Character Creation: Marvel Superheroes

When I was 11 years old, my mother bought me a copy of TSR's Marvel Super Heroes Roleplaying game (Advanced Set) before we went on vacation. We always went on vacation late in the season, so there weren't other kids around to hang with, other than my brother. I'd play Marvel once or twice at summer camp, and I was looking forward to creating my own superhero...which, really, I'd been doing since kindergarten or so.

Oh, baby.

That was my intro to gaming, and it was just combat for a while. But there were plotlines. They were intricate. I can't really remember much of them, but I remember my brother's character (Oriole), who was a member of a strange, non-human race. He could shoot webs from his hands that changed color over several rounds, and then exploded! Awesome!

Anyway, I made up lots of heroes (and villains) over the years, many of them modeled on existing characters, many more modeled on obvious tropes (there was the luck-controlling Leprechaun, f'rex). But some were just weird, and that was OK. I introduced everyone from babysitters to girlfriends to gaming through Marvel, and so it remains one of my favorite games.

And so, without further delay:

The Game: Marvel Super Heroes
The publisher: TSR
Degree of familiarity: See above.
Books required: Just the Player's Book is required, but I have the Ultimate Powers Book and I'll be using that. 

 

OK, we've got seven steps. I'm going to do this largely randomly, because I enjoy the challenge it creates, but I reserve the right to say "that sucks" and alter a die roll if need be.

Generate a physical form. I roll a 27, which means "Induced Mutant." That is, I started human and then something happened to make me a superhuman. That's fine. It also means I can take a +1CS to any primary ability when we come to that.

Generate an Origin of Power. A roll of 84 means I got my powers from Chemical Exposure, which is pretty much exactly what it sounds like.

Generate Primary Abilities. FASERIP. Stands for: Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition and Psyche. And in case you don't know, stats in this game get descriptors as well as numbers. For instance, Thor has Unearthly Strength, while Spidey has Incredible Strength. I roll for Primary Abilities on Column 1 (determined by my physical form), so here we go.

The rolls: 72, 6, 53, 20, 48, 26, 81

Fighting: Remarkable (26)
Agility: Poor (3)
Strength: Excellent (16)
Endurance: Typical (5)
Reason: Excellent (16)
Intuition: Good (8)
Psyche: Incredible (36)

OK, so far, my best stat is Psyche. That measures mental endurance. My Agility sucks rocks - I'm not going to be dodging or throwing anything. Strength isn't bad; I can bench about 800 pounds without much strain. Endurance, though...ouch. I have a free +1CS to up a stat. I think I'll boost Agility to Typical; that gives me better than 50/50 odds to make FEATs with that Ability, at least.

Generate Secondary Abilities. Health is how much damage I can take before I drop: 52. Not much. Karma is a measure of my experience, and it's used to alter rolls (though it'd be the first thing I'd house-rule): 60.

Resources is how rich I am, and it's a die roll: 46 gives me Excellent Resources. That's not shabby.

Generate a Weakness. Every hero has a weakness. Mine, besides my low stats is...Energy Allergy! Which means what? Checking the Effect and the Duration, I get...Fatal. Ouch. Duration is Limited with Contact, which means I take damage from a specific type of energy for 1-100 turns after initial exposure. I'm going to refrain from naming the energy until I know a little more about this guy.

Generate Powers. Here's the fun bit. I actually generate Powers, Talents and Contacts here, but let's do Powers first. A roll of 46 on the table nets me 4 Powers, which is respectable. I roll on the Power Class chart, and then on the individual Power table, and since some of these eat two slots, I'll do my Powers one at a time.

First, I roll 19 - Energy Emission. A 44 on that table gets me Kinetic Bolt. Let's look that up. It's basically what it sounds: A bolt that does damage based on the Force table. The only problem here is that it's going to rely on an Agility roll. Well, I'll deal with that later. Let's see how tough it is: 95! Holy shit! That's an Amazing-ranked Power. Awesome! I could knock down walls with that shit!

Ahem. Next power: 86 means it's Power Control, 5 means I get Control. This means that I have some control over other people's Powers. It's not a bad power, but it does eat two slots. I'll keep it, just because it'll be interesting. First off, I roll for a Power rank: 16. Good. Yuck. Well, OK. A roll of 92 (now I roll high) on the "Power Control table" means that I have Power Control - Negation, which means I just totally turn off the target power. If the roll succeeds, which considering it's a FEAT based on the target's Psyche, ain't likely. OK, moving on.

Final power: 50 gives me Matter Conversion. OK. 38 gives me Disintegration...which also costs 2 slots. Damn. I'll reduce my Resources by 2 ranks (down to Typical) to take this, because I've got an idea about where this character is going. A roll of 47 gives me Excellent Disintegration. That means I can affect 16 cubic feat of solid matter in a turn, which isn't shabby at all. My range is 6 areas - which means (hang on) good lord, an area is 44 yards. I think we'll drop the range down to Typical (2 areas, still fine) and bump the Power rank up to Incredible. I can Disintegrate 36 cubic feat of material in a turn.

OK, moving along to Talents. A roll of 68 gets me 2 Talents. First Talent: Chemistry. Second Talent: Detective/Espionage. Eeeeexcellent. It's all coming together.

Finally, Contacts. I have 2 of them. For my first Contact, my hero has a buddy in the security team where he used to work, before "the incident." The buddy, Duncan "Donuts" Billings, is now a staff supervisor for the night shift at the place, and so can sneak his ol' pal some gear every now and then.

For the second Contact, I want a street-level contact, basically a scumbag who doesn't really hurt anyone (he steals cars, that kind of thing). He snitches to my hero in exchange for not getting his ass busted. His name is Jimmy.

Give your character life. OK, time to tie it all together.

Hans Holmer was a security guard for a big chemical firm, not much more than a merc (or a mook). One night, while he and his buddy Duncan Donuts were making the rounds, some whacko in powered armor blew a hole in the wall and started laying waste to the place with these force beams. Donuts ran to sound the alarm, but Hans got stupid and tried to shoot the guy. The guy turned his blasters on Hans and put him through a wall, straight into a room full of experimental chemicals. Hans steeped in the stuff, unconscious, for hours until the attack was over and Donuts found him. Over the next few weeks (in the hospital), Hans changed. He found he was able to turn solid matter into sound with a glance, and that he could project a blast of invisible force at a target. This last was devastating, but hard to aim - as it happened, the chemicals and the trauma had done some cortical damage. Hans used to be a crack shot. Now it's all he can do to type straight.

He didn't learn about his third ability until after being discharged from the hospital. He saw the whacko in power armor again, flying across the city like nothing was nothing. Glaring, he reached out to the systems allowing the armor to fly and shattered them. The whacko (actually an eco-terrorist named Earth's Avenger) crashed to the ground. Hans disintegrated the ground around him as he tried to stand, and kept him down with his force blast. The cops arrived and subdued the terrorist, and Hans was taken away and debriefed.

He was given the opportunity to work with other heroes, but he hasn't made up his mind yet. He's still bitter about what happened, and he's not sure if he's really cut out for life as a costumed clown. He's got the costume, though - his old uniform from the chemical plant was stained from light gray to a deep purple, with irregular black and blue patterns, almost like an acid wash. Hans put it on and hit the town, solo, a few nights later, interrupting a drug sting that was about to turn into a bloody ambush on the cops (Jimmy told him what was up). He disintegrated the bad guy's guns, watching them disappear in an ear-splitting crash, and blew the drug dealer's cars upside down with his force blast. When the cops asked who he was, he said, "Call me Fragment."

Hans doesn't bother with a secret ID; he didn't have any family to begin with. That sets his Popularity at 20. Fragment has a gained a following in the city; club kids are starting to wear shirts with his suit's pattern on them.

Oh, I should detail his weakness, that form of energy that can kill him. Fragment is vulnerable to harmonics, sounds that are perfectly blended. The right kind of machinery can generate these sounds easily, and if he's exposed to them, the chemicals in his brain that were altered in the accident (the ones that allow him to break things with a glance and a gesture) turn inward, breaking him down instead.