The Between is a game from The Gauntlet which recently finished a campaign on BackerKit. The game’s about Victorian monster hunters who are incredibly messy people. As they investigate mysteries, they often become part of them and could often be seen as pretty villainous.

The X-Men are a group of superheroes made by Marvel who despite their intentions are often hated and feared by humanity who sees them as their own extinction. They try to help other mutants from human, mutant and robot threats. The journey to mutant liberation is a fraught one and the team’s often populated by people who have at one time or another been villains.

I’m a fan of both these messy groups, and while I was watching The Between’s campaign break the record for how much overtime it was running into on BackerKit, I decided to do something involving both these fandoms over on BlueSky. I enjoyed doing it, but I thought I’d expand on it here.

The American: James Howlett aka Logan aka Wolverine

We’re going to gloss over the fact that Wolverine’s technically Canadian, because he’s pretty perfect for this role.

The American is the ‘werewolf’ playbook, born of a wealthy family originally, cursed by a feral rage which comes out at night. They’re hunted by officials and the fear that they might become a threat to everyone around them.

James Howlett was born to a wealthy family and marked by tragedy, taking the name Logan and resorting to a feral life in the wilderness. Over the years, he was hunted, made into a weapon and managed to eventually break free of everyone, joining the X-Men. Even so, he’s prone to a berserker rage which can be deadly when coupled with his unbreakable bones.

The Explorer: Professor Charles Francis Xavier aka Professor X

Here was the playbook & character mix-up that made me think of it. The problematic boss.

The Explorer is the ‘campaign’ character, with a relationship with the Mastermind where they have had connections and will be intertwined in their chess match. They travelled the world, colonised places, have a mountain range named after them and left behind a lot of scars. Now they have a lot of contacts from their place of privilege and can call on them for help. Their Masks of the Past don’t look into their backstory but instead show The Boy, who was taken in and abandoned by The Explorer. Their final Mask of the Future has The Boy return and physically destroy The Explorer.

Charles Xavier is the founder of the X-Men and a king of hubris. In his youth he travelled the world, sometimes even with his stepbrother Cain. He met ‘Magnus’, they worked together until they fell out, then he got his legs crushed and went home in a wheelchair. He founded the X-Men and in the name of doing good, often did some abominable things with his telepathy. Folks often mention that he created a child army and… that’s not entirely wrong. He did things like wiped the memories of everyone who knew Hank McCoy in his hometown to make it easier to adopt him, completely wiped Magneto’s mind once, had a whole second X-Men team who died, enslaved a robot and turned it into a Holodeck. The list goes on. I think to make him work as The Explorer, his contacts would have to be his students. I’m not sure who The Boy would be, but there are a lot of candidates.

The Factotum: Forge

Forge has almost never been a core member of the X-Men and that’s part of the point here.

The Factotum is a servant at Hargrave House, they have their own background and life, bur that’s not important. They are probably the most competent person in the group, but they will not get recognised for it, living a life of service instead.

Forge aka Maker does have a place of his own unlike the Factotum, generally Eagle Plaza in Dallas. Like the Factotum he has his own dreams and ambitions (a lot of them being Storm), but they will always be unfulfilled. He’s rarely been part of the X-Men outside of as a support role. He makes their technology, repairs them and even in a leadership role with X-Factor ends up helping others out. On the nation of Krakoa, he helped give Domino a weird biological arm-weapon and Wolverine an adamantium surfboard. Now that’s service!

The Mother: Dr Henry Philip McCoy aka The Beast

The Mother is clinical, rational and has a grim project. They’re the ones most eager to get their hands bloody, to dig up graves and assist the authorities in order to get what they want. They have a creature they’re making, one they’re emotionally attached to, harvesting body parts and eventually animating it.

The version of Beast I’m thinking of here is the one from the modern age, where he was the Henry Kissinger of mutantkind, carrying out clinical genocides and cloning an army of Wolverines to assassinate people in the name of Krakoa. The truth is, he was always leading down this path. He experimented on himself and went all grey (then blue). He traded a mentally unwell unhoused woman to Mr Sinister for information. He killed an alternate reality just in case it was bad. Then there was all of the mutant CIA stuff.

The Orphan: Dr Hank McCoy aka The Beast

This was a fun thought, so I had to follow it.

The Orphan is an unlockable playbook, accessible if The Mother completes their project and things don’t go too badly. They’re helpful and bear the sins of their creator. You have some friends, but also may give in to the occasional rage.

Beast left behind a backup version of himself from his Avengers stoner friend of Wonder Man era as he felt it was useless. The X-Men decided to use it to help stop the older, more evil Beast and his clone army. Now this Hank’s the reigning Beast. He’s aware he’s atoning for things another version of him did, a version he could become. He’s not quite a clone, but he’s angry about what he’s done, what he could do and how things have turned out. 

The Undeniable: Emma Grace Frost aka The White Queen

This was difficult. I nearly went with Storm, but there are enough elements of Emma Frost which work better with it.

The Undeniable is a Dorian Grey kind of character. They’re beautiful, immortal and heartless. Somewhere, there’s a work of art looked after by a cult. When hurt or when they transgress, the work of art is scarred somehow. They have a lot of potential to be a real villain.

Emma Frost started out as a villain and a member of the Hellfire Club, one of the most Chris Claremont creations he made in his run writing the X-Men. Despite this, she actually was a good teacher (apart from the time she exploded a horse… it’s assumed she was on a LOT of drugs during her Hellfire days). She joined Generation X as a teacher and then the X-Men after a mutant genocide. Since then she’s alternated between active team member, teacher and reverting back to her Hellfire Club ways. To use her as the Undeniable, the work of art AND the cult could be her students. That way they get worse or end up dying, like too many of her students have, all while she remains a flawless diamond.

The Vessel: Jean Elaine Grey aka Marvel Girl aka Phoenix

Another perfect fit with very little change needed.

The Vessel is as close as you get to a Magic-User in The Between. The magic specifically comes from dark forces who are attracted to The Vessel. They’re drawn to darkness and threatened to be consumed by it.

Jean Grey is a good person, more than you’d think for The Vessel, but that doesn’t mean she’s a nice person. The Phoenix was drawn to her and took her place for a time, living as her. Later, it became more clear that it was still Jean in some way, even if it wasn’t her body. As Phoenix, she is fire and life incarnate. She’s killed a planet, she made Mastermind so cosmically aware that it broke his brain. While Phoenix died and became Jean again, the pair have been linked many times as Phoenix can never really give up Jean. Just re-flavour the dark forces and maybe have the Witches as worshippers of it.

The Mastermind Theodora Braithwaite: Max Eisenhardt aka Erik Lensherr aka Magnus aka Magneto

This isn’t really a playbook, but the season’s big bad. Theodora Braithwaite was a victim of colonisation, a pirate and after a falling out with the Queen, wants to use a campaign of terror to take control and rule without any concern about morality. She’s ominous and ever-present, a Moriarty figure to the hunters of Hargrave House.

Magneto is the best friend and worst enemy of Professor X. The two are intrinsically linked, each others’ biggest defender and hater all at the same time. Magneto, as the saying goes, made some valid points. He knew that mutants may get tolerated but won’t get accepted, not really. He wanted to take over for mutantkind, viewing them as superior and ignoring any assimilationist/integration-based ideas. He’d be a great Mastermind to have linked to the Explorer.

Bonuses:

The Martian is an alien with strange powers and inherited weapons. My choice for him would be Adam X, The X-Treme, specifically the version from Fabian Nicieza where he was a bit more of a Luke Skywalker than a Limp Bizkit fan. His powers allow him to electrocute people’s blood, but it has to be exposed, so his costume is covered in knives. He also skateboards, because he’s from the 90’s.

The Informals are helpers to Hargrave House. You play a number of them, each with their own abilities but also all doomed. To be honest, these are probably the New Mutants or New X-Men, as they’re all useful but to have a terrible amount of casualties. Poor Doug. And Jay. And two of the Stepford Cuckoos. And so on, and so on.

The Legacy is hunting a beast, defining it at they go. I was tempted to say Cyclops as my boy’s not appeared on the list yet and hunting Sinister would work here. Instead, I’m going to say Bishop, given his hunt for a traitor to the X-Men and his combat abilities. Sometimes he goes through periods of trying to be peaceful, other times he burns the world to make his hunt easier.

The Underground is an Alice in Wonderland type character, thought to be mad and having spent a lot of time in a strange Wonderland. This is one of the new ones, so I don’t know a lot about it, but my first instinct is Longshot. Longshot comes from a strange wonderland called The Mojoverse, run by spineless creatures who get nightmares from our television signals and turned that into their belief system. Longshot’s often lost there, leading resistance efforts and then getting mindwiped. He’s often more Dorothy than he is Alice, but I feel this works. Oh, and he’s also his own grandfather/grandson, but that’s neither here nor there.

The Volatile would be Beast or Forge if they weren’t already claimed. As someone who keeps modifying themselves in volatile ways with science, you could probably get away with having Mr Sinister as them, as he has been someone who keeps tinkering with his genetics. Alternatively if you want someone a little less evil, there’s Greycrow, who has a ton of cybernetic modifications and is always tinkering with himself. He’s also emotionally pretty volatile.

The Dodger is Gambit, obviously.

That is all and I will not be taking any questions.