In 2012, Margaret Weis Productions released Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, powered by their Cortex Engine. It was designed to tell the kinds of exciting stories that you read about weekly in the books from your pull list, allowing you to play your favorite Marvel heroes in each and every session.
But the star of this game, at least for me, is the rule known as The Doom Pool. At its most basic level, the Doom Pool represents how difficult things are for the heroes. If they are taking an action important enough to roll dice for, but there are no other characters present to oppose the hero, the Watcher rolls the Doom Pool in opposition to that hero’s action. But it is also how the Watcher interacts with the game world and makes things progressively harder and more difficult for the heroes. Where the heroes have what are known as Plot Points that they can use to activate certain power effects or manipulate their dice pools in different ways, the villains and other NPCs have The Doom Pool to get that effect. This pool of dice will often be in flux, growing as the general chaos of the scene grows and shrinking back down as the villains make use of it.
The Doom Pool starts play at a pre-determined level based on the scale of the scene of the heroes are entering. It can start anywhere from 2d6 all the way up to 4d10 based on how dangerous the scene is going to be. 2d6 is your standard, every day level of danger present in the Marvel Universe. 4d10 would be something like Galactus approaching Earth with the intent of devouring the planet.
The Doom Pool can be increased in a number of ways. By far the most common way it is increased is when the heroes roll a 1 on any of their dice. For every 1 rolled in the pool, the Watcher is able to add another d6 to the pool or step up the lowest die in the pool to the next die size (d6 -> d8 -> d10 -> d12). This happens because the player’s actions are increasing the danger that is already present in the scene. They’re causing collateral damage or the use of their powers is causing panic. The second way that the Doom Pool can grow is what is known as “grandstanding.” The villain is mocking the characters or causing general mayhem with their powers instead of directly harming the heroes. When they do this, they can add the effect die from their action directly to the Doom Pool instead of using it in any other way.
Dice from the Doom Pool can be used in a number of ways. First things first, they can be used to directly add dice to a villian’s Dice Pool. They can also be spent to add an additional die to the total or a roll, or keep an extra effect die from an action. As players are able to spend Plot Points to activate certain special power effects, some villains can likewise spend dice from the Doom Pool to do the same thing. Doom Pool dice can also be spent to create new scene distinctions they can use against the heroes, interrupt the action order or even to split the heroes up. That’s right – by spending dice from the Doom Pool you can cause the floor to fall out from underneath a hero suddenly, separating him from the rest of the group.
One of the more versatile things that can be done with the Doom Pool is activating scene or event effects. These are unique things to each scene. Most often, this includes adding new characters to the scene, but there can really be any number of effects that make sense in the context of the given scene. Perhaps a bomb that is placed at the scene goes off, or a major villain makes an appearance in the scene.
But I think my favorite thing that can be done with the Doom Pool is simply ending the scene. The Watcher is able to do this by spending 2d12 from the Doom Pool. How this plays out depends entirely on how the scene is going. If it’s apparent that the heroes are winning and have the enemy on the ropes, the Watcher can ask the heroes how they mop up the remaining resistance. If there’s a major villain present, you might give the heroes a choice between capturing him or attaining one of the other goals of the scene. If the heroes are losing when you spend the 2d12 from the Doom Pool, you can ask the heroes how they lost or even what they needed to sacrifice to get out of the situation. Maybe they’re surrounded by enemy forces and one character is able to slip away. Which one is it and how? Maybe they need to quickly escape a place that is now dangerous to be in – the building is on fire or otherwise collapsing. The Watcher might ask them how they managed to get out and what they might have left in the building, such as losing a thumb drive loaded with sensitive files or another tech asset.
As with the heroes dice, oftentimes the bigger the dice, the better the chance of success (or at least the less chance of rolling a 1 yourself and allowing the heroes to take advantage of it). But because the chance of there being more higher powered dice in the Doom Pool, there are a few different rules on how dice are spent from the pool. The first is that certain sized dice need to be spent to perform certain types of actions. For example, if you want to add another die to the total or keep an extra effect die from your pool, you need to spend a die of the same size or larger from the Doom Pool. Secondly, whenever the Watcher uses a d12 from the Doom Pool, all of the affected heroes gain 1 XP for their trouble. Sometimes, in the case of an attack, this might only benefit one hero. But in the case of ending the scene, every hero gets 2 XP for their troubles (and it could be quite a bit of trouble depending on how the scene is going so far).
I fell in love with the mechanic after reading and playing with it, and it’s gone on to inspire my own design philosophy and decisions in several of my own projects. The give and take nature of the pool, along with the ability to directly affect the narrative with the spending of finite but renewable resources… the concept just feels super elegant to me. And while it might not always play that way when it hits the table (I know there have been sessions where I’ve completely forgotten about the power of the mechanic), the times it does, it does so just beautifully.
Ben Erickson
