Marvel Multiverse RPG Random Character Generation

After spending the last couple of months exploring deeply through the Palladium Wilderness, our main protagonist side-trekked once again to the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game where he was found pondering random character generation...

... I hate "building" characters, so much so, that I'll spend hours/days creating a system that lets me generate them randomly.

Such is what I've done for the Marvel Multiverse game.

The tables are a mix of all the classic dice, though primarily percentiles and 3d6 -- the game's core mechanic.

First you roll your rank. There are different tables for how varied you want your power levels to be.

Then you roll your origin and occupation -- these give you your "tags" and "traits" as per the rules.

Then you roll your core stats depending on your rank. For example rank 2 looks like this:

    3-4:  0

    5-8:  1

  9-12:  2

13-15:  3

17-18:  4

The bell curve favors a number equal to your rank and these results tend to give you slightly higher abilities than your starting ability points would normally allow. Example, rank 2 gives you 10 ability points to spend with a ability cap of 5 (so you could have four abilities at 0 and two at 5, extreme but allowed). With 6 abilities (Melee, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic) rolling on the above table would average you a total of 12 (6 2s) not 10.

NOTE: Abilities in this game range from -3 to 9. Negative scores are very rare though. The "typical" person has 0 in all abilities (the game considers the average civilian to be rank 1, but they're really more akin to a rank 0). The way I figure, Marvel Multiverse abilities translate to the old FASERIP system as follows:

-3 -- Shift 0

-2 -- Feeble (2)

-1 -- Poor (4)

 0 -- Typical (6)

 1 -- Good (10)

 2 -- Excellent (20)

 3 -- Remarkable (30)

 4 -- Incredible (40)

 5 -- Amazing (50)

 6 -- Monstrous (75)

 7 -- Unearthly (100)

 8 -- Shift X (150)

 9 -- Shift Y (200)

Rank 2s are given 8 powers. 1 power equals 1 ability point and as per the rules you can mix and match these. Rank 2s total points are 18 (10 ability points + 8 powers). So if you spent 12 points rolling above, now you're only going to have 6 powers. I favor stronger abilities and fewer powers (this game gives A LOT of powers and this can be cumbersome for play -- not remembering what they all do (similar sounding names) and trying to decide which one you should use, although some are never "used" they are simply built in; permanent buffers, such as mighty 1-4 (super-strength that increases your damage multiplier).

NOTE: Not all powers are actual powers, many are basically just maneuvers; feats if you will.

In my random system, when rolling a power, you first roll to see which power set table to roll on, then you go to that table and roll for a power. If you roll a power that has prerequisites, you must take all of them. The one prerequisite I ignore is "rank". So, if you had 6 powers and the first one you roll has 2 prereqs, you must take all 3 and now you only have 3 powers left to roll for. If you don't have enough powers left to cover all of the prereqs, you work backwards to a lesser power that you can afford. Or, you can sacrifice some ability points to make room for more power slots.

You may continue rolling in that power set or roll randomly for a new power set table.

Here's a sample character I rolled up (and a character sheet I made; still tweaking...):

Whyspurr is rank 1.

Origin: Unknown (as opposed to hi-tech, mutant, alien, special training, etc.)

Occupation: Outsider (conveniently, this goes great with her origin)

Tags:

• Mysterious: The character has no idea why or how they have their powers.

Traits:

• Connections--Outsiders: Connections basically allow you to occasionally call in a favor. This one requires a clever explanation as she doesn't know how she has her powers, so who is she calling for favors???
• Fresh Eyes: You have an edge on logic checks when trying something for the first time.
• Stranger: You have "trouble" on checks trying to fit in locally.
• Sneaky: Others have "trouble" trying to spot you if you're hiding.

As a rank 1 character she gets 5 ability points and 4 powers; total value: 9. With my creation tables her abilities add up to 7 so she only gets 2 powers which is MINISCULE for this rpg's intentions, however having a 2 in both resilience and vigilance make her a very durable rank 1, in that her health and focus are both 60 (focus fuels some powers).

I rolled telepathy for her first power set and then cloak for the power. Cloak requires that you have telepathic link (basic telepathy) and that you are rank 2, but, I ignore rank prereqs. So those are her 2 powers. Cloak allows you to hide your presence from someone, but being rank 1 it's not that strong because of her low logic defense (target number: 10 on 3d6 + vigilance score) -- however, she has sneaky as trait which gives people "trouble" (disadvantage) trying to spot her, quite convenient!

So, she's a durable, sneaky telepathic in the most basic sense. Not a scrapper. The most damage she can hope to do is marvel die (d6) x1 +1, so 2-7, or double that on a "fantastic" success. That's... not a lot, but, that's rank 1 for you.

Now, with "building" in mind, would she be better off knocking a couple points off her abilities and grabbing 2 more powers? Maybe, because as she is, she can't do much except sneak around and communicate telepathically -- she'd make a great spy. However, she can sustain a decent amount of damage. 

When "building" heroes for this game, I would always put the most points into resilience and then vigilance. A rank 1 hero could, by-the-book, have the following build: 0,0,0,0,1,4, with the 4 in resilience that would give you 120 health, better than half the Marvel Universe! A clever selection of 4 powers and you've got quite a bad-ass rank 1 hero (except for damage, rank 1 damage is highly limited). Why wouldn't you do this every time? This is why I don't like "point-buy". 

But, let's roll up one more power for her just to see what would happen. Sticking with the telepathy power set, I rolled Mental Punch*, which lets you do focus damage on a melee attack instead of health damage. For this to be worth it, she needs a better melee score, so now I have to take away 2 points from her other stats, one for the power and one to add a point to melee. So I would drop vigilance and agility each down to 1. Now her melee attacks have a x2 multiplier (according to MY HOUSE RULE, not official rules; see below) and can affect health or focus.

*Psylocke's psi-blade is sort of like mental punch. Psylocke also has "telekinetic attack" which stuns as well as damages and can be done from a distance, so this one might in fact be her psi-blade. She also has flight (?). Seems Psylocke's powers have changed somewhat. Traditionally, her psi-blade severely stuns anyone she hits with it; it's a finishing move. These days she can manifest this as a bow and arrow, apparently.

*Another point -- all of the character profiles use these generic power descriptions, e.g., mental punch, telekinetic attack. The term psi-blade is not used anywhere on Psylocke's sheet.

Tying health to one stat might be a system flaw. You could go the FASERIP route and tie health to Melee, Agility, & Resilience, and tie focus to Vigilance, Ego, & Logic. (then x this total by 10). So, Whyspurr would have 50 health instead of 60 and 20 focus instead of 60. Minimum health and focus for anyone would be 10. Spiderman's health would grow from 90 to 150 and his focus would fall from 90 to 70. Flipping through the hero profiles shows that this method would have results that are surprisingly close to the way they are (Spiderman's health jump being one of the more extreme changes).

Another critique...

Damage.

Damage is based on your rank. There are 6 ranks (1-6). Rank 1 is pretty much normal human level hero, rank 6 is cosmic level hero. You have 4 types of attacks: Melee, Agility, Ego, and Logic, all do damage according to your overall rank, not your ability score. So Sue Storm (Invisible Woman) who is rank 4 (with Melee 2, Agility 2) has a baseline of rank 4 damage with all attacks, so her regular punch is as mighty as her telekinesis, and, mightier than most of the Marvel Universe (actually her telekinesis is mightier still because of power boosts). So if she uses a gun she does rank 4 damage. Punisher is only rank 2... see where this is going? 

NOTE: How damage works: All rolls are 3d6. One of those d6 is the Marvel Die. If your attack succeeds, your damage is your Marvel Die x rank + ability score. Damage possibilities. Note: Marvel Die 6 is a Fantastic Success which means double damage or added effect or sometimes both.

• Rank 1: 1-6 + 1    (2-7)
• Rank 2: 2-12 + 2  (4-14)
• Rank 3: 3-18 + 3  (6-21)
• Rank 4: 4-24 + 4  (8-28)
• Rank 5: 5-30 + 5  (10-35)
• Rank 6: 6-36 + 6  (12-42)

My change: Damage multiplier is your individual stat not your overall rank. So, Melee 3 equals a x3 multiplier. Agility 4 equals a x4, Logic 2 equals a x2, and so on. In some cases, some high ranked characters will have up to a x13 multiplier with this ruling, e.g., a 9 melee with mighty: 4, and that's fine. No more Clea (rank 6) or the Invisible Woman (rank 4) kicking the ass of the likes of Daredevil, Elektra, Punisher, etc. (all rank 2) without even using their powers! So the above progression continues as follows:

(Stat) Rank 7: 7-42 + 7  (14-49)

(Stat) Rank 8: 8-48 + 8  (16-56)

(Stat) Rank 9: 9-54 + 9  (18-63)

Minimum multiplier would be 1, even for stats of 0 or less.

Fights in this game can last awhile, so more damage is not a bad thing.

This wouldn't affect Whyspurr really, unless she picked up a gun, then her agility of 2 would give her a x2 multiplier.

So rank still matters the way I do it because lower ranked characters still have lower stats and fewer powers and traits. It doesn't change the game too much, just makes things more logical to my brain.

Of course, you could ignore every mention of the word "rank" all together and roll up your stats simply by rolling a d6 for each, giving results 1 through 6, equivalent to "good" through "monstrous" in the old FASERIP system (by my calculation). Roll for origin and occupation and then roll 1d3 extra traits and 2d6 powers for a true random old-school experience! (Then again, Champions is old-school too and that's as point-buy as it gets... ugh!)

All for now, ideas for XP and advancement, another time.

Meanwhile, my thoughts drift back to Traveller and a certain fantasy offshoot I occasionally work on...

Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game... What Have We Here?

Strange how things happen...

A couple of weeks ago I dreamed of a comic shop. This one was tucked away, hidden like an adult video store, in the back of a gas station, doorway complete with hanging beads, located in a more run down, but not necessarily seedy part of town. I don't often dream of comic shops, haven't in years, but when I do, they are always somewhat hidden. Two days later, another comic shop dream, another vaguely odd place, though I don't recall exactly where...

Why am I dreaming of comics?

These are hidden treasure dreams. Occasionally, in my youth, I would dream of amazing toy stores -- toy stores you could only dream about. Stores that had everything and then some -- awesome toys that didn't exist.

Then I stumbled across the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, written by Matt Forbeck, published by Marvel. I had actually heard about it some time ago (months, a year?) and scanned a preview of how it works then promptly dismissed it. Marvel is long overdue for a good role-playing system, because over the years there have been nothing but duds. 

I can't remember what recently brought this game back to my attention (dreams aside) but I bought it on Amazon for about $30, which is approximately 45% off. So why not? Because, apparently, super-heroes are on my brain.

I've eternally searched for the perfect super-hero system. My two favorites, and I've stated this plenty of times, are the Marvel Super Heroes game (FASERIP system) from the 80's and Palladium's Heroes Unlimited, two utterly and completely different games.

Anyhow...

Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game is 320 pages, has a high quality binding, and is jammed full of quality, Marvel Comics art (of course I would've preferred art from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but, that ain't gonna happen.) The layout is good, but the pages have this subtle background hex-mesh (kind of like the stuff hero uniforms are made of in the movies) that threatens to annoy your eyes. A plain white background would've been better, then again, this might not bother younger eyes. Overall, it's a very nice book.

There is branding all over this thing. You have six abilities that spell MARVEL...

• Melee -- hand-to-hand combat, including throwing
• Agility -- acrobatics and most ranged attacks
• Resilience -- your health
• Vigilance -- your focus and initiative
• Ego -- magic, leadership, psychic powers
• Logic -- reasoning and telepathic powers

Notice that there is some blurring between melee and agility, and between ego and logic. Are telepathic powers not psychic powers? This will certainly lead to arguments. Each power states what ability to use and some powers don't require a roll.

Also notice, there is no strength stat. In this game strength is a super power, or rather, a set of super powers (they could have added strength at the bottom and had the stats spell MARVELS.) Stats are ranked from -3 to 9. Average citizens have all 0s. Nowhere is this book are there metrics given for how much your character can lift in actual lbs./tons. I've never seen this before in a super-hero game. Super strength here is kept vague. 

Characters are ranked in power level from 1-6; average citizens, Hand Ninjas*, and Hydra Agents* are rank 1, Hela and Magneto are rank 6. Spiderman(Peter Parker) and Captain America are both rank 4. If you're a fan, Miles Morales is rank 3. Daredevil and Elektra are both rank 2. 

*Hydra Agents are actually tougher (more health) than Hand Ninjas (same health as Aunt May!) -- something I find unbelievably bizarre. I'm sure the author is trying to set up scenes of Daredevil or Wolverine plowing through ninja-hordes, but in my mind, one Hand Ninja would slaughter several Hydra Agents... easily. Debates on the accuracy of character stats can be found on various forums -- this is inevitable for such a game. (Since when does Sam Wilson have super-strength?)

You have two hit point scores, Health and Focus, obviously physical and mental, which equal 30 times your Resilience and Vigilance, respectively (though Focus functions as a combo of physical and mental endurance.) A Resilience of 3 gives you 90 Health and a Vigilance of 5 gives you 150 Focus. Using some powers requires you to spend Focus. 0 Health equals unconscious while negative Health equals dead (thankfully they didn't shy away from death in this game, but then again, comic book death...) 0 Focus equals demoralized which means you can't use certain powers and you have the equivalent of disadvantage (here it is called trouble) on all rolls. Negative Focus equals shattered, meaning your will is completely broken, so not dead, but definitely taking a hiatus (perhaps your title got cancelled...)

Characters are built with a sort-of point buy system (yuck). Decide what rank your game will be and build heroes accordingly. Rank mainly decides how many powers/traits/ability-points you have and how much damage you do. Gaining ranks is handled vaguely, basically you rank-up whenever the Narrator (FASERIP's Judge was a better GM title, Narrator sends the wrong message to my ears) feels is reasonable, perhaps every 4-6 sessions (a graphic novel) but this would be far too fast. How do you explain a rank 1 rookie becoming a cosmic power in a matter of months? This isn't D&D. To the game's credit, it states that the official Marvel characters can't go any higher than they are and does sort-of warn against advancing your own too quickly. I would probably come up with some sort of system reminiscent of FASERIPs karma advancement. It would be very slow with plenty of limitations. Comic characters take years to change just a little bit. It is a curious genre that way. Almost all others RPG genres expect a fairly regular pace of improvement. Fighting crime is truly for the love of the game.

Your hero will be made up of the above mentioned stats plus an origin, occupation, tags, traits, and a multitude of powers. And by multitude, I mean multitude. Powers are built like feat trees, meaning certain powers have prerequisites, and those prerequisites have prerequisites. For example, in the super-speed category of powers, you can't take catch bullets until you take speed run 2 and your hero must be at least rank 3. Captain America's ability to punch someone with his shield is a power called shield-bash, so if you want to build a shield-bearer (this is a power set) you might want to start with shield-bash!

Power trees.

(Of note: Specific powers like penance stare exist in the game, but Daredevil's radar sense does not. Instead, his powers are summed up under the moniker of heightened senses. Nowhere on Daredevil's character sheet is radar sense even mentioned. Likewise, Psylocke's famous psi-blade is not mentioned either (not even in parenthesis.) This power uses the generic term of mental punch, a melee attack that damages Focus instead of Health and stuns on a fantastic success. I've never seen her psi-blade not stun someone, of course, I only recall ever seeing her stab targets through their skull, perhaps a psi-blade to the arm merely hurts.)

Origins nicely cover the usual tropes: Various Aliens, High Techs, Mutants, Monsters, etc. These give you certain tags, traits, and even powers (with some limitations) these are powers you must take before choosing any others, and sometimes, as with vampires and werewolves, these are the only powers you get.

Occupations offer more tags and traits, e.g., lawyer, entertainer, journalist, outsider, spy.

Tags are mere fluff descriptors like: mysterious, streetwise, rich, secret I.D., young, etc. These offer no mechanical benefits. 

• But, they could... What if the hounded, hunted, and enemy tags meant that if you roll a fantastic failure (see below) or a new dice combo like triple 1s (1M1) members of an enemy organization or an arch-nemesis shows up to complicate your current situation? Or if you had the dependent tag, in the middle of the fight you find out a loved one is in danger somewhere else? Tags could have positive effects too if you roll a 6M6, such as allies arriving to help turn the tide (there is a backup tag.) This is what I would absolutely do.

Traits are like the old FASERIP talents which offer a slight edge to this or that roll. They sound just like tags though: iron will, loner, pundit, small, sneaky, etc.

Sample characters and sheets...

This is what Spiderman would look like if you created him yourself (on the right.) There would be a back page with the rest of his powers listed. See what I mean by a multitude of powers? BTW, there is a power-group of spider powers for people who love the spider-verse and wish to create their own spiderman (spider-verse book due out around the end of the year.)

Also, I would add an Action section to this character sheet. Everyone gets 1 standard action, 1 movement action, and 1 reaction. The trait combat reflexes gives you 1 additional reaction. It would be nice to see this at a glance. All powers fit into one of these action categories.

Most likely I'll be designing my own sheet.

Game Mechanics... Make or brake time. The stat block below is really the core of your character:

Of your 6 standard abilities, you can attack and do damage with 4 of them --melee, agility, ego, and logic. As already stated, resilience and vigilance set your health and focus. All 6 are important. All 6 also have a defense score, an armor class if you will, your score +10 + power bonuses. In melee combat, you roll against your targets melee defense. When shooting, you roll vs. their agility. Now, I love opposed rolls, but this is certainly the next best thing. For non combat rolls, you simply add your score (which may have a power bonus) to the 3D6 roll. And there in lies the mechanic... 3D6.

3D6

One die needs to be a different color from the other two. This die is called the MARVEL die. Official dice are sold in packs of 12, so 4 sets, for $16 -- not bad. The MARVEL die reads MARVEL in place of the 1.

The basic mechanic is: Roll 3D6 (referred to as D616, more branding, the Marvel earth is earth 616.) Anyway, if you're trying to punch someone, roll 3D6 + your melee score and meet or beat your target's melee defense. That's it, those are the basics. The same applies to agility, ego, and logic.

If you hit, the MARVEL die represents damage. Take that number and multiply it by your damage multiplier (limited by your Rank, e.g., rank 4 = x4 damage multiplier, some powers expand this) then add your melee score on top of that. 

If the MARVEL die comes up, MARVEL, it's called a fantastic success and you do double damage. 6MARVEL6 (6M6) is an ultimate fantastic success for triple damage. Powers and weapons will trigger other effects too, like stunning and knockback.

You can have a fantastic failure as well -- you fail but something strange happens that benefits you, sort of like failing forward. That's OK, but a missed opportunity for classic tropes like spiderman running out of web-fluid (if using a web power.) 

Some powers, traits, situations, give you edge or trouble, meaning you reroll the best or worst die. You can have double edge and double trouble too.

There is also Karma (a nice throwback to FASERIP.) You get a number of karma equal to your rank and can spend it to give yourself an edge or an opponent trouble, and to recover some health. BTW, edge and trouble are mentioned throughout the book without being in italics or bold print, I find this odd as they are terms that should always stand out.

The mechanics are simple and elegant. I actually like them. Lucky rolls can quickly knock people out of combat and also allow you to survive against powerful foes. There is however, one philosophical flaw in this game: Setting target numbers for non-combat challenges...

Target numbers are set based on your hero's rank. So, jumping from one roof-top to another (if set at challenging) will be TN:12 if you're rank 2, but for a rank 4 hero it's TN:14. What if they were jumping at the same time? Shouldn't it be easier for the rank 4 hero? This is an all-things-equal storytelling mechanic... not a fan. I think this assumes all heroes playing are the same rank, something else I'm not a fan of. I would set one TN regardless of who's attempting the feat. Easy fix, not a game-breaker.

Another thing, your damage multiplier is based on your rank. So rank 1 has a x1 multiplier and rank 6 has a x6 multiplier (remember this multiplier is applied to the results of the MARVEL die.) This applies to all 4 attack types, melee, agility, ego, and logic. Jean Grey is rank 6 so her melee damage multiplier is x6. Her melee score is 1, so not a great fighter, but if she did hit you she would do more damage than Daredevil and maybe even Captain America or Wolverine! Her mental powers do more damage than her fists, so she shouldn't bother trying to punch you, but if she did... This is a weird byproduct of this system. Obviously you could just say there was a little telekinesis in that punch (even though she has a separate telekinetic punch power, which is a logic vs. melee roll, just so you know.)

All in all, as it stands right now, I call this is a good game. So I'll say: Well done MARVEL (not a company I've praised in a long time -- the movies are terrible and it looks like they'll continue to be.) Time will tell though, as this RPG is still very new. The more people that play it, the more optimum power-builds will be revealed and then every created hero will look the same. Every one is going to take the equivalent of "super-strength" in their preferred damage mode and they will also take damage reduction in both Health and Focus -- you'd be dumb not to. And you'll have one attack that targets Health and one that targets Focus enabling you to zero in on a foe's weak spot. Also, EVERYONE will take the trait combat reflexes. Everyone will have flight. And these will only be half of your powers. This is why random character creation will always be superior to builds. 

Two books are out, the core rules and the Cataclysm of Kang Adventure which stats out a bunch more heroes/villains (the adventure part, I could care less about -- published super-hero adventures are always rail-roads of the highest degree.) An X-Men book is due out in August and a Spider-Verse book after that. These books are slated to have tons of hero stats and new powers and new rules. Eventually, I imagine, there will and should be, a Powers book. They should call it Ultimate Power (FASERIP had the Ultimate Powers Book.)

What I would love to see, and will most likely end up doing myself, is a random character generation system, not concerned with or limited by balance and rank. The actual X-Men aren't balanced nor are the Avengers and nor should your game be, well, my game anyway.

Now go clobber something!

Marvel FASERIP And Random Character Generation

Nothing beats RANDOM character generation.

Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) is the all time king of random character generation (Traveller is up there, and Heroes Unlimited too.) Often in Marvel, you have to make sense of truly odd power combinations, and many times back yonder, we would just reroll. Screw that. Random generation allows you to create characters that you would never otherwise think of. 

It is the path to true originality.

I rolled up this character in all of 10 minutes, 100% random, no fudging, no rerolls.

A Mutant...

Improve their Endurance by 1 rank (nice, since I only rolled Typical(6)), one extra power, and zero popularity.

Stats are decent, Health is on par with a lot of street level heroes. 

Talents are Military (plenty of sub-plots here, experimented on? Spy?) and Martial Arts E (+1 to initiative, actually makes sense as her two highest stats are Agility and Intuition at Incredible(40) each.)

Powers:

• Extra Attacks
• Probability Manipulation* -- counts as two powers (I rolled 4, +1 for being a Mutant)
• Earth Control
• Computer Links

What a group!

Looking for patterns...

She can change outcomes, Probability Manipulation (reverses % die rolls), for better and for worse, but only for non-living things -- like making a gun jam. She can manipulate the earth itself, Earth Control (that's earth in an elemental way, as in... dirt) and she has an immensely powerful (Monstrous (75)) connection with computers. Almost sounds like she's from a simulation, a virtual reality, or that's the way she sees reality. She's an architect, a creator, a shaper of the world.

I named her Mint (thought of Warp, Architect, Shaper, etc.)

Extra Attacks, according to the rules, simply gives her a better shot at rolling to see if she can make an extra attack. I prefer to see this power as a minor form of Super Speed, or Super Multi-Tasking. I would allow her to use two powers in one round (makes sense too with her Agility/Intuition.) Perhaps she appears somewhat pixelated when she moves or her Earth Control manifests in a pixilated way like in Minecraft (which I've never played.) Could have called her Pixi...  

Earth Control, at the beginning stage only allows you to use clumps of earth to bash and block. There are several other useful things you can develop as power stunts, tunneling, traveling on waves of earth, grappling, earthquakes, sculpting golems, etc.

She can block and bash, bash twice, bash two separate foes, manipulate and bash, manipulate twice, block block, etc.

Combat with this character would never be dull.

Perhaps she looks like this...

Or this...

FASERIP -- Best Super-Hero system ever!

It's not even close.

Looking All The Way Back...

 

I still own every single piece of anything I ever bought or created for role-playing games except the three 2nd Edition AD&D Core Rule Books. Not everything is in good condition, but most of it is.

I have binders and binders full of creations going all the way back to the beginning, which for me was the mid 80's, starting with the 1983 Red Box (technically my brother's at that time, later acquired by me in a trade as he moved beyond D&D to other games) followed almost immediately and concurrently with other BECMI sets (again, his originally) and AD&D hardcovers. My first was the Player's Handbook. For Christmas, 1985 (I believe), I got Unearthed Arcana and the Marvel Super Heroes Box Set (yellow box) and the rest is history...

My brother owned the Dungeon Master's Guide, this one:

I would eventually acquire it from him, but until that happened, I copied page after page after page for my own records, Spell Costs, Poisons, Traits, To-Hit Tables, Saving Throws, Treasure Tables, Magic Items...

 

But, way before any of that, when it was just the Red Box in our possession and perhaps a module or two, I had a strong desire to create my own stuff, and so behold, the first dungeon I ever made...

Two of the three levels...

This introduction...HA! And that cursive writing...I've literally almost forgotten how to write in cursive.

Of course I made another...

Maps already getting better...

I made many more, but eventually we got lazy and started creating quick, randomly rolled, one-page dungeons...

This one's something of a gauntlet...

And how many of you remember these Adventure Log Sheets...?

How about some cut-and-paste character sheets...

The pose on the sheets below, do you know where it came from?

That's it for memory lane.

Looking back is nice, but nostalgia can be a trap. The older you get, the less you have to look forward to and the more you have to look back on. You can, and almost certainly will, get lost in the fog of yesterday.

Do not neglect the present.

Keep creating.

Marvel (FASERIP) Praise + Revised Character Sheets

Opal. See stats below.

So there I was, experimenting with different ways to draw dungeons, when out of the blue, Marvel popped into my head, and stayed there (such is my brain.) I should redesign the character sheet, I thought...again. Make it more user friendly. Put the charts (Universal Table) directly onto the sheet. People don't really like charts any more. They can be very useful, but the Holy Grail of game design -- well, charts don't seem to belong.

But Marvel Super Heroes (FASERIP) is the greatest super-hero role-playing game ever made. Even though I played it to death, haven't touched it in years, having moved on to Heroes Unlimited or some variation there-of, including whole systems invented by yours truly (should post them here one day.) I now feel that no game captured comics like Marvel did.

Next thing you know, it's 3 A.M. and my sheet's been redesigned, with variations over the next couple of days. I guess the dungeons will have to wait a minute.

Marvel Super Heroes is such a solid game, they could republish it today with minimal tweaks. Our young minds didn't appreciate the finer details enough. We never used the defensive maneuvers (how cool is block? -- granted I would use it more proactively than rules-as-written) and we weren't all that creative with our powers -- some of which need to be fleshed out a bit more and given more practical use examples. 

Another thing Marvel could've done better is character creation. As it stands, it's completely random -- which is a good thing, I love making sense of random rolls, but, there should be more archetypes available. Something like this:

01-20  Altered Human

            01-50   Experiment

                                01-60  Super-Soldier (usually no powers, but very good stats + weapons)

                                61-80  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

                                81-00  Random Powers

            51-00   Accident

                                01-50  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

                                51-00  Random Powers

21-40  Mystic   

            01-40   Martial Artist (plenty of fighting talents, limited selection of mystic abilities)

            41-70   Sorcerer (quite a few lower powered powers "spells")  

            71-00   Mystically Bestowed

                                01-30  Random Powers

                                31-80  Magic Weapon/Item

                                81-00  Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

41-60  Mutant

            01-30   Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

            31-50   Experiment (Random Power + a cybernetic or two.)

            51-00   Random Powers 

61-80  Hi-Tech

            01-40   Power Suit (roll on list of powers commonly found in battle armor)

            41-70   Gadgeteer (each power is a separate gadget)

            71-00   Cybernetics (roll on list of enhancements)

81-90  Robot

            01-20   Swarm

            21-60   Android -Human Form (random powers)

            61-80   Non-Human Form

            81-00   Transforming

91-00  Alien

            01-20   Altered Form (animal, plant, mineral, etc.)

            21-80   Alien race (list of strange beings, multiple eyes, arms, etc.)

            81-00   Myth or Legend

There's tons of fan stuff for FASERIP out there. Many have expanded the universal table to include new in-between ranks such as: Awesome, Fantastic, Sensational, etc. I've looked into this before, but now I feel that it isn't necessary. I always felt Monstrous as a descriptor didn't quite fit. If I had to replace it from the list below, I'd probably choose Sensational.  Anyhow, here's a list of words you could use if you're looking to expand:

• Awesome
• Marvelous
• Outstanding
• Uncanny
• Magnificent
• Sensational
• Spectacular
• Astonishing
• Fantastic
• Impressive
• Astounding
• Exceptional
• Stunning

And if you wanted to play a horror themed Marvel game you could rename the ranks from the following list:

• Dreadful
• Horrendous
• Terrible
• Ghastly
• Unspeakable
• Atrocious
• Shocking
• Pathetic
• Nightmarish
• Awful
• Eerie
• Abominable
• Lousy
• Alarming
• Daunting
• Formidable
• Harrowing
• Distressing
• Terrifying
• Ungodly
• Mundane
• Maniacal
• Demented
• Beyond
• Unreal
• Ridiculous

Let's give it a whirl:

• Feeble -- Pathetic (2)
• Poor -- Lousy (4)
• Typical -- Mundane (6)
• Good -- Formidable (10)
• Excellent -- Daunting (20)
• Remarkable -- Alarming (30)
• Incredible -- Shocking (40)
• Amazing --  Ghastly (50)
• Monstrous -- Maniacal (75)
• Unearthly -- Horrific (100)
• Shift X -- Abominable (150)
• Shift Y -- Unspeakable (200)
• Shift Z -- Beyond (500)

An oddity with the Universal Table: Shift X and Shift Y are almost identical. First of all, in my humble opinion, Shift Y should be 250, not 200. A yellow success should be 36, not 41, and Shift Z's yellow should be 31, not 36. Ignore what this does to the Class 1000 side of things -- those ranks are pointless to regular super-hero game-play.

No creation charts allowed you to roll up really powerful characters -- Unearthly and up (not even the Ultimate Powers Book.) But you could use a chart like this:

01-10  Good (10)

11-20  Excellent (20)

21-35  Remarkable (30)

36-55  Incredible (40)

56-70  Amazing (50)

71-80  Monstrous (75)

81-90  Unearthly (100)

91-94  Shift X (150)

95-99  Shift Y (200) or (250)

   00    Shift Z (500)

Or if you want to limit things to Shift X...

01-05  Typical (6)

06-15  Good (10)

16-25  Excellent (20)

26-45  Remarkable (30)

46-65  Incredible (40)

66-80  Amazing (50)

81-90  Monstrous (75)

91-98  Unearthly (100)

99-00  Shift X (150)

The Character Sheets!

In order to make the result table fit, I combined the Blunt & Edge, Fighting & Agility results columns into one. This means you can now Slam with a throwing blunt attack. Which actually fits -- how many times have you seen Cap's thrown Shield or Thor's flying Hammer slam an opponent into the next area? How about a certain cinematic manhole cover? -- "Superman...!"

This was the first revision. The idea was to record the numbers you need to roll for each color feat, per ability...

Marvel FASERIP Revised A

Then I decided to simply include a condensed version of the whole Universal Table showing the rolls needed for every rank...

Marvel FASERIP Revised B

And then I added lines...

Marvel FASERIP Revised C

And here's a sample character named Opal, an entity from the Darkforce Dimension -- that's all we know, that's all we'll ever know, because mysterious is better, every time. For a randomly rolled character, she makes a lot of sense. She can't control the Darkforce like Cloak, but she can generate it, and that stunning option is enormously powerful -- stun your opponent for 1d10 rounds if they fail their endurance roll. Yikes! I would allow and endurance roll every round to snap out of it. Maybe I would change it to touch only (she reaches an ethereal Darkforce hand inside you and grasps your heart...!) She makes a good villain, dangerous, and if she starts to lose, Bamph! -- she's gone to the Darkforce Dimension --she has to roll for that, of course.

And Martial Arts D allows her to slam and stun opponents with body armor who take no actual damage from the attack (I would ignore the fact that you're supposed to study your target for 2 rounds first, hate that kind of crap.) Very useful considering she only has typical strength, i.e., if she ever finds herself unable to generate Darkforce blasts. This Talent is an example of something we almost certainly overlooked or forgot while playing.

So play some Marvel, have a blast! And remember, when villains win, they usually leave the hero lying battered and unconscious in a dark alley or they capture them and leave them unattended in some sort of death trap. Playing one-on-one? -- introduce a new hero who has to rescue the first one (guest starring, the Marvelous _________!)

And keep track of the villains that you've captured, who are now locked up in a super-max facility. When in need of a random encounter, create a random breakout table. No need to explain how...

Could look something like this:

  1  Doctor Octopus  

  2  Vulture

  3  Scorpion

  4  Electro

  5  Sandman

  6  Hobgoblin

  7  Speed Demon

  8  Hydro-Man

  9  Roll Twice

10  Everyone on this list!

And what are they doing...?

  1  Robbing a bank  

  2  Hunting Spider-Man

  3  Hunting __________

  4  Building a new Secret Base

  5  Recruiting henchmen

  6  Raiding a scientific laboratory

  7  Planting a bomb

  8  Holding a hostage

  9  Marauding maniacally

10  Whereabouts unknown...

Their Secret Base is...

  1  In the sewers  

  2  The top floor of a sky-scraper

  3  An abandoned warehouse

  4  Underwater

  5  Basement of an old house

  6  A penthouse apartment

  7  A mobile truck or van

  8  A junkyard

  9  An old factory

10  Hidden in an iconic landmark

It's Clobberin' Time!

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black

Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black are the four colors that were used to color comic books -- back in the day.  If you've ever heard the phrase "Four Color Comics" or "Four Color Super-Heroes" now you know why.  So, here I present FOUR character sheets for super-hero RPGs.


Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition is the newest of this bunch.  It's not a bad game, a little too "point-buy" for my taste.  It's kind of like Marvel (FASERIP) mated with Champions.  Champions was an alright game to play, and I knew people that would spend hours.....no, days..... actually, make that weeks fine tuning their characters, trying to get the most bang for their hero-point bucks.  This might just be where power-gaming started.

The same situation exists with Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition, but admittedly, it's nowhere near as bad.  Many gamers love point-buy systems.  Ain't my cup of tea.  My imagination works best when I have to make sense of unrelated fragments.  Now, M&M 3rd does have a meticulously crafted random character generation system that is 100% balanced for their point-buy system.  It's impressive, and whoever designed it deserves credit. I just wish they had it for every level of power in the game.  Not everyone should be "power level 10." I just don't like that amount of balance.  It doesn't exist and never has existed in comics.  Anyway, point-buy is not a flaw, it's a preference one way or the other.

A real nit-pick I have of this system is that it's "condition" heavy.  There are no hit-points, just negative modifiers and conditions, and then more conditions, and then some of those conditions have conditions.  All of these conditions are basically a variation of "stunned."

All in all, it's not a bad game.

Mutants & Masterminds 3rd Edition

When DC Heroes came out I was heavily into Marvel (FASERIP).  As much as DC fascinated me, I never made the switch.  The system is awesome, elegant even, but I hated the fact that you had to build your character.  Might as well play Champions.

No game has ever handled different power-levels as good as DC Heroes.  From Superman to Batman and everyone in between, the rules handle the difference realistically and gracefully.  

Two flaws that stand out to me.  One: In the exponential system that is DC, every number is twice as good as the one before it (4 is twice as good as 3 which is twice as good as 2 which is twice as good as 1.)  However, on the action chart (this could be another flaw--the game was chart heavy, an action and results chart, if you don't mind looking at charts though, they work great) 1-2 is a column, 3-4 is column, 5-6 is a column, etc.  Numbers 5 and 6 have the same value on the action chart, yet 6 is supposed to be twice as good as 5.  Two:  Hero-Points, you're expected to spend them to survive.  You're not really in any danger until you're out of hero-points.  Batman would be knocked out with one punch in this game many times over if he didn't have hero-points to spend to change that fate.  A character should be able to survive and do what they do based on their stats, not the expenditure of hero-points.

Still, a beautiful system.  

DC Heroes

Marvel Super Heroes (now referred to as FASERIP) was my go-to game other than D&D.  I played this game so much that it ruined percentile-dice systems for me for years.  I knew the stats to every Marvel character thanks to all the source books they produced and I still, to this day, mentally rank super-heroes according to the FASERIP system.

I loved the quick and random character generation in this game and it forced you to get creative because, damn, you would roll some weird combos.  Not like we never re-rolled though ("Feeble" Plant Control, I don't think so.)  

Like DC, Marvel was dependent on a chart (charts really were a thing in the 80's), but some people over the years have come up with creative ways not to use the chart (actually called, the Universal Table).  The main flaw of this game is that the powers sometimes aren't well explained.  Also, characters weren't always as strong or weak as their comic book counterparts.  But that's role-playing.  RPGs aren't movies, aren't novels, aren't comics.  RPGs are their own beast.  I think the biggest flaw in FASERIP was OUR inability to use the system to its maximum affect.  

If I was allowed to redesign this game........

A note about the sheet....I added Infamy to oppose Popularity.  You can use Infamy to represent villain popularity or simply to represent negative popularity.  Or you can ignore it.

Marvel Super Heroes FASERIP

Heroes Unlimited.  I know, the character sheet below says Rifts.  That's because this Rifts character sheet is usable for any Palladium Books game from Rifts to Nightbane and Heroes Unlimited to Beyond the Supernatural and Splicers to Palladium Fantasy, you get the point.

Where do I start?  This game is a random character generation paradise, but sometimes it will give you too many powers.  See, powers in this game are so well thought out, that often 1 power is like having 3 or 5 or 10!  And you might roll 4 or 5 powers.....get ready to transcribe! Often, one or two powers is plenty.

No super-hero game does gritty hand-to-hand combat better than Heroes Unlimited. Strike, Parry, Dodge, Roll With Punch, Leap Kick, Body-Block Throw, etc., it's all there.  Throw in powers and magic and you've got the most dynamic comic book action you've ever seen.

You won't be playing Superman or Thor in this game.  The power level is more attuned for street to mid-level play--which is perfect.  As of right now, Heroes Unlimited would be my go-to super-hero game.

Now, Palladium's games aren't without their flaws.  Most critics will cry about contradictory rules being scattered across books and how the system is unbalanced.  I just don't view those things as problems.  When you like a toolbox, you like it.  For me the biggest flaw in Palladium Games is M.D.C. (Mega Damage Capacity).  I simply change everything to S.D.C./Hit Points. Game on.

Physically, Palladium books are probably my favorite format for an RPG.  I love the way a perfectly-bound paperback feels.  I love the gritty black and white interior art and Palladium has some of the BEST COVER ART in gaming.

And to think, I ignored Palladium Books for years.  I currently own over thirty of them and periodically feel compelled to buy more. 

Character Sheet note:  Speed doesn't do much in this game, so I added the OPTION for Speed to give an Initiative Bonus.  Just use the same bonuses that are given for P.P.

Rifts

Will have to do some posts focused only on Palladium....