"I didn't pick my superpowers, they picked me"
Careers have been made in the comic book industry by being able to dream up new and imaginative superheroes and villains, yet "point-build" roleplaying games expect players to do this - sometimes at a moment's notice - right there at the games table.
In this article about my general preference for random character generation, I have leaned into superhero RPGs for the most part as this is where I have largely encountered this issue.
The out-the-door epic scale of some comic book heroes, compared to the street-level 'normality' of others, also helps make my point about emulating genres, even if in an exaggerated manner.
Sometimes a player will arrive with a preconceived idea for a character, but more often than not - especially if, for example, the players are not totally
au fait with the superheroic oeuvre - there's be a lot of
umming,
ahhing and staring off into space before he or she cranks out a thinly veiled clone of an established, popular character.
This mental constipation can also lead to further frustration and ultimately taint a player's opinion of your campaign before the first adventure has even begun.
And this, for me, is what makes
Villains & Vigilantes' random superpower generation system so wonderfully appealing.
Anyone can pick up their dice and within 20 minutes to half-an-hour have the outline of a unique character, ready to play.
It's quick and easy, but there also remains an element of choice - so the experience doesn't go to the other extreme and the player feels totally at the mercy of the gods of fate.
Under normal circumstances, that is playing the "rules as written" in the 2nd Edition
Villains & Vigilantes of my youth, each player character gets 1d6+2 rolls across his choice of the five tables of superpowers (
powers; devices; magic/psionic items; skills; and magic/psionics) plus a random drawback from the "weaknesses" table.
The player must discard one of his rolled powers and if he wants to drop his "weakness" he has to scrub off a second of his random powers.
Now, of course, the observant among you would have realised this can mean a character ending up with only a single superpower.
Back when we were running our superheroes as a play-by-(
snail)-mail game at the dawn of time, we addressed this very issue in our introductory material:
"Whenever someone rolls up a character and then moans: 'But I only got one power! What use is flight?' ... stop and think. If you woke up one morning and suddenly found you could fly would your first reaction be: 'ohhh, boring, wish I could fire blasts of super-heated energy and fry people's skin off..."
You just have to look at classic TV shows like
Heroes,
No Ordinary Family or
Misfits or the original
X-Men comics to know that people with a single superpower can thrive in a superhero milieu if enough effort is invested by the writer/player into developing the character's personality and backstory.
On the other hand, game-wise, this striving for realism is often more an ideal than a true reflection of the game as it relies on the other players not having rolled up
Superman,
Dr Manhattan, or
Captain Marvel.
Comic book superteams usually represent a broad spectrum of power levels, but there has to be some degree of compatibility and synergy between team members in a game - no one wants to be the
Wonder Twin stuck back at Titans Tower, while the team are off facing
Deathstroke or
Brother Blood.
This, again, ultimately comes down to discussions between the player and the Gamesmaster.
If he genuinely believes his character is unplayable (
or unable to gel comfortably with characters generated by the other players), it's quick and easy to start the random generation process again - rather than endure the mathematically complex juggling act of point balancing, min-maxing and optimisation that goes into "points-buy" character builds.
I've played several different supers systems over the years, but the most memorable characters I - and my peers - have created at the table have all come via the random generation process (
e.g. my Acrobatic Flea, Steve's Silverfist, Pete's Hurricane & Brutus, and characters from other V&V games, such as Dave's Nightgaunt and Mark's Copernicus).
I guess my issue is with the idea of "wholly designed characters", and this pretty much applies to any genre, probably because I was introduced to gaming via "old school"
Dungeons & Dragons and
Traveller.
Both of these systems employed - very different, but no less inspirational - random character generations methods.
I really admire the random "story path" method of character creation in
Traveller (
yes, your character used to be able to die in the process and, no, they no longer can), but also the fantastic 'group' method of random character creation in
Beyond The Wall & Other Adventures from
Flatland Games.
This clever folk fantasy system sees your party creating its home village as part of the character creation process, as well as weaving meaningful connections between all the player-characters which, in turn, influence their starting statistics and abilities.
Meanwhile, I have friends who draw Tarot cards to stimulate ideas for their character's personalities and I don't see random generation as being any different.
When it comes to superheroes, all the major teams (
such as Justice League, Avengers, Watchmen, Teen Titans etc) feature characters with a broad range of power 'levels' and abilities.
It's only certain structured teams - such as the
Fantastic Four - who could be seen to have roughly equivalent power levels.
But the
FF are the exception, not the rule, as this "style" of team also tends to share a common origin story as well.
Generally I find that point-buy systems, without a degree of randomness, don't gel for my tastes and style of gaming.
The whole idea of artificial balance is ridiculous and fails to simulate either 'real life' (
whatever that means to you, of course, in the context of sci-fi, fantasy, and superpowers) or the comics, novels, films, TV shows etc that your games seek to emulate.
Let's strip this down to ridiculous basics: Players A and B each design 100 point characters; Player A just uses the 100 points and takes no weaknesses, but if Player B takes "heavy smoker" for a bonus of 10 points or "terminal illness" for 50 points, why should Player B's character then have more powers and abilities than Player A? It makes no sense.
I'm not saying character's shouldn't have weaknesses (
in fact, as with V&V, I like the risk of random character weaknesses), I'm saying I don't see how the 'reward' for taking them in a point-buy system reflects any degree of verisimilitude.
[
Footnote: I strongly recommend you check the highly entertaining Adventures Of Superhero Girl, from 2013, by the talented Faith Erin Hicks, for a wry take on the idea of superheroes with real lives. I can't praise it highly enough - just read and enjoy!].
