Status of the Marvel Multiverse RPG?

 

There are a lot of great superhero RPGs out there right now:

• Mutants and Masterminds is still chugging along. There aren't a ton of new things out there but they've been doing adventures lately which is about the only thing the game hasn't thoroughly covered.
• ICONS is another mature RPG that is still cranking out new material.
• Champions is not one I hear much about anymore but it is still producing things like .. .character creation cards? I'm not sure I get that but I'll have to take a closer look.
• The Sentinel Comics RPG is one of the newer entries in this category and the latest thing there is the new version of the starter set which is probably a good thing but I wish they were doing more! I'll have to cover it in another post but this is a very promising game that just needs a little more attention.
• Absolute Power is the new version of Silver Age Sentinels. It's been out for a year or two now and has decent support so if you think a BESM approach to supers is interesting it's worth a look. This one is probably worthy of a separate post as well.

All of the above games are currently in-print and have pretty solid support beyond the basic rules but there was one potentially giant new entry in the field in the last couple of years that many of us were interested in - the Marvel Multiverse RPG, published by, well, Marvel itself. My own account of a tryout game is here and I thought it was worth considering as a real option. 

For Marvel we saw the main rulebook come out in 2023 along with a starter adventure and  since then we've seen an "Adventure" - Cataclysm of Kang and an "Expansion" about the X-Men. That's decent enough and there is one other announced book coming which is the Spider-Verse Expansion. There was also a set of Marvel Dice and a short Deadpool adventure that came out around the time of the movie last year.

Recently though I saw new copies of the core rulebook show up at a local Half-Price Books. Not one copy, but multiples. Now Half-Price is a pretty regular stop for my wife and I - there are quite a few of them around DFW - and we hit them whenever we are out and about. Over the past few weeks I've seen multiple new copies in multiple stores in the area. That's not a great sign for a new game as that means they are remaindered or whatever the official industry term is and sold off as a bulk lot. It happens from time to time but being fairly aware of what shows up on the RPG shelf in local used bookstores sometimes things jump out like this. So I am concerned about how the game is doing - I decided to check around online.

The MMRPG D616 Facebook group used to consistently show up in my FB feed as a group with "10+ posts a day" as recently as last year. Now it's down to "5 posts a day". Well ... 

The MMRPG Reddit group has slowed from maybe around 5 posts per day to roughly 3 per day. Not as dramatic as FB but it does seem less active. 

There is also a starter set that was supposed to be coming out from Gamefound that has been delayed from September-November to "early next year" which is ... now. It funded in February 2024. It's causing some friction. Beyond that there were some other accessories mentioned like GM screens and maps and power cards and more dice  - all of them seemingly tied to some of the supplement books. None of them have appeared or seem to have release dates. None of that is good. 

I wonder if some of the accessories are being held up or "reassessed" due to sales numbers maybe not being what they were expecting. The lack of announced books beyond the Spider-Verse book also does not feel great. I know a lot of this is anecdotal and I'm not trying to jump too far to conclusions - it's been a fairly slow-grow game line but it does seem to have gotten really slow here of late. I've been watching these things for a long time and what I'm seeing here is not positive. 

Let me say that I hope I am wrong about the direction things look to be heading. A thriving Marvel RPG could be a great way to both bring in new players and pull existing players away from D&D as their only game. I hope that we are just in a slow period where a company new to RPGs (Marvel) is working with a new partner on accessories (CMON) and things are just taking extra time. If that is the case I'd love to see a new Avengers book or Fantastic Four book announced - there is a FF movie coming out after all - for later this year. I'll be crossing my fingers as I watch for the next update on this game.