I was in a discord and some users asked some questions about Marvel RPGs. It just seemed easier to respond in a blog post that deal with Discord's character limit.
Marvel has been in the Roleplaying Game Hobby since almost the beginning.
TSR, creators of D&D, made Marvel Super Heroes in 1984 (advanced was released in 1986). It was one of the first superhero RPGs ever made and was intentionally made simpler. While it isn't as simple as modern simple games, the MSH RPG was very easy to follow by design and was a massive commercial success. This game launched at a time when superhero games (not TRPGs but games in general) were rare and there really wasn't competition from other forms of media. Video games were still relatively simple and video game RPGs didn't really compete for the attention of gamers like they do know. MSH remains the most successful Marvel RPG and the most beloved.
One thing that helped it remain so is that it is easy to find. I do not mean original copies, but the license holders do not seem interested in protecting the copyright. Whether this is due to the fall of TSR, I do not know. However, fan sites do keep high quality scans readily available. Furthermore, the game is easy to turn into a retroclone. It doesn't have a lot of moving parts. Many developers have taken advantage of the legal loophole that, while rules text itself is subject to copyright, game mechanics are not subject to copyright to rewrite the entire book to preserve it.
The next came Marvel Superhero Adventure Game in 1998. SAGA used the SAGA engine, which was a card based resolution system. Marvel SAGA has a small but dedicated fan base and the game was a critical darling. People always come out of the woodworks to talk about how good this game was. But, do you notice how I am not talking about it from experience? See, sadly, the card based system makes SAGA difficult to preserve. Older copies are hard to find, the cards are proprietary and scans of them are not as common, and making a retroclone is more difficult as card design can require hiring someone with the skill to make them. All of this contributes to a game easily lost to time. It isn't gone and copies (both physical and digital) still exist, but the things that are great about it and unique about it are also why its difficult to play online or preserve.
Further dooming it was TSR's fall. Marvel SAGA came about only a few years before TSR went bankrupt. That's a coincidence, for the most part. TSR's bankruptcy has essentially been tied to a series of poor CEOS. The penultimate CEO literally being fired because they were discovered to have been embezzling millions of dollars from the company. I feel the need to point this out because the old adage in the 90s of "they only put a woman in charge when they know its going to fail" applies here as they appointed a woman as CEO right after the embezzlement scandal and the company was in a nose dive. This has led a lot of people to single her out as the person who "killed D&D" at the time and, while she definitely made missteps, the company was already dead.
Marvel regained licenses rights and went out to make their own game: Marvel Universe in 2003. This game tried to take advantage of the growing indie scene at the time. It used a very rarely used randomization system: colored stones. You almost never see people use the "stones in a bag" method of randomization. But it exists and for some games it can be really cool, like Fate of the Norns. Marvel Universe I have not personally played or read. I haven't heard too much buzz around this one nor have people come out to say that they loved it. or that they hated it.
The vibe I personally get is that it was released during the height of the d20 system and, despite selling well, didn't catch on as d20 fever was wild. Seriously, if you weren't around for it, loads of people legitimately refused to play anything not derived from 3.5e. That honestly remained dominant until about 4 years before 5e came out. Then, there was a brief indie boom. Then 5e became the new d20 fever.
Point is, this game sounds perfectly fine and likely is, but it didn't find an auidence.
I do want to take a second to talk about the reason for its cancellation as its cancellation is a bit of a canary in the coal mine for how the next Marvel RPG went. The game sold out multiple time and had many different print runs. It was definitely a success. Yet, after only three books, it was canceled due to not selling as well as D&D or a regular comic book. Why is this a canary in the coal mine? Well, Marvel having unrealistic expectations for sales in a hobby where most designers make games in their spare time and there are only a handful of real businesses is likely to become a trend. I say likely because it hasn't happened yet for Marvel Multiverse but...
Marvel Heroic Roleplaying by Margaret Weis Productions was released in 2012 and is, personally, one of my favorite superhero games of all time. MHR uses a unique derivation of the Cortex Prime system that Margaret Weis Productions used in their licensed games. It is a dicepool system that rates traits with dice and you pull a trait from each category to form your pool. You had special powers to manipulate the pool, as well as hiccups you could trigger to get more plot points. What was notable to me about the game is that is the first superhero rpg from Marvel that did not concern with power levels.
Superhero RPGs have always had an issue where the power levels are all over the place in-universe but don't actually matter to the story. Superman and Batman are equally powerful from a story perspective, but, in universe, Superman can turn Batman into a pretzel with ease. Superhero RPGs have struggled with that doughnut for years. The DC RPG used logarithmic scale to try to solve it. (Brief aside, I taught myself LOGS to read up on that game because I did not understand that logarithmic is something completely different...but now I know LOGs so that's useful). MHR solved that problem rather elegantly by having larger traits be better but smaller trait get you more plot points. So, it events out.
I don't want to show favoritism so, to wrap it up. MHR was a big success and won Origin Awards. It was one of the only Marvel RPGs that followed that Stan Lee Quote ("Who would win in a fight: Hulk or Thor? That's simple: whoever the writer wants to win.") in how it handled its supers and, as such, any combination of heroes could work while also feeling like their own unique heroes and feeling like their comic book counterparts.
However, remember the canary in the coal mine? Despite selling very well, it didn't meet expectations. Arguably, telling MWP that they couldn't make sourcebooks and only adventure books probably didn't help (even if those adventurebooks were written like sourcebooks) since adventure books don't generally sell well. Marvel canceled it before the Annihilation books could go to print and when the Age of Apocalypse book was allegedly 80% complete. And, no, I asked and Cam Banks says he can't give the in-progress text out, if he even still has it.
That brings us to Marvel Multiverse, released in 2022. Or technically, 2023? Does the playtest count? That's a bit weird. They did literally sell the playtest for money, which is a very odd thing to do and something only a company as big as Marvel could get away with. If I tried that? Woof.
Actually, wait, isn't that basically just paetreon?
Point is, Marvel Multiverse was their second attempt at an in-house system. Seemingly going the opposite direction from Marvel Universe and its difficulty finding an office by being too different, Marvel Multiverse attempts to be very familiar. MM is a D&D-like, but it isn't 5e, it doesn't use a d20, and it isn't literally 5e. However, anyone whose read it, will definitely get that 5e/d20 system feel. That is certainly by design.
As I said, they tried going against the grain in the last d20 boom and it didn't produce the results they wanted so they went the opposite way this time. In the grander context of the situation, who can blame them? You can blame them for a lot of things, especially when it comes to how they treat comics creators (they deserve more pay and recognition), but this? You can't blame them.
I make this aside as its a criticism lobbied against them by many people, including myself. But, writing this narrative, made it make a bit more sense.
Marvel Multiverse itself is a bit young to discuss in a wider context. It's hard to gauge how well its sold and what its legacy will be. A few things I can say are this, however.
Marvel have made a few obvious missteps. The playtest served as a bad advertisement as it had a lot of issues that they were ultimately fixed, but threw a lot of people off the game. In an age where digital is king, the digital releases have been bungled. They are terrified of just releasing PDFs and will only do Roll20/Demiplane/Kindle deals where you lose your PDF if the provider's software goes under. This decision garned backlash. Look at the DTRPG page and, let me tell you, they deleted some of the negative comments. Lastly, Marvel, I feel, is still set up expecting unrealistic sales that this dev team can not meet. And I feel bad for them because of that. The game is by, all accounts, selling well for a TRPG. And that has not been enough for the last two games (technically 3, but TSR made SAGA).
That said, while it's not my cup of tea, I have recently met some of the community that enjoys MM through a chance YT video recommendation. They seem cool, enthusiastic, and engaged. I try not to be a grognard. So, I hope that I'm wrong. That the game sticks around. That they get more cool shit to play with because that's what I wished happen to MHR. If not, I hope they continue to enjoy the game or find something new. It's cool seeing how much they seem to love the system and I am sucker for passion.
