Playing canon characters versus home-made

[siebharinn]

I'm curious how most people are playing the game. The book and community seem to be oriented towards players using canon characters during the game, within the canon events of the Marvel universe. Is that a fair assessment?

I know I can use the game however I wish. I'm interested in how everyone else plays it.

[MidnightBlue]

So far I've been playing in two PBP games as Spider-Man (the official datafile in the Basic Game) and I've run a PBP demo where the players ran Beast and Armor (also the official Basic Game datafiles).

Unfortunately, that's been the extent of my actual play/gaming time with MHR.

In the games that I've been playing in, we have a mix of official and player created datafiles, but they are all canon.

I've experimented with original characters which are every bit as easy to make as canon characters.

I've also seen a lot of hacks for original and non-Marvel properties for characters and games on this site and around.

It seems that there's a pretty big community backing for playing canon or original characters from my observations.

[Supplanter]

I'm in two FTF campaigns with overlapping groups. In one game we play original heroes in a "realtime" Marvel Universe, so most of the canon characters are old now. The one where I'm Watcher is an X-oriented game with canon characters in our own pick-and-choose continuity. What we haven't done is mix rolling-continuity canon heroes in their prime with original heroes. Duck Call Lass and others have done that, though.


Jim

[Mystrich]

The rule book most certainly seems to favor playing canon characters with its rules, even if it is possible to play original characters. However, making your own isn't that hard, and I find making canon characters from any series is what the system really favors.

I think part of this is the loose character creation. Without knowing your character completely, it's hard to find the balance of too many vs too few and too low/high power traits/SFX. So while it favors canons, it doesn't necesarily favor Marvel canons. I think any action packed series (ie. The various stats for Avatar characters) works fine.

Making an original character, you have to have all the powers while still having them condensed into just two power sets. And at the same time, maintain some sense of balance with other players.

[Doc_Nova]

In the game I will be running (2 months and counting!) we are going mostly original in a "realtime" universe, as well. There are 9 players. 1 is playing Wolverine, although he is a bit toned down. The other 8 are, to varying degrees, original. (What I mean by that is that some are totally original, and some are "legacy" style characters that inherit some powers/traits of previous Marvel characters.)

This far, we have found making characters of any kind requires a bit of thought and planning to get them to "feel" right, but in the end the system doesn't "favor" any type of character. Those modeled after other characters require the same thought on individualising their SFX and Limits that original characters require.

Now, I did stipulate several restrictions on creating characters for the game (no D12s to start, only one Specialty at Expert, all others at Rookie, and one SFX per power set if you have two, or two SFXes if you have a single power set). I set those limitations for several reasons: 1) there are a number of players and I wanted each to have a unique spot (limited Specialty levels at start), and 2) I wanted there to be ample room for growth as it is going to be a continuing campaign (I've never run a campaign for less than 2 years in a run, hence no D12s and limited number of starting SFXes).

We have actually felt the limitations helps with character design as it forces a few selections and tightening of the concept.

[Supplanter]

In the game I will be running (2 months and counting!) we are going mostly original in a "realtime" universe, as well. There are 9 players. 1 is playing Wolverine, although he is a bit toned down. The other 8 are, to varying degrees, original. (What I mean by that is that some are totally original, and some are "legacy" style characters that inherit some powers/traits of previous Marvel characters.)

Yeah, ours are all legacy characters of one sort or another. I play the Wasp's son, via artificial insemination using - not as secretly as she hoped - Hank Pym's DNA: my character spent a lot of his childhood in family court. Dave plays Hulc (sic), son of a She-Hulk/Hercules fling. Nate plays the current-generation Iron Man: his character was a protege of Stark's via the Tony's Kids program who had a falling out with his mentor and won an IP contest. And Mark plays a young Nomad, who is actually a sorcerer because why not, huh? But who is also Tony Stark's biological son, and also had Steve Rogers for a mentor.

So you can see why our group calls ourselves the Newvengers. Or why my hero, Palmer Van Dyne aka Magnitude, calls the group "Newvengers" and everyone else will come around in time!

Are you really going to run for 9 players in each session? Cause, man! My hat's off to you if so. Five's my limit.


Jim

[adam]

I played two events as spider-man and a third one as watcher in the marvel universe; now I'm gonna play some DC-events (at least one as watcher and one as batman) and then I will run a lot of events in a custom non-marvel non-DC universe as watcher (we're already statting the characters )

I find quite easy to create a character if you have a clear idea of who he is and what he does; otherwise is a bit challenging.

Related to previous posts: there are absolutely no limits about how strong a starting character can be in our games. MHR works with every level of power, from daredevil to thor, from robin to superman. The important thing, here, is that the character is interesting to everyone.

[Doc_Nova]

Are you really going to run for 9 players in each session? Cause, man! My hat's off to you if so. Five's my limit.

Heh, yeah. Been running for a group that size (same group, too) for over twenty years now. Hollow Earth Expedition, Shadowrun, D&D, Star Wars (D6), Dresden Files, Star Trek (Fate), Masterbook System, Mutants & Masterminds...we've played a ton of different games and MHRP is next!

[siebharinn]

Thanks all, for the feedback! I'll probably start with stock datafiles for the first few sessions, until I get a feel for the mechanics (I'll be running the games). Then maybe start pulling in some home-made heroes.

[MidnightBlue]

I find quite easy to create a character if you have a clear idea of who he is and what he does; otherwise is a bit challenging.

Related to previous posts: there are absolutely no limits about how strong a starting character can be in our games. MHR works with every level of power, from daredevil to thor, from robin to superman. The important thing, here, is that the character is interesting to everyone.

I agree with this whole-heartedly.

Start with a character concept. What do you want to make? Is he sort-of like Spider-Man, but more serious and uses weapons? What areas of training does he excel at? Is he the best at what he does or still learning?

While character creation often presents the desire to make the best, most powerful character that you can...fight the urge.

Go for interesting over power-gaming. I find as a player that I'll always have more fun if I follow that simple rule. I also find that my GMs also have more fun when I follow that rule.

But no matter what you choose, the rules as written fully support all of those character building options. You've got 23 datafiles all ready for you to choose from in the Basic Game as well as rules for creating your own characters and the DLC Random Character Generator.

Whatever you choose, good luck!