Playing canon characters versus home-made

[AccidentalRob]

Clackey – I'm doing the same thing. A non-Marvel setting with ordinary folk who have developed abilities. For specialties we just chose them at D6, meaning "regular training", so they're not experts. Not yet. They'll have a chance to justify higher dice through spending experience and using those specialties in the game.

I have no problem with coming up with specific, custom specialties for players. I have no problem with the players coming up with them themselves, either – it's just one further level of investment they have in the character.

Perhaps even through RP they can add more specialties. If a hero spends time in-game hacking into computer systems, you could add the specialty of Tech (Networks) D6 as an introductory specialty.

[pksullivan]

My campaign has four players, each with a custom character. We are playing in our own version of Marvel's universe but drifting from canon quite a bit. Canon heroes will make appearances but for now the emphasis is on shaping the universe as our own heroes rather than running through Marvel history as established characters.

[Reinhardt75]

In our game we are playing cannon, mostly.

It is a twisted marvel universe with the cannon characters having slightly different backgrounds to provide a more grayscale than 4-color feel.

Our Daredevil was a product of a super soldier program who lost his sight when he planted explosives to destroy the project base of the group that had "turned" him.

Another player is running a character who is the child of Cyclops and Emma Frost, come back from the future. He is basically using the Emma Frost data file but as a guy and tweaking the milestones.

Someone else is using Cloak...though he got his powers through study with the arcane and a bargain with a demonic entity bound into the cloak.

Other folks are basically using their heroes as is.

I am tweaking some of the marvel characters who are NPC's as well...in our universe, Stephen Fury (a mash up of Nick Fury and Dr. Strange) is the director of shield as well as the (soon to be former) sorcerer supreme protecting the earth.

[tjburns42]

I'm both continuing a campaign that's been in some version of utilized since 1991 and using Breakout to add in new players to my version of the Marvel Universe. (Long story short: heroes are SHIELD Super-Agents in the standard Marvel Universe, dealing with major threats.) So we've been desperately converting old characters into the new format the past few weeks.