The Marvel Universe RPG Review

When I was younger my mom used to let me go into Borders to read whatever I liked while she went into Whole Foods, which was next door. I would browse the shelves of unlimited knowledge, usually stopping at the art books or the graphic novel section. And, of course, the RPG section was right next to it. While it would be a number of years before I started playing RPGs this section was always very interesting to me, particularly the non-DnD stuff. The game that caught my eye the most was The Marvel Universe RPG. In between reading graphic novels and checking out the weirder RPG titles I would stare at this game. It was the only diceless game in the whole shelf of a (relatively) diverse shelf of games, and that piqued my interest! What was this thing like? Why did they decide to go diceless? I had no answers.

Years went by, and I finally began to play DnD. Eventually I jumped ship to Burning Wheel and, to be honest, they ruined most dice RPGs for me. Burning Wheel's engine appears finicky but, once the learning curve has been mastered, it is a masterpiece. It is complete and utter control, at least as far as dice systems can go. I found myself "selling" my other dice games back to Half-Price books, mostly because I knew that I didn't actually want to play them. The bar had been set, for better or worse, at Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, and Torchbearer (Urban Shadows is still sitting here, needing playing!).  There was a bit of a heavy feeling in my stomach as I gave the extra games I had away, but I wanted others to be able to use what I wasn't.

Of COURSE this was sitting at Half Price Books.
Of course.
WASN'T I TRYING TO CUT BACK??

Yeah yeah yeah, I picked it up.Yes, I rolled my eyes at myself as I did so. It had been about eighteen years since I'd last seen this game, so why even bother now? I had Burning Wheel, Mouse Guard, Urban Shadows, and Torchbearer, why did I need of any other games?

Yes, I backed it. So what? I like Chinese film!

I CAN QUIT WHENEVER I WANT!

ONLY GOD CAN JUDGE ME AND THIS ISN'T EVEN AN RPG!!!!

OK, that's just spite.

So, after the usual self-loathing I encounter was played out in a manner everyone else finds funny (comedy is tragedy remembered, after all!), I began to look through the book. The system is simple: if you have the stones (resources) to spend on the action, you can do it. There's a Difficulty and Resistance chart that you helps set up the minimum number of stones necessary to start the action and the number of stones necessary to complete it. A lot of the time those two numbers are the same, but not always. In the case of the Resistance being higher than the Difficulty the action could take multiple panels to complete. What's a Panel, you ask? A Panel is the standard increment of time in the game (30 seconds if it's a question of timing, although most of the time the actual timing of Panels is incredibly open), with a certain number of stones regenerated at the top of each Panel. An undefined number of Panels making a Page. An undefined number of Pages makes for a Mission, an undefined number of Missions makes for an Issue... not incredibly well defined, any of that, nor is there any actual mechanics attached to this names. They're just there. The rulebook is also filled with editing errors of a structural and rules nature, making some things unclear and necessitating some research to verify how often Stones recharge and the structure of sessions. My armchair designer senses began to tingle. Where was the tension in this game? Why was it so badly edited? How on earth was I going to GM it or play in it? I called my buddy Andy and we went over it, but the more we went over it the more confused we got. A playtest was in order.

As we began the playtest I found that the session organized itself into a natural comic book script format. I have reproduced what we wrote, in a semi-script form, which can be found here. And... we had a blast. None of our questions seemed relevant, not one! Andy was always scrambling to pay for the actions he wanted to do, and there always seemed to be a clear idea of when to end a page. We're both fairly analytical people when it comes to RPGs and we had no idea why what we did worked. Oh sure, we both thought the idea of constructing a comic book page could be taken a whole lot further than what the game did, and that recharging stones could be hooked into a splash and double splash page economy. But we had such a blast playing that we found ourselves hardly caring, at least at that point. I awarded him a Line of Experience, which is basically a blank check to the player, allowing them to write down an experience and attach it to an Action. Whenever you use that action you get to add a stone for all the Lines you have that apply to that situation. Ten such bonuses nets a permanent +1 to that action, those Lines are erased, and you start all over again. And that was great too! Andy wrote down "Dodged automatic gunfire". He chose how the character advanced. I'm a huge fan of the player getting to define the experience and what's important to them about it, and it did my heart good to see such a freeform reward mechanic.

I gotta say, The Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game was way ahead of its time, and it's a shame too. Had this game come out today it probably would have killed in the Indie RPG market. But it released in 2003, when DnD was really the only thing that dominated the market. I'm really glad that I found it, though. Some things really are worth the nostalgia you attached to them as a kid. Not a whole lot, but man, when it lives up to those shiny moments from childhood, when the world was still an awesome place and when you still had hope, it's worth holding onto that as tightly as possible.

I will, trust me on that.

I'm going back to that Half-Price Books and I'm getting the rest of this game's books, ASAP. I highly recommend everyone else do it too.