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| source: RPGGeek.com |
I found a copy of Marvel Multiverse RPG several months ago on the clearance shelves at my FLGS (Black Diamond Games in Concord, CA) with a dented corner and a 40% discount, so despite my overpacked gaming shelves I nabbed it, because I love supers sytems* and had heard good things about the new Marvel game.
As with so many of the games I buy, I didn't find time to really read it at first, and it sat by my bed until TardisCaptain announced the coming year's challenge over at RPGNet. I thought it would be a good time to break this thing open and at least try out the character generation rules.
For this exercise I've decided to take one of my old Villains & Vigilantes characters and recreate him in the new system. In V&V the default option is playing yourself, but with super powers, and although I gather not many groups went for it most of the players in my group did. (As a result I'm going going to shift between first- and third-person even more than I usually do, so please bear with.) The campaign ran for several years, through most of high school and college, with a couple of reboots along the line. I played four different versions of myself over the course of this game, but the one that stuck best was a telepath/telekinetic who went by the codename Psycho. Psycho's power set shifted a little over the course of play (as often happens to superheroes who stick around for a while), so there's even less reason than usual to try duplicating the V&V version power-for-power.
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| One of many V&V character sheets for Psycho |
But I do want to make sure I hit the high points. V&V Psycho's core powers were always superhuman intelligence, enhanced willpower, telepathy, telekinesis, and psionic blasts. I began playing this character when I was about 15 or 16 and continued roughly until I was 21 or so, so I'm going to portray him as college-student me: Ken MacLennan, undergraduate at Santa Clara University, with a few years of heroic exploits under my belt (and a public identity, with all the headaches that brings).
Step 1 in the process is to come up with a concept. We've got that going in. We start engaging with game mechanics in step 2, which involves determining the character's Rank. This is his place on the power-and-renown scale and ranges from 1 (rookie heroes) to 6 (cosmic-level entities such as Dr. Strange or Thanos). Street-level heroes tend to run between 2 and 3, maybe 4 for a character like Spider-Man or Captain America who routinely plays in deeper waters; more powerful heroes (such as most of the major X-Men or Avengers) cluster in the 4-5 part of the range. Your Rank sets limits on your ability scores, powers, and other mechanical expressions of what you can do, which we'll cover as we get to them. This version of Psycho is well above street level, but hardly cosmic, and I feel comfortable ranking him at 4 (legendary).
Next we assign ability scores. This is done by point-buy; your Rank determines both your point allotment and the maximum score you can give any single ability. Scores default to 0, with the natural human range spanning -3 to 3 and 4 marking the transition to superhuman levels. A rank 4 character gets 20 points to spend and has a maximum score of 7 in any one ability.
Ability scores are a key to task resolution in the MMRPG's game engine, called 616 for the version of Earth's timeline that is supposed to house the main Marvel continuity. The basic roll is 3d6, but one of those dice (the "Marvel die," red in official sets but always a different color than the other two) triggers extraordinary results on a 1 (replaced by a Marvel logo in the official set). Add the relevant ability score to your total and compare to the task's target number (as assigned by the rules or by the GM). These can be modified by edges (reroll your lowest die, use higher result) or trouble (reroll highest die, use lower result).
There are six abilities, named so that they fom an acronym of MARVEL: Melee, Agility, Resilience, Vigilance, Ego, and Logic:
Melee measures your hand-to-hand combat ability.
Agility covers ranged combat and your ability to dodge.
Resilience represents your ability to withstand pain, exertion, and other stresses.
Vigilance measures your alertness and mental discipline.
Ego covers self-confidence, force of personality, and personal magnetism
Logic represents your reasoning ability and insight
These seem roughly analogous to the traditional Dungeons and Dragons abilities (Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Charisma, Intelligence).
Twenty points and a cap of 7 mean that at least two and probably three of my ability scores are going to be in the superhuman range. V&V didn't run on point-buy (and only had five abilities), so we're going to see some divergence from my old stats (to Marvel-me's advantage). My primary investments will be in the mental abilities (Vigilance, Ego, and Logic), with Logic receiving the biggest share, and Melee the dump stat. A 7 score in Logic would rank me with Reed Richards among the greatest minds on the planet; that seems a bit much, but I'm willing to take a 6. I'll buy Vigilance and Ego up to 5 each and Agility to an above-human-average 2, which leaves one point each for Resilience and Melee. Not too far from my V&V numbers. Here are the scores again:
Melee 1
Agility 2
Resilience 1
Vigilance 5
Ego 5
Logic 6
These will come up again in calculating various secondary stats.
The third step is to assign backstory elements. The main elements are an Origin (i.e., how you got your powers) and an Occupation (what you mostly do when you're not doing hero stuff). Both provide a source of labels for your character. Labels come in two flavors: Traits that have mostly mechanical weight, and Tags that have mostly narrative weight. I'll add some more labels after these as well.
In the original V&V campaign, an accident with electricity and experimental chemicals unleashed my till-then-latent psychic abilities; MMRPG would classify this Origin as Weird Science. That carries the Trait Weird, which gives Psycho an unusual appearance or aura that affects how others react to him. (A bonus with those already inclined to be favorable, a penalty from those inclined to be the opposite.) That tracks with the original version, whom the accident left with chalk-white skin and a black scar over one eye. It doesn't provide any Tags, so let's move on to his Occupation. At this point in life superhero-Ken is a Student, which carries a Trait and two Tags. The Trait Quick Learner lets me re-attempt a failed action (on my next turn) with a bonus. The Tag Mentor gives me an older person, probably a faculty member**, to whom I can turn for advice; and Obligation: School, which gives me various deadlines and responsibilities that can get in the way of trying to save the world/city/neighborhood/local pizzeria.
Psycho's Rank gives me four more Traits to choose, and as many Tags as I feel are appropriate. For Traits, having loaded up on brainpower, I'll add Font of Information and Eidetic Memory to the Trait list, tap my origin again for Connections: Science, and then finish with a weakness to remain true to my V&V concept. Psycho had various phobias over the course of his career (and a stint where he was blind and saw through the eyes of a cloned falcon companion, but we're not doing that version here), Nothing in the Traits list fits (I suppose it's really more of a Tag-type feature); the closest things (not that close) are Anathema and Weakness, both of which model adverse physical reactions to physical substances. None of the other negative Traits seem to fit either, though, so I guess I'll leave the weaknesses for my Tags and take Investigation instead; that'll give me a very on-brand edge to find and interpret clues.
Now to add some Tags. Canon tells us Psycho has a Public Identity because neither real Ken nor game-fiction Ken wanted to mess with all that phone-booth costume-changing nonsense. (Public ID brings its own special and possibly more annoying brands of nonsense, but in tenth grade I didn't concern myself with that as much as perhaps I should have.) Extreme Appearance also fits, though it's kind of doubling up on my Weird Trait. Super-team membership doesn't apparently count as an Obligation (even Cyclops doesn't have it). Heroic certainly fits: fictional Ken is in this game to help people. Unfortunately, like the Traits list, the Tags list doesn't provide any psychological issues that you can hang a phobia on, but the game also encourages players to create Tags, so I'll add claustrophobia to the list (a weakness V&V Psycho had for some time). That adds up to six Traits and six Tags, which seems like enough for the moment.
Now we can pick powers. You can choose up to four powers per Rank, but you can also get bonus powers for choosing powers that go together thematically. Powers are classified into thematically defined Sets, alongside a set of "basic" powers that don't count as belonging to any particular Set. If the number of Sets you draw from is less than your Rank, you get an extra power for each point of difference between them. Telekinesis and telepathy are different Sets, so Psycho will have no more than two bonus powers (rank 4 minus 2 sets used equals two bonus powers), for a maximum of 18. That may seem like a lot, but it turns out that a lot of things you can do with telepathy or telekinesis are broken out into separate powers under the umbrella of the Set, so they'll build up fast. Also, powers in Sets tend to be set up in trees, where some powers are prerequisits for others. (There are also rank prerequisites, but at rank 4 I won't have to worry about most of them.)
Let's start with the Telekinesis set. The base powers are Telekinetic Manipulation (moving objects with your mind) and Levitation (moving yourself with your mind). I'll want both of those on their own merits as well as to qualify for other powers in the tree. Manipulation opens the door to Telekinetic Grab, which lets me use TK for grappling. In turn, Grab is a gateway to other attack powers I want: Telekinetic Attack (hitting people with waves of mental force) and Telekinetic Toss (throwing people you've telekinetically grabbed), as well as the defensive Telekinetic Barrier. (Grab can be upgraded to Telekinetic Crush and Barrier to Telekinetic Protection, but I've already used 6 slots and still want to hit the Telepathy tree and grab a couple of Basic powers.)
The Telepathy set has a wider array of base powers than Telekinesis, but I'm only taking three: Telepathic Link (the base communication power), Mental Punch (a psychic melee attack), and ESP (sensing others' mental energy at a distance). Link opens up Telepathic Network (basically psychic group chat), Telepathic Blast (your basic ranged psychic attack), Mind Reading (looking through other people's brains for information), and Borrow Senses (what it says on the label). Mind Reading then opens up Mind Interrogation (which allows you to dig deeper than basic mind reading). That's nine more slots used for a running total of 15.
That leaves me three slots for Basic powers that fit the character concept. Levitation is nice, but relatively slow (same as my run speed), so I'll invest one slot in Flight to move Rank x run speed in combat. Evasion lets me use my higher Agility score for melee defense (not a huge improvement, but still an improvement), and Uncanny provides extra protection against mental attacks. (Flight and Uncanny can be bought in stages, but the entry-level versions work well enough for what I'm doing.)
Now it's time for a little bookkeeping as we calculate various secondary characteristics. Health is basically your physical hit points, calculated as 30 times your Resilience score (1 in my case, so 30 points altogether). Focus serves as an HP pool against mental attacks and as an energy pool to feed various powers; it's 30 times Vigilance, which for Psycho is a much more respectable 150 points. Damage is a multiplier applied to your various attacks, calculated by adding your Rank (4) to the appropriate ability score: melee 5, agility 6, ego 9, logic 10. Base Speed for average-sized humans is 5, and I have no powers to modify that. My Karma score (what you might call luck points) has a starting value equal to my Rank; it will rise and fall over time as I earn and spend Karma but for our purposes is 4 points.
Finally there's a section the rulebook calls "Character Data," which consists almost entirely of qualitative information about the character. This includes real name and codename, gender, height/weight/eyes/hair and distinguishing features, as well as Occupation, Origin, affiliated teams, base of operations, brief personal history and description of personality. Some of this we've already covered, some is not interesting enough (in a game or in a narrative sense) to recount here and then repeat in the stat block, so a few notes will suffice. Ken MacLennan (aka Psycho) is affiliated with a super-team called the Protectors, based in San Jose, California (where the players all lived at the time). While in high school Ken was working on a scientist's lab project as entry-level labor when a device overloaded, showering him in a bath of experimental chemicals with a current running through the mixture. The aftereffects left him with chalk-white skin, a black scar running down the left side of his face and over his left eye, and a supercharged brain possessing extensive telepathic and telekinetic powers. As a regular comics reader, he knew exactly what to do with his newfound abilities, and he began saving civilians and stopping crime alongside a few friends who also had coincidentally developed extraordinary powers, under the group name "the Protectors." Ken struggles to maintain some semblance of a normal life in his public identity and has perhaps become a little more sarcastic and impatient under the pressures of combining student life with superheroics.
OK, let's do a stat block.
Codename: Psycho
Rank: 4
Real Name: Ken MacLennan
Height: 59" Weight: 160 lbs. Gender: M
Eyes: Brown Hair: Black Size: Medium
Distinguishing Features: chalk-white skin, long facial scar down left
Occupation: Student
Origin: Weird Science
Base: San Jose, CA
Team: Protectors
Traits: Weird, Quick Learner, Font of Information, Eidetic Memory, Connections (Science), Investigation
Tags: Mentor (tbd), Obligation: School (Santa Clara University), Public Identity, Extreme Appearance, Phobia: Claustrophobia, Heroic
Abilities: Melee 1 (damage x5), Agility 2 (damage x6), Resilience 1, Vigilance 5, Ego 5 (damage x9), Logic 6 (damage x10)
Karma: 4 points Initiative Bonus: 5 Speed: 5
Powers (cost in parentheses after name)
Basic: Flight 1, Evasion, Uncanny 1
Telekinesis: Levitation, Telekinetic Manipulation, Telekinetic Attack (5 focus), Telekinetic Grab (5 focus), Telekinetic Toss (10 focus), Telekinetic Barrier (5 focus)
Telepathy: Telepathic Link, ESP, Mental Punch, Telepathic Network (5 focus), Telepathic Blast (5 focus), Borrow Senses (5 focus), Mind Reading, Mind Interrogation (5 focus)
Tomorrow I'll probably be posting the first of about a dozen characters from as many different Tiny d6 games. Hope to see you then!
*MMRPG joins Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, Tiny Supers, Icons, Truth & Justice, Capes, Mutants and Masterminds, Villains & Vigilantes, TSR's Marvel Superheroes RPG (aka Marvel FASERIP), and Champions in my RPG collection.
**And very likely the person whose lab was the setting for my accident; you know how these things go in comics, nobody sues over accidents that give them superpowers.
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