Recurring comment about Marvel Heroic RP that seems wrong to me

[pemerton]

I often read posts asserting that Marvel Heroic RP (ie the Cortex+-based supers game) doesn't allow for PC creation.

To me this seems just wrong. I mean, the rulebook has a section on creating characters. And I've personally created plenty of characters for the game, both superhero PCs, and fantasy PCs for my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game (which was inspired by the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide).

All you have to is assign Affiliations, write up some Distinctions, choose specialties that fit the character, and choose powers and limitations that express the character.

Like, when my daughter told me about her character The Knight, who is an inventor who dresses up in armour and has a hover-shield, I worked with her to come up with descriptors (like "Resourceful Inventor"), wrote up an Armoury power set, which includes Durability d10 and Flight d6, with a limitation that activating Flight steps down the Durability (ie the Knight hops onto their hover shield) and that recovering Durability requires shutting down Flight (ie the Knight re-equips the hover shield as a shield). And then allocated some appropriate specialties, like Tech and Vehicle.

It takes longer than making up a PC for (say) Cthulhu Dark or Moldvay Basic; but I don't think it's any harder than making a PC for (say) 4e D&D or Burning Wheel.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I often read posts asserting that Marvel Heroic RP (ie the Cortex+-based supers game) doesn't allow for PC creation.

To me this seems just wrong. I mean, the rulebook has a section on creating characters. And I've personally created plenty of characters for the game, both superhero PCs, and fantasy PCs for my Cortex+ Heroic Fantasy game (which was inspired by the Cortex+ Hacker's Guide).

All you have to is assign Affiliations, write up some Distinctions, choose specialties that fit the character, and choose powers and limitations that express the character.

Like, when my daughter told me about her character The Knight, who is an inventor who dresses up in armour and has a hover-shield, I worked with her to come up with descriptors (like "Resourceful Inventor"), wrote up an Armoury power set, which includes Durability d10 and Flight d6, with a limitation that activating Flight steps down the Durability (ie the Knight hops onto their hover shield) and that recovering Durability requires shutting down Flight (ie the Knight re-equips the hover shield as a shield). And then allocated some appropriate specialties, like Tech and Vehicle.

It takes longer than making up a PC for (say) Cthulhu Dark or Moldvay Basic; but I don't think it's any harder than making a PC for (say) 4e D&D or Burning Wheel.

Than why would people possibly say otherwise?

 

[Arilyn]

Marvel Heroic is a great game. I'm not sure why people say you can't make characters. I guess because the game doesn't emphasize character creation and defaults to the expectation players will choose a Marvel character. But character creation is in the book. I find making characters a lot of work but worth it. You can make exactly what you are after.

 

[Thomas Shey]

I can probably answer that: they don't consider pure modelling a PC creation method. While incorrect on the face of it, if that's a PC creation method, its effectively one in every RPG ever, and certainly all superhero game.s

 

[aramis erak]

Than why would people possibly say otherwise?

Because it's advice on rating existing characters. It's not a creation system. Now, a creative minded person can use that to write up new characters of their own creation, but that's not the intent.

Pemerton is somewhat right, however - there is a creation system, but he's wrong about where it is. There is a set of character creation rules released as a free download by MWP.

 

[pemerton]

Pemerton is somewhat right, however - there is a creation system, but he's wrong about where it is. There is a set of character creation rules released as a free download by MWP.

Those are rules for rolling up a random character.

I'm referring to the rules in the rulebook, under the heading "Creating New Datafiles", which begin on p OM110 and run for four pages, to OM113.

These begin "To create your hero the way you want, you need to know as much about him or her as you can. . . . From this informatoin, write up a short summary of the hero. . . . Now you're ready for the checklist." The checklist refers to the stuff I described in my OP: assigning affiliations writing up three distinctions, creating power sets, and assigning specialties. The book says, in my view quite correctly, that creating the power sets for a character "is probably the most time-consuming part" (OM112).

The book also refers to creating milestones, which I left out of my OP but is important (although probably not fundamental, eg for a one-shot).

It's not a creation system. Now, a creative minded person can use that to write up new characters of their own creation, but that's not the intent.

I think it is a creation system, as per the checklist and what I've said in this post and my OP. For reasons that surprise no one, the actual examples discussed are of writing up an as-yet unstatted Marvel hero, but I can report - from experience - that it works just as well for The Knight, and for other heroes and villains that I've created.

I can probably answer that: they don't consider pure modelling a PC creation method. While incorrect on the face of it, if that's a PC creation method, its effectively one in every RPG ever, and certainly all superhero game.s

"Pure modelling" isn't a PC creation method in D&D. As we know from books like DDG, it produces character builds that are illegal in terms of the game rules.

The same point can be made about a lot of other RPGs (eg Rolemaster, RuneQuest, Torchbearer, etc).

But characters created following the guidelines and checklist set out on those four pages of the rulebook will be legal characters who will work in play.

Than why would people possibly say otherwise?

As I have seen it, either because (i) they miss those pages, or (ii) they misread them, or (iii) they take the view that character creation rules must mean something like "pick one from list A and one from list B" (eg D&D class + race), or must mean buying options from a menu with points (eg Hero, GURPS, etc).

The idea that first you would imagine your character in the fiction, and then use the game's system of descriptors (some free, some specified in the rules for PC build) to express them in system terms, seems foreign to them.

I find making characters a lot of work but worth it. You can make exactly what you are after.

I can't remember how long it took me the first time. I feel I've become quicker at it with a bit of practice (especially for my fantasy hack, which I have played and have prepped for more than MHRP itself).

I also think it can vary a bit with the character. I found The Knight really easy to write up, because the concept of a superhero who has built themselves their gear, and one of those items is a hover-shield, is such a staple that it's really easy to map to the options in the book. When I wrote up the Scarlet Witch that was a bit trickier: I had to lean on a mix of Sorcery and SFX that permit (and encourage) Doom Pool manipulation.

 

[hawkeyefan]

(iii) they take the view that character creation rules must mean something like "pick one from list A and one from list B" (eg D&D class + race), or must mean buying options from a menu with points (eg Hero, GURPS, etc).

This is literally exactly the issue that two of my players had with the game. As fans of TSR’s Marvel game, they were expecting numerous character creation tables and power lists and so on. When they saw that’s not what was on offer, they refused to even give the game a try.

Add to this the fact that due to the amount of TSR’s Marvel that they’d played, they had long since decided to forgo random character creation… basically using a modeling method of their own in that game… the decision made no sense.

These are two otherwise great players with decades of RPG play, and who are both generally reasonable people. But the game was just different than what they were expecting, and that influenced their thinking.

 

[Thomas Shey]

"Pure modelling" isn't a PC creation method in D&D. As we know from books like DDG, it produces character builds that are illegal in terms of the game rules.

The same point can be made about a lot of other RPGs (eg Rolemaster, RuneQuest, Torchbearer, etc).

Its illegality is irrelevant. You could very much still do it with as much practical system support. The fact that MHR fans didn't recognize that modelling was not a useful creation method for people did not change that; it still added up to "write down what you think is appropriate" which wasn't any more satisfying there than it would be in any other game to them.

But characters created following the guidelines and checklist set out on those four pages of the rulebook will be legal characters who will work in play.

As I have seen it, either because (i) they miss those pages, or (ii) they misread them, or (iii) they take the view that character creation rules must mean something like "pick one from list A and one from list B" (eg D&D class + race), or must mean buying options from a menu with points (eg Hero, GURPS, etc).

The later is, indeed, what people mostly expected. You're not required to agree with them, but as I said, modelling wasn't legitimate as far as they were concerned. I could expand on why, but all it would do is show there's two camps on this. But combined with the fact the game system did not care much about anything resembling inter-character balance (helped a bit by the fact the differences had to be fairly pronounced before they were strongly noticeable because of the mechanical compression in Cortex), modelling was not viewed by a lot of people as a satisfactory character generation method for original characters. As such, to them, it didn't really count.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Its illegality is irrelevant. You could very much still do it with as much practical system support. The fact that MHR fans didn't recognize that modelling was not a useful creation method for people did not change that; it still added up to "write down what you think is appropriate" which wasn't any more satisfying there than it would be in any other game to them.



The later is, indeed, what people mostly expected. You're not required to agree with them, but as I said, modelling wasn't legitimate as far as they were concerned. I could expand on why, but all it would do is show there's two camps on this. But combined with the fact the game system did not care much about anything resembling inter-character balance (helped a bit by the fact the differences had to be fairly pronounced before they were strongly noticeable because of the mechanical compression in Cortex), modelling was not viewed by a lot of people as a satisfactory character generation method for original characters. As such, to them, it didn't really count.

A perfectly reasonable opinion from the perspective of many, and hardly a "silly" one. I really do feel that many storygame proponents are, almost willfully, not understanding the point of view of folks who don't share their perspective, and are instead inclined to take disagreement personally.

 

[Thomas Shey]

A perfectly reasonable opinion from the perspective of many, and hardly a "silly" one. I really do feel that many storygame proponents are, almost willfully, not understanding the point of view of folks who don't share their perspective, and are instead inclined to take disagreement personally.

On a certain literalist grounds, claiming MHR didn't have a method for creating original heroes kind of does ask for a side-eye, as modelling, as noted, is called out for this purpose. I just think it requires a certain degree of apparently willful contrarianism to not understand why modelling is not considered a "system" by most people's standards, and as such is ignored; as I noted, whether "legal" or not, you could use that in almost any game system (and in random generation systems, it would likely be impossible for examination of the character to even tell that it wasn't done "legally" as long as you stayed within the normal parameters the random system would produce).