After my initial impressions being a little confused and mildly negative, I have found over 16 sessions that it works fairly well for what I am trying to do. I was way overthinking it, when in reality it was fairly low on crunch. It just had some unique mechanics, like you to hit and damage being wrapped up in the same roll.
I got the physical book and read thought it a time or two over a couple of months. Played in a few sessions of some dudes games. I was still fairly confused a bit on some of the rules, but my character was fun (cat human hybrid Manx McAllister, whom I put into my Haven setting, albeit as an old man since those sessions were set in 1981), and a couple of the guys from that helped my player pool for my own things months later. One of them helped pad out my DnD campaign as well.
But what helped me learn the system the most was getting my Demiplane account and spending summer 2025 creating dozens of characters, mostly off the top of my head. A lot of the time just based on cool images I was finding online. Many of those fed my first few sessions, with many being used for my first session that was a Justice Incorporated audition attended by a few dozen mostly weirdo types with some skill or abilities and a more or less colorful presentation in appearance. Some of these would form a group of rejected applicants who would call themselves "The Redeemers."
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| Too obvious that I dreamed him up on the spot |
Anway, working on so many characters forced me to look up the powers and abilities available. Did not exactly memorize them but it gave me a great outline of the system. It was there I learned to true simplicity of it all, once you got past the awkward bits. Anyway, Demiplane was a godsend, especially with its approved connectivity with Roll20. Roll20 does have its own internal character sheet within it, but I found it clunky and not at all intuitive. You must know the system to use it. Whereas Demiplane will guide you easily through the process of doing up the character you envision. I have had a couple of my players only watch a short Youtube vid about character creation, and one on using Demiplane for creation, and they were able to whip up their characters in swift fashion with the barest knowledge of the crunch.
In the system, your "abilities" are basically your stats like Melee, which more or less represents your hand to hand ability (and Strength may or may not enter into). Agility covers both your marksmanship and ability to dodge stuff. Resilience is mostly about your health, or "hit points" if you will. Vigilance will affect both your initiative and ability to notice stuff. Ego is more or less your mental defense and offence levels, and Logic is your brains and education. Add any number to 10 and you get your offense and defense number vs. things related to those.
After doing up your ability scores, Demiplane will then guide you through the tabs. You can select origin, such as Mutant or Weird Science. I liked having Manx be a product of weird science, in the sessions I ran him in his catchphrase was borrowed from the movie and song "Weird Science." When asked if he was a mutant, or how he came to be, he would exclaim "I'm a product of...Weird Science!"
Never got the chance to use a Thomas Dolby line..
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| You kids out there will need to use your Google machine on that one |
That origin will possibly give you a trait or tag, and you then get to also choose some traits and tags. Could be anything from underworld connections to abrasive personality, all giving you some kind of small boon.
Then you will choose your skills and powers from various trees, fully point buy with the amount depending on your rank.
All the powers come from various power sets. The Basic power set has things like your Accuracy with ranged weapons, Brawling, jump, Evasion. Brawling will let you use your Melee score against Agility attacks, and Evasion will give you your Agility defense vs. Melee attacks. That is an example of how you can kind of adjust things to suit your character. If you are Daredevil with a better Melee than Agility, you will want that Brawling because it can sort of represent his acrobatics and dodging.
Then you can choose various sets representing energy attacks like Cyclops eye beams, along with various sub skills within it hitting multiple opponents, or other neat affects. The Martial Arts and weapon (HTH and ranged) sets gives your various moves that can let you get an advantage or give a foe a disadvantage (called Edge and Trouble in this system) or maybe be able to hit everyone near you. You can mix and match various sub powers like these to customize your guy to emulate Cap America or Daredevil fighting styles. Keep in mind, its costs a point to access a particular power set, so the rules sort of encourage you to go lightly on too many sets. Somebody like Cyclops will want to focus on his Energy powers as well as his Martial Arts prowess. Many powers have a necessary ranking where you might have to buy one power in order to get a next more powerful one. Such as buying a power that lets you attack two people at once, in order to buy the one that lets you hit everyone in range. And Rank requirements, where a Rank 2 character (who would be considered fairly street level) cannot be able to buy some of the more powerful stuff the will be able to at Rank 3.
One thing I don't much like is how Marvelized everything has to be. Powers will have a connection to some character trope, such as a powerful healing/second wind power is called "I can do this all day," a direct nod to Captain America films. Not a big deal I guess, this is a Marvel media game. Constant cross promotion. But yeah, I can deal with it. And my setting is very Marvel adjacent.
Like pretty much most Supers systems, there is not much room for picking up something and running around with it, such as a sword or rifle you did not pay for in points. This isn't a looting game like DnD. But of course, you should allow a character to do so temporarily in a pinch. One interesting thing here is damage multipliers do not stack. So if you have Mighty 1 or higher, using a weapon will not add to that. Though Spider-Man or whoever using a sword real quick could add some bleed damage potentially even though it will not give a bonus multiplier.
So you roll three D6. The total will be your chance to beat the foes appropriate defense score. One of them is the "Marvel Die." It represents the damage. Yep, both to hit and damage come out of the same dice roll. To whatever you get on the Marvel die, you will use your Rank and potential other things such as a weapon. A bo staff or pistol will add 1. A sword or rifle will add 2 to your multiplier. Mighty (levels of super strength) and Accuracy will add to it.
And the rules also provide chances for "Edge" or "Trouble." Pretty much get to reroll a die to get a better roll, or have to reroll a good one if you have Trouble. You can also accrue " Karma," which can let you choose when to get and Edge. A very heroic type can always get Karma, but I like to give it for all kinds of stuff, like just making me laugh or do good roleplay, the same as I do with Inspirations in DnD.
There are lots of power sets. Whether martial arts related, or energy power related, or a Mighty based power sets with super strength-based items, variances will basically give you similar boons. Like some Martial Arts abilities will let you get an Edge on an attack, let you attack two foes at once, or give Trouble to the foe attacking you or something like that. Very much the same with energy stuff. Get an Edge, spread the attack out, that sort of thing. All forms of Energy can be chosen, such as blasting out Water based attack, or a Fire attack. They all come under the generic umbrella of Energy. and a high roll ("fantastic" success or "ultimate" fantastic success) can get you double damage and the special affect.
There are lots of power sets. Whether martial arts related, or energy power related, or a Mighty based power sets with super strength-based items, variances will basically give you similar boons. Like some Martial Arts abilities will let you get an Edge on an attack, let you attack two foes at once, or give Trouble to the foe attacking you or something like that. Very much the same with energy stuff. Get an Edge, spread the attack out, that sort of thing. All forms of Energy can be chosen, such as blasting out Water based attack, or a Fire attack. They all come under the generic umbrella of Energy. and a high roll ("fantastic" success or "ultimate" fantastic success) can get you double damage and the special affect.
That will be "fire" condition from heat attacks, or "bleed" condition from sharp objects. If you have any level of Mighty, you can choose to do knockback (potentially a good distance) instead of the condition.
The Rank system is a bit tricky as far as when, or even if, you will let characters move up a Rank. If they are used to games like DnD, there will be a certain amount of "when do we Rank up?' Well, in comics character did tend to get more powerful across the decades. Ben Grimm the Thing from the FF when he started in the first issue back in the day, probably could lift around 10 tons. By the 70's he was Hulk level strength. Superman might be the best example. He could hardly even fly at first. But every new creative team came in and added stuff.
So somebody like a Shield agent, or Hawkeye, might be Rank 2. Daredevil, Luke Cage, Iron Fist, and guys like that might be Rank 3. The majority of comic book characters would be 3. That is getting into the city level heroes. Spiderman, Captain America, Wonder Woman, Cyborg, etc probably around Rank 4 (Spidey was prob Rank 3 in his early days). Guys who have lots of things they can do, or been around the block enough to be considered "classic." Rank 5 is the top tier dudes like Superman, Hulk, or Thor. Supes might actually be 6th, though that seems to be more of a godlike, Galactus type Rank.
But yeah, my prob with Ranking is that a single Rank up comes with a slew of points. Several more Ability points, or several more power points. This is significant. The character will seem more powerful, if not looking different. Depends what you pick. We are having fun at Rank 3 in my campaign, but I keep alluding to a Rank up just to keep them from asking. A few sessions ago I let everyone borrow a couple of points against the eventual Rank up, just to sort of making that landing a bit softer when it does happen.
So my final major thought, and most positive part of my feelings about it, is that it works with my particular style, vibe, etc I am going for. Sure, its a Supers thing. But I feel my setting is way more. Cyberpunk, Distopean world, future noir, Urban sci Fi, supernatural stuff. I guess you could say comics are that. Thought the majority of people playing this thing seem to be mostly about running existing characters in one shot modules. Ugh. To me the creativity of rpgs is coming up with a character and developing them over time. I put my campaign groups together with that in mind. But to each his own.
The fact is, lots of developing characters, and mostly fairly shortish action encounters without big long punch up combat situations, has worked well for me. I think if I was doing big long battles, the shortcomings of the system might be more obvious. A couple or three rounds of action seems to be plenty and gives time to do other things in our rather short sessions. But I do seem to be headed towards a more combat oriented second half of the campaign (I say "second half" though I have no idea how long it might go), so we shall see. But bottom line, this system and its online usefulness and approachability has let me live out my long time dream of getting back to my Haven setting that goes back to 14 year old me and well into adulthood. Cheers.
