Hello Marvel fans and tabletop gamers! I have with me the Core Rulebook for the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game. I wanted to take a quick look at chapter two of the book. We’ll be going through chapter by chapter on this blog so if you want to, follow along. Some chapters I will take a much deeper look at than others but my goal here is to give you the basic information of what you need to know if you are considering playing this game.

If you want to see the review of chapter one, check it out here.

(Note: this post contains affiliate links. If you purchase something through this post I will get a small commission at no extra cost to you)

CHAPTER 2 – Core Mechanics

This chapter is a short five pages but it gives us almost everything we need to know to play the game. I’ll give a short breakdown of the rules below but for full rules you’ll need to read the book.

There are only a few core concepts you need to know to get started. If you master these, the game flows fairly easily for the most part. There is going to be some addition and multiplication in this game. It’s nothing that should be too intimidating but if you are like me and can struggle with math at times, there’s no shame in using a calculator when needed.

Let’s take a look at the concepts.

The Action Check

The action check is the most basic check of the game. While roleplaying, there are plenty of things you should be able to do without making a check of any kind. For my examples in this post, I am going to use Matt Murdock, aka. Daredevil to demonstrate.

If Daredevil, dressed as Matt Murdock wants to walk into his law offices to talk to his partner Foggy Nelson, there is no check needed whatsoever, he just does it.

Now, let’s say Matt is walking into the law offices and sees Foggy is being held captive by Wilson Fisk, aka, The Kingpin. Matt is able to hear the commotion and knows his partner is in trouble. He needs to take action. But he also needs to do so without letting Foggy know he is, in fact, Daredevil. In this case, Matt wants to act like he is stumbling around and just so happens to knock out Fisk. To try that, whoever is playing Daredevil is going to need to make an action check.

To do that, you take 3d6’s and roll them. In this game this is called rolling the d616 (more about that in a minute). Once the total of the dice is added up, the player then adds any ability scores needed to the total. The player is trying to roll higher than a Target Number the Narrator has given them. (More on this later as well).

If the player rolls high enough, Daredevil is able to pull off his stunt. If not, something else happens, determined by the Narrator.

d616

In this game, the only dice you need are d6’s. But, it’s good to have one die a different color or size than the other two. The way rolls work is the two dice on the outside of the roll (the 6’s in d616) are added up like normal. But on the middle die, also called the Marvel die, both the 1 and the 6 are counted as a 6. We’ll get more into this in further posts but for now, suffice it to say, the higher you roll the better, and if you can get your dice to come up 616, that’s the best result you can get. Ability scores can add even more to this number but we’re not going to go into those in this post because they are better explained during character creation.

Target Numbers (TN)

If you play Dungeons & Dragons you would think of this as the DC of a roll. Basically there is a number the player needs to meet or exceed for success. Most of the time the Narrator sets this based on the circumstances of what is happening in the game. But there are some NPC and player stats that may cause this number to have to be adjusted.

The narrator also still has the freedom most of the time to determine if something is impossible. If it’s impossible it cannot happen. For example, if Daredevil wanted to fly to the moon unassisted, even though he has no flight powers, he can’t do that even with the best die roll result.

Fantastic Rolls

Any time the middle die comes up with a 1 it’s called a fantastic roll. If you roll a 1 on that die and you exceed the target number, you get a fantastic success. This means you do the thing you were trying and also something else good happens. What that thing is can be suggested by the player or the Narrator.

If you have a fantastic roll but your result adds up to less than the target number, you still fail at what you were trying to do but something good happens to mitigate the results a bit. This also is determined by the player or the Narrator. Ultimately, Narrators have final say but player suggestions are often welcome.

The absolute best result you can get is a roll of 616. This is called an Ultimate Fantastic roll. In D&D it would be a critical success. If you roll this, outside of checking against something the Narrator has deemed impossible, you automatically succeed. These rolls can often be the most fun part of the game and can turn the tide of a battle or the narrative in an instant.

Edges

Also like in Dungeons & Dragons there is what amounts to an advantage/disadvantage system in this game. If you are in special circumstances where your hero has an advantage, they get an edge. For example, if Daredevil is fighting someone and the lights are off, Daredevil has an advantage because he doesn’t need to see to fight.

This can stack as well. If Daredevil has and advantage because the lights are out, and he’s sneaking up on an unsuspecting thug, he’d have two edges.

What happens here is with each edge you get, you can re-roll one of your dice and take the higher result. So, with two edges you might have an initial result of 5, 3, 5. You can then decide to re-roll any two of the dice you want. And you get to keep the better result. So if you re-roll and you end up with 5, 1, 6, you’d want to keep the second result. Remember the 1 = 6 so the result on the second roll is 17 compared to the original result of 13.

Trouble

The flip side of edges is trouble. This works in the same way but in the opposite direction.

If Daredevil is trying to fight bad guys and suddenly loud music comes on, he has trouble due to his highly sensitive hearing.

This also stacks, so if Daredevil is not only in a spot with loud music but there is a crowd of people blocking his way, he’s got two instances of trouble.

In these cases you re-roll however many dice you have equal to the amount of trouble. This time, instead of taking the better result, you have to use the lower result.

Edges combined with Trouble

Where this gets really tricky is when you have circumstances which provide edges and trouble. You can have an instance where a character has three edges and two troubles. Or three troubles and two edges, etc.

In those cases, the edges and troubles cancel each other out and you have to take what is left.

If Daredevil has an edge because it’s dark and one because he is sneaking up on someone, but he has trouble because he has been awake for more than 18 hours, he’s got an edge.

If Daredevil has trouble because he’s in a noisy place, and he doesn’t have his weapons with him, but he’s sneaking up on his opponent, he has one trouble.

Hopefully that makes sense but if you play the game for a while, you’ll get used to quickly figuring out how many edges and troubles there are to deal with.

IN CONCLUSION

There’s a few key rules in this chapter. Once you’ve got them down, they become pretty easy to understand but it can take a few sessions to get the full hang of them. There’s a bit of math involved but it’s not anything overly complicated. There are definitely parallels to Dungeons & Dragons but these rules, ultimately, are a lot more streamlined than those.

Next time, we’ll be taking a look at character profiles. There’s quite a bit of info in that chapter but it’s one of the most fun parts of the game. In the meantime, if you are interested enough to buy the book, check out how to do that below. Otherwise, see you next time!

HOW TO BUY THE BOOK

If you have read enough to realize this is a game you want to try out there are a few things you can do to get it. The different methods have some pros and cons so I’ll go into that a bit as well.

And, I’m not trying to make the hard sell here but if you want to help out this blog, buying through the links below goes a long way and it won’t cost you any extra.

1. You can pick up a copy at your local friendly gaming store. The books should run around $50-60 bucks and not only do you get to support a local business, you get to walk away with a copy in your hot little hands that day, no muss, no fuss.
2. You can buy a hardcover copy on Amazon for $32. This is a great way to get the core book, although you will need to wait for it to be shipped to you. If you want to help this blog out buy your copy here.
3. You can get a copy for Roll20 for $30 on drivethrurpg. However, a couple of warnings here. First off, you’re not getting a physical version of the book this way. Also, you need to have an account on the Roll20 Virtual Table Top in order to access the content. (This is a free account and there’s a link in the purchase description on the Drivethrurpg site if you don’t already have one) Finally, and this is my biggest complaint about this purchase method, if you buy this through Drivethrurpg you are not getting a PDF of the book. As far as I can tell, there is no way to get a PDF of this book at this point. If you do want to buy this version and use it on Roll20 it’s a great option. And if you want to help this blog out you can buy your copy here. You can still read the digital book on basically any web browser this way, you just don’t get a PDF.
4. If you happen to have Marvel Unlimited, you can get the test version of the book by typing in Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game: Playtest Rulebook. This will be an earlier edition and some of the rules have changed but it’s got the basics.
5. If you don’t have Marvel Unlimited and you are willing to shell out $17 to get the Playtest book, you can get it on Amazon. If you want to help out this blog buy it here. Again, it’s not the full current book but it does cover the basics and it gets you started at a lower price point.

Special Bundles

If you are all in on the game and have cash to spare you could really go all out in a couple of ways.

1. You could buy the Core Rulebook, the adventure module MARVEL MULTIVERSE ROLE PLAYING GAME: THE CATACLYSM OF KANG and the upcoming MARVEL MULTIVERSE ROLE PLAYING GAME: X-MEN EXPANSION books. Getting all three at once will run you around $100. If you’d like to help out this blog just make your purchase through one of the linked titles above.
2. If you are already big time into Roll20 anyway, the best value through drivethrurpg is to get the Marvel Multiverse RPG Roll20 Mega Bundle. This will give you the core rulebook, a short module made for the Roll20 system called Revenge of the Super-Skrull, and The Cataclysm of Kang. Just remember this is only for Roll20 and does not include PDF’s. To help out this blog, buy it here. Right now this is on sale for around $70 and is the best deal if you don’t need physical books and want to play on Roll20.