Most TTRPGs have a variety of books in their respective libraries. More often than not, these books are lumped together under terminology like “source books” or “campaign books.” With Marvel Multiverse, every book and digital release is categorised by a sub-heading at the bottom of the front cover. These sub-headings help clue you into exactly what kind of book or PDF it is you’re looking at, in turn ensuring you know what you’re buying.
These sub-heading terms have evolved over the course of the game’s existence, and so navigating the landscape of the various products can be tricky for someone just coming into it for the first time. Well, fear no longer, enterprising buyer of Marvel products! This is your guide to the library of the Marvel Multiverse RPG!
We’ll start off with the essential, one-of-a-kind book that is going to be the foundation of your entire Marvel Multiverse experience: the Core Rulebook, often abbreviated as the CRB. This book is for players and Narrators alike to learn the rules of the game, create their characters, and devise the kinds of stories they want to experience at the table. This is the only book you actually need in order to play the game. Everything else in this article is purely optional. However, if you’re in a pinch and just want to test the game out before you go spending any money, then there is another one-of-a-kind supplement you need to be aware of.
The free Quick-Start Rules are available on marvel.com/rpg alongside a free digital Adventure designed to introduce you to the game’s core mechanics with ease. The Quick-Start Rules are an abridged rule-set that leaves out the Core Rulebook’s chapters relating to the creation of characters. A physical edition of the Quick-Start Rules accompanies both the standard and deluxe editions of the Marvel Multiverse Start Set. As with the digital version on the website, the physical edition in the Starter Set is also accompanied by an Adventure. So, what is an Adventure?
In the early days of Marvel Multiverse, any book or digital product that contained a pre-written story for you to play with your fellow players was labelled as an Adventure. This is no longer the case, but you will see this term on the covers of several books that all vary in length and content. For example, both Enter: Hydra and Cataclysm of Kang feature the “Adventure” subheading on their front covers, but the former is only 8 pages long, where the latter is over 200 pages long. This discrepancy can be confusing for people approaching the game for the first time, so it’s worth noting that there will be a marginal difference between all of the books and PDFs you see with the word “Adventure” as their subheading. Specifically Enter: Hydra, Revenge of the Super Skrull, Murderworld That Time Forgot, and the Cataclysm of Kang. Ever since 2024, branding for adventure modules has become much more specific, leading to the adoption of a new subheading.
One-Shot Adventures are short-form narratives, typically in softcover books, that have been designed for players to complete within a few hours. Of the older Adventures, Enter: Hydra, Revenge of the Super Skrull and Murderworld That Time Forgot would likely all now qualify as One-Shot Adventures. The available One-Shot Adventures also have some variations in length, but nowhere near to the degree of the older batch of Adventures. The books and PDFs for Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe, Fantastic Four: From the Depths and Spider-Man: Midtown Mayhem all feature the One-Shot Adventure subheading. While it doesn’t feature the subheading, the Marvel Rivals Timestream Adventure has the same page count as Deadpool Roleplays the Marvel Universe and is designed in much the same way to be a One-Shot Adventure.
The One-Shot Adventures that have received physical releases also always open with a short comic. These books are better suited to those who have some familiarity with running TTRPG sessions rather than as a starting point. Unless you like throwing yourself in at the deep end, of course. One-Shot Adventures also typically feature the character sheets for the suggested player characters within the contents of the book. There is one final type of book that typically features a full adventure for you to play the game with.
The Expansion Previews that release on Free RPG Day every year have been used to provide players with more short-form adventure content. The first such release was actually a portion of one of the chapters of the X-Men Expansion and a few of that book’s exclusive character profiles, which are now also available for free on the game’s website. The adventures in these Expansion Previews are about half as long as your average comic book, much shorter than the One-Shot Adventures, but with a greater focus on introducing newcomers to the game as opposed to being run by more seasoned Narrators. Unlike the One-Shot Adventures, they do not feature a comic or character profiles, and require that players scan a QR code in the front of the book to gain access to their character sheets. And of course the contents of the Expansion Previews are, as their name suggests, previewing material for the game’s Expansions.
The Expansions for Marvel Multiverse are long-form hardcovers themed around particular teams, characters and events from across the Marvel canon. So far, the Expansions that have been released are the X-Men Expansion, the Spider-Verse Expansion, the Avengers Expansion and the Secret Wars Expansion. Each of these books has contained chapters dedicated to the lore and histories most associated with their titular theme, along with new rules that are also in keeping with the theme of the book. The X-Men Expansion, for example, featured rules for “Getting Schooled” and increasing your character’s power level over time, while the Spider-Verse book introduced rules for gadget-crafting, symbiote-bonding, and cloning. Each Expansion also comes with new character profiles for use within your games. Whenever an Expansion releases, there is almost always a “Web Exclusive” chapter that is uploaded to the game’s website that is typically a chapter of the book that didn’t make the final cut.
The Web Exclusives are purely informational, providing no rules or character profiles, but instead acting as a sample of the typical format of the chapters of the Expansions. Those chapters tend to finish off with some suggestions for adventures relating to the subject matter, and so these Web Exclusives can be a source of inspiration to anyone looking to start a campaign with the likes of Excalibur or the Avengers Academy, which are both organisations that have been featured in the Web Exclusives.
Sourcebooks are the latest addition to the Marvel Multiverse library, with there only being one that we currently know about: the Godzilla Sourcebook. This is going to be a 64-page hardcover book that features character profiles, rules and information relating to both Godzilla and the various other kaiju of the Marvel Multiverse. Sourcebooks are not Expansions. They are much shorter and much more focused on particular subject matter; the kind that wouldn’t warrant or fill a 260-page Expansion. At a guess, some other potential Sourcebooks we might see in the future could be a Marvel Rivals Sourcebook, an Ultimate Universe Sourcebook, or an X-Men ‘97 Sourcebook. Synergy and cross-promotion with movies, video games and television have typically been the main driving force behind the releases for Marvel Multiverse, and those few topics have been incredibly popular with Marvel fans over the last couple of years. It’s entirely within the realm of possibility that other major, non-Marvel franchises may be the subject of future Sourcebooks. And lastly, we come to the most recent announcement for the game’s library:
The Solo Rules for Marvel Multiverse will be releasing in late September to early October, and will be a 64-page PDF-exclusive supplement for the game available on DriveThruRPG. This will allow people to play sessions of the game all on their own, or even as a group without a Narrator, referring to an oracle and various random tables for the generation of their superheroic adventures.
Long-time players of Marvel Multiverse have been clamouring for another long-form Adventure in the style of Cataclysm of Kang, as well as an Expansion dedicated to the magical and monstrous side of the Marvel Multiverse. I personally think that the next Expansion will be a magic Expansion, but I don’t think it’s likely we’ll ever see another full campaign book like Cataclysm of Kang. By all accounts, that book did not sell very well, and it’s not all that surprising considering only Narrators are ever going to buy Adventures; especially one that length. Meanwhile, the One-Shot Adventures are shorter, cheaper to produce, cheaper for customers, and easier for newcomers to sink their teeth into. Ultimately, adventures should be geared toward introducing people to the game, and anything else should be geared toward improving the games already going on at people’s tables.
With the recent announcement of the Godzilla Sourcebook, I can see a move toward that format within the next year or so, with a magic Expansion rounding out the full Expansions for the game, and the focus shifting to shorter form content like Sourcebooks and One-Shot Adventures. This would mean a more consistent release schedule, a greater volume and variety of material for use with the game, and longer windows for those products to exist on shelves and storefronts to catch people’s eyes.
For all the books I’ve mentioned above, you can find the PDF editions on DriveThruRPG, and following that link will get you there through my affiliate ID, so any purchases you make will get me some store credit! Or if you’re more of a physical edition person, you can find stores at which to buy all the books on marvel.com/rpg. There you’ll also find the game’s FAQ and Errata documents, as well as a freely available playtest document called Tony’s Workshop.
You can expect a significant decline in content on this blog over the next few months. I’ll be reviewing the various releases, but all my other creative efforts will be spent on things that keep me fed and watered.
Till next time, have fun out there…
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