Despite Marvel’s near chokehold on popular culture, Forbeck and his team have not been guaranteed success. Marvel Multiverse RPG‘s predecessors took different tacks when translating the high-action and often pulpy nature of comic stories to the tabletop - in one case using a deck of cards instead of dice – but none managed to capture a long-running audience. Image: Marvel Worldwide/Marvel Entertainment Players can choose to embody one of their favourite superheroes, or they can create their own and align them with the Avengers, the Guardians of the Galaxy or any other organization. Marvel took matters back into its own hands by directly publishing Marvel Universe Roleplaying Game in 2003, while Margaret Weis Productions managed to license Marvel Heroic Roleplaying in 2012. The granddaddy of RPGs, TSR, began the tradition with 1984’s Marvel Super Heroes and followed it up with Marvel Super Heroes Adventure Game in 1998. This new game was created by Matt Forbeck, a New York Times bestseller who co-designed the system with Mike Caps, John Nee and John Nee. The game’s characters feel static, unmoving and sterile, and the game too heavily focuses on fan service and gimmicks. Is it an aspirational fondness? Do we study their fictional lives so that we might better model our own on their exploits? Or is it instead a devotional kind of admiration for a more perfect humanity? The new playtest document spends more than 120 pages scaffolding rules and minutiae for a system that ultimately feels like a third option: Reading comics in order to choose the best action figures for a display case. Why do we enjoy superhero stories? This question kept nagging me while I read through an early preview of the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |