The cover to Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game X-Men Expansion, with Professor X in the back, with Bishop, Polaris, and Cyclops right below him, then Jubilee, Nightcrawler, and Psylocke in front of them.
When I first started collecting comics seriously (seriously meaning I wasn’t pointing at whatever the grocery store was and asking my mom to buy it for me), the X-Men weren’t even on my radar. I was focused on Batman and Spider-Man and branching out from there. Then came Secret Wars. In context with the rest of the Marvel heroes, I got to see who the X-Men were. I also got to see, right from that starting point, the complicated relationship the X-Men had with their “villains” because I was immediately introduced to this Magneto guy, who was a villain but didn’t want to be associated with them and started helping the heroes. 

I started picking up X-Men comics from that point on. I jumped on in time to see Rogue dealing with Carol Danvers’ personality in her head. I saw Wolverine setting up Colossus to get beat down by Juggernaut because Colossus broke Kitty’s heart. I saw two major X-Men villains arrive on the scene in the form of Selene and Nimrod. I saw Storm lose her powers and still hang on to leading the team. I got a crash course in “This isn’t just a superhero comic; it’s a soap opera.” 

Regardless of the vagaries of licensing agreements and vengeful CEOs trying to poison their own wells, it’s hard to see a Marvel project emerge that doesn’t immediately cause people to ask, “When are the X-Men going to show up?” Even She-Hulk is asking that. This is the answer to that question for the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing game, the X-Men Expansion.

Disclaimer

I was not given a review copy of this product. I am writing this review based on my purchased hardcover copy and the Demiplane Nexus version. I have not had the opportunity to use the material in this product, but I have played the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game.

 Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game: X-Men Expansion

Lead Writer: Matt Forbeck
Writers: Jesse Scoble, Devinder Thiara, Elisa Teague, B. Dave Walters & Marty Forbeck
Producer & Project Lead: Carlos “CJ” Cervantes Jr.
Editor: Brian Overton
Assistant Producer: Amir Osman
Cover Art: Francesco Manna & Jesus Aburtov
Chapter-Opening Art: Ruairí Coleman, Yen Nitro & Fer Sifuentes-Sujo
Cartography: Brian Patterson
Logo Design: Jonathan Silva
Graphic Design & Layout: Simeon Cogswell
Editor In Chief: C.B. Cebulski
Business Development Lead: Trent Bielen
Executive Director, Marketing & Integrated Planning: Tim Dillon
VP Production & Special Projects: Jeff Youngquist
VP Of Planning & Forecasting: Mark Annunziato
X-Men Created By: Stan Lee & Jack Kirby

Less Scary Than the Darkhold

The hardcover version of this product is 256 pages long. It includes a credits page, a two-page table of contents, and a single-page glossary/index. About 80 pages are comprised of single-page character profiles featuring X-Men and adjacent characters with their RPG statistics. 

There are copious offerings of X-Men artwork from across a range of eras. Each chapter is introduced with a full-page piece of art on the opposite page. There are several illustrations featuring the layout of various vehicles and locations related to the X-Men, such as the Blackbird jet, the Mutant Town district of New York City, X-Factor’s Cavern X, Xavier’s School grounds, the Morlock Tunnels, the Marauder naval vessel, and the Exiles’ Panoptichron.

The Demiplane Nexus version of the product includes links to enlarge the various maps or diagrams found in the book. Owning the book will also add all the character profiles to your Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing tools, including using them as a template to build your character.

Find All The Mutants

The book is organized into the following sections:

  • Introduction
  • Mutants
  • The X-Men
  • X-Factor
  • X-Force
  • Mutant Classes
  • Marauders
  • Alpha Flight
  • Exiles
  • Other Worlds
  • Futures Past
  • New Rules
  • New Equipment & Conditions
  • New Character Options
  • Characters

Most of these chapters present the history of mutants in Marvel comics from different perspectives, from the overview in Mutants to the history of various mutant teams to the alternate worlds and timelines in Other Worlds and Futures Past. 

The chapters detailing mutant teams include the following sections:

  • Team Rosters (for different eras of the team)
  • Locations (headquarters and recurring places relevant to the team)
  • Opponents (a description of specific opponents and types of opposition)
  • Theme (what stories about the team are usually about)
  • Style (how the theme is expressed)
  • Purpose (particular goals shared by the team)
  • Transportation (how the team gets around on their missions)
  • Joining (how characters are recruited, what Rank members need to be to join)
  • Adventure Hooks

Because there is a lot to cover, most of these topics get no more than a paragraph or two, but the more history and relevant details related to a team, the more sections are given to that team. For example, the X-Men adventure hooks are broken out into general hooks and Krakoan Era Hooks, and sections like Purpose, Transportation, and Joining will often have multiple entries based on different iterations of the team.

When these entries touch on opponents, the chapter doesn’t give statistics for opponents. If those opponents have game statistics, they appear in the Characters section of the book. Similarly, the vehicle statistics appear in New Equipment & Conditions.

The Other Worlds and Futures Past chapters include multiple chapter descriptions of various worlds or alternate timelines, as well as a handful of adventure hooks for each entry. If a team has notable variants, the entry may also include a roster of members for the team as it exists in that world or timeline.

The original X-Men in their  yellow and black training uniforms, Cyclops, Jean Grey, Iceman, Angel, and Beast, charging toward Magneto, who is encased in a magnetic bubble.Growing the Game Rules

The book also has several rules, clarifications, modifications, and additions. The changes aren’t so much errata as changes to some of the established definitions that leaned heavily on the X-Men’s status quo when the core rulebook was published. For example, the Kroakoan tag has been split out. It can be a historical note for a character or denote that Krakoa still exists in your game and isn’t automatically given to any mutant character. 

There are also some clarifications on how ongoing damage types are affected by damage reduction and an expansion of the ongoing damage types into corrosive (acid) and poisonous. There are rules for passing on diseases and being an infectious carrier, which do not universally reflect how diseases work but does make sense for adjudicating things like the Legacy virus or Techno-Organic infection. I’m also mean because this made me think about making Peter Paker’s player check on these rules when he’s been fighting supervillains during flu season because Pete’s definitely had to deal with that before.

The book answers questions that may never come up but have been important in Marvel comics. For example, if you are Rank 4 and have Telekinetic Manipulation, you can keep the Techno-Organic virus from spreading, but you can’t do so and use your telekinetic powers. Some individual infections, like Brood Infestation or the Transmode Virus, are also explicitly called out as not being affected by some healing powers in the game.

Very X-Men Combat

There are two new styles of combat scenes detailed in these pages. One allows for the simulation of a Danger Room session, and the other is about engaging with an opponent in a psychic duel on the Astral plane.

The Danger Room rules come the closest to almost anything official we’ve seen in Marvel Multiverse to extrapolating combat without using full character profiles. Different challenges are provided, and some of them produce minions that just have a Health score and a speed and make a specific attack but don’t have any additional associated rules. 

Some classic Danger Room threats, such as hydraulic presses and randomly fired missiles, are mechanically detailed. The Danger Room has two modes: Victory and Endless. Victory requires overcoming a set number of challenges, while Endless just keeps pounding the participants until they lose all of their Focus or Health. 

I’m a fan of the Danger Room Environment effects, not just for the Danger Room, but because they provide a model of environmental factors you could use in other combat scenes. In particular, what happens when it’s foggy, storming, windy, or some form of sensory overload while the PCs are in combat? I like having these in the broader toolbox because I can see using the overwhelming sensory input in a scene where Spider-Man and Daredevil are taking on some of Kingpin’s minions that are shielded from the sensory effects while Matt and Pete are having their super senses and spider-sense overwhelmed. 

I like the concept of the psychic duel; it’s very on-brand. I pictured Professor X and the Shadow King squaring off the second I read this. The consequence of losing the duel even plays right into those scenarios because there are several telepathic powers that the victor has an easier time inflicting on their defeated opponent, one of which is Telepathic Possession.

My main concern with it is that, mechanically, you could do the same thing repeatedly during the duel. You can use telepathic abilities that read minds, protect others, or telepathically blast one another. If the duel only involves two people, there isn’t anyone to protect, and you may not want to take time away from the fight to probe for information, or you just may not be able to think of what you want to probe for. If someone gets roped into a duel on the Astral plane and they don’t have Telepathic Blast, they get it, mainly so they can do something in the fight.

I like the way this section describes the participants and how the participant can shape their “side” of the battlefield. It allows for a lot of imagination as people picture their “happy place.” I wish players could use that imagination to create assets for themselves in a way that didn’t take away from their ability to keep doing more damage than their opponent. 

A team shot of Alpha Flight. In the back is Sasquatch. In front of him is Snowbird, Talisman, Guardian, and Vindicator. In the very front row is Shaman and Puck.Team Players

The core rulebook introduced Team Maneuvers, which are templates that affect characters in the next round, triggered at the beginning of a round, which represent a signature tactic that the team has practiced. The core rulebook has several maneuvers, but this book introduces some team-specific maneuvers for Alpha Flight, Exiles, Marauders, New Mutants, X-Factor, X-Force, and the X-Men. I’m particularly amused by Alpha Flight’s maneuver: Wolverine just happens to be in the area and shows up to help.

As much as I like that one, it does highlight something that remains true of Marvel Multiverse. There is no “short-hand” for NPCs in the game. If Wolverine shows up, you need his character sheet, and he runs like a player-character version of the character. That’s not an insurmountable requirement, but it does mean that you don’t just reference a quick set of rules explaining what his help looks like until he’s gone.

A World that Hates and Fears Them

Another new rule is Mutant Reputation. In any situation where a character makes a social interaction, if the character is known to be a mutant, and the NPCs aren’t specifically disposed toward mutants, various edges or troubles may be assessed to the roll based on public perception of mutants. 

The reputation levels are Beloved, Liked, Neutral, Feared, and Hated. Whenever the campaign produces events that affect public perception, the narrator can shift the Mutant Reputation level in the direction the events indicate. The most recent example was at the height of the Krakoa era when mutant-kind provided humans with wonder drugs, and the X-Men were well-regarded, publically known superheroes; the reputation level is at Beloved. Once Orchis arranges for the human population to learn of how the Krakoan wonder drugs are tainted, and the mutants are scattered and pushed out from Krakoa, that reputation plummets to Hated. 

Aside from the modern era, this rule aligns with many of the X-Men stories I grew up with. I remember Professor X’s concern when Thunderbird kidnapped members of the X-Men and infiltrated Cheyenne Mountain Complex, worrying that mutants would be seen as terrorists due to his actions. I also remember that the X-Men got a huge reputation boost when it looked like they sacrificed themselves to save the world in Houston before they were relocated to the Australian Outback by Roma. 

I’m torn on a few aspects, as much as I like this rule. On the one hand, I like this idea for teams in general, as many Marvel teams have gone through ups and downs regarding their reputations and how well the public regards them. On the other hand, the specific view of mutants is a particular story element of stories that involve mutants. Finally, this is a great way to communicate the public perception of mutants. However, given that mutants are allegorical to many marginalized groups, the table will need to be very careful not to gamify how a marginalized community is viewed.

When players try to influence reputation intentionally, not by talking about equity, but by attempting to prove that they are “the good ones,” this rule could reinforce some negative aspects of how marginalized communities are viewed. That doesn’t make this rule bad; it just reinforces that stories about marginalization must be treated with care.

Educational Benefits

Another new rule presented in this product is the Getting Schooled rules. This is an alternative means of tracking character advancement to reflect students who may be learning about their abilities and training between the missions they participate in. This breaks benefits provided by the next rank above the character’s current rank into ten smaller, individual advancements. 

Characters can get one of those advancements for a scene spent training, for example, a session in the danger room. But they can’t advance from training again until they participate in a regular mission. This makes perfect sense to me and is also a little amusing since I remember all the times the New Mutants were told expressly not to take on any missions outside of their training. Then, they would sneak out and get into trouble, which, of course, is incentivized by this system. 

This is also a flexible rule that can be adapted to other campaigns. Over the years, there have been several mutant schools, but there have also been other supers training institutions, including an Avengers Academy for young trainees that the Avengers wanted to steer away from potential supervillains and the newer Strange Academy for magically gifted students. Adapting this to reflect a SHIELD super agent training program wouldn’t be too hard.

Devil in the Details

While the core rules included various pieces of standard equipment and how they work, this supplement goes into more detail and adds additional equipment. For example, we get specific game rules for how Adamantium interacts with Damage Reduction and a write-up for anti-telepathy helmets like the ones worn by Juggernaut and Magneto. 

Vehicle rules are expanded, giving vehicles profiles similar to characters and providing rules about when and how to make checks to maneuver them, how they can be used in combat, and the kind of damage characters take from crashes and destroyed vehicles as if anyone is going to crash the Blackbird.

Cerebro gets its own write-up as an item that effectively grants additional powers when worn and provides requirements for what characters can actually use it. The Exiles Tallus device, Krakoan flowers, and Mutant Grown Hormone are also detailed.

Powers and Power Sets

Several new power sets are introduced in this book. These include:

  • Healing
  • Luck
  • Sixth Sense
  • Translation

There are also new powers introduced into the following existing power sets:

  • Power Control
  • Telepathy
  • Teleportation

There are also some expanded rules for Elemental Control (new elemental types), Resize (movement rules and adjudicating growing into spaces too small for a character), and Telekinesis (using Brilliance to affect the weight moved in the same way Mighty works for physical strength).

Some powers in Sixth Sense fall into traditionally tricky implementations of precognitive abilities in-game, namely, that most of them work in a way that means the Narrator needs to have an idea of what’s going on in the future when the power is used. There are some more recent game rules for these powers that I wish had come into play, such as allowing a character to ask questions in the moment or modifying rolls based on “knowing” what was going to happen without literally knowing exact events.

Cure-All has some limitations, which are a good addition to the power. It can remove conditions, allow recovery checks, and remove current effects afflicting a character, but long-term health issues can’t be removed. For example, you could remove allergy symptoms, but you wouldn’t remove the character’s allergies. You can restore someone’s hearing if they have been given the deafened condition, but you can’t restore someone’s hearing if they have a hearing disability. 

Logan fighting a zombie Gladiator, while Storm fights a zombie Mystique, the Age of Apocalypse Cyclops fights zombie Magneto, and House of M Quicksilver runs toward a zombie Nightcrawler.Narrative Powers

Narrative powers are a great concept, but I’m not sure I like why they are used in this book. Narrative powers are powers that just work. There aren’t stats for them, and you don’t roll for them. They aren’t meant for player characters. In many ways, they represent narrative absolutes that some characters introduce into the game. This is great for the reality-warping powers of characters like Molecule Man or Franklin Richards. 

Characters can still have regular statistics while also having narrative powers. The Narrator can change the reality or the terrain around Molecule Man however they want, but if they get close enough to Molecule Man to punch him, they may still be able to knock him unconscious, but the Narrator could also just say that Molecule Man caused the ground underneath them to lift them 100 feet in the air. These powers need to be used carefully, but it does keep the Narrator from being frustrated when the dice don’t agree that Franklin Richards could make a new planet for everyone to live on.

It also means you can still use statistics to model a character out thinking someone with godlike power, like Doom, convincing the Beyonder to take his time dissecting him, so Doom has a chance to trigger his armor’s power, or Adam Warlock convincing Thanos that he doesn’t want the power of the Infinity Gauntlet.

I’m not sure I like the exact examples in this book, though.

  • Cannot Lose
  • DNA Manipulation
  • Duplicate Self
  • Instant Evolution
  • Restart

I understand some absolute or wide-ranging abilities, like Cannot Lose, DNA Manipulation, and Restart. Cassandra Nova probably doesn’t need to make a roll to say that she changed her DNA to match the Trask family, and how would you even adjudicate Moira dying and then resetting the entire campaign to when she was born? But I feel like duplicate self and instant evolution, which are the signature abilities of multiple men and Darwin, should be something player characters can emulate.

Going one step further, some powers in the Sixth Sense powerset would be better off as narrative powers. I understand you may want to avoid having the absolute version of some powers, like Maddrox not having a limit to the number of dupes he has. Still, you could model less powerful versions of the power and have the “absolute” version detailed as a narrative power. I also feel like Maddrox’s power highlights the need for more solutions like the minions detailed in the Danger Room section, characters that don’t require a complete profile.

I like this rule; I’m just not sure I like the examples provided.

A Note on Tags

Tags don’t have a direct mechanical effect, although they may provide narrative positioning for something that does touch on the rules. I touched on tags previously when discussing the updated definition of Krakoan and who gets that tag, but some additional tags have been added that I think are solid narrative ways to express characters. 

Tags like Mental Health Conditions and Mobility Issues exist without having a mechanical expression. If I want to express that my character is neurodivergent, I don’t need to change any stats, but I can have it exist as something detailed on my character sheet. If I have a character that relies on a prosthetic device, again, I don’t need stats, but it’s something true of the character.

This section does not suggest what the Narrator might do with these tags, although if those tags are going to have any particular weight, that should be determined by the player. 

Speaking of tags that give narrative permission to do something that may interact with the rules, we’ve also got Secondary Mutation and Mutant Associate. Secondary Mutation allows a character to break their character’s Rank Cap, but only with powers unrelated to their current power sets. Mutant Associate is a tag that can affect a character that isn’t a mutant in a campaign using the Mutant Reputation rules.

Additional Profiles

The following profiles appear in this book:

  • Angel (Rank 3)
  • Aphelion (Rank 2)
  • Apocalypse (Rank 6)
  • Askani (Rank 5)
  • Aurora (Rank 4)
  • Banshee (Rank 3)
  • Beak (Rank 1)
  • Bishop (Rank 4)
  • Black Priestess (Rank 5)
  • Black Tom Cassidy (Rank 3)
  • Blink (Earth-295)(Rank 4)
  • Blob (Rank 4)
  • Brood (Rank 2)
  • Cable (Rank 6)
  • Callisto (Rank 2)
  • Cannonball (Rank 3)
  • Captain Britain (Betsy Braddock, Rank 5)
  • Cassandra Nova (Rank 6)
  • Chamber (Rank 3)
  • Cypher (Rank 3)
  • Darwin (Rank 3)
  • Dazzler (Rank 4)
  • Destiny (Rank 3)
  • Domino (Rank 4)
  • Doop (Rank 6)
  • Dust (Rank 4)
  • Elixir (Rank 4)
  • Escapade (Rank 3)
  • Exodus (Rank 5)
  • Fang (Rank 4)
  • Fantomex (Rank 3)
  • Gambit (Rank 4)
  • Greycrow (Rank 3)
  • Guardian (Rank 4)
  • Havok (Rank 4)
  • Hope Summers (Rank 6)
  • Isca the Unbeaten (Rank 3)
  • Jubilee (Rank 3)
  • Karma (Rank 3)
  • Kid Omega (Rank 5)
  • Lady Deathstrike (Rank 4)
  • Lockheed (Rank 2)
  • Longshot (Rank 4)
  • M (Rank 4)
  • Madelyn Pryor (Rank 6)
  • Magik (Rank 5)
  • Magma (Rank 3)
  • Master of the World (Rank 4)
  • Mastermind (Rank 3)
  • Mister Sinister (Rank 5)
  • Moira MacTaggert (Rank 1)
  • Mojo (Rank 4)
  • Multiple Man (Rank 3)
  • Nemesis (Rank 4)
  • Nimrod (Rank 6)
  • Nocturne (Earth-2182)(Rank 4)
  • Northstar (Rank 4)
  • Old Man Logan (Earth-21923)(Rank 4)
  • Polaris (Rank 4)
  • Puck (Rank 3)
  • Purifier (Rank 1)
  • Pyro (Rank 3)
  • Rictor (Rank 4)
  • Rogue (Rank 4)
  • Sasquatch (Rank 4)
  • Sebastian Shaw (Rank 4)
  • Sentinel (Rank 4)
  • Shadow King (Rank 5)
  • Shaman (Rank 4)
  • Shatterstar (Rank 5)
  • Silver Samurai (Rank 4)
  • Siryn (Rank 3)
  • Snowbird (Rank 4)
  • The Stepford Cuckoos (Rank 3)
  • Sunfire (Rank 4)
  • Synch (Rank 4)
  • Talisman (Rank 4)
  • Toad (Rank 3)
  • Warlock (Rank 4)
  • Warpath (Rank 3)
  • Wild Child (Rank 3)
  • Wolfsbane (Rank 3)

I wouldn’t argue against most of these profiles, but it continues a trend from other Marvel Multiverse products. It provides a lot of heroes if people want to play them, but it feels like it’s light on the villains, which is especially noticeable when you need to build villains using the same rules as player characters. Some entries even mention some of the signature villains of the various teams, but those characters don’t get stats. I understand you don’t want to bump a vital character to have a Warwolf profile, but I wish there were a better solution. For example, if you had a more compact trooper/minion-style character presentation, you could fit two to a page instead of one.

Whenever superhero games have ranks or power levels, I avoid nitpicking where I think those power levels should fall, but there are a few relevant points to make on the ranks of some of these characters. I feel that most established heroes should be Rank 3 or 4, with globally significant powerhouses at Rank 5 and cosmically important characters at Rank 6. Some characters with a lot of powers and abilities end up a rank higher than they may otherwise be because there is a limited number of powers a character can have at a given rank. In other words, characters can’t go wider than the boundary the rank allows, but some characters feel “wider” and not “deeper” (i.e., operating at a higher scale of power).

Okay, I have to get one thing out regarding rank. I like Cable. I know Cyclops and Maddie are a big deal. I have never thought Cable should be the same rank as characters like Captain Marvel or Silver Surfer and higher rank than someone like Thor. It’s also worth noting that you may want to check out the X-Men ‘97 version of some characters you can get for free on Demiplane Nexus here. 

Missing Teams

This book covers a ton of territory, but there are so many X-Men adjacent concepts that it just doesn’t have room to cover. I know where those elements will fall if they get touched on in the future. The Shi’ar Empire, the Imperial Guard, the Starjammers, multiple iterations of the Brotherhood, the Reavers, expanded members of the Inner Circle of the Hellfire Club beyond the Emma Frost and Sebastian Shaw, details on the Externals and their operations as a group, the Thieves’ Guild, the Assassins’ Guild, Magneto’s Acolytes, and a host of others that may not have appeared recently, but have long term gravitas with the Marvel Mutants. 

There are also a ton of mutants who have been important, featured characters in some eras but who have been shifted to the back burner in the Krakoa era, like Armor, and who don’t get any space (which only jumps out at me, given the new Ultimate X-Men line). 

Since you can’t make a book of infinite size, at least not now, it’s not a fault of the book that it can’t hold more for the page count allotted. I think what concerns me is the pace of release. Anything X-Men adjacent that doesn’t show up here may be a long time coming if we only get major hardcover releases once, maybe twice a year, with smaller, supplemental products like the Deadpool comic/sourcebook in between. 

If you noticed the missing section on Excalibur, a free supplement provides this information, especially since they were active in the recent Krakoa era

Any Dream Worth Having is a Dream Worth Fighting For
The new rules are great tools that make sense for this sourcebook but have utility beyond them.

This is a highly comprehensive sourcebook. While some of the more detailed team histories, like the X-Men, have most of their details at the beginning and end, there is a surprisingly comprehensive outline of the various mutant-related storylines. Providing team motivations, themes, styles, and hooks for each team is a great set of tools for a mutant-centric campaign. The new rules are great tools that make sense for this sourcebook but have utility beyond them. My favorites are the advancement rules, specific team maneuvers, reputation rules, and environmental examples from the Danger Room. The expanded vehicle rules are appreciated, and the concept of narrative powers is good.

Demerits, My Boy

While the individual team sections provide great advice on theme and style, the new rules could use more narration on how best to use some of the tools. The narrative powers are a solid idea that needs to be further explored. There are a lot of characters that are mentioned in the team histories which would have been great to have profiles for, and I feel like there may be some stress that develops from expanding the game rules and presenting general rules expansions in the same product that’s trying to provide additional statistics. In some ways, the book addresses things we almost need an additional core book to handle; maybe one addressed directly to the Narrator. 

Qualified Recommendation–A product with lots of positive aspects, but buyers may want to understand the context of the product and what it contains before moving it ahead of other purchases.

If you’re already in on the Marvel Multiverse RPG, and you are even a bit of a fan of the X-Men, you’ll want to pick this up. If you want additional tools with the Marvel Multiverse RPG’s core system, you’ll find many valuable new items in the toolbox. The individual team sections do a good job of explaining what a game featuring each of the mutant teams should look like. The main thing that this book suffers from is that the book is trying to be both a sourcebook and an expansion of the game rules, limiting the full effectiveness of both goals.