Showing posts with label Marvel RPG. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marvel RPG. Show all posts

Tuesday, December 20, 2016

Character Generation Library - Marvel Heroic Roleplaying

So this is me trying to do my first Character for the Character Generation Project. If you don't know what it is, you can look at this page for all the details of what's involved.

With that in mind let's start with Marvel: Super Heroic Roleplaying. I want to start here because I love this game, but also because a lot of people were like "Uuuhh, there isn't a character creation system here" and that always annoyed me because it does, it just doesn't have a lot of rules that we've come to expect with character generation.

Instead of coming up with some stats, it's probably best to come up with a concept for what I want and then see how the game can make that a reality. To be honest, that's how I usually came up with characters for systems like Champions, but what's great about MHR is that I don't have to worry about how it fits under a point system. I can make the exact character that I want.

Since this is Marvel, most of my exposure and love of those comics were through the Mutants rather than through say Captain America and the Avengers. I don't really want to deal with the "adult" x-men though, I think doing something at the school would be fun. That makes it a young character, but what kind of powers should they have? I'm usually playing speed/smart characters so I'm going to try playing a large, power character. I think the idea is that they've got a lot of muscles, and strength but it's grown in such a way that it's covered their body in weird way. What would be odd for us comes naturally to him, and vice versa. Included is that he can't really talk, because of how the muscles of grown around his mouth.

He's 15 and I'm going to call him Slingshot, real name is Maurice Francois Benoit.

Now comes the character creation part. I have to put a D6, a D8 and a D10 into Solo, Buddy and Team. I think he's one of those people who works really well when someone knows him, so the Buddy gets a D10, and better on his own because he's unpredictable which makes for the D8. The team gets the D6 because he's just too unpredictable to work well in a team.

Next comes the Distinctions, you get three of them. My thoughts are:

-Moves in mysterious ways
-Frightening Visage
-Wallflower

The way he moves can be both a good thing and a bad thing, same thing with the ways his muscles have grown over his face. If he wants to be comforting it will be harder, but if he wants to be intimidating then it's going to be something he can use.

Wallflower is fun because I can see him being really kind of shy and nervous about people because he's probably had nothing but bad reactions from people. Which makes one emotional, and two physical distinctions. The game doesn't differentiate, but it's nice to have some variety.

Now comes the powers. He really only has one powerset, which is his over and strangely developed muscles. That means he's going to have a lot of strength, speed and reflexes,

Title: Slingshot Muscles

Enhanced Durability (D8), Enhanced Reflexes (D8), Enhanced Speed (D8), Superhuman Strength (D10).

Lots of physical stuff there because that's really all his power is. Nothing outstanding, but the great thing about Marvel is that this is perfectly fine. Sure Slingshot can't go up against Galactus, but really who can? (Rocket can, seriously had a great time and my plan was to shoot Galactus in the face. It almost worked).

Anyway, time to add SFXs and Limits:

SFX: Unconventional Attack. Step up your effect die by 1 when involved in hand to
hand combat.
SFX: Side Stepping. Add d6 to your reaction roll when attacked by anything physical.
Limit: Mutant. Gain 1 PP when affected by mutant-specific Milestones and tech.

I like the fact that his odd way of moving gives him extra effects when dealing with combat, and since he is a Mutant he should get the Mutant limit.

Next it's time for specialties. He's still only 15 so he's not going to have a pile of them.

Acrobatic Master D10
Combat Expert D8
Menace Expert D8

I think his musculature allows him to do some extra special acrobatic things. He's learned how to fight, but you wouldn't have him go toe to toe with the best ones out there, and he's learned how to use his face and his walk to intimidate people but those who really know what menacing is won't be intimidated.

Finally Milestones.

This is a fun part of Marvel. What do I want to signal to the other players how I want to play this character. I think the first one should be about how he feels about himself, so I'm going to call it Where the Heart Calls and it's going to be all about how he can push people away for being friendly with him.

The second one is going to be about violence, because I don't think he's particularly aggressive as a person but the way his powers work tends to put him in those situations.

And that's done. First one out of the way, hopefully the others can be done a little faster. The completed character sheet is below.




Friday, August 22, 2014

Fan Expo 2014 - Panels and Game a Go Go

Gen Con is behind us, and Fax Expo is in front of us. If you're going to be in the downtown Toronto area next weekend you'll be able to hang out and talk about things because there are plenty of panels here.

Friday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Panel
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Panel
03:00 pm - Room 703 - Publishing your RPG

07:00 pm - Room 709 - Geasa: An Evening of Curses

Saturday
11:00 am - Room 709 - Finding Your RPG Style Workshop
12:00 pm - Room 709 - Kicking Off your Campaign Workshop
12:45 pm - Room 705 - In the Game of Boards you roll or you lose

02:00 pm - Room 709 - Gaming by Storm (1 hour blocks, I'm running 2 games of Critical! and 2 games of Marvel)

Sunday
11:00 am - Room 703 - Pathos and Probability Curves: Writing Adventures
04:45 pm - Room 705 - State of the Industry

01:00 pm - Room 709 - Critical!: Go Westerly: Growling Door Gates

Monday, September 24, 2012

RPG Review Recess - Marvel RPG Civil War

Now, I will tell you something you already know. The set up for how the Marvel RPG books are done is amazing and is backwards to so much of the advice that I have gotten over the years.

That advice? Adventures don't sell. Write them, but give them away for free because no one buys an adventure.

Well, Margaret Weis Productions is set up to completely and utterly destroy that concept with their Marvel Civil War. Inside you'll find an adventure that will take you months to complete, seriously it will take you a couple of months to complete and what a set of wonderful months it will be. If you haven't read the comics, or at least checked out the timeline on wikipedia or something, then let me explain briefly what this is. Civil War is the arc of stories that deals with the Marvel Universe's Extension of the We're Scared of Mutants Act (Paraphrasing) to the We're Scared of Superheroes Act. It breaks down into anyone with any weird powers, no matter how they got them, needs to register with the government so they know where they are at all times. This causes a schism to occur between super heroes and a fight breaks out between the pro and anti-We're Scared of Supers Act. I'm not really going to talk about that more, if you want more go look it up. It's not like this knowledge isn't readily available.

What I'm going to talk about is the book, which comes in two flavours. The super flavour which comes with all the rules so you don't need to have picked up the basic rules in order to buy this game. Of course, for those of us who did you can pick up just Civil War as well. This is great on so many levels because it provides people with options. I know I was grateful for it when I picked up the base game that they were going to let me not buy the base game every time I bought a copy of the book. It's great, and while it's awesome it isn't the design for every game I have to repeat that it's absolutely perfect for this game.

The content of the book is amazing as well.  It gives you the feel of Civil War without actually having to play Civil War exactly as it is in the books. I will admit I was uncertain how they were going to do that when dealing with iconic moments in the book without them being those moments in the book. The answer to that is by giving you the outline of the moments and giving you tips on how to use them to fit how you've decided to take the characters you've chosen to play rather than the characters that were in the setting. Instead of Spiderman revealing himself as Peter Parker, you get Ms. Marvel revealing herself to the world as Sharon Ventura. Why? Because you have a player playing Ms. Marvel who thinks this would be a great thing to do, and the rest of the players think it would be awesome to try to talk her out of it, or stop it from happening because they don't want her to go over to the other side.

There are pages, and pages, and pages, and pages of this kind of material and how you can set it up for your game. Pick the pieces you think are interesting, do what you want and make the story change for you. Here's what can happen, and here are the characters as they are in Civil War. I read the book, and couldn't wait to see how things were turned and twisted depending on the situation.

It's just brilliant. You should get it, now. Even if you don't play it, as something to check out a great design.

Firestorm Ink's Fan Box