After being playtested last spring, the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Core Rulebook is finally here! Featuring sections on how to play, create an original hero, and run a campaign, the Core Rulebook prepares you and your tabletop friends for exciting adventures across the multiverse.
Great for beginners — especially first-time DMs!
What makes the Marvel Multiverse game so fun is how accessible it is! Whether you’re a role-top veteran or have never rolled a d20 before, the rulebook has great explainers on how to play it and RPGs in general. It introduces broad concepts like explaining what even is a role-playing game and also brings up ideas like scheduling a session zero before diving into the game. The Core Rulebook explains its concepts in a very user-friendly way, though there are so many actions a player could take in combat, status conditions, and powers to choose from, the sheer volume of choice may look a bit overwhelming at first.
Only needing d6s (more on the dice later!) also simplifies things for players. You won’t have to worry about having a d8, a d12, or a d20 – you’ll only be rolling three d6s for this RPG. The math takes some getting used to, but that’s true of all RPGs, tabletop or otherwise.
As someone who’s only DM (dungeon master) experience was a one-shot last year when the playtest rulebook released, I was very impressed with how much time Marvel Multiverse spends aiding the Narrator (the game’s version of a DM). It’s the third-longest section in the book after the Powers and Characters chapters and offers guidance on the minutiae like when to take breaks and the best way to end sessions. It also offers plenty of detail on preparation, crafting adventures, role-playing villains, and playing in different universes – this is the multiverse, after all!
Heroes and villains galore!
The Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Core Rulebook runs just over 300 pages and a good 130 of them are pre-made characters ready to be played by your group or used as villains in your adventure! From mainstay Avengers like Iron Man and Doctor Strange to several Spider-people to even lesser known characters like Whiter Tiger and Maximus, the Core Rulebook is full of detailed heroes you’ll want to use in your campaigns.
Can’t find your favorite character in the book? Not to worry – more characters will be included in future expansions and adventures, with the first expansion The Cataclysm of Kang launching in November. X-Men and Spider-Verse expansions are set to release spring and fall of 2024, respectively. As someone who’s been collecting Krakoa books like crazy since House of X/Powers of X, I for one can’t wait to see what mutants join the fray!
Want to create your own hero or your favorite Marvel hero that’s not included yet? The Creating a Character section offers simple explanations for how to create a hero from selecting their powers, assigning ability points, and crafting a personality. You and your group could run a campaign full of original heroes or add your created character to a team like the Avengers of X-Men. It’s up to you and how you want to role play!
One notable change from the playtest book to the final game is the way ranks are handled. Previously, characters could be anywhere from rank 1 to rank 25. Now, there are six ranks that group together heroes based on their power levels relative to what kind of threats they can take on. Ranks 1-6 are: Rookie, Protector, Champion, Legend, Mythic, and Cosmic. A street level hero like Daredevil rounds in at rank 2 while a literal god like Thor impresses at rank 5, for example. Adventures will be for heroes at recommended ranks, and ranks are something for you as a Narrator to keep in mind when crafting stories and deciding what enemies you want your group to take on.
Dice System — A Fantastic Succes
Marvel Multiverse throws a crazy concept out there – it actually wants you to roll a 1!
Using a 3d6 system – meaning you won’t need anything aside from six-sided dice – the best roll you could get is a 6/1/6. The most marvelous of Marvel fans will know that’s a very special number in Marvel canon as it’s the designation of the main universe most of the stories you know and love take place in. The 1 on the middle die is branded with a Marvel logo on the official dice set, and rolling the 6/MARVEL/6 nets you an Ultimate Fantastic Roll – your character automatically succeeds in whatever they were doing and ignore any Trouble they might have (Trouble is essentially rolling with some sort of disadvantage).
Rolling the Marvel logo on the middle dice can create a Fantastic Success if your score is high enough, which results in succeeding your check and getting some sort of special effect depending on the power or idea you have that your Narrator approves. However, you can also roll the Marvel logo and get a Fantastic Failure – if your roll is still under the target number for the check, you’ll fail and, together with your Narrator, you’ll come up with something on the spot to go along with your roll, like missing your attack but still stumbling out of danger. A Fantastic Failure fails, but can still benefit you as the player!
The dice system comes into play the most during combat. Instead of each power requiring a different type of roll to determine if it hits like in Dungeons and Dragons, every power in Marvel Multiverse rolls a 3d6 and adds whatever the appropriate ability score modifier is for melee and agility attacks. Damage is a little trickier to get the hang of – its calculated by taking the result of the Marvel/middle die from your attack roll, multiplying that by the rank the hero is, and adding the appropriate ability score. Some heroes, depending if they have a Mighty power or a weapon, can add to that multiplier. For example, Daredevil is a rank 2 hero, but his damage multiplier is 3 because his Billy Club adds a +1 to his modifier.
Roll20 exclusive adventure: Revenge of the Super-Skrull
If you don’t want to craft your own adventure just yet and can’t wait for The Cataclysm of Kang to release, Roll20’s Marvel Multiverse RPG Revenge of the Super-Skrull is a very fun adventure and an excellent way to familiarize yourself with the game’s mechanics.
Featuring a story by three-time ENnie award winning game designer Eddy Webb, Revenge of the Super-Skrull recruits players to stop another potential Skrull invasion. However, there’s more than meets the eye to this adventure as it includes a few surprises along the way. Broken up into four acts, the adventure could take anywhere from two to eight sessions depending how familiar your players are with the game and how long you like your sessions to last. And how long it takes you all to sort through your A/V troubles, of course.
My group is still in the early stages of the adventure, having just thwarted a bank robbery. The adventure opens in media res with the heroes already on the scene and then asks the group to flashback and role play how they all came upon the bank robbery. Called in by police? Happened to be patrolling the neighborhood? In a fun bit of improvisational role playing, my group decided the heroes were in town to head to a Luke Cage poetry night. Starting off the adventure with combat right away was a fun way to begin and allowed the players to learn their characters via beating up on some bad guys.
Roll20 is already a great platform for connecting players across multiverses, and makes playing Marvel Multiverse very accessible. The Revenge of the Super-Skrull comes with pre-made tokens and pre-filled out character sheets for playable heroes Ant-Man (Scott Lang), Daredevil, Hawkeye (Clint Barton), Luke Cage, Ms. Marvel, and Wolverine (Laura Kinney). Rolling their attacks is as easy as clicking a button on their character sheets. Want to try out a different hero? Uploading a token is simple enough and filling out a blank character sheet with ability scores and damage rolls for a character from the Core Rulebook can be done in no time.
I learned how to play Dungeons & Dragons virtually via Roll20. Having the platform worry about all the numbers and math for me helped me instead focus on role playing and learning the systems at my own pace, and I felt like it was less daunting than potentially diving into the seminal RPG with paper and pen. Similarly, Roll20 makes learning the mechanics of Marvel Multiverse simple for even the most novice of players. Everything you’ll need is on the character sheets, and purchasing the Core Rulebook via Roll20’s marketplace nets you plenty of pre-made tokens and sheets to drop into any adventure.
The Marvel Multiverse RPG continues a gaming renaissance for Marvel, but this time takes it to the tabletops. It’s a fun role-playing game that’s simple enough to learn (compared to some other RPGs), and starting an adventure on a platform like Roll20 makes learning it even easier. With a multiverse-worth of characters to role play as, you’ll never bore pretending to be your favorite Marvel superheroes.
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