TO BE OR NOT TO BE - DOES A NEW CHARACTER NEED A FULL ORIGIN?

There are many characters with extensive backgrounds stretching back to the earliest days of the comics industry. Everything from science, to magic, to the wonders of the body’s own genetics have been used to explain the wondrous powers of comic books heroes and villains. What many people don’t realize is that these origins were often never conceived of when the character was first created and only became canon later in the character’s existence.

In the long history of comic book characters there are even some characters who have never had a definitive origin revealed in the pages of any book. Oftentimes, characters' origins are unknown to themselves and their comrades and thus kept from the reader until some story element or elements finally reveal them. The mystery and uncertainty of an unknown origin can add to a character’s charm, allowing room to grow and areas to surprise readers later on down the road when the character might be getting a little more known and predictable.

In RPGs making the decision to keep the exact details of your character’s origin a mystery can be fun for you as a player as well as your GM. It allows players to get into playing without the burden of trying to come up with a complicated backstory and the GM has the opportunity to fill the blanks in for you later on. Most systems require you to roll or make a choice about your character’s power source but you can leave it at that and not specify anything until later. A scientific accident can be left at a simple, “An explosion in the lab..” or, “due to an unexplained laboratory accident.” If your character has a mutant background you can leave the origin very basic with just a glimpse of their childhood and early life, filling in specific events later. Your alien character only needs to know what species they are a general reason to be on Earth.

The most important thing to understand if you choose to do this is that you are allowing your GM a lot of room to play. You are essentially surrendering the details of your character’s origins to the campaign and entrusting your GM to figure it out as you play. With this decision, you will need to display a fair amount of willingness to play along and collaborate with the choices your GM makes for your character. That is not to say that you have to accept everything your GM comes up with. Ultimately your character is yours to play and such an agreement is still at the consent of you, the player. GMs should be willing to work with the player, adjusting when a player voices displeasure at a direction taken with their character’s true origins.

Another thing to consider when taking this approach to a character’s origins is to have a discussion with your GM about anything you absolutely want to take off the table when it comes to revealing a secret origin. You can also agree ahead of time just how long you want to keep that origin secret and what, if any, lasting effects the revelation will have on your character. This should help to ensure that the final reveal is as seamless and satisfying as it can be.

Choosing to play a character with a secret origin is a big decision to make but it can be a lot of fun. It can take as little or as much time as you want and just remember some of the most famous characters took half a dozen to a dozen issues for their true origins to be revealed while others have gone literally years, even decades without having theirs revealed. Just be willing to play along and see where the fun takes you.

YOU'VE BEEN PLACES - BUILD YOUR CHARACTER'S LORE THROUGH NPCS

Decades of comics have given the characters found within the countless pages extensive backgrounds, each a rogues gallery of friends, allies, and enemies. These, of course, were developed with time and successive layers of story, something we seldom get to have in tabletop games. To this end, it can be worthwhile to not only create your hero but a few other characters from their background.

Many games assume that a character is starting at the beginning of their heroing career, however this is not always explicitly stated. Many systems allow for starting power levels that are on par with well-established comics characters and so it would be completely reasonable to decide that your character has been adventuring for some time before the start of play. As such, there is plenty of room to create a few secondary characters to fill in that time. They don’t have to be enemies or anything spectacular but a few nicely thought out NPCs can really round out a character.

At minimum it is worth your time writing up any every day NPCs that your character interacts with, unless they are interacting with established characters from the universe. Think of what family members, work associates, and other people in the neighborhood your character might have interacted with. If you are running a street-level campaign these characters might be a local grocer, a street kid, or even a homeless person that your character interacts with on a regular basis. If you're playing a character with a strong connection to their home life, like Spider-Man these could be immediate family or close relations, perhaps even dependants. Alternatively, they could be people that your character knows from their alter eog’s professional life, fellow scientists, engineers, social workers, etc. They needn’t be friendly to the character either, as designing rivals, nosey neighbors, or low-level bad guys can add texture to your characters. You can even design employees, if your character is the sort to have them.

In addition to everyday NPCs, a player can and should think of at least a couple of villains from their past. Not only is this a nice gift for your GM who can then use them against your character later (as you wrote them or otherwise), but these sorts of NPCs can help your GM establish the sorts of themes and tone you want to explore with your character. Darker themed NPC villains will establish your character as the sort who fights those sorts of enemies while a bunch of mystic ninjas tells you GM of a very different sort of feel. If at all possible, you should at least write up any enemies who have appeared in your hero's origin or background as such characters have a tendency to resurface later in a hero’s career. Again, you are trying to flesh out your character to enrich your play by inspiring your GM with some personalized content for your character.

Besides everyday and enemy NPCs there is also room for creating other heroes your character might have worked with in their past. This is especially useful if the campaign is taking place in a place other than where the character established themself. These sorts of characters might have been partners, sidekicks, mentors, even friendly rivals or teammates. If they are from another location than the character’s current stomping ground, they can be a handy off-camera backup, rescuer, or source of plots and stories for your hero. An old ally seeking help or bringing news from your character’s old patrol makes for a great introduction to a new adventure. These sorts of characters can be used by the GM to great effect but also provide handy backup characters for players who have a character with a reason to look in on their main character should something happen to them.

One last form of NPC to consider creating for your character is an entire organization. This may seem daunting at first but when you consider that new characters in comics often have ties to existing organizations or even invent new ones, it’s definitely a route to go. The famous Weapon X program, later named Weapon Plus, wasn’t in comics until 1974 when it was mentioned in The incredible Hulk #180. Organizations can be big or small and give you the opportunity to play with something that could very much add to your campaign’s universe. Organizations are a topic that warrants its own post but they can definitely be a fun project.

In the end, lore goes beyond just NPCs but I find that the NPCs are key to the lore of a hero. These characters you create, whether enemies, rivals or supporting cast, will generate ideas and stories that give your character the feel of having come from somewhere, with several issues under their belt before the start of play. A little thought and time spent will slingshot your character into a campaign with more definition than a freshly rolled set of stats.

GET OUT OUR COMPASS - MORALITY MAKES THE HERO

It is undeniable that the vast majority of comic book protagonists are heroes. While there are some that stray from the heroic path most, most fall very much within the construct of "hero". It is important that when you create your characters, you decide in which direction their morale compass points.

Because comic books have, for the vast majority at least, a very decided general tone, you are best served by creating characters that fit that tone and the conventions of the comics, if you want your games to feel like the comics themselves. You don't have to and certainly good stories can be told by straying from the heroic path but this means that the tones of your games will either fit a very specific sub-genre of super heroic comics or something altogether different. 

A hero's morality is , however, not a simple matter of good or evil. Every hero possesses a complex set of values and bonds with those things which are important to them. Family, friends, duty, honor, the preservation of an entire species or world, the list is practically limitless. Choosing one or two key, guiding principles for your character will certainly be enough to play with but delving deeper will make for a much more satisfying role-playing experience, adding layer and nuance. Many heroes have a broad motivation for truth, justice, law, and/or order but what does this mean to them? What else is important to them? Do they value connection, love, faith, friendship and how do they reconcile these with their role as a hero?

Peter Parker is famous for having a mess of a life in which he constantly juggles his family, friends, relationships and even his day job with his life as Spider Man, a state of constant stress and chaos that has fueled his titles for decades. The X-Men have always walked the line between a high social morality and search for justice and equality but each and every character in that team has struggled with interpersonal relationships driven by their individual brand of a heroic moral code. Even a character that seems so simple and laser-focused as Captain America has found himself struggling with the more complex elements of his love for his country vs his general stance on truth and justice. 

What you choose for your character should certainly fit the nature of the campaign. If you are playing a high justice, paragon superheroes sort of campaign, throwing in a broken, murderous, loner type is not going to work. Likewise, having an overly docile, pacifist character might be a tough sell for a gritty, street-level campaign. Fitting your character's morality to the setting, campaign style, and even the team they are in, is critical for an overall satisfying campaign. This doesn't mean your character can't be your own and unique, but all players are best served by making sure their characters mesh. You can take this even further by working with other players to create characters with complementary motives and morality. This does not mean they have to be identical but that they can benefit one another in different ways. Having a gruff, aggressive type in a team works well with another character who is more calm, reasonable, or empathetic. A contemplative character with a more restrained sense of morality can benefit from a teammate who is more flexible in their morality and quicker to act.

It just takes a little thought and you can create a rich sense of morality and motivation for your character. Doing so will not only improve role-play and enrich your campaign, it can even score you some handy Karma. Remember, your GM is looking for reasons to throw Karma your way. Do yourself a favor and set them up to do so.

 

YOU THINK YOUR ORIGIN IS WEIRD - THE CASE OF THE ORIGINAL SPIDER WOMAN

The other day I was rewaching an episode of MerryMarvelite, a YouTube Marvel comics lore channel. This particular episode was on the very strange and convoluted backstory of Jessica Drew, the original Spider Woman and it hit me. A perfect example of why players shouldn't shy away from those randomly generated, seemingingly nonsensical combinations of powers and backgrounds.

Rather than go in depth with a rehash of her background, I have posted the inspiring video above but leave it be said that Spider Woman's origin is a convoluted mess of magic, super science, brainwashing, time travel (via hybernation), and retconned recollections. But there is much that can be taken away from this. Her nanny was a cow woman (and then she wasn't, but she was..) for Stan's sake!

Too often we get caught up in tightly crafted origins and backstories and power sets that manifest in clean, logical ways, but this is, for the most part, a very modern comic books convention. For many years, origins weren't always a given and might often be thrown in as an afterthought and through various bits and pieces as the character progressed. A character might go through a dizen or more issues before we even glimpse their true origins. Often the the layers of weirdness were brought about through various layers of different creators' writing and influence, each trying to put their own mark on the character or attempting to fill in perceived holes or "fix" things.

The characters we create can simulate the sort of long-form, winding, twisting road by just accepting the rolls we roll and finding ways to make them work. I talked abou this in my previous post but I feel that Spider Woman is a great example of this and so worth repeating the point for. It's perfectly fine to have a tight background and origin for your character but there is nothing wrong, and in fact a lot of fun to be hand, in embracing the weird and rolling with it. Generations of comic books will certainly back this play.

WHAT DO I DO WITH THIS? - INTERPRETTING ODD CHARACTER CREATION ROLLS

The Ultimate Powers book, while providing an amazing array of powers and abilities is also famous for creating some really weird combinations. 

The Classic Marvel Super Heroes RPG utilized a random character generation system as its core method of creating characters.  While random character generation is a time-honored and popular method of generating characters in TTRPGs that, it can lead to some bizarre characters. In this article, I hope to provide some hints and tips for making the most of wild random results. 

While other methods of character generation were proposed, such as modelling and and the point build system in Polyhedron Magazine, issue #72, random generation was the primary method and one that was most often used, in my experience. There is something enjoyable about discovering who and what your character is through a series of random rolls. Sometimes these are completely random with little or no choices to be made along the way and sometimes they are more guided, with each roll leading to another. MSHRPG's method is very much the latter, with each roll determining a chart or column that you will roll on for the next part of your character. 

Early versions of this method found in the original boxed set and then the Player's Book of the advanced set, kept these options pretty tightly confined, but as the game grew and supplements such as the Ultimate Powers book were released, the random options, while still guided through charts and tables, became much more sprawling, complex and often convoluted. This made for a seemingly endless number of combinations and options but the results could often be very strange and hard to reconcile, especially for newer players. Usually, the powers and origins generated are perfectly fine and can be meshed together with little problem, however it was quite possible to end up rolling something wild like a plant/robot or a character with fish communication and fire powers. It is these strange cases which I seek to address.

1. Substitution

One of the easiest ways to handle the rolling of seeming incongruous powers is a simple method of substitution. To do this, allow a player to exchange a power for two ranks in other powers. Additionally, I have found it simple enough for the player to decide which of powers they wish to keep and simply substitute unwanted powers for either a new roll or choosing a power more appropriate to the theme set. This gives the player a chance to hone their powers. You can even allow a player to sacrifice ranks to gain new powers, should they feel the need to expand their initial powers beyond what they rolled. This should be done at an exchange of two power ranks from one or two powers to gain another power. A GM should be careful of abuses using these exchanges. It is advisable to allow no more than one or two new powers using this exchange method.

To further reinforce responsible power and rank exchanges, a GM can reward a player for maintaining a tight theme to their powers, giving them a +1 Column Shift bonus to powers that fit a particular, narrow theme. It is important, when doing this, that the theme be well defined up-front, so as to make sure the player isn’t trying to scam the system. GMs should work with players to firmly establish the theme while also being willing to listen to creative interpretations of powers (see #2 below). 

Doctor Doom classically combined hi-tech and science with magic.

2. Interpretation

The more complicated way to do this is also the more interesting way. Instead of changing out oddball powers, a creative GM and player can choose, instead, to spend some time getting creative with how to interpret powers to bring them into a usable consistency. This may require some mental gymnastics but comics have proven that no combination of powers is truly impossible. Mixing magic and science are well-established in comics, often in some interesting combinations. In addition to powers, sometimes origins can seem a bit disjointed with players having to reconcile how they might be a mutant robot or an alien deity, etc. 

In these cases I find it is best for a GM to really listen to the creative vibes that the player brings to the discussion, keeping an open mind and listening from a position of wanting to make it work. Marvel comics has given us alien mutants whose mutation is the ability to feel compassion or a mutant character whose powers allow him to speak with and channel the dead. Classic characters, such as Scarlet Witch, blended magic and mutant abilities and we have seen magical robots like the Asgardian Destroyer or alien, psychic, cyborgs like ROM and the Space Knights. Anything can be done if you simply apply some creativity. Now, I realize that not everyone is as well-versed in comics tropes and lore and so that may not be such an easy undertaking, so allow me to give you some tips on how you might accomplish this. 

Magick was a character that combined mutant, sorcerous, and demonic powers all into one

One great method for making these disjointed powers work together is to recontextualize them. Consider changing their nature or the exact effect and how that produces the final power. Control powers can always be reframed based on the type of energy they are using. In addition the source of the manipulation can change to accommodate the theme of the character. A classic version of this is the force field or elemental control powers. Force fields can be expressed in any number of ways. While one character might generate an energy field of force from a technological device, another might simply generate telekinetic force with the power of their mind, while at the same time another, insect themed character, might create a wall of insects that provides some defense in a similar manner. Elemental control characters might use technology, a magic item or the power of their mind e.g. pyrokinesis. 

It is important to understand that all of these methods can crossover without any real need for explanation. If your character roles computer communication or machine speaking and you rolled a mystical origin, just have the abilities work by reading the electronic code as if it were a language to be translated, energy to be manipulated like any other, or even the spirits of the machine being contacted. Even some of the more esoteric powers can be linked together through theming. Imagine you roll a bunch of incest-themed powers but then time control. You might be tempted to drop the time control ability but, maybe it’s just a matter of researching which insects have a mythical or folkloric connection to time. Chances are most insect abilities will work together regardless of the insect type and now you have a very unique character.

The same applies to combining backgrounds and origins where a magical cyborg can make perfect sense when we consider the various Asgardian mechanical constructs of the techno-magic of the Dire Wraiths, Doctor Doom, or Apocalypse. Just remember, one of Marvel’s most famous characters is an undersea hero who can fly (Namor) and there is a super acrobat who is the byproduct of demonic possession (Puck). You just need to be willing to bend with the rolls and sometimes squint until you see the hidden picture in the mess.   

SUNDAY SUPPLEMENTAL #1 - MORE STICK

In last Friday's post, I posted my old character Stick. In that post, I talked about how she went through a few stages in her career, including a brief bit as a mind-controlled villain. Below are images of the various costumes she used at those times. They are posted in order. All these pictures were created using outlines taken from published works with details drawn over. 

STICK AS NIGHTENGALE, COSTUMED SIDEKICK TO NOSFERATA 

    STICK AS A MIND CONTROLLED ASSASSIN

STICK AS BLACK DRAGON, MYSTIC WARRIOR