RULES, PART TWO: MARVEL LITE

If you are familiar with the Marvel Saga Adventure Game, then you could skip this if you want. If you do know some Role Playing stuff, you'll still want to skim these rules. I tried to make it as "Newbie-friendly" as possible, so keep the post handy if you have any questions. Here are the down and dirty, very basic rules for the Marvel Game.

Everthing is based on cards. There are four suits that match the Abilities of your characters: Strength, Agility, Intellect, Willpower. There is also a Doom Suit, which doesn't match your abilities but is played normally.

The card values range from one to ten, so you could have a hand of 4S, 2A, 8I, 3W, 4D. That is: 4 of Strength 2 of Agility, 8 of Intellect, 3 of Willpower, and 4 of Doom.

How You Do Things

For any action, there is a difficulty set to it. Sitting down in the chair is an Automatic action. Throwing the chair at a target is an Easy Action. Balancing on the chair while juggling would be a Daunting Aciton, etc.

A number represents this difficulty, and as a player, you must meet or beat this number with your character's Ability and card play for your character to succeed. (The exact level of difficulty won't be told to you-- instead, you have to decide how much effort to put into an action.)

To succeed at an action, you play a card and add it your revelant Ability. To lift a heavy object, add a card to your Strength. To balance on a chair, add a card to your Agility, and so on. Willpower is used for Intimidaition, Resist Mental Attacks, Persuasion, etc. Otherwise, everything else is pretty much common sense. Don't worry. You will be told which Ability to use if needed, otherwise, write out what your character is doing and we'll all just go with the flow of the story.

Here we go! The evil Licorice Face is trying to lift a heavy safe. It's obviously heavy so Licorice knows he'll need a high number. His Strength is 8, so he wants to play his highest card, a 7 of Intellect, for a total Action Score of 15.

There's a bit more to it. If you play a card whose suit matches your Ability.then you get a Trump, and will add another card to the total. Should THAT card also match the Trump suit, you will trump again. For example, Licorice later tries to jump over a wall, and needs to use his Strength, value of 8. He plays a 4 of Strength, and is able to Trump. The next card is a 1 of Strenght, trump again, with a 6 of Intellect. The total Action Score is 19-- a nice jump indeed.

Sample Difficulties

Easy (4) Using your powers, catching a ground ball, operating Word 97

Average (8) Using your powers in a Stunt (more later) catching a line drive, turning off the Office Assistant in Word 97

Challenging (12) Hitting your called shot into right field bleachers, writing computer games in C++

Daunting (16) Lifting a heavy safe to lob into right field, designing artificial intelligence

Superhuman (20) Reaching past the upper limit of normal human abilities

When You Fight

Normally, you will just make Actions as the story flows along. Occaisonally, heroes get into Combat situations, which are handled a bit differently. The Action gets broken down into a series of "Exchanges." An Exchange goes like this:

1) Heroes fight, 2) Villains counterattack, 3) Resolution. (which includes bombs going off, spells, damage taken by everyone, etc.)

Action Scores in battle are a bit different since you are not trying to beat a base Difficulty score-- any Opposed Action (from combat to tug of war to trying to impress your date) is a bit different. Here, the Hero generates an Offensive Action Score with the "Difficulty" being the Villian's own Action Score! Whoever gets the highest total wins!

The Difference between the two Action totals, equals the amount of damage you do. Do enough damage, and the villain goes down.

The Narrator will draw one card to add to every Villian's action during each Exchange, and Villians do not get to Trump. Instead, any used Doom cards any player had already used can be later used by the Narrator to simulate a Villain Trump.

Sample: Potato Salad Man wants to pound his pudgy Fists of Goo upon Licorice Face. PSM has a Strength of 9 and uses a 5W for an Action Score of 14 (no trump, see?) To figure out Licorice's opposed action, the Narrator takes Licorice's 6 Agility and Narrator card of 4 for total of 10. The Difference is 4, so Licorice takes 4 points of damage as he reels from the sticky sulfur smelling smite! Alternatively, if the Narrator Card was 10, then Licorice Face's defense is 16, and he proves too nimble for our Potato Salad Man to make contact

When Villians Couterattack!

Sounds like a Fox special, Don't it? The same thing is reversed: The Hero generates a Defensive Aciton Score (based on Agility) which is compared to the Villain's Offensive score, and we see if our hero Potato Salad Man is nimble enough to get out of the way of Licorice's whips!

Contingent Attacks

Certain characters may be able to act in this "resolve" phase of the Exchange, if they have a talent or power that allows multiple attacks in one Exchange. Otherwise, certain effects that are contingent upon previous actions (bombs, spells, wrestling holds, etc.) are resolved here Don't worry. If you are able to do something here, you'll know. Otherwise, don't worry about it.

Combat Manuevers

The Basic Opposed Actions during combat is usually Strength (someone's fist or weapon) versus someones' Agility (their nimbleness and dodgeing.) But there are times when you'd use other attributes for similar actions. Common sense will dictate these, or I will tell you which Attribute to use (or I will do it for you if it helps flow the story-- just play the cards and try to get a high score!) Some samples:

Strength in Battle: Slugfest (boxing, brawling, hand-to-hand weapons)

Agility: Martial Arts, thrown weapons, bows and arrows

Intellect: Actually, most energy controls and power-usages are Intellect-based

Willpower: Taunting, intimidation, manipulation, mental-based powers

The Basic Defensive Action is pretty much based on your Agility, period. If you are more creative, tho, AND if you didn't do any primary Offensive Action you could use your powers or a relevant ability during your Defensive action (such as using your Optic Blast to deflect the Villain's attack.) This will depend on the story. If you have a weapon you could also use your Strength to Block the action as if parrying.

Hand Size

So, you play a card and add it to your Ability. That's pretty much how it goes. But how many cards do you get?

This is based on what is called your Edge. More experienced characters have a higher Edge, which helps them in battle in a couple ways.

Your Edge determines your hand size-- i.e. how many card you start with. (You can never have more cards than your Hand size.) Most characters, since we are just starting out, have only a Edge of 1 (Hand of 3 cards). More experienced characters have an Edge of 2 (Hand size=4) and I think only someone like Thor will have Edge of 3 (Hand=5)

The Edge also gives you a bit of advantage in Doing Things. You play any card whose value is less or equal to your Edge before you play your final card. IN other words, Licorice Face has a Edge/Hand of 2/4 and holds the following cards: 1 of Doom, 2 of Strength, 5 of Agility, 4 of Willpower. Licorice can play the 1 AND the 2 to add to his Ability, since both are equal/less than his Edge. He then plays the 5 of Agility, thus getting a total of 14. (Agility 6 plus 1 plus 2 plus 5) Plus, he gets a Trump since his last card was of a Trump suit.

Losing Hand

Remember how you could take damage from combat, above? Well, that Damage comes out of your hand.

You must discard (and not re-draw) the total amount of damage you take from the value of the cards in your hand. Basically, if you have a hand of 4I, 5W, 6W and 7A, and you take 5 points of damage, you must discard the 5W (or, if you take 8 points of damage, you must discard both the 4 and the 5-- whatever makes up the total damage)

There may be time for you to recover, but if you are reduced to no cards in your hand, you are knocked out for the remainder of the battle-- or as the story allows. Death normally doesn't occur, but only if the story dictates. (If you get hit with 20 pts of damage and only got a 1 of Strenght left in your Hand-- well, that was a pretty bad blow.

That's it! If you need a handy reminder-- just in mind: Action Score equals your Ability + Edge cards (if any) + Card + Trump (if possible.)