Marvel Heroic Roleplaying: Affiliations

Ask, and you shall recieve. In the comments of my review of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Game, I was asked by Stephen for more detailed followups, talking about individual aspects to the game. I’ll go over a few of them over the next few posts.

First up: Affiliations.

Affiliations are one of the first things you see on a character’s datafile, right at the top. You can see Captain America’s datafile here.

 Affiliations represent how well your character works with other heroes (or villains, if you’re looking at a villain datafile). Every character has three Affiliations: Solo, Buddy or Team. Of those, a D6, D8 or D10 is placed in each one.

As you can see from Captain America above, he works best in a Team, leading his allies and coordinating attacks.

In the course of a game, your character will shift from being in a Team to being Solo, depending on the situation. Depending on your current circumstance, you’ll add that die to your dice pool. Pretty simple.

However, the Watcher builds up a Doom Pool throughout the game (I’ll talk about the Doom Pool in a later post), which he can use to actually change the current setup of the Heroes by splitting them up.

Cyclops works best in a Team, for example. He’s doing well, helping his Team out, when the Watcher decides he doesn’t like Cyclops rolling a D10 every time it’s his turn. The Watcher can take a D10 or D12 (the die must match or be greater than the Affiliation) to force the hero to go solo. This could be the floor collapsing under Cyclops, or some other circumstance that separates him from his allies.

In the exact same way, say you’ve got Wolverine who works best Solo, and worst as a Buddy. The Watcher spends a D10 or D12 from his Doom Pool, and suddenly, Colossus, who was nearby gets knocked back by a Sentinel slams into Wolverine. Now they’re fighting (for now) as Buddies. Time for a Fastball Special, I think…

I’ve got to say, I really like the way Affiliations work. It basically provides a free die no matter the circumstances, which changes based on how your characters are oriented. It also provides for some tactics in combat, as your heroes best align themselves to their strengths.

Don’t forget, you can still enter to win a copy of the Marvel Heroic Roleplaying Basic Rules! Click here for details!