Marvel Multiverse RPG announces June 2023 release date and accompanying adventure book
Summertime superheroes.
The Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game announced a release date for its upcoming tabletop RPG of clashing superheroes and villains. The officially sanctioned title will drop a core rulebook in June of 2023, followed by an adventure supplement in July.
Both books will be written by author and game designer Matt Forbeck and feature art from comics illustrator Iban Coello. The core rulebook will package everything a group needs to create their own caped crusaders and learn the rules of the game. Marvel Multiverse RPG uses three six-sided dice for its s616 system that is both a nod to the prime Marvel universe and Forbeck’s answer to heroic combat where power levels between characters can vary wildly.
Unlike Dungeons & Dragons 5E and other conventional TRPGs, challenges are assigned a Target Number by the facilitator, and players roll their three dice in hopes that one of the resulting faces trumps the target after character modifiers and other conditions have been applied. The Marvel die, which is a different colour from the other two, can apply some special effects if it lands on a six - this can be a grand success or tragic failure for the character in question.
Also included in the core rulebook will be dozens of prebuilt Marvel characters, both heroic and villainous, that players can embody or facilitators can deploy during their adventures. Marvel Multiverse RPG sets bespoke characters on the same level as big brand names such as Spiderman, Black Widow and the Fantastic Four when it comes to player agency. So, if you’re happy grabbing Wolverine’s printed stats and rushing headlong into “snikt”-ing those claws out, the book will easily oblige.
An adventure collection titled The Cataclysm of Kang arrives in July of 2023, providing groups with six modules that can be run separately or linked together to form an overarching narrative campaign. The power level of these is reportedly designed to take a group of characters from their humble origins to interstellar legends, and it will expand the roster of character profiles pulled from the shelves of comic shops and Marvel’s own storied history.
Marvel and Forbeck have remained tightlipped on details about this adventure collection, but the title alone likely positions Kang the Conqueror as the ultimate baddie. The time-travelling supergenius bears a history of popping up at the most inopportune moments and manipulating events in his favour along a ridiculous scale. Kang will be played by actor Jonathan Majors in Ant Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, not coincidentally also releasing in 2023.
A playtest version of Marvel Multiverse RPG has been making the public rounds throughout this year and is still available to download for free on the publisher’s website. Next year’s version will be the latest in a long line of officially licensed Marvel RPG books that started with TSR’s Marvel Super Heroes: The Heroic Role-Playing Game in 1984.