This is the set-up for Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying. Published by Free League Publishing, it is based on Invincible, the American comic book series written by Robert Kirkman and illustrated by Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley, and published by Image Comics, and subsequently developed as a television series on Amazon Prime. Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying is a departure for Free League Publishing since presents a genre that the publisher has not previously explored. The roleplaying game presents the means to roleplay superheroes in the world of Invincible, whether that is one of the many characters adapted from the comic book or one of each players’ own creation. It presents the background to the Invincible setting, full write-up and stats for sixty-four characters from the Invincible setting, advice on running the roleplaying game, and the means to play solo.
The introduction covers the basic elements of the setting, the different types of scenes—Briefings (which typically start a mission), Action, and Social, time, and the roleplaying game’s key themes. There are ‘Coming of Age’, ‘Everyday and Epic Struggles’, ‘Bloody, High-Stakes Action’, ‘The Hero/Villain Dynamic’, ‘Power and Responsibility’, and ‘Realistic Heroism’. Most of these are a common staple of the superhero genre, but here also drawn from the comic book series and the story of Mark Grayson, Invincible, and his relationship with his father, Nolan, Omni-Man. The one that is particular to the world of Invincible is ‘Bloody, High-Stakes Action’ with its often bloody and graphic violence in which battles are intense, injuries can be brutal, and death is an actual possibility and often permanent. Neither Invincible the comic book and Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying have the equivalent of plot amour common to the genre.
A Superhero is first defined by his Rank. This can be Teen Upstart, Street Defender, Global Guardian, or Cosmic Champion. This determines how many points his player has to assign to his starting and maximum Attribute points, number of starting powers, and starting reputation. He has a role, six attributes, several derived stats, plus Powers, Talents, Drawbacks, Personal Details, Resources and Gear, and reputation. The eight Roles are Blaster, Brains, Brawn, Controller, Defender, Leader, Striker, and Wildcard, and they define how a superhero operates, but provide no mechanical benefit. The six attributes are Fighting, Agility, Strength, Reason, Intuition, and Presence, and they range in value between ‘1’ or ‘Poor’ and ‘12’ or ‘Invincible’. A superhero’s Powers, Talents, and Drawbacks will vary from superhero to superhero. Personal Details encompasses a superhero’s Occupation, Personality, Drive, Flaw, and Key Relationships.
The Superhero creation process is not difficult. The standard procedure is to choose an Archetype such as Bruiser, Gadgeteer, Powersuit, Psychic, Sharpshooter, Speedster, or Vigilante. This suggests a Role, Attributes, Powers, and so on. It also gives options for Power Source, Hero Talent, Drawback, Occupation, Personality, Drive, Flaw, and Hero Name that a player can choose from or roll for. The latter means that a Superhero is partly randomly generated, partly not. Alternatively, a player is free to choose everything about his Superhero from start to finish, taking inspiration from the Archetype or not. Or a player could choose to one of the Superheroes detailed in the background section of the roleplaying game. It is possible for a player to select extra Powers or Power Boosts during the creation process by taking an extra Drawback or sacrificing Attribute points. The question that many players will have is, “Can I create this ‘superhero’ from this comic book/television series/film/franchise?” and the answer is yes. Not perfectly, but with some effort, yes.
Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying includes some seventy or so Powers, from Action Plan, Adaptation, and Adhesion to Transformation, Water Control, and Weather Control. These are divided into six Power Types—Attack, Control, Defence, Modification, Movement, and Sensory Power Types. Most Powers are graded into four Power Levels—Basic, Major, Massive, and Monstrous—and a Superhero must have each Power Level before progressing to the next. Individual powers tend to be relatively narrow in their application, but can include Boosts which change how the Power is used and Limits which restrict its use. For example, ‘Flight’, whether from wings, jet pack, cape, or magic carpet, allows a Superhero to fly two Zones in a single action, or four Zones at a cost of a point of Stress. This doubles at the Major, Massive, and Monstrous Power Levels. Its single Boost gives the Superhero ‘Interstellar Flight’ (which also requires the Life Support Power), whilst its Limit is ‘Gliding’, which means that the Superhero can only glide and must get to an higher altitude to launch himself and cannot simply stop mid-air.
Of course, there are two difficult Powers in any superhero roleplaying game—gadgeteering and sorcery. In Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying, there is no specific gadgeteering Power. Instead, there is the Technology Control Power and Knowledgeable (Technology) Talent, which can then be backed up with other Powers. So there are no rules for building or designing gadgets. This may limit player choice when it comes to certain superhero archetypes. Sorcery does not list any spells, but simply enables a Superhero to instantly duplicate any other Power or for a few minutes by suffering a point of Stress. This does mean that any Superhero with Sorcery is going to want to consult the core rulebook a lot of times during play.
Slipways
Name: Gavin Tuttle
Rank: Teen Upstart
Role: Mastermind
Occupation: Student
Personality: Reserved and thoughtful.
Drive: Acceptance. Gavin wants to be recognized and approval for being a hero.
Flaw: Naïve. Gavin is new to being a superhero.
Key Relationship: Spiteful Bully
Reputation: 0 Resources: 2
ATTRIBUTES
Good FIGHTING 3, Good AGILITY 3, Typical STRENGTH 2, Extraordinary REASON 5, Good INTUITION 3, Great PRESENCE 4
Health: 8 Resolve: 12 Slugfest Damage: 1
POWERS
POWER SOURCE: Mutation.
Basic INTANGIBILITY Gavin can turn himself sideways and two-dimensional
Basic TELEPORTATION Whilst Intangible, Gavin can slide along buildings and down the street
KNOWN TALENTS
Tactical Support, Knowledgeable (Technology)
DRWBACKS
Hard Times ×1
As well as each player creating his Superhero, together they also create a Team. Each Superhero has a specific relationship with another member of his Team in addition to the one provided by his Occupation. They have a Team Base too, which for a team of Teen Upstarts might be an unused wing of the school library or the basement of a tattoo parlour and for Street Defenders a former warehouse or family mansion. As with other roleplaying games from Free League Publishing, there are Base Upgrades that the Team can purchase using Karma, the roleplaying game’s equivalent of Experience Points.
Mechanically, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying uses the Year Zero Engine, first seen in Mutant: Year Zero – Roleplaying at the End of Days. To have a superhero undertake an action, his player rolls a number of dice equal to the appropriate attribute value. The Game Master can add or deduct dice depending on the difficulty of the task, whilst Gear used and the support from allies can add dice. Each roll of a six is counted as a Success and only a single Success is required to succeed at most tasks. If more Successes are rolled, these can be used to gain bonus effects called stunts. These can be used to have a superhero to complete the task quickly or quietly, learn something new, and help a friend by passing him a Success if they are working on a similar project. However, if no Success are rolled, the Superhero has failed and that failure should ideally have dramatic effects. Alternatively, the player can choose to Push the roll. When this happens, the player rerolls any dice which do not show a one or a six. Whether the roll is a success or a failure, the Superhero suffers a point of Stress for each one rolled overall.
Conflict in Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying uses the same core mechanics. Initiative uses a deck of cards numbered from one to ten, and extra cards may need to be drawn if a Superhero has additional actions. In a round, a Superhero can perform a Full Action and a Quick Action or two Quick Actions. A Full Action is a Slugfest, Charge, or Shooting attack, using a superpower, breaking or lifting something, saving bystanders, and so on. Quick Actions can be to move into an adjacent zone, blocking a slugfest attack or dodging a shooting attack, engaging in banter, and more. Some of the Quick Actions can be used to interrupt the actions of an opponent and they can be saved for this purpose to use later in a round. A combatant can also give an Order to grant extra dice to an ally’s action. Movement can be on the ground and in the air with different elevations counted as separate zones. The action also allows for smashing through doors and walls. In a Slugfest attack, extra Successes can be spent on Stunts including Double Damage, Knockback, Stun, Bang Heads, Trap, Disarm, and Deadly Hit, and Special Stunt. Those for Shooting attacks include Double Damage, Suppressed, Trick Shot, Disarm, and Deadly Hit. A player is also free to create his own Stunts and use with the Game Master’s permission. Armour reduces damage, but when a combatant’s Health is reduced to zero, he is broken and suffers a Critical Injury. Critical Injuries can be inflicted without reducing a combatant’s Health to zero. Critical Injuries take weeks or months to recover from, but Health is recovered faster. A combatant can suffer Stress, often from a Banter Action in combat, but primarily through the use of a Superhero’s Powers. When a Superhero’s Resolve is reduced to zero due to Stress, he is stressed out, cannot use any Superpowers which require Stress to be gained or push any rolls.
The rules also cover minions, challenges, and other hazards. Notably, a Superhero can use a Slugfest attack to ‘Wreck a Zone’, the Superhero or Supervillain ripping up objects and using them to hit, throw at, or smash an opponent. This grants bonus dice to an attack, means the attack can be made into an adjacent zone, and completely wrecks the zone, meaning it cannot be wrecked again. It requires a minimum Strength wreck certain types of terrain and this means it is possible to level office interiors, city streets, and whole buildings! Just like we see in superhero films, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying allows for the possibility that a fight between superpowered individuals is not without its consequences.
As much as Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying is fast playing, it is not without its hurdles that a player needs to overcome. However, these are not insurmountable. Rather that they may slow play down. First, a player needs to learn how his Superhero’s Powers work. Fortunately, unlike in some other superhero roleplaying games, none of the Powers in Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying are that complex. More challenging perhaps, is getting used to the wide range of Stunts that player can chose from in combat. There are a lot and picking the right one may at times slow play down in what is meant to be a fast-playing roleplaying game. Once a player gets used to them, play should proceed as designed.
For the Game Master, there is good advice on running Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying, including tips and how to capture the tone, structuring play through the different types of scene, adventure, and campaign. Challenges, for example a building burning or a runaway travel, are outlined too, and campaign play is expanded with suggested story arcs for the roleplaying game’s four Ranks, including Alternate Reality, Corporate Interests, Desperate Rescue, Dimensional Crisis, Environmental Disaster, Gang War, Invasion Force, Recurring Foe, and more. Some of these are supported by breakdowns of storylines in the comic, but all are accompanied by an example countdown and social hooks that the Game Master can bring into her game. These are further supported by tables for random threats, such as criminal activity, global dangers, and cosmic perils, which provide prompt after prompt, and to go with all of this, there are plenty of NPC stats too. One area that Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying does not touch upon is mixing Superheroes with different Ranks. This does not mean that such situations in game cannot arise, but rather that there is not advice on them.
In terms of background,
Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying provides a good overview of the Invincible universe, from Earth to Mars and beyond the Viltrum Empire. Organisations like the Global Defence Agency, the Guardians of the Globe, the Lizard League, and Viltrum Empire are accompanied by both Action Hooks and Social Hooks. Specific locations, like the headquarters of the Global Defence Agency, Reginald Vel Johnson High School, and even Tailor Shoppe (where the budding Superhero can get a fitted tuxedo or prom dress by day and a flame retardant spandex suit by night) are also detailed, though not as much. The advice makes the city where a lot of the action of the comic book takes place is never identified—it is just the city. What that means is the Game Master can place all of the elements of the setting on Earth in the city of her choice and still have room for her material. In other words, play in the world of
Invincible, but make it belong to both her as the Game Master and her players. Lastly, there stats and details for sixty-four characters from the Invincible setting, each given a page. Here and throughout the background section in particular, there are spoilers for the comic book. Nevertheless, this gives the Game Master a great cast of NPCs to use in her campaign.
Lastly, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying
includes ‘Crisis Mode’. This everything that the prospective player needs to run
the roleplaying game as a solo experience. Effectively, the player is creating
a crisis that his Superhero must respond to each time with a few dice rolls and
possibly escalating its intensity, but then resolving it via the ‘Forecast
Analysis and Trajectory Engines (FATE)’ which act as the Game Master. Free
League Publishing has form with this kind of solo play set of mechanics and it
works well to provide a threat or situation and then any questions that the
player might. In addition, it could be used by the Game Master as an extra
threat generator for a standard, multi-player group.
Physically, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying is very well presented. The writing is good, but what is going to catch the eye is the artwork. Drawn from the comic series and animated series, it depicts a Four Colour style contrasting with its often bloody scenes of conflict.
The Superhero genre is not one that most people thought that the Year Zero Engine would ever try to tackle. After all, most Year Zero Engine roleplaying games are quite low key and often grim in tone. Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying proves otherwise, with a fast-playing, bruising, knockabout system that gives the players and their Superheroes lots of dice to roll and lots of Powers and Stunts to choose from, and so lots of options. In many ways, the core mechanic is simple—in fact simpler than most Year Zero Engine roleplaying games, for example, it only uses one type of dice and it does not use skills at all—and where the roleplaying game’s complexity does come, is in those choices and the spending of the extra Success to choose Stunts. In addition to that, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying is a good treatment of the world of Invincible, whilst still leaving of room for the Game Master to develop her own content, the setting working as a framework rather than a tableau. In other words, Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying works as a superhero roleplaying game and as a roleplaying game set in the Invincible universe.
For the Game Master and her players looking for a fast-playing, battling and bruising superhero roleplaying game with lots of action and lots of options when in action, as well as a setting that details enough of the world, but not too much to get in the way (and keep fans of the comics happy), then Invincible – Superhero Roleplaying is a great choice.
