Marvel is making a push into tabletop gaming, and their first RPG looks legit.
Tabletop gaming is having a real rennaissance, and is becoming more and more mainstream. When I was young, playing Warhammer wasn't exactly cool, but now... we got an Avatar tabletop, and you have celebrities like Henry Cavill and Vin Diesel repping the hobby. With mainstream support of such calibres, it's no surprise that more and more companies are jumping on the tabletop bandwaggon, and now Marvel is the latest.
Marvel Tabletop RPG Coming Soon
The game goes by the name Marvel Mutliverse Roleplaying Game, and in an interview published on Marvel.com, the lead designer revealed that public playtesting will start this week. He also confirmed that the game will feature a 3D6 system, using a designated Marvel dice, which will be able to determine when something 'amazing' happens:
One of the coolest bits of the game is the new dice mechan. You roll three standard six-sided dice, one of which is the Marvel die. If you get a 1 on the Marvel die, you get a fantastic result and something amazing happens. If you get 6 on both of the other dice—or a 6-1-6 result—that's an ultimate fantastic roll, which is even better. Combine that with our rules for edges and troubles—which offer dice re-rolls—and you wind up with a lot of ways to make incredible things happen during the game, maximizing the fun.
Of course, the game also features character creation, with players being able to build around archetypes within the 'MARVEL' stats: Might, Ability, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, Logic.
Scores for standard people in each of these abilities range from -4 to 4, and the scores for super powered characters can range much higher. There are a number of different archetypes in the game that describe what kind of character you're playing—a striker, a blaster, and so on. When you combine the character's abilities with their archetype, that gives you even bigger numbers for your attack rolls and for your defenses too. That way the characters can stand toe-to-toe with others of their own rank.
When playtesting starts this month, we'll undoubtedly hear more about the game, and we'll find out if this is another entertainment medium that Marvel is able to conquer.