The 'Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game' Developer Update #8 Covers the Spider-Verse Expansion and an Interview with Map Designer, Brian Patterson

Hello, Marvel RPG fans! 2025 is going to be another huge year for the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game, and what better way to start than with some new and exciting updates. Let’s dive in!

Spider-Verse Expansion

Spider-Verse Expansion officially releases next week on March 18th! We can’t wait for you all to swing into a brand-new section of the Multiverse! Whether you’re looking to learn more about the Spider-Verse, starting a new campaign, or wanting to check out the new rules, there’s something for everyone in this exciting addition to the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game!

Kicking things off, here’s a glimpse of the full table of contents for the expansion. Learn the rich histories of Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Ghost-Spider, Spider-Man 2099, and all your other favorite Spider-related heroes and villains. For the full characters list, check out Developer Update #7.

Spider-Verse Expansion also contains a full web of new rules, mechanics, and tables for you to include in your campaign. Here’s a sneak peek at some of our favorite new additions:

Sinister Plots

If you’re looking to juice up your boss fights, look no further! Similar to how heroes can spend Karma points to influence the outcomes of dice rolls, characters with the “Villainous” tag can use “Sinister Plot points” for a variety of evil effects during a fight. To make the situations even more Sinister, villains in a team can pool their points to create challenging mayhem for your table.

Personal Responsibilities

Super Heroes often have people in their lives who are important to them. Throughout an adventure, Narrators can check to see if someone in a character’s life is in danger. Failing to help the person could result in a loss of Karma or a severe narrative consequence!

Bad Karma

Characters with the “Weird” trait can spend more than 1 point of Karma on a single action check as well as spend Karma they don’t have, going into the negatives. While this might help you survive an encounter or succeed an important check, use it carefully. Bad luck might strike when you least expect it.

Symbiotes

We’ve added some new rules around symbiotes, including bonding with existing symbiotes, how to role-play a symbiote, new origins, how to remove one, and more!

Here’s a teaser of some of the differences in existing symbiotes:

Stunts

This exciting new system allows characters who have mastered their powers to explore new ways of using them. Stunts grant an additional special effect for a power, which the character can use when they get a Fantastic success while using that power.

Here’s an example of the new “Spider-Cuffs” Stunt:

Characters

As with all releases, there are a ton of new characters to be seen in the Spider-Verse Expansion, including updates to existing ones to reflect some new and fun changes. This doesn’t mean that existing versions are outdated though! The Multiverse is vast, and you can choose the version of a character who you resonate with the most.

ICYMI: Avengers Expansion Announcement

In case you missed our announcement, the next expansion in the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game line will be the Avengers Expansion! Explore the history of the Avengers as well as associated teams, villains, and heroes. Look forward to new rules around bases, Iconic Weapons, alternate forms, and more

Interview with Map Designer, Brian Patterson

One of the highlights of all our Marvel Multiverse books has been the many maps by Brian Patterson. Brian has been with the team from the playtest back in 2022 and has contributed to almost every publication. We asked Brian to answer a few questions so you can get to know him a bit better.

How did you come to mapmaking? What schooling did you have?

I started drawing pen and paper maps with my earliest days of playing TTRPGs (graph-paper memories…), and my cartography medium just sort of evolved alongside my illustration career when I transitioned over to a full-digital workspace with Photoshop and drawing tablets.

I did not go to college or school for training. I wanted to when I was 19-20, and I am sure I could have benefited from it immensely, but I was never in a place where I could do that. I had to enter the workforce early, and I had to do it all the hard way, admittedly. I bought a secondhand iMac (the candy-coated shell model) and bought books on how to use Photoshop and Illustrator (this was before we had YouTube to teach us things) and just spent hours and hours learning.

Is this your full-time job? If not, does your other career influence your work?

Illustration and cartography are my full-time job. I have over twenty years of experience, but I went full-time freelance around 2015. Before going full-time freelance, I worked as a graphic designer and art director for a firm that specialized in making concert merchandise (T-shirts, souvenirs, etc.) and worked on my webcomic d20Monkey and freelance cartography at night. I was tired all the time, but I loved it.

In 2015, the arrival of Patreon allowed me to take all those experiences and bet on myself. Thankfully, I am still here and making things that make people happy.

Where can your maps be seen outside of the Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game?

If you play TTRPGs, there is a good chance you have already seen or used a map I had the pleasure of making. I don’t want that to sound arrogant or anything like that, but I have worked all over the industry. I have maps in books from Atlas Games, Beadle & Grimm, Demiplane, Evil Hat Productions, Ghostfire Gaming, MCDM, Restoration Games, and many more.

That’s the thing with long careers — if you stay active, your body of work goes from a baby lizard to a kaiju pretty quickly.

Most of your career has been in fantasy games — has it been an adjustment to work on this game, most of which is set in modern day?

It absolutely has. I had a few modern and sci-fi style maps in my portfolio, but like you said, most of my work is focused on realms of fantasy and dungeons (with the chance for dragons), so it was a welcome change of pace. Modern maps are their own animal. You want to draw buildings and offices that are visually interesting, but you can’t go too far into cyberpunk, so there is a needle to thread.

Special, super-hero lairs and locations bring their own interesting features (like the Sentinel head in Cavern X), but normal places can be tricky. I try to make mundane places interesting with little details and lighting, but ultimately, I look at every single Marvel map with the same questions: How many walls can you put villains through, and what would the extent of the property damage be for Narrators?

I know that is mostly a joke, but that is why you see me adding things like boilers, servers, and infrastructure to “normal” places. That all has the potential for table shenanigans.

Did you have a history of reading Marvel comics? Do you have favorite characters or series?

Absolutely. I grew up with Marvel Comics. Issues of the X-Men from the ’80s were specifically what put me on the path to wanting to become a comic artist.

I feel like as Marvel fans grow up, we tend to gravitate toward one primary branch of the Marvel Universe and the books on that branch (if that makes sense). The Avengers are a branch. The X-Men/mutants are a branch. Spider-Man is a branch. The supernatural/underworld side is a branch. Hell’s Kitchen characters. The Fantastic Four. Etc.

I gravitated toward the X-Men when I was young, and that was the majority of what I read. The INFERNO storyline was formative for me. Just the scope of it and all the emotional weight of the characters involved. Plus, seeing it touch on SO MANY Marvel titles at the time. There are demons in Manhattan? Yep, Spider-Man is going to have to deal with demons.

INFERNO also led me to my most beloved X-Men title: EXCALIBUR (1988) (yes, it counts).

This was pre-internet, so young Brian didn’t know Excalibur was up and running until he saw that iconic cover from their Inferno issue (EXCALIBUR (1988) #6, I believe), and he was hooked.

I got the back issues for my birthday, and I kept up with the series all the way. I fell in love with Alan Davis’ art and the weirdness of the stories. Just like INFERNO, the "Cross-Time Caper" was woven into my creative DNA, and I can still see it today. I loved the team, but I immediately felt a connection to Captain Britain (Brian Braddock). A super-strong, magically powered agent of a larger Multiversal corps of protectors working for Merlin? Sold.

Do you have a map or artist that you look to for inspiration?

Being honest, there are too many to name. I consume art. I love art. I was influenced in my younger days by greats like Jack Kirby and Curt Swan, and as I became a teenager dreaming of becoming a comic artist, I was obsessed with the work of Jim Lee, Mike Mignola, and Don Bluth from Dragon’s Lair fame.

Inspiration for maps comes from most historical maps. I love the grand old maps on vellum with all the little details and the beautiful compass roses. I was never a painter (outside of painting miniatures for TTRPGs), and I have the deepest respect for fine artists who create masterpieces without the use of an Undo button.

Modern TTRPG cartography is brimming with great artists. Off the top of my head, I would say that I love the works of Mike Schley and the work that Czepeku is doing. Two very different styles, but I take inspiration from both in different ways.

What has been your favorite map to draw so far, and why?

That’s a tough question to answer, and I know most would say “I love them all equally,” but in this case, I would say Excalibur’s lighthouse (for emotional attachment) with Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters coming in at a close second. The Blackbird would be third, because…IT’S THE BLACKBIRD.

How do you see maps being used by players? What makes an RPG map useful?

Maps allow everyone in a session to immediately visualize the scene and remove some of the heavy imagination lifting, allowing players to see their characters in the scene. The characters are the custom action figures we make, but a good map is the playset.

The most useful maps, in my opinion, are the maps that give players a chance to move around, explore the space, and encourage creativity and drama in their actions (especially with battle maps). I love a map with different elevations and set pieces to play off. How many objects can we crash through, and what does the environment provide for the GM and players to tell an amazing story together? That is what makes a map useful.

What Marvel map was the biggest challenge?

The Panoptichron. Hands down. It is a beautiful location in the comics, but when you take it from a bird’s-eye view like the map, I initially worried that I could not make it visually interesting. The location is spartan by design, so I had to find ways to draw the eye into the floor plan and make everything else around it pretty.

There is a map coming up that may take the throne, but we’ll have to wait and see. Challenges are fun. I enjoy when a map brings out my golden-retriever head tilt.

Do you have a particular Marvel setting you hope to tackle?

If I had my dream? Well, we already tackled X-Men, but I would love to make maps for the supernatural side of the Marvel Universe.

Give me the Sanctum Sanctorum, Limbo, Asgard, Dormammu’s domain, Ghost Rider’s summer home (I would totally design that). Give me all the weird and spooky places.

What do you like about the game? Are you usually a Narrator or a player? What characters do you like to play?

I am a player, which is a nice change of pace (as I usually GM the games I play). Right now, I am playing Dakota Nova: a 22-year-old mutant and aspiring DJ with sound-based powers that allow me to blink, manipulate sound, and use slang from 2024 (usually poorly) and make references to the late 1900s that crumble our Gen X bones to dust.

What I love about the game itself is the balance of mechanics and story-driven narrative tools. The moments in combat and in social role-playing encounters feel equally fun in different ways, and the Marvel die mechanic scratches that pleasing feeling of rolling a natural 20 in other systems.

Plus, it’s the MARVEL UNIVERSE. That is an epic playground. For example, our group has already faced off against Mister Sinister, trained with Nightcrawler, and survived (not defeated) a brush with Ghost Rider. It is such a rich universe to explore and play with.

Are you focused on mapmaking, or do you have further ambitions in art or writing?

Making maps and illustrations for others is my day job at the moment, but I am preparing to return to my own comic series The Innsmouth Garden Society soon, which is a horror-themed series with comedic elements that spun off from d20Monkey.

d20Monkey ran for ten years (2010-2020), and I was fortunate enough to tell the entire story from beginning to end. Now I am doing what I always do creatively and looking for the next hill to climb.

You’ll see my art all over the place like usual, but I have some fun plans to put a little more focus on making things for me and my fans while making more Marvel maps!

Have a specific question you want to see answered in future updates? Head to marvel.com/rpg and use the FAQ Submission Box to submit your questions.

The Marvel Multiverse Role-Playing Game: Core Rulebook is currently available to order wherever books are sold.