Concepts you wish your players would play

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

Using telepathy as an interrogation tool against known supervillains and their goons while or after they fight you is one thing. Just randomly rummaging around in people's minds the first time you meet them is another.

 

This is a matter of feel. Golden/Silver age characters commonly read the minds of people coming to them for help because it was quicker and more accurate than listening to their stories. This was a common Martian Manhunter trope, for instance. As we've become more sensitive to issues of privacy, the comics have reflected this by considering telepathy a serious breach of privacy.

 

Similarly, many golden age characters would think nothing of beating a confession out of a crook. Try that in the modern age...

[Kirby]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

While these opinions are nice and all, could someone add "Concepts you wish your players would play" into the posts?

[Egyptoid]

attempt to get back on topix

 

well in Champions, Aaron Allston maps out the basics

 

like Brick, Martial Artist, Mystic. etc.

 

and the the egos like Loner, Leader, Misfit, Follower, etc.

 

Is this the thrust of the thread, or what are we missing ?

[Robyn]

Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

[Korvar]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

 

That actually sounds like fun.

[CandidGamera]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

 

I'd say:

 

"Pass. Good luck with that."

[Karmakaze]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

 

It depends a bit on how much I trust the GM and what "roll randomly" means. It's been my experience that random character generation for supers tends to make unplayable character sets. If it's just a matter of a random choice between several premade (but well-made) powersets, then that's ok.

[Hermit]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

It depends a bit on how much I trust the GM and what "roll randomly" means. It's been my experience that random character generation for supers tends to make unplayable character sets. If it's just a matter of a random choice between several premade (but well-made) powersets' date=' then that's ok.[/quote']

Ditto on that one.

[Robyn]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

It depends a bit on how much I trust the GM and what "roll randomly" means. It's been my experience that random character generation for supers tends to make unplayable character sets. If it's just a matter of a random choice between several premade (but well-made) powersets' date=' then that's ok.[/quote']

 

That's the idea, yes. The players could even be allowed to generate all the characters, working together on each one; that way, they'd be more likely to build the powersets to support a team concept (so that no matter who ended up with which character, their own character would not be left behind).

[Kirby]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

Actually, I've been there. Now, the results of how the campaign goes will really depend a lot on the GM, but my experience: it sucked big hairy donkey balls.

 

The game was "in the future" when Genocide had been victorious against the mutants with nuclear war, etc. etc. We spent the campaign living in this vast underground secret network where it was just the PCs and one NPC "instructor." The GM wouldn't let us know our stats unless we figured them out exactly. Naturally, his wife learned her powers relatively quickly (though he claimed he was fair, this always happened with her), my roommate at least had wings sprout from his hunchback. My character was apparently a brick, but since the weightroom didn't have weights over 600 lbs, I wasn't allowed to test my full strength and never allowed to write anything down. He stopped after about 15-20 sessions because he ran out of ideas (and believe it or not, we only left the complex once).

 

Hopefully, you'll have a better time.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I have a habit of running my games in the format of "write up a 50/50 normal" (yeah, I know, 50/50 aint exactly normail), and then write up the powers. Sometimes I do the writing up, sometimes the players do.

 

In the case where I did the power generation (the biggest example is the Universe of Hellenback games I run at cons) it was originally because I had a mix of newbie and borderline-rules-abusive players and I was applying a little behind the scenes balance. For the convention games, each pre-gen has powers designed to match that pre-gen, but the powers come out slowly as a surprise to the players over the course of the game. In that case, it's partially for the fun of discovery and also because it allows me, if I have novice players, to slide the rules in slowly, in stages over the course of a demo.

 

When I had the players write up their own powers, it's just because the two-stage process helps make characters that are people with powers rather than a walking powerset.

 

I did get a little red-flag from the original concept posted in that the pre-super characters were meant to be slanted one way and then thwarted by the random power roll. It's possible that this is just a way to explore character development and avoid the old stereotypes, but I also get a vibe of "torturing the players, not the characters". That's why I specified it would have to be a GM I trusted.

[fwcain]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

The Legacy character.

Would this guy qualify as a "Legacy character"? (He's a hero from the 50s trapped in the present.) If not, then please elucidate what you consider to be a Legacy character.

 

Thanks!

Franklin

[Robyn]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

When I had the players write up their own powers' date=' it's just because the two-stage process helps make characters that are people with powers rather than a walking powerset.[/quote']

 

Agreed. Part of it, too, can be that we're aware of the powers we'll have when we design the character, and even if we don't know the exact powers, we do know the approximate areas in which we'd like to be strong and can afford to be weak, skill-wise. A bit of metagaming may enter into building the character, there.

 

I did get a little red-flag from the original concept posted in that the pre-super characters were meant to be slanted one way and then thwarted by the random power roll.

 

The players may certainly take skillsets based on how their characters like to behave (such as the jock taking physical skills), but this slant should not be as extreme as it would be if the characters knew, or even suspected, that they would one day be gaining superpowers. It's not like they're training themselves for some special future role; they're just ordinary people, with their personalities exerting an ordinary influence over their choices in life.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Thread necromancy!

 

How would you react, as players, if the GM told you that this was going to be the type of campaign?

 

"Accidental exposure to radiation will give your characters strange new powers, specialized in the traditional archetypes. Create characters with personalities that will have all have a preference for different archetypes. When the moment comes, I'm going to roll randomly for which powers your character ends up with. The conflict between having the powers of a mentalist or speedster, but the mentality of a brick, should make for some interesting roleplaying."

 

 

Now I have done that a few times. I have run in that and have played in that. Right now I am in a PBEM that my C was a golfer, so he's mind set was a ranged attacker.....what does he become....a brick. He is a great in your face fighter but he is alot more confortable laying back and wanting to hit at range. At this time he has no range attacks, but he has started to use materials in the environment to make really large clubs, and then using them on them on the bad guys.

 

The below link is the site for the PBEM, ran by the one and only incrdbil, a friend of over 20 yrs, and a great GM.

 

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/stellarknights/

[freakboy6117]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

he wouldn't be a legacy hero because he has no legacy he is a character from the past

a legacy hero would be black canary or the star spangled kid heroes who assume the identity of a previous hero or villain and are living up to a tradition set up by there parents or mentors.

 

probably the best example would be The Flash.

post infinite crisis you have 4 generations of flashes inspired and trained younger speedsters. Jay Garrick inspired Barry Allen who trained Wally West as the first kid flash. wally then assumed the mantel of the flash when Barry died. then he, jay Garrick and max mercury helped raise Bart Allen( impulse kid flash II) and turn him into a responsibel superhero.

 

they are more common in DC than marvel as marvel heroes tend to just get there origin rejigged to move them into the now instead of being replaced by new heroes.

[fwcain]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

a legacy hero would be (a new hero/villain) who assumes the identity of a previous hero/villain and is living up to the tradition set up by (their predecessor).

OK, fair 'nuff!

 

Thanks!

Franklin

[Mike W]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

Things I would like to see my players take a shot at:

 

1. A supermage/sorcerer of some type. I like some of the mystic villains but it's hard to tie them in sometimes without a party mystic.

 

2. An experienced hero. Someone with lots of contacts and history.

 

3. An energy projector. Hard to believe but the last group was almost all hand to hand fighters. Most of them had one or two range attacks, just in case there was no one handy to punch/slash/claw, or whatever. But the guy with the battlesuit was the only one with significant ranged capabilities and most of the time he preferred to use those as an opening salvo before closing to hand to hand.

[Karmakaze]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

he wouldn't be a legacy hero because he has no legacy he is a character from the past a legacy hero would be black canary or the star spangled kid heroes who assume the identity of a previous hero or villain and are living up to a tradition set up by there parents or mentors.

 

Ah, like Gladiatrix! (No stats here, because it was a storyboard. I've played the pulp incarnation of this character once, who was, of course "mom". This writeup is the daugher of what would have been the silver age 'reboot' of the character and... well, it gets complicated )

 

You know, one of these days I need to stat up all the different incarnations of this character...

[wrestlinggeek]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I would like my Players to play:

 

Truely heroic PCs. People in the Superman/Spider-Man mentality. "With great power comes great responsibility." "I do what I do because someone has to, and I can." That sort of thing. This is common in thecomics, but less so in the games I've run. Even Batman, when you come down to it, doesn't really do what he does for revenge. He does it so that other ten-year-old kids don't have to go through what he went through.

 

I would also like to see some legacy characters. I actually ran a game of legacy characters once, and it was one of the best, longest-running games I can remember. Even in that one, though, the players didn't take on ther exact identities of their predecessors (it was more like an adult version of the Teen Titans), and that's what I would like to see.

[Smoot]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

 

Alternate-Earth guy. (Maybe just b/c I've wanted to do as a player) - instead of being from the future, past, or an alien world, character is from an alternate now. I'm a sucker for alternative history scenarios and alt universe stories.

 

Someday, I'm going to do an all Alternates game. That is, the team would consist of people/cyborgs/genegineered clones, etc. that were sent back to "here" to prevent something from their timeline from happening, or otherwise from a 'upcoming timeline').

 

Marvel and DC have characters like that (Booster Gold's from a 'good' timeline, Rachel Summers and Cable aren't...). Astro City's Samaritan would be a good contender, too.

 

I was thinking of the team name "The Orphans" (since they're the only members of their world left), and their adventures would largely consist of trying to encourage/prevent things that brought their future about.

 

Just tossing it out there, in case someone wants to try it, too...

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I would to see my players actually work together more.

 

These guys do work well with each other but they forget sometimes that they are a TEAM, that means covering each others back, double or more team the bad guys.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I would to see my players actually work together more.

 

These guys do work well with each other but they forget sometimes that they are a TEAM, that means covering each others back, double or more team the bad guys.

I've seen groups of Good Guys forget to work as a team, and I laugh because in our Ness. Evil style game our group of untrusting psycho's will work nearly flawlessly together, heck the GM doesn't have us make Teamwork rolls anymore....

[Funksaw]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I'm hoping to try a blind PC in a game soon. I have a mute character and that one is interesting to play and not as difficult as I'd first feared. But I did discover the character can only be played with a certain group' date=' and even then it has to be small. So they don't get pulled out to often.[/quote']

 

I had a blind PC in one Angel game I ran; the character was a blind seer.

 

Yes, you read that right.

[bwdemon]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

It's not so much a concept I want to see played as a concept I never want to see again: the ultraviolent moody loner. In a 1-on-1 game, then it might work out, but not in a heroic or superheroic multiplayer game.

[Fenixcrest]

Re: Concepts you wish your players would play

 

I'd like one of my players to play a "vehicle master."

Like, a low-powered powersuit, but a really hardcore hovercycle that he rode on, or somebody who does most of his fighting from a jet (SWAT Kats-style). Vehicles seem like an under-represented element of the game. Sort of like bases- it takes a lot of effort on the group's part to get the base involved in the plot enough to make the points spent on it worthwhile.