It’s been about 10 months since the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game officially released. It seems to be doing well with a ranking on ICV2’s 10 ten sales chart and a hotly anticipated X-Men Sourcebook hitting on the heels of a revamp of the classic animated series. While Marvel Heroic Roleplaying remains my favorite comic book RPG, Marvel Multiverse aims for a broader target of D&D 5e fans and people familiar with the MCU to bring them into the hoppy. One of the big strengths of the game is the massive collection of characters in the core book. It’s very easy to ask a new player their favorite Marvel character, hand them the character sheet and start playing. The main thing missing from the core rulebook is a starting adventure. The Murderworld That Time Forgot positions itself as a beginner adventure, written by comics writer Jim Zub. Does a trip to Murderworld sound like fun? Let’s play to find out.
If there’s a Murderworld, then that probably means Arcade is the villain. For those unfamiliar with Marvel Comics, Arcade is a villain who is often hired by other villains to kidnap heroes and put them in amusement park themed deathtrap dungeons called Murderworld. His ego allows the heroes a small chance to survive, which they inevitably do so the comic can end with a few pales of the insufferable bad guy getting put in his place. The storyline follows that general arc with the heroes getting caught by Arcade and sent to a Murderworld all the way down in the Savage Land. Mostly that makes this an opportunity for the heroes to punch evil robots and dinosaurs which honestly sounds like a good way to pass a few hours. I imagine anyone playing Deadpool wondering aloud why Jeff Goldblum isn’t there to help or someone playing Miles Morales talking about how similar it is to that “really old dinosaur movie” to make veteran heroes feel ancient.
The adventure is built for Rank 1-2 original heroes but also suggests several rank 2-3 heroes to use. That the character levels aren’t tightly locked down reminds me a bit of the classic adventures for TSR Marvel Super Heroes where the adventure was written with specific heroes in mind but can be used with original heroes with a little adjusting, It’s also a clue that the designers view the rank system as guidelines for teams with mixed ranks rather than a strict code. It has the feeling of 5e Challenge Rating to me where it’s mostly just vibes to get players together and left up to GMs to make sure each character gets some spotlight time.
This is a pretty linear story though as a potential first time story for new players that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The individual scenes offer plenty of discussion on different ways to achieve goals beyond combat. Zub’s strength as a writer shines when he’s discussing how to make the villains in the story hateable. Arcade is something of a riff on the “Killer DM” archetype and GMs are encouraged to mock the heroes and offer snarky commentary on their failures. That makes this story something of a dungeon crawl even if I found each individual room to be entertaining. Who hired Arcade and why they targeted the PCs is left open with the promise of a continuing story (assuming the adventure does well), though it can easily be slotted into whatever big bad the Game Master wants to install.
The biggest hurdle to using The Murderworld That Time Forgot is that it’s only currently available on the Demiplane Marvel Nexus. Marvel decided that it’s going to be very protective of its game and not do a PDF release. I like the Nexus suite for this game as it makes looking up powers and abilities a lot easier than paging through the physical book, but I understand people who want to have a physical thing in their hands to hold when they play. I hope that, like many exclusives, it’s merely a timed one and that a good beginner’s adventure eventually makes its way out to a wider audience.
The Murderworld That Time Forgot shows off some of the strengths of Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game written by the capable hands of someone who knows both the comics world and how to run role playing games.
