The next Avengers movies, Avengers: Doomsday and Avengers: Secret Wars are currently scheduled to arrive in 2026 and 2027, respectively. There’s some good news for fans of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes this year, though. Avengers Expansion for Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game is out this month and the folks at Marvel sent along a copy to read for this article.
Avengers Expansion marks the third main book for the game following books about the X-Men, the Spider-Verse and a campaign pitting players against Kang the Conqueror. There are also several PDF supplements featuring stories built around specific super teams. The game also has an electronic version over at Demiplane Nexus which is really useful for keeping all the different character write-ups in one place.
Marvel Avengers Expansion Contents
The first part of the book digs into the history of the Avengers. It covers everything from the pre-historic avengers all the way up to the Doctor Doom, Sorcerer Supreme storyline. Summarizing decades of comics history is no easy task but the team pulls it off well here.
Next comes a look at all the various teams spun off from the Avengers. This includes the various teams part of the 50 State Initiative where each state got its own super team to things like the Young Avengers and even the Pet Avengers. There’s even some information on various versions of the Thunderbolts and their awkward relationships with the main team.
Speaking of relationships, the next chapter deals with how the Avengers deal with members of law enforcement. Generally the team works with the government which means there are details on SHIELD here. While not as extensive as the history of the super hero team, it does touch on important recent events such as Civil War and Dark Reign.
HYDRA, SHIELD’s classic nemesis, gets some detail in the chapter on the villainous organizations that have fought against the Avengers. There’s also information on Zodiac, the Masters of Evil and the Dark Avengers that took over the name for a few years. Fans of the Infinity Saga will also enjoy finding out more about The Black Order run by Thanos.
This book also includes a small guide to locations in and around Earth-616. Stories in Marvel comics tend to focus on New York City but there’s information here on Wakanda and Atlantis. Doctor Doom’s country of Latveria also gets a little bit of attention.
The big focus from the new rules are on things related to teams of super heroes. There are new powers, of course, and revisions to old ones. There’s also some discussion of how to handle characters with alternate forms, such as Bruce Banner and the Incredible Hulk.
Rules for iconic items, such as Captain America’s shield or Thor’s hammer, are the big new addition in this expansion. Now these items can be lent or borrowed to other characters, allowing for players to make characters exploring more famous legacies or classic storylines where a well-known character has lost their powers because they’ve lost an essential part of their character. It also makes battlesuit characters more versatile with the ability for players to quickly build new Iron Man-style armor for specific situations.
The Avengers are known for famous occasions like Avengers Mansion and Avenger Tower. This book contains rules for building headquarters for any super team with facilities that can affect game play. The choices also give heroes some downtime options that will help them prepare for the next time evil strikes.
Marvel Avengers Expansion Impressions
The biggest strength of the Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game expansions continues to be succinct writing that pares down decades of comic book history into a short but informative chapter. The history section is a good read for anyone interested in past storylines with just enough information to direct fans to the proper storylines. I’ve dipped in and out of the Avengers during my time as a comics fans and I feel caught up after reading this book.
The iconic items fit well in this book given how many Avengers don’t feel complete without a gadget or mystical item to carry into battle. There’s some good advice on how to integrate the Infinity Stones into tabletop stories. Individual stones have mechanical effects, though anyone that rebuilds the Infinity Gauntlet is someone that should just sit down with their Narrator to craft the stories they want to tell.
There’s a wide berth of characters featured in the power profiles. Most of them tend to be connected to one of the popular Avengers, though I was expecting a few more deep cut bad guys for characters like Hulk or Iron Man. Grouping this section is always more art than science but I think it’s also an overall strength to the game that there are so many writeups in so little time.
The character collection leans into more alternate builds for main characters. Some of them are from other dimensions, some of them depict earlier, less experienced versions of a character. While some might argue that the fun of these profiles is to compare stats and win pub arguments about whether Hulk really is the strongest one there is, I like how the designers embrace the multiverse aspect of the game and give players options on how to best fit famous heroes into their games.
At this point, I think the biggest challenge is figuring out how to best cross-reference rules in different books. The biggest reflection of this issue is remembering which character profiles are in which books. But it also means, for example, Xavier’s School For Gifted Children didn’t get a write-up with the headquarters rules because the X-Men book came out last year.
The game remains accessible to new players and to fans who might not get what this role playing stuff means. It feels like a worthy successor to the Marvel Super Heroes RPG of the 80s which acted as a gateway for so many fans. Avengers Expansion continues that lineage and I hope the game continues to grow thanks to Marvel’s ongoing popularity.
Marvel Multiverse Role Playing Game books are available online, through Marvel directly and at Friendly Local Gaming Stores everywhere. The Demiplane Nexus edition now features information from the Avengers Expansion. Also, DriveThru RPG just announced PDF editions of the core book and expansions are now available for purchase.
