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Marvel Comics, home to the various X-Men, Avengers and Spider Man books has decided to step up into the gaming field and create their own RPG based on their own universe. Previously, Marvel has had games created by TSR, each with its own small, hardcore following of gamers. Recent changes in the higher positions at Marvel have brought with them a new creative energy and a desire to take on the world of publishing. Marvel has recently started a series of young adult novels for girls based on the life of Mary Jane Watson. They have broken into chain bookstores with an ever-increasing number of graphic novels for the average book reader to check out at reasonable prices. Marvel has even ushered in a new era of the “comic book movie”, with three major motion pictures based on their own properties out this year (X2, Daredevil and the Hulk) and at least three coming out the next (Ghost Rider, the Punisher and Amazing Spider Man).
With the success experienced by the company on the chances it has taken in the market, it is not surprising that the company has decided to go its own way and publish its own gaming material. They know that there is a built in market for their gaming books seeing as how many gamers read comics and vice versa. It also makes sense that Marvel, being a publishing house, publishes their own books rather than license out their characters and worlds and only reaps part of the profits. But how good can a new RPG be from a company that has never done anything of the sort before? Honestly, pretty damned good.
The Basics
The Marvel Universe Role-Playing Game (or MURPG) is quite astounding first off in that it is a completely diceless RPG. No randomizers, no cards, nothing. Instead, the system is based on the concept of effort. All characters have a certain number of Stones in their Energy Reserve that they can spend on doing actions every given round, or Page as the game color names them. If the action seems easy, like riding a bicycle, then a player may only wish to spend one or two stones that round on the action. If the action seems more difficult, like catching a person in a fall from a ten-story building before they hit the ground, they may want to put some more effort into and spend their entire Energy Reserve on it.
Expending effort can be tiring though. As such, you only regenerate so many stones into your energy reserve per page based upon how healthy your character is. Stones may also be spit up to try and do more than one action per turn, or panel as the game calls them.
Quick aside: A stone is the basic form of measurement in the MURPG. They are normally called stones because they are normally represented by red stones like you use to measure your life rating in Magic: the Gathering. Stones also represent health, though these are white ones.
Characters
The game comes with complete stats for at least forty characters from the marvel universe including Wolverine, Spider-Man, Captain America and Jean Grey. While players can portray characters from the Marvel Universe if they want to, the writers suggest that the players instead make up their own characters so they have a little more of a personal stake in the game.
Character creation is actually rather easy. In keeping with the “no randomizers” rule set down from the start, character creation is point-based, all players getting forty white stones to by all of the things that they want for their characters. All characters are defined by five Abilities (Intelligence, Strength, Agility, Speed and Durability) and a number of Actions (superpowers, skills and forms of training). Each of these have a rating that shows how well trained your character is. Characters also have Modifiers, which can also represent superpowers and special training and can give you bonuses on certain actions. Forty stone characters wind up being moderately powerful heroes, like the X-Men at the beginning of their career or a young Spider-Man.
The lists of Actions have powers that cover broad fields of concepts such as force blast (fireballs, eye lasers, what have you) and Masteries (which give you control over certain basic elements of the world, like Ice or Storms). The players are encouraged to work with their GMs to tailor their powers to their likes and there is even a system in place to help players tweak their Actions so that they’ll do exactly what the player envisions.
The Action Resolution System (ARS)
Action resolution in MURPG is based on three basic concepts, Effort, Difficulty and Resistance.
Whenever a character is trying to accomplish an action, he first must make sure that he has the proper training to even attempt the action. Characters compare their appropriate Ability or Action rating to a Difficulty established by the GM. If the player’s rating equals or beats the Difficulty, then they have the appropriate amount of experience to try the action.
For instance: Bruce Banner is trying to figure out the chemicals that were used to make a certain serum he has found. The GM decides that a character would need to have at least a Five in Technology or Intelligence to attempt the action. Bruce has a Technology of six, not to mention his Intelligence of seven, so the GM says that Bruce can now attempt the action.
After seeing if a character has the proper amount of training to attempt an action, the player then has to put a number of stones of effort into succeeding. If the action is easy, then he may only need to use a couple. If the action is more complex and straining, then he may have to spend more. If the stones of effort from a character equal or exceed the stone of Resistance , then the player succeeds. If not, the action was a failure. A character may only put as many stones of effort into any give action as they have points I the Action or appropriate Attribute. Also, some actions, such as scientific research, can be done over multiple turns, allowing a player to combine all of their stones of effort over an amount of time. Others, like combat, have to be overcome all at once.
For Instance: Bruce is attempting to discover the origins of this serum he has found. He already knows that he has the training to do it and now simply has to put the effort in. The GM tells him that he needs a total of 20 stones of effort in order to overcome the resistance. Bruce only has three stones of effort when fully charged, and only regenerates one stone per panel. Rather than stressing himself out, Bruce decides to take his time and put only one stone of effort into his problem per panel, thus figuring out the origin of the serum twenty panels, or ten minutes later.
Combat works in pretty much the same fashion. Players put so many stones of effort into their fighting skills and into their Defense pool, which represents how much effort they are putting into being n guard ant trying not to get hurt. Stones in the defensive pool come from other pools that are relevant to defense.
For Instance: Cyclops finds himself surrounded by a number of alien creatures while running through a combat program in the Danger Room. He starts off with nine stones of effort and decides to put eight of them into his Optic Blast action. He then takes three of those stones and shifts them into his Defense pool. That combined with his standard X-Men Kevlar body suit, which gives him a +1 to his defense, gives him a total of five stones of effort in his optic blast attack and a Defense of four.
When a character attacks another character, the players compare stones. If the attacker has as many or more stones in their attacking pool than the defender has in their Defense pool, then they hit; if not, then they miss. For every three stones of effort that beat the defenders defense pool, the player takes one stone of health in damage.
For Instance: Spider-Man has found himself in the wrong side of New York and has come across the path of Bullseye in Hell’s Kitchen. They’ve been fighting for a couple of panels now and Ol’ Web-head really needs to land a shot on Bullseye and get home before MJ gets really mad. Now Spidey, after three panels has 8 stones left in his Energy Reserve. He decides to dump them all in a last ditch attempt to whack Bullseye with a good wallop. Spidey takes two stones for his Close Combat Action and six for his Agility ability and puts them all towards hitting the bad guy. Now Bullseye wasn’t expecting such a full out attack from Web-head and only has three stones spent on his defense. With Spidey’s eight stones versus Bullseyes measly three, five stones get through for damage and Bullseye takes a nice right hook across the face.
The sources of stones in action pool can also put flavor on the action being attempted. If, to pick up from above, a player portraying Cyclops were to take some of the stones that he had placed into his Force Blast action pool and pushed them into his defense pool, then he is most likely using his Optic Blast to swat away whatever incoming attacks fly his way.
The game likes to play fast and loose with the concepts of time, distance and speed, preferring to let the GM decide whether something will happen on his own to help out his story. If you are the kind of GM that needs to figure everything out to the smallest minutiae though, charts and figures are included.
The Marvel Universe
The game kind of assumes that you have read some comics in your life, but doesn’t need you to have read up to the most current issues of everything that Marvel publishes. Instead, a player simply has to know the broad strokes that most people do. Spider-man was bitten by a radioactive spider, Captain America is a hero from the 1940s, the Fantastic Four like to travel into other dimensions, etc. The game includes an overview of the MU and discusses what sets it apart form other comic book universes. It also suggests that games should be set in New York City since, not only is this the central location of most of Marvel’s line of comics, it is also instantly familiar to most players and can be easily researched.
The book then goes from microcosm to macrocosm and discusses the unusual races that inhabit the earth, the moon and the galaxy, as well as discussing the significance of magic and the presence of ancient gods in the MU. The book also discusses the concepts of good and evil and the science of the MU. While it may go over all of these subjects in broad strokes, it is enough to glean ideas from and introduce players to the world with and not fear drowning them in information.
Gamemastering MURPG
Unlike most other RPGs in recent memory, the nature of the MURPG system necessitates the reading of the GM section for almost all GMs. It helps you figure out how to assign Resistance stones to actions as well as modifiers and discusses at length the awarding of experience, which is also done in an interesting and novel way. Rather than simply gain points of experience, which you then spend on raising things, characters receive lines of experience. Each line is used to describe what a character has done to learn more about a certain action. When a character has collected ten lines for an action, that action goes up by one level. This gives the sense of history to a character and acts as a reminder to what a character has done before.
Final Critique
The MURPG has the makings of a great game. The game system is both novel and simple to understand, allowing for a great amount of character depth, as well as power complexity, without actually becoming complex. I’ve seen the system compared favorably with Nobilis on various message boards out there. Character creation is easy and there’s plenty of depth to the Marvel Universe for a GM to play with. The system is very customizable and fun. Apparently the game was taught to a bunch of eight and nine year olds during playtesting and they were able to grasp the game just as easily as the adults.
This game is not without its flaws though. The writing shows the relative inexperience of the staff at creating RPGs, especially when explaining the system. The text can be a little unclear at times, but nothing that a little common sense and a second or third read-through doesn’t fix. The game is also rather expensive for such a short page count, though the book is hardcover and in full color. Also, the character sheets are in a weird format that isn’t easily reproduced on a photocopier. The game may also suffer a little as Marvel doesn’t quite yet understand how to market an RPG. Trying to find the official website at Marvel.com can be a little trying, and the site isn’t even the impressive. Also, I’ve not yet seen any trade ads for the game, and I was even at WizardWorld East two weeks ago in Philadelphia, the largest comic book convention on the east coast, and didn’t see a single thing about the book’s release at the Marvel booth.
All in all, the Marvel Universe Role Playing Game is quite a lot of fun, with an innovative system and a great universe to play in, in spite of the relative inexperience of the staff creating it. Perhaps after a little bit of time to get their act together, Marvel could be making some of the best stuff on the market. In comparison to other super-hero RPGs that I’ve seen, this stands well above them in system, ingenuity and pure fun-factor. I find myself thinking that this game has easily beaten Aberrant and Silver Age Sentinels right out of the gate, mainly by taking the risks that Marvel has become known for in recent years, and with a sourcebook for the X-Men already out and ones planned for the Avengers, Spider-Man’s New York, the Ultimate Universe and Wolverine, it seems like Marvel is ready to get behind this puppy for a long while. If you find yourself feeling heavy by about twenty-five dollars and want to try a new game, I don’t really think you’ll feel cheated by the MURPG.
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