Roleplaying Games | Superheroes

“Invincible: The Roleplaying Game”? | Spectaculars

How to play in Invincible’s bloody sandbox

Invincible is not like other comic book universes. Except for the superpowers and demons and stuff, it’s more, for lack of a better word, “realistic”. It’s bloody. Property damage is massive. People die all the time. HEROES die, and it’s really hard to bring them back from the dead. Few superhero RPGs can model this well. And the few that can are usually too crunchy to FEEL like Invincible.

But Spectaculars gets closer than most. Not because it fits Invincible’s exceedingly violent and cynical tone, but because the game gets to the point. It’s a roleplaying game built like a board game. It’s meant to be played off-the-shelf, with almost no GM prep.

“Spectaculars is a tabletop roleplaying game where players create their own comic book universe, craft heroes and villains to populate that universe, and then play through full-length campaigns to tell incredible stories of heroism and villainy in a world of their own creation. This box set game gives a gaming group everything they need to play the game, and to create their own consistent campaign that spans multiple comic book genres.”

— ScratchpadPublishing.com

Spectaculars’ rulebook is 60 pages. That’s big for a board game rulebook but exceedingly short for an RPG rulebook.

The setting book is full of questionnaires to record everything about the setting, Mad Libs style. This includes how people see supers, what the super-prison is like, etc. This makes building an original setting quick, collaborative, and easy to reference later on.

The game’s publisher is called “Scratchpad” for a reason. Each of the four series pads represent different titles in a comic book line, and have 80 tear-off sheets. You’re meant to play them from front to back. The sheets range from hero archetypes, which are kinda like PbtA playbooks, team archetypes, villains, minions, and adventure scenarios. Everything is meant to be written on and kept for future reference.

There’s also a tear-off pad of hero progress sheets that compliment the archetype sheets. These are where you record your Origin, Aspirations, etc. These are introduced AFTER the first session to get the ball rolling quickly. Again, Spectaculars wants to get players playing NOW.

Spectaculars is not a card-DRIVEN game, but there are a lot of cards. The 105 Power cards and 85 Identity cards make character creation super-quick, mainly because you don’t need to look anything up. Players draft 3 Powers and an Identity, which includes their normie skill set. The Power cards in particular remove the need to reference a rulebook.

The 8 Role cards identify who’s doing what in a fight. They provide bonuses or stunts that help heroes be good Leaders, Strikers, Tacticians, etc. These often change between sessions.

The 40-card deck of Complications gives the Narrator a quick way of adding extra chaos to a scene. Complications are also sometimes embedded in a scenario.

The Initiative cards make getting into super-fights quick and fun. The 52 card initiative deck has cards for each Role, plus Villains, Minions, Hazards, etc. At the start of a fight, the GM shuffles all the cards needed. They then deal out a line of cards to determine who goes when. Some Powers can futz with the initiative order.

The box includes 7 sets of percentile dice, 4 Advantage dice, and 4 Challenge dice. All rolls in Spectaculars is percentile-based. Powers and Skills have innate chances of success. If the roll is for a successful attack, the number rolled is also the damage inflicted. Powers, Complications, and a few other things can change that damage.

Instead of changing the chances of a Power or Skill’s success, Advantage and Challenge dice are rolled to make things interesting. A hero might hit a bad guy with an ice blast, but then take “damage from a surprise attack”. A hero might fail to find a villain’s lair, but get some “insight into an enemy’s nature, perks, or weaknesses”.

Obviously, if you get the PDF version of the game, you’ll have to either buy these dice separately or make your own.

Finally, there are three flavors of tokens. Speed tokens mark powers that need to cool down. Hero Points are spent to increase your chances on a roll or to activate special power stunts. Continuity tokens let players invent or retcon facts or events in the game’s fictional world.

The boxed set isn’t cheap, but there are no expansions to buy. The PDF version is only $20. Worth it, but again, no dice.

“INVINCIBLE is an adult animated superhero series that revolves around 17-year-old Mark Grayson, who’s just like every other guy his age — except his father is the most powerful superhero on the planet, Omni-Man. But as Mark develops powers of his own, he discovers his father’s legacy may not be as heroic as it seems.”

— Amazon Prime Video

Spectaculars is meant to be a fairly typical supers game, but it still handles Invincible’s bloody and chaotic combat pretty well. The Basics setting sheet asks “How Often Do Superheroes Die in the Line of Duty?”. Just mark “All the Time”. Also, use Turn-by-Turn Initiative from the Optional Rules. Everything else is just in-game fiction. Assume most Minions are straight-up killed when they’re taken down. Same with bystanders.

Playing in the Invincible universe, or any other established supers setting, makes filling in all those setting sheets a no-brainer. You already know a lot of the answers. Then again, there are some comic-book-y things Invincible never explored. Here’s your chance to fix that.

Spectaculars’ scenarios are fairly on-rails. Interludes break up the action and let players explore their personal plots, but they always feed back in to a traditional comic book plotline. As-written, they might not “feel” like an episode or issue of Invincible. That’s fine. The series pads aren’t that long. After you’ve played through one, the training wheels will be off. Then the Narrator can make their original scenarios more brutal and bizarre.

Spectaculars can model other superhero settings. DC. Marvel, but they have their own game coming out soon. Astro City. Planetary, with some tweaking. Maybe Underground, with a lot of tweaking.

Probably not The Boys. Risus: The Anything RPG is a better fit.