Playing with characters provided by the GM

[Boll Weevil]

I am curious if any of Herodome Assembled have ever run or participated in a game where the characters were provided for you and of the success thereof. Specifically for newcomers or for those daunted by the character-generation process, this can be a good way to jump right in to play. I have read on these boards where folks have run, say, a Marvel Universe game and players ran published characters but even still I think the players did the write-ups.

 

A second, more selfish reason I have thought about this is the fact that, as a GM (and evermore shall I be apparently) I have good characters that have not seen a battlefield, bar or Evil Volcano Base in years. It would be good for the soul to see my old team fight together again and by fresh players to boot!

 

So whattyathink? Does anyone have any success/horror stories about such a game?

[Lucius]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

Other than the probably obvious observation that it's a very good idea to talk about the player about what they might want to play, before assigning a character.

 

And include with each some kind of "cheat sheet" that explains the character step-by-step - how their characteristics stack up ("STR 20 means you can lift more than 4 times what an average person can....") and what the skills and powers mean ("your character's high rolls in things like Stealth and Shadowing mean you can sneak around without much chance of being seen" and "you can probably guess that Force Field will protect your character, but you have to declare you're using it, and you have to feed energy (END) into it each phase. It only covers your own body, so you can't protect someone else unless you're standing in front of them...")

 

The latter could possibly be covered verbally, but a few hints and notes may still be helpful to refer to. All this is assuming you're working with completely new people.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary wants to buy Life Support, Tech Support, and Arch Support...

[John Desmarais]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

The only time I normally do this is convention and demo games - and it works quite well there.

 

In the group I gamed with before moving from Virginia, there were a couple of players who's characters I always wrote up (whether I was GM or not) but that was more a question of system familiarity than anything else.

 

For new players, I generally work with them to create a character (their concept, my numbers). If a new player shows up unexpectedly I hand them a character I've created, but generally expect that they will eventually want to trade it in for one from their own immagination.

[ghost-angel]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

One of my wife's characters was provided by the GM... it was from a short 2-session game originally. Everyone played GM provided characters and my wife enjoyed hers enough to keep playing him afterwards.

 

So it can work, and work well. I doubt it will work for everyone though.

[input.jack]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

There are just some Players who dont WANT to play "someone elses character". I tried recently to start up a DC Animated Universe campaign based on the Bruce Timm series', where the Players would pick members of the Justice League to play.

 

They looked at me like I was from Mars.

 

So be aware; some Players have NO interest in playing a Character that is not of their own original conceptual design. It would be unwise to force them to.

 

Also, if a character that you played is being played by someone else, they will be a very different Character from the one you knew

[Nucleon]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

The use of GM-created playing characters are common in tournament, trials and when a particular player has no or few knowledge of the superhero type.

 

That being said, Nucleon, in the rare occurences where He plays, prefer a character of his own, and by far.

 

However, Nucleon's gaming bunch is now trying out a new system; non-exclusive playing character pool: That means you make a character, and put it in the pool for another player to play, if he desires so, for the session (see Nucleon's thread to that effect if you will). And from the short time we've tried it, some players told Him they actually prefer characters who were not made by them!

 

Its fun; Playind another's character is a refreshing role-playing challenge. Everbody wins.

 

[SirViss]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

Well, it depends what you mean "Playing with characters provided by the GM".

 

In a sense, all the characters in my game were provided by the GM (me). Of course none of the players were really experienced with the Hero System. And before I provided said characters, I asked them to what concept they had for the character. Then I sat down made the character, and pas it along, explaining everything I did (keeping the concept in mind). None of the characters in the campaign had anything but cosmetic changes done to them, before I started the game. The campaign is 2+ years old now, so I must have done something right.

[Weldun]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I have found that it's also a good idea to leave about 20-30 points unspent on a pre-made super. This allows that player to have a pool of points with which to buy some things that they want once they get the hang of things, giving the character a more personal touch. This has helped me avoid prblems that I've had in the past with players getting the hang of the game and wanting to change characters mid campaign. I normally allow it if there's a pretty good reason for it, but generally I prefer there to be a story reason.

[teh bunneh]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I tried recently to start up a DC Animated Universe campaign based on the Bruce Timm series'' date=' where the Players would pick members of the Justice League to play.[/quote']

 

I'd be all over that game like fur on a bunny.

 

I always use pre-gens at con and demo games -- in fact, I'd probably not want to play a con game that didn't use pre-gens. Short-term campaigns where everyone is learning the system, pre-gen characters can also work OK. For a long-term campaign, I generally want to "roll my own," so to speak.

 

Bill.

(I'd play Hawkgirl, 'cause I like her approach to problems: hit them).

[Scott Heine]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

When I've run listed games at conventions, I often give the players pre-made characters. In fact, I ask the players to sit in a particular order around the table, organized by DEX so that it's easy to run combat. Then again, when I've run listed con games, there's usually a very specific story to tell. I'm assuming that at least some of the players won't know each other (in fact, they may all be strangers), and that they'll arrive with varying degrees of Hero experience. Sometimes I've had a binder full of just about all the major archtypes for players to choose from (i.e., fire blaster, big rocky brick, magician, storm-summoner, flying energy shooter, shrinking guy, etc.), and sometimes I've had them play a specific team (Big Blue version of Champs was most common for a while, because the characters were so familiar and easily played by a newcomer).

 

However, for pick-up games, back-in-the-hotel-room games, or just goofing around with friends (new and old), I'd usually let people bring in their favorites. Oh, sure, there was always a quick glance to make sure the final mix would be relatively balanced, and I'd have to think quick on my feet to see if there were any specific plot hooks I could add to customize the adventure for those characters, but it was usually more fun.

 

For any kind of ongoing game, of course, the adventures always begin with character creation to make sure that the final team was cool, well-balanced, and diverse enough to foster a wide variety of storylines.

[Korvar]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

One of my most successful campaigns was run using pre-gens. It was deliberately set up for roleplaying newbies for the Uni Role-playing Society, so I thought Pre-gens was the way to go. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, and it lasted the whole year...

[Egyptoid]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I'd be all over that game like fur on a bunny.

[/size]

 

I was going to run the "pick your favorite Avenger" campaign !

 

but they like my Love Child idea better,

if you can believe it.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I was going to run the "pick your favorite Avenger" campaign !

 

but they like my Love Child idea better,

if you can believe it.

 

Makes sense to me. Those people who only enjoy playing characters that they've dreamed up can - they just have the extra step of coming up with a couple of Marvel characters to mix together to justify their character. Those people who don't want to delve too deep into character design can effectively just replicate an existing Marvel character (with a small twist of something else). It's almost a "best of both worlds" scenario.

[Lumbering Ox]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

A fantasy game where we got characters which for the most part suited us and our preferences. Didn't work out well at the end, because of one minor glitch in one character.

 

A champs game which lasted one session much to the regret of all the players. We had characters made, but desgined to keep in mind our personality types. The interesting thing was, we basiclly woke up with powers in this place, however we didn't have a clue what our powers were untill it came into effect. "Hey that shot should have killed me, whoa I am much stronger now". Never got a chance to see our character sheets.

 

That was interesting.

[Kabluey]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I sort of seem to have fallen into this unintentionally recently. I'm currently running a Star Hero campaign, but will be shifting to a Fantasy Hero campaign in a few months. So I've been working hard to setup everything for my fantasy campaign, with part of the difficulty being that I'm using Harn as my world, and I'm trying to capture the feel of the HarnMaster rules, so I actually have less freedom from a rules standpoint than if I were doing my own world. Two sessions ago, when several players weren't going to show up, I decided to go ahead and play a "test" session using characters I had created. But the players (who are experienced Hero players and are fairly particular when it comes to characters) actually liked them so much they wanted to stick with them. And then last session, we again played the Harn Hero campaign, but this time with one of the other regular players there. So I created a character for him. Similarly, he's indicated he likes the character and will stick with him. My 4th player, the only one who doesn't have a character yet, is the least Hero knowledgeable and the most likely to accept a pre-gen character. So I assume that I will be creating his.

 

This is my first experience, albeit unintentional, with doing pre-generated characters and thus far it's turned out quite well. The characters all have reasonably detailed histories that are much more closely tied to the world than they would have been had the players generated them (after all, I know the world better than they do). And I think that's a large part of what's really made them fun to play.

 

So for me at least it's been quite successful. I wouldn't generally do it, and even in this case I've made it clear that they can choose to play their own characters. But I'm really hoping they don't. I like the characters - and I like knowing them as well as the players.

[Redmenace]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

 

A second, more selfish reason I have thought about this is the fact that, as a GM (and evermore shall I be apparently) I have good characters that have not seen a battlefield, bar or Evil Volcano Base in years. It would be good for the soul to see my old team fight together again and by fresh players to boot!

 

So whattyathink? Does anyone have any success/horror stories about such a game?

 

 

It isn't uncommon for someone to bring a friend to one of our campaign games, so I like to have a few pregens on hand. Sometimes these drop ins stay for the rest of the campaign playing one of these characters.

 

My advice for pregens:

 

1.) If you are going to use your own PCs as pregens don't be surprised when the players run them completely differently than you did or as the pc's psych lims might indicate.

 

2.) Unless it is a one shot game, I like to give the player some time to customize the pregen.

[pinecone]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

I've had plenty of sucess with this at Con-games, first timer games and just plain old "dude I cannot handle you plying this guy...I don't care if its the only one you've got"...for me the secret is having Lots of choice available....

[Robyn]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

A champs game which lasted one session much to the regret of all the players. We had characters made, but desgined to keep in mind our personality types. The interesting thing was, we basiclly woke up with powers in this place, however we didn't have a clue what our powers were untill it came into effect. "Hey that shot should have killed me, whoa I am much stronger now". Never got a chance to see our character sheets.

 

That was interesting.

 

It can be quite fun to set aside the character sheets and focus on our roleplaying, so long as the GM is keeping track of those things behind the curtain. It lets us sample all the fun of a freeform game, without that pesky fairness issue.

 

__________________

. . . or setting aside the system

[yamamura]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

Yes and it was a fun character sadly the campaign only lasted a couple of sessions. Also I played in a campaign run by Leah Watts at a con using one of the Dark Champions characters and it was fun too.

[TheRavenIs]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

If the GM knows the players, they can come up with C's that will work for all of the players in that game. I've played in games like that, some were good, others not.

[input.jack]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

... Didn't work out well at the end' date=' because of one minor glitch in one character.[/quote']

 

/Derail

 

How does one minor glitch in one character kill an entire campaign that everyone otherwise loved?

 

/Derail

[Lumbering Ox]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

/Derail

 

How does one minor glitch in one character kill an entire campaign that everyone otherwise loved?

 

/Derail

 

It was a minor glitch that turned major thanks to the actions of other players... and myself I guess.

 

I should note in the other caimpaign [the Hero based one] I forgot an important point. We actually made normal human characters with no point limit. We were just asked to be reasonable. The GM then in the first session had us gain superpowers which were based on in part what we would like, and in part on the character. Not quite fully pregen.

 

In the glitch caimpaign, the characters came with personality and everything predone.

[Robyn]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

("STR 20 means you can lift more than 4 times what an average person can....")

 

Yes, because the very first thing any superhero does when discovering their powers is go to the gym and discover how much they can bench-press.

 

And their level of strength never varies either, superheroes never have an "off day" or suddenly find that they can lift a bit more than they could previously.

 

__________________

Oh wait, this wasn't the "RPG cliches" thread?

[input.jack]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

It was a minor glitch that turned major thanks to the actions of other players... and myself I guess.

 

Allow me to rephrase my question.

 

What happened?

[Rapier]

Re: Playing with characters provided by the GM

 

It depends. I have run a number of fantasy games with pre-genned characters. I bring in a double handful of characters and let the players choose one to play.

 

Pre-Genning characters can certainly shave off quite a bit of time on that first night. It is also about the only way to get a group of newbies going, without spending weeks.

 

I've also used semi-pre-genned characters. In some cases I create the character and leave points for skills and disads empty for the player to fill out and tailor the character more to them. I've also used some cookie cutter types, where I create the characteristics and then supply the players with sheets of power suites and they pick the power suite(s) they want (and have the points for).

 

The largest problem with pre-genning characters is that it is very easy for the player to have a problem connecting with the character. It's sometimes hard to get into a character that you did not create yourself.