Tommy's Take on Civil War: Young Avengers/Runaways

The latest in the Civil War series for the Marvel Heroic RPG by Margaret Weis Productions came out recently, this time focusing on the Young Avengers/Runaways (and to a lesser extent, non-mutant teen heroes in general).

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The pixilation issue with the art seems to be a thing of the past.  That was a common complaint for the last couple of books, but MWP seems to have turned it into a non-issue. The PDF is $12.99, though you can preorder the print book from Amazon right now for $13.59.

This book ties into the Civil War Event book for Marvel Heroic, and is essentially a supplement to a supplement. It is divided into five chapters: The New Warriors, The Runaways, The Young Avengers, The Cube and Hero Datafiles.

The New Warriors chapter gives a brief history of the team (with horrible art from their “reality TV” comic series that led into Civil War), and introduces some new Milestones for Reality TV stars. Incidentally, if you wanted to run a game based off of the brilliant Peter Milligan/Mike Allred X-Force/X-Statix, these wouldn’t be horrible milestones to get started with. Several datafiles (though you will need to adjust affiliations and add Milestones if you want to use them as PCs) of former members are included, with the most notable omissions being Nova (coming in Annihilation) and Scarlet Spider. The odd character selection of these books rears its head as Night Thrasher’s brother becomes the first character (I believe) to get two datafiles in a single book (as Bandit and as Night Trasher II). This chapter also provides for some twists to the Stamford event, allowing for different causes and survivors, with one placing the New Warriors even more directly responsible for the event, while another places the blame squarely on the Avengers for not answering a distress call. The chapter ends with the “new” New Warriors, a team of depowered mutants given technology by Night Thrasher II in order to fight crime.

The Runaways chapter focuses on the cult favorite team of the same name, a team originally comprised of the children of supervillains. The chapter opens with a brief history of the team, as well as datafiles of deceased members Arsenic and Alex Wilder, as well as the Gibborim: The ancient race of giants that gave The Pride (the parents of the Runaways) their powers. This also includes Teenage Rebellion milestones, and options for putting spins on the Civil War event based on the presence of the Runaways. An action scene featuring Flag-Smasher is included, from the Young Avengers/Runaways Civil War tie-in.

The Young Avengers are a team of legacy heroes (directly or not), and their chapter opens with a datafile for their founder Iron Lad (one of the many Kangs). This chapter includes Milestones for second generation heroes as well as some Unlockables. Additional options are provided for tweaking the Civil War Event based on the Young Avengers’ presence, as well as an action scene featuring SHIELD Cape Killers trying to bring the Young Avengers down.

A mini-event is included, The Cube, which is largely the plot of the Young Avengers/Runaways Civil War tie-in. In it, the heroes have to face The Warden of The Cube, as well as the brainwashed Marvel Boy. A slew of anti-registration heroes are included as datafiles, as well as a number of minor villains. These include Rick Jones (yay!), Phil Urich (former Green Goblin), The Living Mummy, Hammerhead, Slyde, Stilt-Man, and The Witches (Satana, Jennifer Kale and Topaz).

The book concludes with a big list of datafiles spread out among the New Warriors, Runaways, Young Avengers and teen heroes in general. They include Young Avengers like The Patriot, The Wiccan and Hawkeye, Runaways like Nico Minoru, Victor Mancha and Chase Stein, and New Warriors like Night Trasher, Speedball and Namorita. As well, heroes like Alex Power, Amadeus Cho, Slapstick and Ultra Girl are included.

WHAT WORKS: They dumped in a number of datafiles I’d love to play in a game (Rick Jones, Living Mummy and Ultra Girl for three), and I like the excuse to add in a few more odds and ends villains to provide more options. Also, it’s nice to have the non-Penance Speedball as an option.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: The awful New Warriors art. This book in general just feels way less “essential” (or way more “optional”) than the 50States Initiative, but that may be a pro, depending on how you look at it.

CONCLUSION: If you’re not sold on Marvel Heroic, this isn’t going to be the book that changes your mind. The datafiles really sell this book, as the extra material like the Milestones and Unlockables just don’t stand out as well with in this one as they did in Civil War and 50 States Initiative, so if you hate teen superheroes, you may not be thrilled with this. On the other hand, that selection of datafiles really is pretty cool, as a few more of my genuine favorites slipped in here.

Tommy's Take on Civil War: Fifty State Initiative

Not Pictured: Baron f'n Zemo

Margaret Weis Productions has continued their support for the Marvel Heroic RPG line with the supplemental Civil War Event Book called Civil War: Fifty State Initiative, based on the fallout of the Civil War and Reed Richards’ plan to place a hero team in every state.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: The print version, not available as of this writing, seems to be about $20, but the PDF is $12.99 at RPGNow. The book is 136 pages and divided up into four sections: The Initiative, The Thunderbolts, Heroes for Hire and Hero Datafiles. This isn’t a huge book by any stretch, and on the surface seems kinda limited, but it has some cool bits.

The Initiative chapter begins with a focus on Camp Hammond, the superhero training camp from Avengers: The Initiative, and includes an example training scenario, as well as a short post-Civil War attack by Hydra, with an example of statted out Hydra vessel, kinda like their Helicarrier, as scary as that sounds. Not surprisingly, the book gives you a few options for dealing with the fallout of the adventure, including being drafted into Henry Peter Gyrich’s Shadow Initiative.

The rest of the chapter is largely datafiles for teams like The Shadow Initiative, The Great Lakes Champions, The Liberteens and The Rangers. This gives the book the interesting distinction of providing the second Constrictor write-up before we’ve ever had an official Magneto write-up. Most of the characters are completely usable as PCs as long as you add your own Milestones. There are also a few notable omissions, like Beta Ray Bill from Omega Flight.

The next section – The Thunderbolts - makes me REALLY giddy, for a few reasons. First off, Thunderbolts-specific Unlockables, like unlocking captured characters as playable characters, Pro-Reg Heroes being able to call in T-Bolts members for assistance, or T-Bolts members earning looser security for themselves. Milestones include trying to escape the T-Bolts, trying to go straight or trying to destroy the T-Bolts from within. The next thing that made me giddy? Baron f’n Zemo, complete with a “Born Better” powerset. I love Zemo…a LOT. Two action scenes are also included, one featuring the T-Bolts taking down rogue, D-list heroes and the other featuring the T-Bolts trying to recruit villains. There’s a sidebar about using the T-Bolts to expand Civil War, with special mention of one of my favorite subplots, when Zemo tried to win Captain America’s trust (the basis for my Mythic SAGA game I played a while back).

The Heroes For Hire chapter gives a small treatment to playing mercenaries, complete with Unlockables and Milestones. One of the nastiest is an 10xp Unlockable that allows you to have retroactively hired one of the opponent’s in the scene…turning them into a double agent who is actually on your side. A pair of action scenes are also included.

In addition to all of the Watcher datafiles that have been included, about 37 full blown player datafiles are included as well. Some of them include Black Cat, Bullseye, Venom, Songbird, Moonstone, Radioactive Man, Howard the Duck, Justice, Penance, Paladin and Nextwave.

WHAT WORKS: Baron f’n Zemo. Mechanical support for a Thunderbolts game. More datafiles are always a good thing.

WHAT DOESN’T WORK: The art is pretty pixilated, especially the cover. I assume this is to keep the file size down. Some notable omissions among the datafiles, like Beta Ray Bill and Norman Osborn (who became the leader of the T-Bolts during the time of the Fifty State Initiative), or Initiative Members like Slapstick and Ultragirl. No Milestones or Unlockables for a “Heroes in Training/Camp Hammond” campaign.

CONCLUSION. I wanna run, or play, a Thunderbolts campaign, or anything as Zemo. Holy crap. The rest is good, too. But yeah, Zemo FTW. I have a feeling we’ll get a few Unlockables or Milestones in the X-Men book that’ll adapt to a “heroes in training” thing, but I could be wrong. I like it. Not as much as the Civil War book, and there are definitely areas where the book could have been beefed up, or perhaps done better with more focus (like some of the aforementioned Milestones and Unlockables), but still a great product, even if it’s not up to the standards of the first two releases.

Tommy's Take on Civil War Event Book Essentials Edition

Psst...the good guys aren't teamed with Venom.

Civil War was one of those mixed-bag kinda stories. Great concept, some great stories within the event...horrible execution. It's also the first Event Book for the Marvel Heroic RPG.

WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW: This review covers the Civil War Essentials Event Book...the difference between that and the Premium version is about 10 bucks in print and 6 in PDF, and the Premium version includes the Operations Manual from the Marvel Heroic rules (that is, the rules to the game, just not the Breakout Event), meaning a difference of about 136 pages. Essentially, no pun intended, Margaret Weis Productions is all about options. When looking at the cover (featuring Pro Registration forces squaring off with Anti Registration forces), you can tell the good guys from the bad guys because one side has Spider-Man and Captain America and the other side has Venom. As in, the psychotic Max Gargan Venom. But I digress.

Mike Selinker does the intro, bragging - and rightfully so - about how he made Captain America the best character in Marvel SAGA (and he really is, or he's very close) because of the Edge mechanic (and about how he got to brag about this to Joe Simon, who co-created Cap with Jack Kirby). From there, it dives right into the event.

First off, I want to note something: Pretty much any time there's a page reference, you can click it and go there. That's in addition to the bookmarks, table of contents and index. That deserves some kudos right there. The Preparing for the Event chapter does a breakdown of the event, as well as recommended number of players (4-6) and some optional rules (like Troupe Play, so your group can cover all the major players of the Pro or Anti Registration sides...or even both sides, if the group wants to cover ALL sides). There's also rules suggestions on making Scene Distictions more dynamic, by adding extra features that people can use by spending Plot Points. Advice is also given for covering Watcher-Controlled Support Characters, addressing multiple characters getting unwieldy (something that was never really addressed in Marvel SAGA aside from hand waving it).

And then...the Civil War Sourcebook itself. The first thing it tackles is the Superhuman Registration Act, as well as making the Pro and Con arguments for it. It also tackles what's at stake for each side, as well as a sidebar on people playing characters who choose different sides (depending on the interpretation, you could easily flip Captain America and Iron Man, especially Ultimate Cap and Movie Iron Man). Lastly, there are bullet points for what can happen if the Act passes or fails, and the consequences thereof. A full dozen new Milestones are included, all event specific, such as Evil For Justice (recruiting Supervillains to your side), My Ally, My Enemy (where you and a close friend wind up on opposite sides of the conflict), or Convert the Enemy (where you become focused on swaying heroes to your side). There are also a number of Factions, with advice on playing Civil War from their perspective (complete with their own Unlockables), like Atlantis (including Unlocking Namor, with a number of implications as to what that means), Wakanda (would you like the blessing of the Panther God?), AIM, Hydra, SHIELD, The Media and even The Illuminati (the behind the scenes power players like Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, Professor X and Dr. Strange). I should note that there are tons of major and minor datafiles all over this thing, from Hydra Agents to J. Jonah Jameson to Man-Ape. The section ends with a number of important locations involved in Civil War, complete with Scene Distinctions for them (like Artifacts From Avengers History in the Avengers Mansion Ruins and the Statue of Liberty serving as a Beacon of Hope).

When it's time for the Event to begin, it's all broken down into Scenes. Buildup Scenes include Titanium Man attacking Washington and Thor's Hammer crashing to Earth (and Doom trying to retrieve it). This includes datafiles for Doom, Titanium Man, Doombots, Thor's Hammer...and options like crazy. Like, say, allowing a hero to pick up Thor's Hammer and just what all that MEANS...with options for it both being a temporary measure to fend off Doom or a permanent one! To prove that it's not all slugfests, one of the Buildup Scenes even takes place with a hero appearing before Congress. The event proper begins with the aftermath of the Stamford explosion and covers a number of Scenes which could become whole sessions in and of themselves, like hunting Nitro (believed to be the sole survivor of the Stamford incident), appearing before the Commission on Superhuman Activities (complete with a chance to actually flip Henry Peter Gyrich to the Anti-Registration side, if they so choose). Act One ends with a roleplaying scene involving numerous heroes gathering to discuss the SHRA.

In Act Two, the SHRA has passed, because there's no Event without it. The Scenes get even more flexible here, as the PCs could be on either (or both!) sides of the Act. The Spider-Man unmasking scene is presented with more options, with Spidey only being used as an example, and even a suggestion for an underhanded twist like a Life Model Decoy being used to unmask in the hero's place! Other Scenes include hunting/eluding friends, the wedding of Storm and Black Panther (complete with Storm datafile), investigating Atlantean sleeper agents, culminating in an epic Superhero Battle Royal involving Thor's clone (though there are other options provided,  like the Sentry and a Hulk Robot).

In Act Three, the pro-Registration forces are running across the moral Event Horizon, with supervillains being actively recruited to hunt anti-Registration heroes, captive anti-Registration forces being locked up in the Negative Zone and more good stuff. This adds a slew of new datafiles, like Songbird, Moonstone, Venom and Bullseye. The Thunderbolts debut scene includes options like making pro-Registration PCs "ride along" with them, or anti-Registration PCs injected with the same nanotech to work alongside them. Other Scenes include negotiating with Atlantis (and hopefully getting Namor and his resources on your side), busting AIM or Hydra (complete with Nick Fury datafile), getting to the truth of Norman Osborn's actions in Civil War (complete with a variety of options again, such as him being under control of Namor, who is using Osborn's attacks on Atlanteans as an excuse for war, or maybe it was Chameleon all along, and not Osborn), both sides of a Negative Zone Prison Raid (busting heroes out or stopping a break in), complete with a second epic brawl between both sets of forces that spill onto the streets of New York. The last scene also ups the lethality, assuming people will die. Act Three ends with a number of options for wrapping things up, no matter which side wins and includig a Third Option where the heroes band together against a villainous force (my favorite option, which isn't listed in the book, involves Nova crash landing on earth with the dire warning that "The Annihilation Wave is coming!").

A sidebar details the three books coming to supplement this event: Fifty State Initiative (which covers what happens in the aftermath of Civil War), Young Avengers/Runaways (which covers the teen heroes, including the New Warriors) and the X-Men (which covers the X-Mansion's residents and the Sentinels sequestering them).

Friends and Foes includes a crap ton more datafiles, starting with Ant Man (Erin O'Grady), the obscure Bantam, the Serpent Society, Doc Samson, the Kingpin, Sentry (complete with a d12 strength), Vision and more.

And THEN we get FULL datafiles for 32 heroes, including Captain America, Iron Man, Spider-Man and Wolverine, as well as folks like Cable, Punisher, Moon Knight and Goliath...oh, and Deadpool. Each with bios and two sets of character specific milestones.

The book ends with a glossary, a clickable index of datafiles and a bibliography.

WHAT WORKS: Well...there's a crap ton of new datafiles, including Dr. Doom (held up alongside Magneto as an inexcusable omission from the rulebook). There's a LOT of leeway and options given for playing out Civil War with your own twists. New optional rules like Troupe Play and handling multiple support characters is great. Oh, there's a table of contents, an index, bookmarks and EVERYTHING IS CLICKABLE. Except links to the Operations Manual, but I would bet those are included in the Premium Version.

WHAT DOESN'T WORK: No Baron Zemo. No Winter Soldier. What? I can't complain about MY favorites not being included? The art is really pixelated a lot of the time, but I am assuming that's a digital only artifact and hopefully they'll fix that for the print versions. If you absolutely hated Marvel Heroic, I don't think this is going to convince you otherwise. For a pre-written adventure (essentially), it'll get steadily harder to run straight out of the book as the twists and turns mount (though that certainly has it's own pluses, as it's not really a railroad at all).

CONCLUSION: An incredibly promising start to the Event Book formula, as there's a huge amount of options included to customize it yourself. The pixelated art doesn't bother me in the digital book, but I would be annoyed to have it present in a print book. Just a huge amount of information, including new datafiles, and while having many of them mixed around the book could annoy some, if you're working from the PDF this thing is so user friendly to navigate that it's not a big deal. Heck, maybe someone wants to play one of the characters not included as a full datafile (with Milestones) here (like Ant Man or Patriot)...just slap on a pair of Civil War milestones that make sense and run with it. If you didn't care for Marvel Heroic, I don't think this is going to sway you...but if you're a fan of it, there's a lot to like from this product.