Session Zero University Book Club - Marvel Multiverse by Marvel Unlimited - Session Zero Heroes - A TTRPG Actual Play Podcast

Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Welcome students to Session Zero University.
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(00:23):
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(00:44):
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(01:05):
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(01:25):
Welcome back, everybody, to another episode
of the Session Zero University's Book Club.
And today, we are going to be discussing the Marvel
Multiverse role-playing game.
That's right, right out of our favorite superhero movies,
all the Marvel stuff we've seen from Captain
America and Iron Man, all the way to the X-Men.
And joining me today is huge comic fan and Marvel Multiverse

(01:48):
expert.
I'm going to call you an expert, I don't know if expert it.
I'm going to disappoint a lot of people
if they think I'm an expert.
But you've definitely played a lot more than I have.
And that's kind of the benefit here is--
Lucas Sullivan.
Lucas, thank you for joining us on the show.
Thank you for having me.
Absolutely.
It's a pleasure.
Yes, absolutely.
So I had actually gotten the book not too long before we played.

(02:09):
I saw it was on sale at Barnes & Noble.
I said, why not?
And then it kind of sat on my proverbial shelf of shame,
just like with the board games that I buy that I haven't played
yet.
We all have that shelf.
It's true, it's true.
I've got a handful of different RPGs I want to try.
And that one's been sitting there.
And I remember--
I think we just were talking, probably,
like a church or something.
And you had brought it up that you were running some.

(02:29):
And I was like, this would be the awesome opportunity
to try it out.
And then we ran the one shot, and it was a lot of fun.
I was like, this is such an easy RPG to get into.
And I love that.
Because as somebody that does a lot of other RPGs,
it's just exhausting to try to figure out
these super crunchy rules.
So yeah.
So if you wouldn't mind, how did you discover Marvel Multiverse?

(02:53):
Like what kind of got you into it?
Yeah.
Well, it's a long journey in some ways.
So in our local comic shop, or one of our local comic shops,
I'm pretty good friends with the owner.
And I just remember going in there one day, and he said,
hey, have you heard anything about this?

(03:13):
And he had a copy of the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game
play test.
Oh, OK.
And so he said, yeah, have you heard anything about this?
Or are you interested?
And so I bought it from him.
Sure.
And tried it a couple of times.
And here's the thing.
It was drastically different than the finishing product.

(03:33):
Yeah, way different.
I couldn't give you all the details,
because it's been two, three years, right?
But it was not nearly as good, not nearly as refined,
compared to what we have now.
So I've been kind of, in some ways,
invested in it since kind of before the actual launch.

(03:55):
So I guess from the beginning, the issue--
I mean, hey, if you had the play test version,
then I would say that's pretty much the beginning.
Yeah, yep.
And so again, it's definitely way better now.
But that is interesting that it was such a different game
during the play test.
And they've changed it.
So I guess that's kind of the point, right?
Send out the play test.

(04:15):
And then you get feedback.
And then you adjust based on feedback.
But that is pretty crazy that it was so different.
Yeah, and I wish I could give you some examples too.
And I don't even--
I don't think I ever actually played it.
Right.
I mean, I just read it.
And there's a lot of stuff that I remember just being like,
this is really confusing, or it's really clunky.
Oh, here.

(04:36):
I don't--
I'm probably wrong.
You'll probably have somebody--
a listener tell me that I am.
In the comments.
I don't even remember the 3D6 component--
or the D616, which is kind of like the hallmark of this system.
I don't even remember that being part of it.
Again, I could be wrong.
It's been like three years since I've read it.

(04:57):
But well, and I'm going to assume that--
and I know this is getting a little off track.
But are you familiar with why it's
like 616 is kind of the concept that they went with there?
Why?
Oh, yeah.
The multiversal aspect.
Yes.
Earth 616--
Yes.
Yeah.
The main continuity of the Marvel comics.
I didn't know that until I was listening just recently

(05:19):
to the Adventure Zone.
Clint McElroy, he did a one--
or was kind of more of a mini series--
on the Marvel multiverse system.
And he's done stuff with Marvel directly.
And so he knew the guy that designed the system,
and he was talking about him.
And he mentioned that.
He's like, oh, yeah.
And it's called the 616 system, one side
because you're using 3D6.
And one of them, the sort of fantastic success part, is a one.

(05:42):
And then on the other hand, it's the fact
that it's Earth 616, which is kind of where what we see kind
of comes into play in the Marvel.
Yeah.
Yeah, for sure.
And it shows--
I mean, it's kind of a little bit of a wink.
Yes.
Nuts to the fans, for sure.
Easter egg type thing.
But at the same time, it really--
I think gives it more of an identity.

(06:04):
Yes.
It's not just three random--
Three.
D6.
It's kind of big--
There's purpose here.
Yeah, it's big then.
So--
Absolutely.
So now you've been into comics for a long time.
Like you've obviously been involved in everything
from DC and Marvel and all kinds of other kind of areas
within that for quite some time.

(06:24):
So this obviously struck your attention because of that.
I'm assuming.
Yeah, absolutely.
Yeah.
Yeah, I've been a big fan of comics ever since I was a kid.
Do you want me to go into that much?
Or--
As much?
Go for it.
As much as you want.
OK.
I could talk about comics all day.
Yeah, that's fair.
But no.
Yeah, so comics--
I mean, that's one of my big passions.

(06:46):
I-- first comic I can remember getting
was around the time Daredevil, the Ben Affleck movie
was coming out.
So like 2002, 2003, somewhere in the--
OK.
And so I'd seen Spider-Man and the X-Men
before that.
But I remember going to Toys R Us
and they had these five packs of Marvel comics.

(07:09):
OK.
The one on top was Daredevil 186.
OK.
And so that was the one that caught my attention
because I was like, oh, this Daredevil movie is coming out.
I want to get into this.
And so we got that.
And I've been hooked ever since.
Was really fortunate.
My-- well, my mom married a guy who's also a big comic collector.

(07:31):
Oh, OK.
And so in some ways, I already was really into them.
But he really just catapulted my love for the comics.
And I mean, he's a big collector.
I think he's told me before--
I don't know if this is bragging or not,
but he told me that his previous marriage,
he had paid for the divorce by selling like three comics.

(07:52):
I mean, so high-end comics is what he would deal in.
But then on top of that, I mean, he was also a fan.
He wasn't just an investment for him.
He also loved the comics.
And so he, like Batman, Spider-Man, Hulk,
he'd have complete runs.
And it would be the kind of thing where he'd have them out
and he'd read an issue and be like, hey,

(08:13):
before I put this back, do you want to read it?
Oh, nice.
And so I mean, he really, in a lot of ways,
kind of nurtured my love for comics.
And so yeah, when it came to--
I'd done other role-playing games.
Oh, OK.
That was going to be my next question.
So that's perfect.
Sure.
But yeah, I was just going to say,
I'd done other role-playing games leading up to it.

(08:33):
And so on top of that, other role-playing games,
they kind of dabbled in the superhero aspect.
But anyway, so for me, it was a no-brainer.
As soon as I heard Marvel, I was like, OK,
I already love these characters.
I've already spent the last--
when was 2002?
That was almost 20--

(08:54):
that was over 20 years ago.
So the last 23 years with these characters
and in this world, it was just no-brainer.
And that is definitely-- and we'll
get into this a little bit more later,
but that is one of the coolest parts about Marvel Multiverses
is that they have even pre-generated characters.
You can play as Spider-Man.
You can play as Black Panther.
You can play as all these heroes that you love.

(09:15):
And I think that's a really cool thing to be able to do.
And obviously, I love creating new characters,
creating new stories, and stuff like that.
But yeah, if you want to just pick this book up,
and then I want to play as Shang-Chi, you can do that.
Like, they have that all set up for you.
So you mentioned other TTRPGs.
Before we jump into the Marvel Multiverse stuff,
hardcore, what other TTRPGs had you played?

(09:37):
Yeah, so my uncle is a big board game guy.
Nice.
And so he--
I mean, I can't tell you how old I was.
I can't even tell you what edition it was.
But I played Pathfinder the first time
when I was pretty young.
I remember the whole D&D 3.0 scandal.

(09:58):
Or was it 3?
I think it was.
It was either 3 or 3.5 or something like that?
They did 3.5 because nobody liked 3.
Right, right.
Yes.
So anyway, so he was very much against D&D when I was young.
So he's like, I'm going to get you into Pathfinder.
World Pathfinder family.
Yeah, exactly.
So I played Pathfinder.
That was really my foundation.

(10:19):
Sure.
Went from there.
Had a friend group that played D&D 5e.
The same uncle got me into Cypher System, which they have
a superhero component of that.
And so that was the first superhero TTRPG I played.
Granted, this was years ago.

(10:39):
Sure.
Man, I've played a lot of the Star Wars RPG,
the most recent fantasy flight.
I mean, love that game.
That is one of the top of my list,
like ones I'd love to try out.
Oh, man, it's awesome.
No support for it anymore.
I know.
That's the frustrating part.
And it's impossible to get the books to you, I heard.
Yeah, it is.
I have a handful of them, but not as many.

(11:02):
I mean, we were still playing when they--
And there's a lot of them, too.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, we were still playing when they stopped supporting it.
So yeah, that was frustrating.
But that was--
man, that was a great system.
I really liked that one.
So those were the main ones.
And I dabble with other ones as a friend would say,
hey, do you want to play whatever gearing up currently

(11:25):
to try out the fallout?
Yeah.
Which hopefully you might have somebody on as a guest
at some point and they'll say, oh, this
is the best system ever.
It's not my favorite.
I'll just see it.
It's the complete opposite of this one.
Is it the D100 one where it's like--
or there's two I've seen.

(11:46):
One was like D100 where everything is kind of on this weird
like percent it, like out of 100% scale.
And then there was one other one, I think,
that was a bit simpler.
You know what?
I couldn't tell you.
My friend is going to be GMing that one.
And so he knows a lot more the details.
I just know I was looking into it.
And a lot of the stuff seemed to be in nightmares.

(12:08):
Just seemed to really cumbersome, especially when
you're talking about things like inventory.
If you've ever played the fallout games,
you're constantly getting scrapped.
Oh, too heavy.
And I'm like, man, I got to get a pen and paper
and write down every individual rusted can.
And I was just like, oh, dude, this sounds like--
Because it's all valuable if you can--
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

(12:29):
If you're building a camp or whatever.
So again, the complete opposite of this game,
this one's super simple, super streamlined.
That one's a lot crunchier.
If you like really crunchy things,
that's great.
Just for me, I'm like, oh, this feels like a nightmare.
I don't know.
I could be wrong.
I could end up playing it when we eventually do.
Again, we're still gearing up for it

(12:49):
and could end up loving it.
And you're like, oh, this isn't that bad.
Yeah, but again, those are kind of the foundation
of the ones that we've spent a lot of time in,
besides the Marvel multiverse.
Right.
And you've run a couple of campaigns, one shot.
I mean, I guess that's one thing.
Because we did a one shot.
I wasn't sure how long of a campaign

(13:09):
have you run within Marvel multiverse.
Yeah.
So the current campaign that I'm working through,
we've been going for the last six, seven months,
somewhere around there, meeting semi-regularly.
I think we're on like 10 or 12 or something like that,

(13:30):
as far as what session we're on.
And that's the longest one.
So that's pretty-- yeah.
I mean, that's a pretty good size.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it's been cool.
That's when you get to this point,
that's when the story really starts to kind of--
Absolutely.
Unfold.
And you start to really love the characters
and all that kind of stuff.
So we're in a fun spot.
Done a good handful of one shots as well.

(13:53):
You did one with your group.
They have a Deadpool adventure module.
OK.
That's supposed to be a one shot.
We had to break it up into two, because it's kind of long.
Oh, sure.
Yeah, yeah.
So I've done that one.
I've done just some kind of almost like play test ones
as well.
Oh, sure.
People have been like, oh, hey, I'm kind of interested in this.

(14:13):
And just, OK, we'll just pick a random character
from the book that's ranked 2, 3, 4, or whatever.
And we'll try it, that kind of thing as well.
But again, as far as campaigns go,
the one that we're on right now that's been going to last,
again, I don't know, six, seven months.
Very nice.
OK.
The longest.

(14:34):
So that means there is--
I mean, there's potential for sure for longer campaigns,
which is good.
Yeah, absolutely.
And again, with it being the Marvel brand tied to--
I mean, there are so many possibilities.
I mean, it's called Marvel multiverse,
because there's multiverses.
Yeah, multuniverses.
There we go.
And so, I mean, there's just so much potential to explore there.

(14:56):
And when you think about comics, I mean,
there are so many series that are in the five, six, seven,
800 issues.
And so, obviously, if they were able to go back to that well
over and over again, it's not super difficult to do
in a tabletop setting.

(15:17):
No, absolutely.
I mean, you throw in a new villain or a new NPC
or something like that.
You've now changed the story and opened up more possibilities.
Exactly.
Awesome.
All right.
So starting from the beginning with the Marvel
multiverse system, how does the 616 dice concept work?
Because that's kind of the foundation of the game, right?
In D&D, you've got like five--

(15:39):
is it five dice, I think, in the polyhedral dice?
You're rolling the D20 most of the time.
The other dice, they're there for damage and things like that.
There's some numbers that you're going to add up to those dice.
This system is different.
You're having 3D6.
How does that kind of play into things?
Yeah.
So with this system, there are three different dice.

(16:00):
And really, Marvel wants you to buy the official dice.
And I would recommend it.
They're nice.
They just came out with a new X-Men version
that's a different color scheme and beautiful.
But really, you could play it with any three dice.
Granted, you would want two dice that
are the same color or whatever, and then one die

(16:23):
that would be different.
And that die would be your Marvel die.
And so the idea here is that as you're playing,
there would be different action checks,
whether that would be melee, agility, logic,
whatever it may be.
And so you roll those dice, and you kind of add up

(16:43):
the score there.
And that would-- whatever number you're trying to reach
or exceed for the check, and you're going off of that.
Now, where it gets interesting is--
I'd mentioned before, you would have one die that
would be different, which would be your Marvel die.
So a one on a regular die, they have a special side that

(17:06):
just says Marvel for the official dice.
fancy logo, little piece on there.
That's right.
Yep.
But if you were to roll that, that would count as a six,
the one would.
And on top of that, that would be a fantastic result.
And so the beauty of that is, regardless of if you pass

(17:26):
or fail that check, you still have that fantastic result.
So you could lose that check, and it would be, yeah, you lost,
but maybe you have an edge on your next roll.
And when you think about it, you have a one in six chance.
Every time you roll.
That's not bad.
Of getting that ultimate result--

(17:50):
sorry, sorry, that fantastic result, rather.
And so you're getting that pretty consistently.
Now, if you pass your check, and it is a fantastic result--
I mean, it's even better.
Maybe your attack says that if you
were to get a fantastic result, maybe the person is burned,

(18:13):
or maybe some different status effect.
And on top of that, you also take whatever you're doing,
especially if it's a check that has to do with a fight
You would take that result and multiply it by two.
And so I mean, it's--
You're doubling your damage and stuff like that.
And again, this is happening pretty frequently,

(18:35):
because again, you've got a one in six chance of rolling
that fantastic result.
So yeah.
Absolutely.
And that's kind of the main job of the system.
Oh, yeah, no, absolutely.
And it's kind of neat how it really
encourages the yes and or the no but concept of thinking
with RPGs, which we push really hard for.

(18:56):
You don't want to just--
like someone wants to jump over some tree or something
like that, but they're super jump.
And then they roll, and they don't do very well.
And then if you're the DM, and you're just like, well,
you fail, and that's the end of it.
And you're like, oh, that's just kind of boring.
But it really encourages like, oh, I failed,
but I did roll my fantastic--
so it's a fantastic failure.

(19:18):
It's like, OK, you jump up, and you slam into this tree,
and you can feel as like the roots from underneath
start to pluck out, and the whole tree starts to collapse.
But as you land, and you hit the ground,
you find, oh, there's this cabin hidden out in the woods
that you wouldn't have noticed, because there was some huge
brush that was blocking away.
And now this tree-- so it opens up a new opportunity.
Now the story can move forward.

(19:40):
And then of course, with yes ands when they succeed,
and they get that fantastic success,
then you get to say, oh, man, well, you usually hand that
over to the player.
You say, OK, describe for me how you do this epic attack
that you were doing, what made it so cool.
And then the player gets that moment
where they're like, I really contributed to the story right
now, and that's really awesome.

(20:00):
And I will say too, before we move on--
so that's the fantastic result.
Then you also have an ultimate fantastic, which
is where you have the two non-marvel dice.
You roll sixes.
So 6, 1, 6 is the idea.
6 on 6.
And then granted, I mean, here's the thing.

(20:21):
It's elusive.
I've never actually seen somebody roll an ultimate fantastic
in per se.
Because you're at, what, 36 times 6, I think,
is how the math works again.
Yeah, I think it's like a 1 in 200 something.
I'm not good at math.
No, I get you.
I think it says it in the book or something like that.
There's a 1 in whatever.
And so they pretty much say, hey, make it really special

(20:43):
when it happens.
Granted, that hasn't happened.
But you get all--
I mean, you automatically pass.
Whatever check you're trying, you automatically pass.
And on top of that, all of the other results
that would come with the fantastic result
are applied as well.
Absolutely.
Like you're trying to jump across a chasm,
and you've got your friends with you, and you jump,
and you roll the dice, and it's the full, the ultimate

(21:05):
fantastic success.
You grab on to everybody, and you all
jump across the couch, or something epic like that.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah, where you just maxes out.
So and you mentioned this before, but you mentioned edge.
There are instances throughout the game
where you can gain an edge, or you
might have what's called trouble.
And those are the opposite sides to that.

(21:26):
How do those work?
What do those mean?
Yeah, so if you have edge, you have to--
here's the crazy thing about these, edges and trouble.
They stack.
And so you could have like three edges on it,
which would mean that you could re-roll one of the dice.
Either three times a roll, all the dice wants, or whatever.

(21:47):
It may be--
Oh, it's a full re-roll.
Well, each edge goes towards one.
Oh, OK.
And so let's say that you had three edges.
You could roll all three over again
and take the better of the two results.
Or you could just do one dice.
One dice three times.
Yeah, until you get something good.
Hopefully.
Yeah, exactly.
And so that's what edges do.

(22:10):
You re-roll and you take the better of the two results.
Now trouble is the opposite.
You re-roll and you have to take the worst of the two results.
And you see both of these pretty frequently
throughout the session, where you're kind of--

(22:30):
depending on the GM is saying, hey,
you're going to have to re-roll one of those.
You've got edge on this or trouble on this.
And some of the different powers also,
they just have that as a effect.
And even some of the traits, I think,
associated with some of the edge and trouble.
So if you're--
oh, man, I didn't look through the traits super well,
because there's a lot.

(22:51):
But if you have something that would, in theory, benefit
to the specific situation, maybe because you
were an Olympic athlete as part of your background,
you gained a trade of extra human strength or high training
So when you're in a situation where you need to pull
vault over something, you'd be like, well,

(23:11):
pull vaulting was something that I did when I was an Olympian.
I'd get edge on that.
Yeah, exactly.
So another example would be there are people
that are famous.
And so they have an edge on checks
where they're trying to speak with somebody.
So it would be an edge on their ego check

(23:33):
when it would come to trying to convince somebody
to do something for them, because they'd be more likely
because, hey, you're famous.
Oh my gosh, I know you from all my--
Yeah, exactly.
You know what?
It's funny you mentioned that, because that was the character
that I played when we did the one shot was famous.
And I completely forgot about that.
No, you're good.
That's a perfect example.
And then on the other hand, you've
got trouble, of course, which that's
like there's security cameras all around you.

(23:54):
You want to sneak in.
But just because maybe they're able to turn invisible,
which is cool, but what they don't realize
is that these have a heat send or something on them.
And it's like, you're going to have trouble
if you're going to try to sneak past these specialized
cameras.
Yep.
So awesome.
OK, and then just play off of everything
that we've talked about so far with the 616 dice concept

(24:18):
and everything that would be associated with that
is pretty much within four pages of the book, which I think
is the coolest thing ever.
You could argue one, two, three, four.
Yeah, four pages.
So that means that within reading a quick overview
of the four pages, you could pretty much get started
on playing for the most part.
There's obviously a little bit more to it.
Obviously, if you want to make your own characters,

(24:39):
there's going to be a little bit more to it.
But for the most part, I mean, you can essentially
pick up the game pretty quick, especially
if you made a character and you read those four pages.
If you have the understanding of how the character's creation
works, you will inevitably get most of the other stuff
that you need.
You're going to be set.
Yeah, absolutely.
And I think that's one of the biggest strengths
for this system.

(24:59):
I mean, I've jokingly called it "baby's first RPG."
And some people might think that's a knock against it.
I don't think that's a knock against it at all.
I mean, it's super simple.
Marvel has, in fact, they even have a YouTube video.
I think it's like a 20-minute-long video.
Sure.
And it's like how to play the Marvel multiverse game.
And I'll send it to people all the time.

(25:20):
And the funny thing is that 20 minutes,
there's like filler in there.
But you can cut out like no problem.
You could cut that video in half if you wanted to.
Because it's-- I mean, it's that simple.
Absolutely.
And I have two daughters.
One of them is nine.
The other one is five.
And I've honestly-- we've had conversations of, hey,
why don't-- they're really into X-Men right now.

(25:42):
Oh, awesome.
OK.
It's like, hey, why don't you play as Kitty Pryde.
And you-- the other one will play as Rogue.
And we'll just mess around and have fun.
And I mean, they can just grasp it as kids.
Now granted, that's with somebody that's older,
that knows the rules.
Right.
You know, shepherding them through.

(26:04):
I don't know that they could get there on their own
without that.
But again, super simple.
Yeah.
Super, super simple.
But they have fun with it.
They're able to.
And they're not just like rolling dice
and then letting you tell them everything that just happened.
And then they're kind of outside of the situation.
Like, they're actively engaging in the story
and everything like that.
Exactly.
Which is awesome.
Yep.
Now, when it comes to combat, that's

(26:26):
where a little bit more of the slight clunkiness to this game
comes in, just because that's where the majority of the math
sits at.
That's right.
Right.
So you'll have some damage multipliers and some things
that'll add to the damage.
But I think for the most part, especially
if you've played an RPG before, it's
a lot easier to pick up than some of them that I've played.

(26:46):
Sure.
Yeah.
And I guess that's one of the areas
that I kind of forgot to mention when I was talking
about the dice system.
Oh, sure.
Which is the fact that when you're rolling,
you only have to roll once.
Right.
It's not like you're rolling to see if you hit
and then rolling to see how much damage you do.
It's all in that first roll.

(27:09):
Again, I should have mentioned that earlier.
But so let's say that you're rolling to try to see
if you hit somebody with a melee attack.
And so you roll and you hit.
Yeah.
It's a success.
It's a success.
All that you do is you just take that Marvel die
and then you just feed it through the multiplier.

(27:30):
Oh, OK.
And that you already have to see how much you get.
So let's say that it's a success.
You roll it to and you are ranked to.
So you would automatically, assuming
that there's no other kind of powers that would mess with this.
And there are some.
You would just take that two times that two in the multiplier
and then add whatever your melee is.

(27:53):
And that's your damage.
And so I mean, that might, especially
as I'm saying it out loud, it might sound difficult.
But once you do it twice, it's just like you know exactly how
to do it.
I mean, it's super simple.
I completely agree.
And like with things like Dungeons and Dragons,
you're going to have these four different dice that
might be what you roll for the damage.

(28:14):
And you've got to find the right one.
And then you've got multipliers that all go into it.
And there's a there's a couple of ways
that you can kind of streamline it for sure.
But I mean, like you said, the beauty of this
is the simplicity that I rolled once.
I take that one die that's already been rolled and then just
run it through that same algorithm.
And it's not anything.
I shouldn't even use the phrase algorithm.
That makes it sound really complicated.

(28:34):
It's really like multiply by this number
and then add some of this.
It's like the easiest thing in the world.
If you really hate math, have your phone with the calculator
on and just like quick tap it all in and you're good to go.
So awesome.
So let's talk campaign creation.
So you mentioned before you would
run a couple of different things.
You had one that was kind of ongoing.

(28:55):
I know that you do some like sort of homebrew stuff
when it comes to the--
because you did that for our one shot was kind of something
you had come up with.
So with that being said, as a GM,
how would I even kind of start when
thinking about creating a campaign that I
want to run with some players?
How do I figure out setting?
And what's a good jumping off point?
Things along those lines.

(29:16):
Yeah.
I mean, there's really no wrong answer here with this.
I think one of the very important things to do
is start off by establishing the tone that you want.
And the reason I say that is because I mean,
just think about the differences in the Marvel universe.
Even if you don't read the comics,
if all you know are the movies, think about--

(29:38):
did I say read the movies?
See the movies.
The only thing you're familiar with
is the movies and the TV shows.
As an adult, the older I get, the more
I have to have subtitles on for anything that I'm watching.
So yeah, I definitely read movies.
Did you do movies?
Yeah, well, yeah.
But anyway, if you've only seen the movies or the TV shows,
I mean, you know that there's a huge difference in tone

(29:59):
when it comes to the Marvel.
So I mean, if you take Guardians of the Galaxy
and you compare that to the Daredevil TV series,
I mean, it's night and day.
One is a super grounded, gritty show.
Well, the other one is this really hilarious romp
through outer space, the complete opposite of grounded.

(30:20):
And then you've got something like Endgame or Infinity War,
which is super epic in scale.
I mean, it's cosmic in the same way
that Guardians of the Galaxy is.
But yeah, again, different tone there.
And so it's kind of the same thing
if you are planning a campaign here.
You kind of want to establish the tone from the get go.

(30:42):
I think that this may be more so than a lot of games
is kind of key.
So for instance, the campaign that we're running currently,
I mean, it's a very grounded campaign.
All of our heroes are ranked two, which is pretty low
in the grand scheme of things.
And they're dealing with not really any cosmic level

(31:05):
threats as of yet.
It's mostly drug addicts.
I shouldn't say drug addicts necessarily,
but drug lords rather and human traffickers and stuff.
And so it's really hard to be lighthearted and funny with that.
However, we talked about it beforehand,
and we knew, OK, this is kind of the tone that we're going for.

(31:28):
And so everybody is on the same page with that.
When we do one shot-- we'll do one shot.
And we did the Deadpool one shot.
Oh, I can only imagine that was hilarious.
Yeah, it was great.
And so just kind of knowing what you're getting into tone wise
is really important, I'd say that.
We're all pretty-- I mean, for the most part,
we're all pretty familiar with the Marvel stuff,

(31:50):
and they have all the movies and shows and stuff.
So usually, yeah, you can say, OK, it's kind of going to be--
or it's going to be fitting in with kind of this plot line
here, or we're going to do stuff with X-Men a lot,
But yeah, absolutely.
Having that tone and knowing we're going to be--
this is going to be pretty intense or pretty serious
or, like you said, grounded.
Yeah.
You might have something that's a little bit like--

(32:12):
it was a Doctor Strange 2, where it kind of
had a spooky-ish elements to it.
Or there was a Mutants movie.
Yeah, I think it was Mutants, which was kind of like a horror
movie type thing.
Yeah, yeah.
So you can do that.
Like, that's the beauty of it, too, is like,
superhero stuff notoriously is usually categorized
like an action epic sci-fi kind of a thing.

(32:33):
But man, you could really do just about anything with it.
Yeah, you can.
[MUSIC PLAYING]

(32:59):
And so from there, I'd also say you--
not only do you want to know the tone, but also the setting.
Oh, yeah.
And the reason I say that is because, again,
you could be going through outer space.
You could be hopping through different multiverses.
And so you kind of have to make sure--
I shouldn't say you have to, but you'd

(33:20):
be wise to make sure that you're all on the same page as far
as what you're trying to get out of it.
I know that in our campaign that we're running,
we don't really mingle with the greater Marvel universe too much.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
I mean, that's not to say that we haven't.
I mean, they've run into Daredevil, Wulverine.

(33:41):
But going into it, they kind of knew, OK,
hey, there wasn't going to be a whole lot of it.
My suggestion and nobody else that I know that has run this
game has taken this suggestion.
My suggestion when it came to this game and what we've done
is we've said, OK, most of the Marvel stuff

(34:01):
takes place in New York.
Oh, OK.
And the TV shows or whatever.
But most of the heroes are based out of New York.
I don't know New York.
No, I've never been to New York.
And so the biggest city near me is Omaha.
Yes.
So we just said, hey, let's just imagine
if superheroes were real.

(34:21):
The Marvel universe was real.
Everybody knows that all the heroes are in New York.
And there's the West Coast Avengers and stuff.
So that would kind of create a crime vacuum in Midwestern
cities like Omaha or whatever.
And so let's say that you guys are like the only heroes
in Omaha.
And there's no huge villains.
There's no Dr. Doom here.

(34:42):
There's no Dr. Octopus, whatever.
Lots of doctors.
But hey, there are these petty drug lords or whatever
and all these different things.
And so for us, that's work.
Again, we got to keep it fun with introducing every once
in a while.

(35:02):
Yes.
Yeah, Wolverine's in town.
For some reason.
For some reason or Daredevil.
And granted, those heroes kind of fit well in that kind of--
Right.
Scenario.
But anyway, so that's what I would recommend.
Knowing the tone that you're going for and knowing the setting.
If you really are just thinking, man,

(35:24):
I really want my OC to meet all the Avengers
and become an Avenger or go to what's it called?
Professor X's gift for--
Even school for the junctions.
School for the junctions.
Yeah, yeah.
There it is.
Like, there's room for that.
You can do that.
And so I would just suggest being on the same page
with whoever's running the game as far as what your expectation

(35:46):
and what you want out of the game is.
Absolutely.
It'd be a really unique experience
to run something for somebody who is really unfamiliar with any
of the Marvel stuff.
Yeah.
Like, I've never seen any of the movies,
whether they were the older versions of them,
like "Toby McGuire's Spider-Man" and the original "X-Men" stuff
versus the stuff that's new now with the Avengers and everything
like that.
That'd be really interesting to run

(36:07):
where the person is completely unfamiliar with the universe.
Sure.
Or multiverse, I guess.
Well, we actually have one.
Did you?
I mean, he's not completely--
Right.
I mean, you can't really be completely oblivious to all of it.
But I mean, besides playing Marvel Rivals and seeing
some of the "X-Men" movies back in 2004--

(36:29):
He really--
I mean, he really does not know much, which is fun.
Because as his character is meeting these other characters,
I mean, he has no frame of reference.
And so for instance-- OK, I'll just
use this as a very quick example.
Anybody that is really into the Marvel universe--

(36:51):
but they might know that Wolverine has
like an alternate persona patch, where he's--
where's this white tuxedo and has his eye patch.
So not-- again, not everybody knows that.
And so when we were playing it, Wolverine
is first introduced as patch.
And it was funny because two of the other guys at the table

(37:14):
are big comic nerds, kind of like me.
And they're like stoked, like, yeah, yeah, yeah.
And my other friend's like, patch, OK, yeah.
Nice to meet you.
I mean, to the point where he kept calling him patches.
And Wolverine's getting mad.
He's like, I'm not a dog, but it's not patches, it's patch.
But anyway, so cool.

(37:34):
So yeah, and so there has been a little bit of that.
And that friend, again, from the get go,
I remember him saying, I don't really
know if I'm the right fit for this game.
I don't-- I'm not familiar with all the Marvel stuff.
And again, I just kind of told him, hey, you know what?
Neither is your character.
He's meeting these characters for these people
for the first time, too.

(37:54):
Don't feel bad about it.
That'd be so much fun.
Like, again, because you get to do stuff like that,
where you introduce this character
that other people would know for whatever reason.
They have no idea.
And so they get to experience for the first time
in your campaign, which is pretty, pretty sick,
being able to do that.
So that's really cool.
I like what you said about kind of having
a familiar environment.
Like, you had mentioned Omaha, which is funny,

(38:16):
because we actually-- when we did our zombie one shot--
Black Friday of the Dead.
Black Friday of the Dead was actually--
so the mall in there was fictional.
But to be completely honest with you,
I actually just took an outline or whatever of the mall
here in town.
Sure.
And I swear, I told them so many times throughout the entire thing.
I had the mall.
It was all printed out.
Obviously, the stores are completely different.

(38:37):
But I kept telling them throughout the whole thing,
I'm like, it's literally just this mall.
You guys have all been to this mall.
It's literally just this mall.
So when you're describing where you're going,
just think of it like that.
And that helped a lot, to keep it something close.
And I also really like how there is a lot--
I feel like there's a lot of logic in what you were saying,
where it's like you have all these non-super or maybe
lower tier super--

(38:58):
Yeah, super, exactly.
--that have made their way to sort of this central Midwest
kind of area within the US.
Because I don't want to go to some of these big cities,
because that's where all the superheros are at.
And they're taking out everybody.
Yeah, exactly.
They're just stopping crime everywhere.
So if I'm here and they're out there, then I'm not too worried.
So I think that's actually a really clever, clever concept
here.

(39:19):
And then I would say, what about with--
let's jump into discussing the character creation.
We obviously both kind of plotted out some characters.
And that's kind of how we'll end things today
to talk about what character we came up with.
But when it comes to character creation--
and this is what I love about the book--
is that I think, honestly, about 90% of this book

(39:40):
is literally just helping you create characters
or giving you pre-created characters
so that you can jump right in.
Yeah.
But the fact that they let you create your own superheros
really important to me, because I don't always
want to just play as something that already exists.
I like the idea of being able to make my own.
And so I'm super stoked that they have so much in here
that you can look through.

(40:00):
It's not boring like statistics and numbers and stuff.
It's interesting.
You get to look at all these different origins.
So origins, kind of your--
I want to say how you got your powers is probably
the best way to describe it.
Are you an alien from another planet?
And obviously, things are different here.
Are you a mutant, which we've mentioned a couple of times

(40:21):
before, right?
You have that gene inside of you that gives you special abilities.
Are you one of the eternals?
Do you have high-tech cybernetics like Iron Man?
He's got a suit and things like that.
So there's a ton of stuff in here for that.
Your occupation, what are you doing for a living
that's not obviously super-heroing?
I don't even think actually, now that I think about it,

(40:41):
that's technically not an option in here.
Yeah, I don't think-- there's adventurer,
which you could maybe say.
But yeah, I don't even think adventurer really counts,
because I think they're thinking more of Indiana Jones
text.
Yeah, which that would be a really interesting unique
character.
I guess the closest thing I can see is law enforcement.

(41:01):
You could maybe argue to some extent.
But there are people within the Marvel multiverse that are cops.
Oh, sure.
I think if you're talking about--
you've got Jessica Jones, who is a private investigator.
Right.
Daredevil's a lawyer.
Yep, yep.
I'm trying to think-- but I think there have been some that were--

(41:23):
I'm just drawing a blank.
Right, no, I'm saying here.
I know that there were some that were cops,
but they're like, I can't go quite as far as a cop,
and so I'm going to have to do the sport.
I got to do super work.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
I can't use my superpowers as a cop,
because you sure create a whole situation with legal stuff.
But you've got trade.
So these are just kind of like narrowing down
on some really specific things about your character

(41:45):
and creating some stuff about that.
Let's see, what else is--
you've got tags, which if you don't mind me--
No, go for it, absolutely.
You have tags and traits, which I think for a lot of people,
it's like, OK, what's the difference?
Right, absolutely.
And so the difference is, I would say,
tags are primarily only narrative.

(42:06):
Well, traits, they're narrative.
However, they also play into the mechanics.
That's exactly right.
They play into the mechanics.
Right.
So for instance, you might have as a tag
that you have a secret identity.
That doesn't necessarily change anything.
But if you say that one of your tags is--

(42:27):
we used famous as an example before.
So that's a trait.
And so yeah, it is narrative focused.
However, it also has advantage on the ego checks.
Exactly, yeah.
So there's something that comes out of it.
And with secret identity, it might not necessarily
give you any kind of-- oh, I said advantage earlier.

(42:48):
I'm at edge.
But I know what you meant.
Coming out of Dungeons and Dragons, it's always advantage.
But so with secret identity, when you talked about with Wolverine
and his secret identity, I guess alternate identity,
being patched and stuff like that,
there's something you could still use in the story.
And it might honestly, depending on the situation,
it might offer you something just in that moment.

(43:09):
But yeah, otherwise, it's more of a narrative thing, something
that you can use along those lines.
So it could be anything from like you a black market access
is another one of the tags, meaning
that you've dealt with people within sort of a black market
setting.
And therefore, you could theoretically
use those in the future.
And then, I think, again, the biggest chunk of it all

(43:31):
is the powers, all these many, many, many super powers
that you get to go through when you're creating your character.
Or obviously, if you use one of the premade characters,
they're going to list out.
And they're all within what are called power sets.
Yes.
Which I think-- it's a cool idea, right?
We're trying to sort of categorize.
I will say, with the X-Men book, I think,
did they have more powers that were--

(43:53):
Yeah.
Oh, OK.
More powers.
And so there's also-- OK, there's been two different--
I don't even-- can't remember what they call them.
Like expansion books.
Right.
Granted, but there's also adventure modules,
that kind of thing.
Anyway, but two expansions, an X-Men one and a Spider-Man one.
Oh.

(44:13):
And both of them introduce new--
I think both introduce new power sets.
And both of them certainly introduce new powers as well.
Absolutely.
And also new occupations.
Right.
Traits, careers, that kind of thing as well.
So yeah.
Lots of opportunities.
More opportunities create unique areas.
That's curious.
That's right.
Yeah, that's curious.
Which is really cool.
And one thing that I noticed--

(44:35):
and maybe this is just my opinion, I don't know, maybe--
where I noticed that some of the powers will sort of replicate.
So the idea is that the powers are
under these categories, which are the power sets.
So you might have a power set that is martial arts,
which suggests that this power stems
from your martial arts training, or maybe you're

(44:55):
part of some sort of organization that has some pseudo
superpower thing that stems from their martial arts,
something along those lines.
You might have a power set that's all based around weapons.
You have some magical weapon or some kind of special weapon,
so on and so forth.
And one thing that I noticed is that some of the powers actually
were very much the same as other powers,

(45:15):
but they're from two different power sets.
Yeah.
So it's like, yes, this basically functions the same
within the game.
But we want to make sure that your character is unique
and is using it in a very different way.
Yeah.
And I think that's really good.
That's really useful to make unique characters.
Yeah.
And it's super helpful, too.
I know that I've played this long enough to where--

(45:38):
and especially narrating--
to where I've had to just flip through the book real quickly
and be like, oh, you guys are fighting Saber Tooth today.
And I'm looking at the powers.
I'm going, oh, man, I don't recognize this one.
And then I flip back to the book and I go,
oh, that works exactly like this other one.
Exactly.
It makes it really easy, really smooth.

(46:00):
So yeah, yeah, that's good.
I will say the one thing that kind of got me that I noticed
the other night when I was looking through the book
was in the power section, like all the premade characters,
you do have to kind of-- it just lists them out.
Yeah, you do need to like go re-reference,
like what does that power do again?
So I could-- I mean, obviously, as the DM, right,
you would usually prepare these things ahead of time

(46:22):
so you could write them all out and then that way you have
them on hand.
It's not any different than like in D&D
if you had an enemy that had a big list of spells
that they could cast.
And you've got to keep track of all those
and how all those work.
And like you said, after you've played for a while,
you kind of get an idea of how a lot of these things work.
And you can easily be like, oh, I already know what that does.
It gives him an edge on this or it doubles the damage

(46:43):
in this situation.
Exactly.
Sometimes you need that little bit of a reminder.
Yeah.
But for the most part, it's so simple to where you look at it
and you just go, oh, hey, that works exactly like this.
OK.
So yeah.
Absolutely.
And then one of the last questions I've got here.
So when it comes to I create a character,

(47:05):
we talked about rank before.
So rank is kind of this idea of how powerful is my hero
or this character, I guess, in general.
Because it can apply to the villains as well.
Yeah.
I think it goes until it's like 1 to 6.
That's correct.
OK.
Yeah.
So and then when you're making your character,
depending on what rank you are, it'll
determine how many superpowers you get to pick,
things along those lines.

(47:25):
One thing that I wondered when I first created a character
is I thought to myself, how does in D&D we level up?
We defeat this big bad villain.
And then the DM's like, all right, you hit that point
where you guys have gained enough experience
or you've reached a certain spot in the game where
I'm going to give you guys a level up.
You gain new abilities and new stuff like that.

(47:46):
Is that something you can do in Marvel Multiverse?
Yeah.
So that's another thing that would be good to talk with the--
whoever's running the game beforehand.
Because there are options in order to advance.
But in some ways, the game--

(48:07):
and this might disappoint some.
I'll be just completely honest.
If the fun part of RPGs is starting at level one for you
and seeing this character progress,
this could be a disappointment.
Because the game is made so that, for instance, Spider-Man,
he's rank four.
And so if you want to make a hero like Spider-Man,

(48:32):
it's almost suggested, yeah, why don't you just
start off at rank four.
Sure.
However, there are different ways to do it.
So I'd mentioned that my party that's in the campaign
that I'm running most frequently, they're rank two.
Now, we talked before we started and had mentioned, OK,

(48:53):
the goal is to get these characters to rank four
eventually.
And so they know that that's coming.
It's achievable, yeah.
But it was also established that, hey,
these are going to be connected with events in your story.
Oh.
And so there's going to be events that trigger you going
from rank two to rank three.

(49:13):
And then eventually, rank three to rank four.
So we made sure that it was all part of the narrative.
And the core rule book, that's kind of how it suggests to do it.
However, in the X-Men expansion, there's a section called--
I think it's called Getting Skooled, if I'm not mistaken.

(49:34):
And there are suggestions there on how
you could do almost like a weekly--
or not weekly, but by session, slowly level your character.
OK.
I can't remember exactly how it works,
but it would be OK on this session,
you gain one more ability.
OK.
Next session, you get another ability.

(49:56):
Next session, you gain one more power.
And so you slowly can level or rank up that way.
But again, it's not as baked into it
as something like D&D where it's really part of the experience.
It's much more up to the narrator.
That's what they call the GMs in this game.
We've been referring to it as GM the whole time.

(50:17):
Yeah.
The narrator is technically what they--
Yeah, absolutely.
So it's kind of up to their discretion.
And so I'd say, again, just like many of these other things--
and maybe this goes back to the simplicity of the game,
which is like, OK, what do you want out of the game?
Maybe have that discussion going in.
And then, yeah, it just makes for a more satisfying experience.

(50:40):
And it speaks to the customizability, I suppose,
of the game as well, that they're like, hey, here's some options.
I suppose you're just like, hey, this is how a ranking up works,
or doesn't work.
It's, hey, this is what it's intended to do.
But here's some options for you.
Absolutely.
Absolutely, yeah.
I will say, I don't think I've ever played in a D&D game

(51:00):
where we had to track experience points to determine when we'd
level up.
It's always been the narrative level ups.
And I like that.
I like that so much more.
So I'm glad that that's how they do it here,
because it just makes more sense.
Like, why do you suddenly have new powers after you fought this one?
You could have like, oh, that one goblin, that last goblin,
that's what I needed to get there.

(51:21):
And then all of a sudden, I have new powers.
And it's like, that doesn't really make a whole lot of sense,
narratively speaking.
Yeah, well, and on this game, too, I will say,
each rank is a huge job.
Oh, absolutely.
I mean, you've only got six.
Yeah.
And so one is an absolute rookie.
So if you're thinking of your typical Hydra agent or Shield
agent, six is Thanos.

(51:43):
So it's like, that's only six different steps.
So if you were ranking up all the time,
it wouldn't take you that long to get to six.
And then it's just like, how does this even make sense?
Right.
It's a significant milestone, for sure.
It is, for sure.
And so that's one of the reasons why I'd say, yeah,
you really want to kind of decide going in like, hey,

(52:05):
this is where we're going to start.
This is where we're going to end.
Right.
And part of it, too, is this campaign that we're working--
there's no real end in sight.
Right.
I mean, potentially we could get there.
But I'd said in the get go, there's
comics that have been going for--
since, I mean, Superman since 1938, I believe.
And there's never been a month since 1938 when

(52:28):
at first, action comics number one first came out,
that there hasn't been at least one Superman issue.
Yeah.
So going in, it's just like, hey, my player said,
hey, it wouldn't make any sense for us
to start off on the same tier as Spider-Man.
But we don't see any reason to ever be above Spider-Man.
And so let's rank four will be where we cap it.

(52:48):
Start at rank two.
And so that's what we've been doing.
Yeah, absolutely.
I think that's great that you discussed with the players.
And everybody understands.
Everybody knows where things are headed.
And that's obviously super beneficial.
I will say, when I was making the character,
I think I set mine at rank three, I think,
is where I set mine at.
I don't remember what I did for sure.
So for this, when I was putting the character together

(53:09):
the other day, which I think was rank three,
I think it allows you 12 powers.
And you think, from a new perspective to it, you're like,
oh, man, that's a lot of powers.
I want to say they are very specific.
The super powers are very specific to like,
oh, you have a focus strike.
So you punch extra hard, or you hit something extra hard

(53:31):
with your weapon, whatever the case.
And it deals this massive amount of damage
on this one hit.
That is one individual power.
And so you spend those 12 really fast.
Yeah.
I'm sitting there, and I'm listening to them out
on my phone and stuff like that.
And then I'm like, all right, where am I at?
And I was like, one, two, three, four, five, six, oh,
I'm already at 12.
Whoa, oh, man, there were other things I was going to add.
So yeah, you definitely want to make--

(53:52):
and that's the beauty of it too, is that you can make
such a unique character.
Because there's a lot of powers.
You only have so many spots that you can kind of fill them
with.
You want to make sure that you don't
want to diversify too much.
Because if you do that, you're kind of all over the place.
Your character doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
And also, it's the classic, you know, Jack of all trades,
but master of none.
You're only able to do so much versus, if you really

(54:15):
focus in on this character, one of the people in our campaign,
he played a monkey man.
Yeah.
And that was his concept for a superhero,
is he's like an ape man.
His whole thing was like, he's strong.
He's this ape-like creature.
You can hit things really hard.
And so he based all those powers around punching stuff
and throwing stuff and lifting stuff.
And that was the gist of it.

(54:37):
So his general power concept was super strength,
I guess you could say.
Yeah.
And it made sense.
It was fun.
It was-- you get into a battle situation, monkey man.
Go get him.
And that's the beauty of it, right?
It's like you want everybody in your party
to have a purpose.
And if you're trying to spread that purpose out too thin,
that can be a bit of a problem.
So sure.
But with that being said, I think
we should jump over to the character creation.

(54:59):
[MUSIC PLAYING]
All right.
So we have both created some characters specifically--
because one of the things that I love to do whenever we do
these book club episodes for sessions at our university
is make a character in the system that we're

(55:21):
talking about reviewing.
Karen and I did it when we did our obojima review.
And so I thought it'd be really fun for us
to do it as well for this.
So do you want to go first or do you want me to go first?
I'd totally--
I can do it first if you'd like.
Go for it, yeah.
And how much explaining do you want me to do?
I will leave that up to you.
I was going to do my--

(55:41):
mine is pretty--
it's not overly detailed per se.
Like I'm not going to list out his powers,
but that's just the way I was going to do it.
Well, then you know what?
That's a better idea.
Why don't I let you go and I'll just follow Sue.
Oh, OK.
I'll follow Sue wherever you do.
Yeah, yeah.
OK, sounds good.
All right.
His name is Daniel Reed, codename Pit Viper.

(56:06):
Abandoned at an orphanage by his parents
when they discovered he had a mutant gene,
he was taken in by an organization
known as the afterlife.
This group of highly capable assassins
trained Daniel and other children they took in
in the ways of their own deadly martial arts
that was centered on quick and efficient execution.
Due to this, Pit Viper is considered a rank three

(56:27):
superhuman.
His heightened sense give him an edge in most fights,
keeping him aware of his surroundings and potential
threats at all times.
And his incredible speed allows him to strike out
at his opponent a multitude of times
within a couple of seconds.
Although originally an assassin for hire,
something shifted the focus of Pit Viper
to a different calling.

(56:48):
We believe it had something to do with falling in with the X-Men.
He now works closely with them on missions
and will occasionally take work with the US government
in jobs dealing with violent terrorist groups
and dictator leaders.
Although he's considered an asset,
we at SHIELD are closely monitoring him and his actions
in case he returns to his prior ways.
Additionally, we've been searching for the afterlife

(57:11):
and their headquarters to little success.
We've even gone as far as to interview Pit Viper
about his proverbial alma mater,
but he was unable or perhaps unwilling to divulge
any information.
This is Agent Richardson's brief overview analysis
on the super known as Pit Viper, signing off.
- So that's just kind of what I did.

(57:34):
Oh dang.
- I'm gonna fall woefully short.
- Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, it's totally fine.
I went a little overboard with that,
but I just thought I was trying to--
- No, no, it's good, it's good.
- For sure, for sure.
So I don't have a summary.
- Do you want me to just do it off the cuff?
- Yeah, go for it. - Or do you want me
to go through it?
- Yeah, go through it, or, well, no,
you can do it off the cuff, yeah,
whatever you feel comfortable with.

(57:54):
Or you can go through it as well, like whatever.
- Yeah, why don't I just go through it first?
I guess--
The hero that I created is named Blind Luck.
His real name is Paul Lucky Penny, five foot 11.
Blind Luck got his superpowers by,

(58:17):
okay, let me just say this out loud
because I don't know what these things are called,
but I know they exist.
In real life, I have a friend of mine
that fell on hard times, and he heard of this company
that would give you money for taking
these kind of like experimental drugs.
So similar to like if you were to donate plasma

(58:38):
or donate blood,
he would do this, and again,
this is a real guy that I know would do this,
and I would always joke with him,
like, dude, you're gonna get superpowers.
From the, like this, how you get superpowers.
And he's like, yeah, this is how you die at an early age
from some terminal illness, but anyway.
So for Blind Luck, AKA Paul Penny,

(59:01):
also known as Lucky Penny,
he was part of these different experimental things.
And upon doing so, he was exposed to some injection
that ended up costing him his vision.
And so he's lost his vision,
so he's got the weird science origin,
but the thing is, this also onset some of his latent ex-gene

(59:25):
that he didn't even realize that he had,
which has given him abilities of luck.
So luck powers, and so Lucky may be blind,
however, he's extremely lucky.
And so not only does that affect those around him,
he's able to give them powers that have to do with luck,

(59:46):
but he's also just really good at hitting targets
with his different abilities.
And so he has the core rulebook
called them Elemental Control Powers,
where he's able to have these different projectiles.
In the X-Men expansion,
you are able to do powers of corrosion.
And so the idea here is the same corrosion type stuff

(01:00:11):
that cost him his vision.
He's able to project on others,
not necessarily to blind them,
but to kind of like project on them.
And it has a similar corroding effect to where they,
yeah, he sounds a lot like a villain.
Now that I say it out loud, he probably should be.
- I'm almost thinking of,
have you ever remember the show,
or sorry, not show, the movie Sky High?

(01:00:32):
- Yeah, yeah.
- And they're going through, you know,
he's telling the kids whether they're either
the heroes or the sidekicks.
And there was the one kid that like,
he spits on the wall and he's like, sidekick.
And then the kid's like, hold on a second.
And then it melts, he goes, acid spit hero.
And I'm thinking like acid spit or something.
- There we go, exactly like that.
So a very lucky blind guy that,

(01:00:54):
and I'm not gonna say spit,
'cause that makes it sound really gross,
but they can shoot essentially energy
that corrodes things and/or people.
- The bane of, yeah, somebody with like,
who's all their powers kind of revolve around them,
having like a suit or some sort of cybernetic thing.
Like if he's just blasting their stuff
with corrosive stuff.
- Exactly.

(01:01:15):
- Like iron heart or Iron Man, obviously.
- Yeah.
- Or Iron Lad or any of the iron.
- Yeah, yeah.
(laughs)
That's exactly right.
And this character in particular,
would really, I mean, this would be somebody
that you would want in a team.
- Yeah.
- Especially because most of his powers have to do with

(01:01:35):
giving others luck and jinxing others.
And so, anyway, that's kind of--
- He's a buff debuff guy.
- That's exactly right.
A buff debuff guy.
Rank three as well is what I did,
but he's got a whole lot in agility.
He's got four in agility.
And the idea here, again,

(01:01:57):
this is where the narrative aspect of it has to come in,
because yeah, sure, I could have gone with,
he's like Daredevil.
He's, you know, his, when one sense diminished,
another one heightened.
I could have done that, but I was like,
no, I really like this idea of,
no, he's just like super lucky.
- Sure.
- And so, his agility is really high,
and the idea here is that he's just super lucky with it.

(01:02:19):
And he knows it.
- Yeah.
- And so, anyway, so on top of that,
he is in the education field.
- Oh, wow.
- And so the idea here is that,
when I said education on his character sheet,
my idea is he's educating people
on the effects of these experimental drugs.
- Oh, sure.
- And also kind of on special needs, like blindness.

(01:02:42):
When I say special needs,
I'm speaking more about blindness, deafness,
muteness, that sort of thing.
- He's a big advocate for people with those, yeah.
- Yeah, yeah, exactly.
And kind of educating others on those different things.
So anyway, that's kind of who I came up with.
And really, for me, the X-Men expansion

(01:03:04):
is what made me want to do this.
I'm like, oh, there's luck based?
- Yeah.
- There's a luck based power set.
And so I just thought it was interesting.
- Interesting.
I'm gonna have to talk to Cameron about that
because one of his favorite heroes is Domino.
- Okay, yeah.
- And that's kind of her whole thing.
- Exactly, yeah.
- And so he would love that.
We don't have, I don't have the X-Men one.

(01:03:24):
I actually have it on a wish list
'cause when I looked it up and saw that you can get
more powers and power sets and stuff,
and I was like, yo, more character creation options?
That's what I wanna see.
So.
- And I do wanna say real quick
before we go to the Spider-Man one too,
because I had friends,
my friend group was like,

(01:03:45):
"You know, I don't know if we wanna get the Spider-Man one."
Just because none of them had a power set
that was related to Spider powers.
- Oh, sure, sure.
- But the thing is they pack those expansions,
both the X-Men and the Spider-Man ones,
with so much new stuff where it's like,
even if you do not have a character that has the X-Gene

(01:04:06):
or a character that uses Spider powers,
like you'll wanna--
- You'll find something in there.
- And on top of that, I did wanna say also,
one of the strongest parts about this,
as we mentioned earlier, was the characters.
The fact that in the base game,
the core rulebook has, I think, 130 ready-to-go characters

(01:04:28):
and each one of the expansions has probably about 100
as well if not more. - Oh my gosh.
- So like the X-Men has a ton of characters,
Spider-Man has a ton of characters,
even the Adventure Module, the Cataclysm of Kang,
which I'd say is mostly unessential,
especially if you're not planning on running any,

(01:04:49):
running the Adventure Module.
- For your end, yeah.
However, there's like 50 or 60 new characters
in there as well. - Really?
- It's okay. - It's okay.
- So no matter what you're getting,
there's good to be stuff in there that you can use for sure.
- And it's not like you can,
I wouldn't even say that you could claim
that the core rulebook, that Marvel purposely skimped on them
because there's 130.
- There's so much stuff in there.

(01:05:10):
- This book is huge.
- Yeah, yeah, and so yeah, there's a ton to choose from
and the game is very much still alive,
still very much active.
- But that's also very exciting to hear.
- They've announced an Avengers expansion
that's going to have even more rules.
And so yeah, it's great.
It's a great system.

(01:05:31):
- Absolutely. - I've enjoyed it.
- Like I said, when you ran that one shot,
we had a ton of fun.
It was just like, it was goofy for sure,
but it was super fun to be able to play as superheroes.
I think that's, this is something that does it so well, right?
There's a handful of different
superhero-based RPGs out there,
and there's some that are also pretty simple,
but this one definitely opens up a lot of opportunity,

(01:05:52):
I think.
- Yeah, I think in a lot of ways,
the main contender to this Marvel Multiversal Playing Game,
there's one called Mutants and Masterminds,
which is also a very popular, very established
tabletop role-playing game in this genre, I should say.
But the thing is,
they're doing two completely different things.

(01:06:12):
That one's very crunchy.
This one's super just easy to pick up.
And so, I mean, the beauty of it is,
I don't even see them as competitors,
because they're doing two completely different things.
- Right, right, absolutely.
So if you want something a little bit more crunchy,
that might be a good option for you.
But if you want something that's light
and easy to jump into,

(01:06:33):
highly recommend the Marvel Multiverse RPG system for sure.
- Yep, yep.
- Awesome, well, Lucas, thank you so much
for being on the show and talking to us about this system
and sharing your wealth of knowledge with it.
I think that was super beneficial.
And like I said, we played once, had a ton of fun.
I'm already kind of mentally working through some ideas
for something that I'd like to run for the podcast.

(01:06:54):
So thank you so much for sharing about that and encouraging us.
- Thanks, thank you for having me.
I feel honored to be on it.
And I don't know if I was a wealth of knowledge.
- Oh, you were, I appreciate the compliment
and I'm flattered, so thank you.
- Absolutely, awesome.
- Thank you so much for joining us for today's class.
We hope you gained some new knowledge

(01:07:15):
and ideas from our incredibly knowledgeable professors,
which you can take with you to your table
and implement into your games and sessions.
If you enjoy what we're developing here
at Session Zero University,
then be sure to check out our lessons in practice
by checking out various actual play episodes.
We have tested and recorded a variety of games, systems,

(01:07:36):
stories and themes for your enjoyment,
from Dungeons and Dragons to Powered by the Apocalypse
to Kids on Bikes and more.
Be sure to follow and subscribe
to the Session Zero Heroes podcast
so you don't miss out on any of our future TTRPG content.
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Podcasts can be found from Spotify
to Apple Podcasts to YouTube.

(01:07:57):
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(01:08:18):
Your feedback means a lot
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Thank you so much and we'll see you for your next class
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(01:08:40):
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(01:09:01):
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Session Zero University Book Club - Marvel Multiverse by Marvel Unlimited

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Session Zero University Book Club - Marvel Multiverse by Marvel Unlimited