I Think Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game Taught Me To Play D&D e5

I am having a failure to campaign. I wanted to do a Star Wars campaign, but my potential players spotted the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game on my shelf and dove into a rabbit hole of Super Heroes. I wanted to playtest some ideas for my module POP-001 Reverants of Revenants of the Lost Temple but got sidetracked by prototyping a new RPG. Add in the new laser, the tablesaw, and the 3d printer and I am at a loss for what to do first or now. 

So back to basics. I am going to review the games I have acquired over the last year to 18 months. I just need to pick a good one to start on. 

To get this game design bug out of my head, I want to talk about the Marvel game. 

Marvel... it is inescapable right now. We have a couple of movies and TV shows coming out at the same time that the company is kicking out all kinds of new comic books. That's a mighty big rabbit hole to live in. When my kids and friends saw the Marvel RPG, instead of playing the game we ended up watching 3 movies while digging through a box of comics and perusing the rules. 

Friends, I have wasted a day. 

I'll review the Marvel rules eventually, but I THINK I understand what changed between my D&D of the 1970s and 1980s and e5 thanks to this Marvel ruleset. 

The social purpose changed. As a historian, I like this concept. In history, historical people wanted to focus on the ills of the world, but could not effectively mesh the current massive problem with underlying social issues which were also occurring. It usually results in half measures and more problems. The idea the gaming changed on the social side is neat. 

D&D started as a tactical game; it evolved from wargaming. I have X guys and you have Y guys, let's throw some dice to see what happens. Ok? 

D&D adds special abilities and roleplay to a tabletop game, which changes that random dice dynamic. Individuals become heroes, it is important for them to have a past, present, and future and now we have Player Characters.   

When I think of a classic movie, it will be from the 40s, 50s, or 60s. Many of these were big-budget affairs that depicted massive set-piece battles but also had an undercurrent where a gang of scrappy heroes would be the solution. Or they were low-budget and had to have a gang of oddball heroes to compete with big-budget movie spectaculars. This humanized the story and was a satisfying use of characters. Nobody saw the oddball scrappies coming.  

It doesn't even have to be a war movie. Flight of the Phoenix is a movie about people literally building a plane in flight. Just like war movies, it elevates individual characters to heroes or solution-maker status.

Even though there were far fewer character choices in OD&D, Basic D&D, and e1, not all of the rules were harmonized in the mechanics. Because the mechanics were often unique to the class or monster, it was hard for the DM to determine if a scenario was a real challenge. Add in wily player characters, and really strange things happen. This mirrors the movies of the day. No one saw the ending coming and DMs didn't try to adapt to the players. They just rolled with whatever happened because as long as the players were willing to play, there were always new bad guys and challenges.   

Today, if you ask someone about a "classic movie", the answers are very different. It's Star Wars, Batman, Harry Potter, Kill Bill, The Usual Suspects, etc. 

What is different about these films from older classics? Usually, the viewer has awareness of the heroes from the get-go and the bad guy has the advantage of knowing the heroes just as well as the viewer while the heroes are unaware of their opposites' goals. 

Back in the day, D&D didn't have a Session 0. The DM designed his campaign or story in a vacuum and the players subvert this by building the plane in flight. Session 0 was a vague idea when the DM told the players about the world their characters lived in as they rolled up characters, but it occurred at the same time as Session 1. The players are adapting to the DM's world, without the DM thinking about what the characters were all about. Sure there were minor questions to be answered, but those were usually no big deal: 

"Sure you can be a paladin, an assassin, or a cleric! Any class you like is available."
"Yes, you can have full-plate armor, everyone does. It's all the rage, you are cool."
"You want a pseudo-dragon as a familiar? Awesome!" 

It was almost unseemly for the DM to try to negate a character's abilities by reshaping the previously written materials. Yeah, we have all played those games where clerics can't heal, paladins are evil, or wizards are hampered by widespread anti-magic. Those results are really horrible and DM's usually learn not to do those things. 

An excellent modern movie that depicts this idea is Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. The DM created a scenario in a vacuum and has no idea that zero players have thieving characters. The antagonists think they know what is going on, but usually, they are wrong. The PC's subvert expectations, just like classic D&D. The link above is a post all about the idea where the PC's subvert the basic tenets of the scenario. 

It's great! Everything goes sideways for the DM because they have to cope with the fact zero people are conforming to their original idea. The plane is going down. That is ok because everyone is out there working on the wings. 

In Star Wars and in the MCU, the bad guys know exactly who the heroes are. The author/DM is now creating a checklist of tasks that are measured against the known. The prevalence of Session 0 is almost universal. The harmonized mechanics of D&D e5 make it so simple for the DM to swap out specific antagonists or scenarios to counter the heroes in a way that makes sense... at least in terms of what the DM desires. 

I personally don't like this tactic, but I see the appeal. It makes the game more superhero-like or like a video game while avoiding the trope of simply taking away the hero's abilities, tools, and gear. It is almost fair and just barely dodges railroading. Anything is preferable to taking stuff from the players or railroading, but I dislike this option of plug-and-play gaming. But I understand it.  

I think this is where the idea of DM as a storyteller became overpowering and all-consuming. It's like you are playing against the DM, which is not fun. I have always been a storytelling DM. I create a unique world for the players. BUT I am not "storytelling" in a way to prevent or pervert the player's intentions and goals. There is a difference. 

For example, pawnshops are just as common in my world as magic item shops. New players may not have thought they could find such a thing, but I am not making them shop there. They just know. Horses are also common, the players won't have trouble obtaining one but they don't have to do it. I will tell the players if they are in a kingdom or a republic or something else, which changes a lot of the dynamics of society. I will also let them know if there is a town guard, a marketplace, a city hall, a bank, and whatnot and populate them appropriately. This is the storytelling I do for them. It makes them react if they so choose, it doesn't force them to make specific choices or force them to be something.  

I think I understand e5 better now. What do you think? 

Game Scale - Down the Rabbit Hole - Part 1

As mentioned last time, I am prototyping a science fiction game. 

Before I get to the fun of developing characters and equipment, I like to think about scales. Usually, the first scale I like to work with is "How big is it?" I have always hated the D&D weight and encumbrance scale but in certain ways it makes sense. 

A gold coin is heavy, this is sort of appealing from a DM's point of view. "How big?" is connected to "How much money?". It's not perfect but it does make sense. 

Since I am doing Sci-Fi, I want to leverage SI units. So meters and kilograms are usually what the players encounter. I don't have to come up with my own units. Made-up units nearly always sound silly. How much damage can the words like "Parsec" or "Cubits" do?

Don't answer that.  

The rabbit is out of the
hole.

In thinking about this, I wanted to go down the economic rabbit hole first. It was surprisingly, easy but also comes with its own problems: 

1. Cost doesn't equate to size or weight. 
2. What do I call space money? 
3. Space money sucks as a name. 
4. Will I use creeping capitals: "Space Money" vs. "space money"? 
5. What color is it?  

I decided to name the unit of money "Credits". It is a classic and doesn't suck like "Space Money". Credits are used to buy average, daily stuff. A loaf of bread, a bullet, a comb are all right around one credit each. 

Players won't want any of that, they want lasers, robots, aircars, fighters, and spaceships. One of the wacky things with letting characters have all of these things is that the scale rapidly gets into the millions or even billions of Space mone... er, credits. I hate math that gets out of control.  

The first issue I need to address is that credits are "shiney". It's sort of a color. (There is a whole different rabbit hole about most cultures not wanting to call the sky "blue", but "bright" or "shiny", like bronze. Feel free to climb into that rabbit hole on your own time. Here is a link to get you started.) 

Next, we need a scale to prevent players from yanking their hair out jumping from "How do I buy lunch?" to "How do I buy a spaceship?". 

SI units to the rescue. Will just use credits, kilo credits, mega credits (starting to sound silly..._ giga credits (somehow less silly), and so on:

• Credits (Cr) = Base unit
• Kilo Credits (kCr) = 1,000 Cr
• Mega Credits (MCr) = 1,000,000 Cr (1 million)
• Giga Credits (GCr) = 1,000,000,000 Cr (1 billion)
• Tera Credits (TCr) = 1,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 trillion)
• Peta Credits (PCr) = 1,000,000,000,000,000 Cr (1 quadrillion)

I haven't used AI chats to create content, but I decided to be lazy today and leverage it. ChatGPT did the chart above so I didn't have to do math. Even better, I didn't even sanity-check it. I have no one to blame but my lazy ass self. 

Anyway, I asked GTP Chat to compare that scale to a couple of different real things. A 60,000,000 credit vehicle is best measured in mega credits: 60 mcr. A space shuttle is 1.7 gcr. A motorcycle is 12 kcr. 

This chart gives a base of credits and 5 different scaling factors. That isn't much more difficult than D&D's copper, electrum, silver, gold, and platinum conversions. That will allow me to use 6 different colored tokens to scale things. Yes, I am ignoring that I need 1000 of one colored token to get to the next step in the scale. 

The nice bit about this scale is it is based on reality. The GDP of planet Earth is around 0.1 pcr. We aren't at most science fiction levels of technology so we don't produce a whole peta credit worth of stuff in a year. 

There is a time component to asking how long it takes to build a spaceship without starving everyone on the planet. You can build the Deathstar, but it takes a couple of years or more. This is why they aren't left sitting on a used spaceship lot but the Serenity is available at your local used spaceship lot. 

This time component is nice and I want to reuse this concept in my next post about combat scale. This is another headache for sci-fi: "What happens when a spaceship snipes individuals on the ground?" This will be my next post. 

The bad part is I thought I would be talking "game scale" like distances and weights, and this doesn't do it. A million-dollar diamond ring and a million-dollar airplane are wildly different sizes. An acre of desert could be less than an acre of farmland. A bag of feathers and a bag of lead are wildly different to lift. Nothing matches or scales nicely. I'll have to work on that bit. 

Anyway, thank you for climbing into this rabbit hole with me. I plan on having a whole series of posts as I develop this game. 

Prototyping and Fun

Back in 2021, I reviewed Atlas Game's The White Box Set. This is the handiest game set I've ever owned. The primary part is a 100+ book of essays that every game producer needs to read. It is loaded with a lot of research, details, and facts. I love it for that alone. 

The bits and bobs are perfect for role-playing and board games, even if you are not a content producer. They are so useful, I have five sets. 

Each box comes with:

3 counter sheets with 71 pre-printed and 49 blank counters,

150 small wooden cubes in 6 colors,

36 wooden meeples in 6 colors, 

6 large cubes in 6 colors, 

12 1d6 dice, again in 6 colors, 

110 bingo disks in 8 colors, 

Several clear bags for storage, 

102 page book of essays. 

These little bits and bobs are perfect for resource management in RPGS, replacing lost pieces from board games like dice, highlighting areas on maps without marking them up, etc. You have so many options. 

It's extremely useful. 

But now I have 5 copies of the same book. Well, 4 of those will be going up on my Ko-Fi store. I'll let you know when I have that done. I am on-call this week making a bad time for monitoring orders. 

If you must have this book now, I suggest the Atlas Game store as it's on clearance for $22.00 for the whole set. 

If you need it faster than physical shipping would allow, I suggest DriveThru RPG. Driverthu has two different products: a PDF and an Audiobook. 

Each of these products are LESS than the 10 bucks I plan to sell used copies on Ko-Fi. I want to see what sort of costs are associated with selling physical goods on Ko-Fi. Esty is a non-starter due to the terms and fees. The $10 dollar price point is to make the math easy. These books will be clearly marked with a warning that you are helping me with an order and there are better options out there. 

#MiniMonday

Here are two of my least favorite things about minis: storage and bases. 

Why do I keep my models in a terrarium? My cats are dicks. There isn't much I can do about that, if Youtube is any indicator, all cats are dicks. 

Anyway, my second least favorite thing about models is doing the bases. 

Why? 

Because if you don't straight-up paint them, you end up with materials that are a completely different palette than the paint you used. 

The best you can do is hit the grass and sand with some paint or ink to try and get it close. Sometimes, that works. The other downside is, that sometimes your grass-like material is "sticky". Either actually sticky or it has a static-magnetic effect.

There is some irony that the grass tends to stick to metal models more than plastic models, despite the metal being completely non-magnetic. 

The last un-fun part of doing bases is, let's say you get this looking great, where the tones match your models and the table you use. It isn't long before you show up at a friend's house, or a comic book store with nice tables, and your bases look bad again. 

I suppose it's just like painting, I guess I need to practice. 

February Update - Catching Up

Since Christmas, I have been alternating between Football and illness, either me or someone in the house. Football is over, but this new ick still has me. Last week, 1-3 people were out of the office daily with one thing or another. It was a rough week.  

Let's start with the fun part of the update: Rabbits. 

Fiver has a new house. It's a Snoopy house for a small dog or cat. Fiver barely fits, but he likes it. He shares with the cats, but not at the same time. He'd squish them. He is rapidly approaching 30 lbs. 

Now to the dog, Tori. She has been very sick since Christmas week. More than a few times we thought we'd lose her. She was on a ridiculous amount of pills. As of now, she is down to just 2. Unfortunately, one of these is a steroid. She is packing on the weight and is very unpredictable. 

When I say, unpredictable, I mean really it. Sometimes she lays on her side like a stuffed animal with all four paws poking straight out. If something bothers her in this position, she barks like Cujo. It is surreal because she doesn't move at all. Just barks like a crazy thing.  

Once she recovers, the two of us are going walking each night. Between her lovely weight gain and my diabetes, we need it. If this lasts 'til spring, she will be out there with me re-doing the garden. I don't need to expand, I need to clean up.  

This post wouldn't be complete without circling back to rabbits. We have a family of bunnies in the backyard. Sometimes, I go out there and see 2-3 of them hiding in plain sight. Tori never notices them, or if she does, she ignores them. 

I expect to do battle with them over my garden. I don't mind, I sort of count on it. I have an area under a tree where I can plant strawberries for the rabbits. I might try carrots and radishes, too. I want to kill off the grass there so I don't have to mow that space. My real gardening spaces are fenced, so the rabbits can't do too much damage. 

I'll share pictures as the cleanup begins. Right now, I have a picture as a hint for the next post. I'm planning more than gardening: