games.
The system does an excellent job of having a depth of mechanics that still allows for a strongly narrative driven system. While it is presented in the context of a game that is played in theater of the mind, meaning not on a map or with miniatures, it is easily adapted to a grid based map and can be intuitively tactical, though not on the same level as most popular RPGs.
Character creation is fun but can be a bit involved as it requires some consideration to create an original character as while there are a lot of powers the list is finite and you may have to be creative to apply a powers qualities to feet your intention and you powers are abstract enough to allow some creative wiggle room.
If you don't want to create a character there is an impressive catalog of popular and familiar characters included in this cute book, including many Super Villains to throw at your heroes.
This game looks to have some solid bones and has a great deal of support, both my Marvel and third party tools like Demiplane that appear to be a good sign of the games continued longevity. There are also 2 supplements, X-Men source book and recently the Spider-Verse supplement that add new rules, new powers and a host of new Marvel characters.
If you are looking for a set of rules for the Super Hero genre I would recommend these rules.
The system does an excellent job of having a depth of mechanics that still allows for a strongly narrative driven system. While it is presented in the context of a game that is played in theater of the mind, meaning not on a map or with miniatures, it is easily adapted to a grid based map and can be intuitively tactical, though not on the same level as most popular RPGs.
Character creation is fun but can be a bit involved as it requires some consideration to create an original character as while there are a lot of powers the list is finite and you may have to be creative to apply a powers qualities to feet your intention and you powers are abstract enough to allow some creative wiggle room.
If you don't want to create a character there is an impressive catalog of popular and familiar characters included in this cute book, including many Super Villains to throw at your heroes.
This game looks to have some solid bones and has a great deal of support, both my Marvel and third party tools like Demiplane that appear to be a good sign of the games continued longevity. There are also 2 supplements, X-Men source book and recently the Spider-Verse supplement that add new rules, new powers and a host of new Marvel characters.
If you are looking for a set of rules for the Super Hero genre I would recommend these rules.
August 14, 2024
Kind of annoying merchandise tie-in that encourages but doesn't necessitate buying other materials. It really wants you to get the Marvel dice set so you can get the "Marvel die" which is different than a normal 6-sided die because the 1 is replaced with a Marvel logo. You can still play without it you just have to mentally replace that figure.
A lot of unnecessary exposition on stuff like How to Make Friends.
Rule System works fine for me. Character stats and powers all make sense.
Fantastic art. Really the highlight of the book. Excited to just start winging it and have this in the background for reference as needed. No need to follow blindly if you've run other TTRPGs. It's not a carbon copy of DnD rules but it's similar enough to pick up if you're familiar.
A lot of unnecessary exposition on stuff like How to Make Friends.
Rule System works fine for me. Character stats and powers all make sense.
Fantastic art. Really the highlight of the book. Excited to just start winging it and have this in the background for reference as needed. No need to follow blindly if you've run other TTRPGs. It's not a carbon copy of DnD rules but it's similar enough to pick up if you're familiar.
September 17, 2023
This game looks really fun and I am really glad that it is not super crunchy as the rules part of the book is only about 132 pages which is about a third of the book. The rest of the book is dedicated to stat blocks to dozens of Marvel characters and tips about how to role play in the Marvel Universe which is great as I really do not like crunchy RPGs and the stat blocks help to help fill your games and to help players who want to model there hero after another or know what powers to aim if they trying to create a certain type of characters. I also appreciate the level of detail to the powers presented like the Green Door which I thought was nice.
September 2, 2024
Fun alternative to the fantasy setting of D&D. The MRPG system uses D6’s primarily and has a whole different system of how power mechanics work. I’ve played the first mini Hydra adventure and really liked it. I’ve played RPG’s for 20 years and never before was I able to so quickly assume the identity of a character because I already knew everything about them. With expansions and rule changes still in production this will need some kind of refresh in the next couple years but it’s off to a great start.
August 12, 2023
Wow, simple and slick. I’m super excited after reading this. I’m a big rpg and Marvel fan and it recalls me the good old time with FASERIP
August 13, 2023
Easy to understand mechanics, good layout, and the art is just beautiful. Get a group of friends, 3d6, and your imaginations ready!
August 20, 2023
One of the better role-playing games I've read. Easy to read and understand. Read cover-to-cover relatively quickly.
October 11, 2023
This new game looks amazing. Really can't wait to see what they do with the game.
January 22, 2024
Very interesting. Kind of hype.
May 18, 2024
Simple and narrative superheroic game. Sometimes the enormous quantity of powers and abilities can overwhelm the players and the DM.
June 3, 2024
I’m in a uniquely good position to run this, I just wish it had even more characters. Will be strongly considering the expansions as they roll out.
January 6, 2024
I find it kind of hard to really review this without playing the game first but it sounds fun. And the presentation is really nice with great artwork in a nice hardcover book. Maybe I’ll update this review when/if I play the game sometime.
Read
August 6, 2024How? Library got it, I read it.
What? It's not worth spending a lot of time on: There have been, oh, 5 or so Marvel-specific RPGs (two TSR, one by Marvel, one short-lived by Margaret Weis productions -- it lasted a year before they decided not to renew the license -- and now another by Marvel). This one is, I think, dead on arrival, and I have to point to the first obvious reason: people are getting tired of Marvel.
Besides that, the game is, well, kind of annoying: the resolution mechanic is called 616, after the universe that most Marvel stories take place in; you roll 3d6, but the middle one is a special Marvel die were the 1 is replaced by an M, which counts as a 6 + special effect. Which is so cute and maybe helps sell dice, but isn't actually a fun way to play.
It is also, of course, highly trained on the target of emulating Marvel, which means the chapter on powers involves very specific ideas like spider-based powers; and one of the specialties is "shield-bearer" (as in, can wield the Captain America shield). And the biggest chapter here is probably the statting up of the heroes and villains, which, honestly, is interesting if you're interested in the characters, but isn't really going to grow the brand, and as I noted above, I'm hearing just lots of Marvel fatigue.
Yeah, so? There's an adventure based on Kang that's out (remember Kang? Played by Jonathan Majors, he was going to be the big villain for a new arc until Disney fired Majors for assault, and now they've decided to rehire Robert Downey Jr to play Dr Doom). There's an X-Men supplement planned, there was a Deadpool one-shot out (they were giving it away free at GenCon to people who played it), and there may be a Spider-verse supplement out.
All of which is to say: this is less a game than it is a game-shaped object attached to a huge IP that shows lots of signs of slowing down.
What? It's not worth spending a lot of time on: There have been, oh, 5 or so Marvel-specific RPGs (two TSR, one by Marvel, one short-lived by Margaret Weis productions -- it lasted a year before they decided not to renew the license -- and now another by Marvel). This one is, I think, dead on arrival, and I have to point to the first obvious reason: people are getting tired of Marvel.
Besides that, the game is, well, kind of annoying: the resolution mechanic is called 616, after the universe that most Marvel stories take place in; you roll 3d6, but the middle one is a special Marvel die were the 1 is replaced by an M, which counts as a 6 + special effect. Which is so cute and maybe helps sell dice, but isn't actually a fun way to play.
It is also, of course, highly trained on the target of emulating Marvel, which means the chapter on powers involves very specific ideas like spider-based powers; and one of the specialties is "shield-bearer" (as in, can wield the Captain America shield). And the biggest chapter here is probably the statting up of the heroes and villains, which, honestly, is interesting if you're interested in the characters, but isn't really going to grow the brand, and as I noted above, I'm hearing just lots of Marvel fatigue.
Yeah, so? There's an adventure based on Kang that's out (remember Kang? Played by Jonathan Majors, he was going to be the big villain for a new arc until Disney fired Majors for assault, and now they've decided to rehire Robert Downey Jr to play Dr Doom). There's an X-Men supplement planned, there was a Deadpool one-shot out (they were giving it away free at GenCon to people who played it), and there may be a Spider-verse supplement out.
All of which is to say: this is less a game than it is a game-shaped object attached to a huge IP that shows lots of signs of slowing down.
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