Marvel’s X-Universe

Marvel’s X-Universe is a Marvel actual play podcast: a recording of a tabletop campaign, with DM Vince running the game and a changing group of players voicing superpowered characters. It is a Wild Apes Production, and its sign-offs credit the classic FASERIP rules in the Basic Revised Edition. The show's own description says the campaign is moving to the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game while staying on Earth 699. On tape, what stands out is how much of the game's inner workings stays in. Players call out their rolls, a 97 in one scene and a 72 in another, and results come back as colors. One fight stops so the table can settle whether a small plasma bolt is an energy attack or a force attack. The answer is practical: energy can kill, so the player should say the shot is pulled back enough to knock the target out. In another exchange, a player promises a black hole and is warned it would destroy New York and kill everybody. It becomes a gravity well aimed at one opponent. Talk of karma, endurance and damage caps sits alongside comparisons to Luke Cage, Juggernaut and Thor. The campaign has spent time on both sides of the law. Around episode 50, the characters are wanted by S.H.I.E.L.D. and Hydra, a bar fight breaks out because nobody is in the mood to be nice, and a house blows up. In the special titled 'The Funeral of William Stark', Vince asks each player what their character did during the year after the group went separate ways, and one of them turns out to be able to morph into a random person. Season 6 goes the other way. Megahertz, Electroblaze and Plasma Star, played by Jeff, Sarah and Corey, call themselves hero guys and go on night patrol together. Their trail runs through a drug deal in an alley, a black van at the docks, a gang left in front of a police station and a lead at Uncle Chang's noodle house. Being heroes does not make them subtle: casing a shop means noticing it is closed, and the plan for getting in is that one character is strong, like Jessica Jones. The comedy never lets up, from a power relabeled as fart force to Plasma Star's name slipping someone's mind mid-intro. Mistakes stay in the recording, too. When a botched intro prompts a 'he'll edit it out', the reply is 'No, I won't. I'm leaving it in.' For newcomers, the Season 6 opener starts a new party and also tells first-time listeners to go back to the other seasons. Either way, the recaps at the top of several episodes make it easy to catch up.