Narrator

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The Playtest Rulebook assumes that the game’s Narrator is a seasoned role-player who has rolled lots of dice before, so we’ll try to keep this part short. We plan to go into much greater detail in the *Core Rulebook*.

As the Narrator, you have most of the control over the game. You set up the scenario, play most of the roles, and ultimately have the most power. Of course, you know that with great power there must also come great responsibility.

The game isn’t about responsibilities though. It’s about fun.

First and foremost, do your best to set up a safe and welcoming environment for your game, in which each of the players can feel comfortable enough to dive into their roles and help entertain everyone else—including you.

To that end, make sure to review the "Play It Safe" section in the first chapter. This includes the details on being considerate of the other players and taking the time to set up a Session Zero to help you anticipate any issues that might arise.

## SETTING EXPECTATIONS

This edition of the game isn’t meant to be played for years and years. It serves as a preview of the full game, which will be published as the *Core Rulebook*. It also offers a chance for you and your players to offer feedback and help shape the game’s development.

In general, the game should work well, but you should always keep in mind that it’s not done yet. There are large gaps in the rules still, and there are parts that might fall apart if leaned on too hard. One of the reasons for releasing a *Playtest Rulebook* is to figure out exactly where those gaps are and which portions of the rules need reinforcement, changes, or simply better explanations.

So please don’t get frustrated with the rules while you play. If a question comes up about how the game is supposed to work, feel free to make a ruling on the spot and see if it works. When the session is over, take the time for a closer reading of the rules to figure out if you got it right. Or maybe if you guessed wrong but came up with something even better.

## WAYS TO PLAY

Players can represent combat in the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game in whatever way suits them best. The two main ways are on a map or entirely in their imaginations.

### Theater of the Mind

The default state is to play the game in the collective imaginations of all of the players, otherwise known as the *theater of the mind*. Most of the time this works wonderfully well, as a lot of a role-playing game session consists of conversations and dramatic moments in which the characters’ precise locations don’t matter much. When combat starts, though, things like the characters’ relative positions can become more important.

Some groups can handle even complex combats in their heads. They treat locations, speeds, and ranges more as suggestions rather than restrictions, and they trust the Narrator to rule on any edge cases fairly.

This kind of play works wonderfully if the players don’t happen to be sitting around a table together. Instead of breaking out maps and miniatures, they can play the game wherever they happen to be.

### On a Map

Some players, however, enjoy being able to see everything represented clearly on a map, often with miniatures representing each of the characters and their foes. This can often increase the drama of the moment, and it can help make things seem eminently fair, as everyone can see the exact situation represented clearly on the table.

Some narrators like to use dry-erase white boards on which they can draw a map of the combat. Others use roll-up battlemats, often with a grid printed on them.

### Using Miniatures

Many official Marvel miniatures have been produced over the years, and these work perfectly when playing with official Marvel characters.

If the players make up their own characters, it’s up to them to find a figure that matches their creations. In a pinch, you can substitute whatever you like: figures from other games, dice, coins, or anything else handy.

### Playing Freeform

When playing on a map without a grid, the characters have full freedom of movement, and they can be placed wherever their players like. You can use a ruler to figure out how far they can move. In most cases, an inch is equal to five feet, so a character with a Speed of 25 can move five inches in a single movement action.

### Playing on a Grid

Many battlemats come with a grid of squares or hexes on them. Each square or hex is considered to be five feet across, and each character should stand by itself inside of a single space. When figuring out how far a character can move, divide their Speed by 5 and round normally.

For example, a character with a Speed of 28 can move six spaces on the grid in a single movement action.

When playing on a hex grid, a character can move into any of the six adjacent hexes. You don’t have to worry about diagonal movement. Just count out the spaces normally.

When playing on a square grid, a character can also move from its current square into any of the eight adjacent squares.

### Ignore Diagonals

You might be tempted to worry about the fact that characters on a square grid that move diagonally are moving slightly farther than those who do not, but—for the sake of not having to bother with the math—ignore that. Just count out each space as one square moved, no matter which direction the character moves.

The same goes for vertical movement. Characters that can fly can move up or down for up to five feet at the same time that they move horizontally. This doesn’t cost them any extra movement.

When you want to figure out how far a character can move, just count the number of squares they want to move vertically and the number of squares they want to move horizontally. Whichever of them is the biggest number is the length of the move.

For instance, Iron Man is standing next to a traffic light. He wants to cross the street diagonally and fly up to the roof of the building on the corner opposite of him. The street is 30 feet across (6 squares), so moving across it diagonally also only costs 30 feet of movement. The roof of the building is 25 feet high (5 squares), so Iron Man can reach it without spending any additional movement.

### Virtual Tabletops

If the players in your group can’t all be in the same room, you can use any of a number of virtual tabletops to run your game. Some narrators just use a virtual whiteboard system for maps and markers and handle the die rolls and character sheets by hand.

Another simple way to manage this is through any teleconferencing software that allows you to share a screen. The Narrator can put their map on a slide or image and show the position of the characters as icons or graphics on top of that.

## WORKING WITH RANKS

If you’re playing a game with existing Marvel characters, you don’t have to worry about how the characters are going to gain ranks. After their origin stories are complete, most Marvel characters are already at the highest rank they can be. Spider-Man (for instance) is never going to be as powerful as Thor, no matter how many adventures he goes on.

If your game includes original characters created by your players, though, they would probably like to know how to increase their rank as they play the game.

In general, completing a single adventure should allow a character to go up one rank in the downtime between that adventure and the next one. Think about this like a story arc in a comic book. These can last anywhere from four issues to a dozen, but they each tell a complete story.

Think of each playing session as a single comic book. If you prefer playing shorter, simpler stories—ones that only take a single session or two—it might take two to four of them for a character to be able to gain a rank.

### Starting Ranks

Before you start your game, you should chat with your players about what rank they want their characters to start at. While it seems natural to start at Rank 1, there’s no reason you can’t just as easily start at Rank 5, Rank 10, or any other rank you like.

If you’re playing through a published adventure, it might describe itself as being “For three to five heroes of Rank 10.” You could play other adventures until your players’ heroes are ready for that challenge, but it’s also perfectly fine to have them all start at Rank 10 instead. There’s no reason you have to grind through those earlier ranks—unless you want to!

### Rank Caps

The other conversation you should have is about what the rank caps for the characters should be. If you’re planning on running a campaign that sticks mostly to one neighborhood in New York City, the characters shouldn’t be above Rank 5. If they are, the challenges they face there might be too easy for them. Thor doesn’t spend a lot of time patrolling rooftops for purse snatchers or bank robbers, after all.

A rank cap is a goal for the kind of game that you and your players want to play. If it’s about fighting local crime, capping it at Rank 5 is fine. If it’s about saving the galaxy, a rank cap of 20 or even 25 might work better.

If you decide you want to change your game’s rank cap at some point, that’s easy enough—as long as you’re lifting it and not lowering it. Few players like having to scale their characters back, as it feels like throwing their achievements away. Doing this temporarily can be fun, but a permanent loss might be too much.

Raising the rank cap so the characters can try their luck against a broader canvas, though, can be exciting.

### Mixing Ranks

It’s easiest to play with a group of characters that are all at similar ranks. You don’t have to worry about the villains being too tough for some and too easy for others. The heroes can just mix and match foes as they prefer.

However, there are lots of examples of super hero teams that feature characters of differing ranks. The Avengers are such a team, for instance, and they work fantastically well together.

To make this work in a game, it’s up to the Narrator to come up with challenges that are suitable for characters of various ranks. Each player should have their moment in the spotlight to shine during each play session. That requires a much stronger hand with crafting encounters.

For example, if the Avengers are facing off against Thanos, the highest-rank heroes can try to take on the Titan toe-to-toe. Meanwhile, the lower-rank ones can deal with Thanos’s subordinates, making sure to keep them off the backs of their buddies. Or they can spend their time saving innocents endangered by Thanos’s appearance. Or maybe they can use their special traits and powers to come up with a complicated way to defeat Thanos while their higher-ranked friends buy them the time they need to put their plan into action.