Big Damn Heroes
Many of the games we play are set in worlds created specifically for those games (or universal enough for player created worlds), but there are plenty of games out there designed to immerse your players in a setting from movies, television, books, comics, and so on. Firefly! Song of Fire and Ice! Supernatural! Doctor Who! Battlestar Gallactica! Star Wars! Buffy the Vampire Slayer! The list is almost endless — if there’s a movie, book, television series, comic book, or whatever out there that tickles our gamer nerd fancy, someone’s made a game out of it. Even if they haven’t, it’s easy enough to find a system that will work for that setting.
When inviting your players to step into that known world, you as the GM need to make a decision on whether they’re going to be playing characters that already exist in the setting’s canon, or if they’re going to be creating new and original characters. Is your Firefly game going to revolve around Captain Mal and the rest of Serenity’s crew, or are the players creating a whole new band of misfits trying to find their way in the Black? Are your players residents of Westeros the ones we see on HBO, or are they scheming nobles and knights of the players’ imaginations?
Both options have their pros and cons, so it’s up to you to decide which option is going to work best for the game you want to run. Before getting too far into the process, one key piece of information to gather is how well your players actually know the source material. This could push or pull your decision in one direction over another and it also lets you get a feel for which option your players might prefer. It’s also a good way to gain forewarning if you have a superfan among the group that may get particular about the way the characters and world are presented.
One variation on the Scooby Gang
Using canon characters lets your players that know the setting easily jump into the skin they’ll be inhabiting for your game. They already know the quirks, mannerisms, and goals of that character, and to a certain degree it can satisfy a wish fulfillment to be part of that world. This is especially true for settings based on sources that may have had a limited run. (I’m looking at you, Firefly.) Another aspect that especially benefits GMs is that it allows you to set up storylines with ease. You won’t have to dig for information on the backgrounds of the PCs, and if you’re a fan of the source material, you’ve already got some ideas on new stories for those characters.
On the other hand, there are benefits to going with original characters. It lets your players put their own ideas and imagination into play within a favorite setting. Players unfamiliar with the source material may have an easier time as well. Creating an original character gives them an opportunity to be sure they’ll be comfortable playing that character rather than one that comes with baggage and expectations. That said, you may need to do some coaching to keep them within the feel and spirit of the setting you’re playing in. Having an amoral, violent mercenary messily kill a janitor that got in the way during your Star Wars game can be a tiny bit disconcerting.
Balance can also be an issue when choosing between canon or original. In some settings, like Doctor Who or Buffy the Vampire Slayer, certain characters are expected to be more powerful than others. While these dynamics often work great in the movies or television, they can throw off a game where players expect and need a certain degree of balance. Some systems account for this in the mechanics, such as Doctor Who’s story points, but it’s still an important facet to be aware of.
An exceptional number of companions…
Another factor to consider is whether you’re running a one-shot or a campaign. Campaigns allow for more room to flesh out original characters and dig into other corners of the world. Canon characters can sometimes work better for one-shots because there’s less work to get the players to buy-in to the game. This is especially true at conventions where people signing up for the game most likely love the source material anyway and they’ll happily jump into playing a favorite canon character. This isn’t to say there are exceptions to the rule. I’ve heard stories of long running games where the players assumed the roles of existing characters and I’ve played in some amazing one shots with original characters in Firefly and Supernatural games.
My personal preferences vary with the setting. I find some work better with canon characters and others work better with original characters. I’ve run Firefly games with both Serenity’s crew and with a bunch of player creations. For Supernatural games, though, I always go with original characters since the Winchesters seem too busy with their own messes and there’s plenty of Americana and monsters to explore without them. Conversely, the Farscape game I play every year at Origins wouldn’t nearly be the awesome that it is without Crichton, Aeryn, D’Argo, Chiana, Rygel, or Zhaan. It ultimately depends on the stories the game can tell in that setting.
Which do you prefer, the existing canon characters or all new original ones?
Back during the playtests of Buffy I ran games almost exclusively with canon characters. The games went so well that I spun them off into their own “series” that I actually liked better than the original material. Eventually Willow & Tara: The Series became one of my longest running tie-in games and influenced a bunch of my writing at the time.
That is awesome. I love how games using canon characters can take on a life of their own and create an alternate reality for what ‘really’ happened on the show or series.
My general tastes lean towards original characters even in a published setting (though I agree it is hard to see Farscape working without the canon crew). That generally avoids unnecessary debate within hardcore fan bases.
I generally lean towards originals as well, but I find I enjoy PLAYING canon characters in one-shots. I’ve had some great experiences as Sarah Jane Smith, Lin Bei Fong, River Tam, and several others.
As a GM, I’ve created original characters for Supernatural and Doctor Who one-shots, but when I wanted to run a Warehouse 13 game, I felt it was important to use the characters from the show.
Hey Angela, what system did you use for your Warehouse 13 game? I love that show and have been thinking about doing a game but can’t decide which system would work best for it.
I ended up using Doctor Who: AITAS. It was a system I was comfortable running and I like the way it allows for balancing out mixed skill-level characters. So, H.G. had a plethora of skills and abilities, but she had fewer story points than some of the other characters.
I love the Buffy game (and show), but I don’t think I would want to play the iconic characters because I am sure I could not live up to the stories on the show. I don’t know, I don’t mind playing Spiderman or whoever in a supers game, but it feels different with Buffy.
I suppose part of it is that I would feel uncomfortable trying to recreate the melodrama of the series. I did run my own Buffy style game, but most of the melodrama was provided by NPCs. This seems easier, because my group was relatively light hearted, and I don’t think having doomed love affairs with each other was really something they wanted to explore.
It takes the right group of players to get into the melodrama of some stories. I played a Buffy one-shot at GenCon that had the best group of players, totally willing to get into the mindset of young, dumb, and adventurous teenagers.
For a really light hearted take, I played a game of Inspectres where we were the Scooby Gang. (No, the actual Scooby-do, Daphne, Velma, Fred, and Shaggy.) It was zany fun!
I lean toward doing your own original characters, but adhering to some ‘canon’, or throwing caution to the wind and tossing what you need to if you want to be the heroes.
I also find the idea of “game balance” to be something that can interfere with the enjoyment of a setting. Okay, your companion isn’t as smart or experienced or glib as the Doctor (to use one of the above examples), but maybe you kick @$$ or have a skill or quality that makes you useful (early Rose’s morality before they made her godlike…) Toss the Adamas to the wind and do your own characters, or just your own versions of the characters…it’s another iteration of the Great Cycle of Time. Kirk wasn’t the only guy with a starship and its a big galaxy…maybe your crew were destroying the life-giving computer that provided food to the aborigines but hey! they’re free, let’s jet!
Here were a few pieces I did on using established settings, particularly Battlestar Galactica:
http://blackcampbell.com/2009/12/27/one-trouble-with-licensed-property-games/
http://blackcampbell.com/2014/09/28/breaking-canon-battlestar-galactica-rpg/
One of the reasons I love the Doctor Who system by Cubicle 7 is because of the story points. They’re specifically designed so you can have a character as powerful as the Doctor or as bad ass as Captain Jack in the same game as a Rose Tyler or a Donna Noble. Generally, the ‘weaker’ characters have more story points which allows them more flexibility and to come through in moments of crisis. When I run it at cons, I always describe them to the player as the reason a ‘Simple Shop Girl’ was able to save the Doctor from an alien bent on taking over the planet.
Yep. I’ve been increasingly unimpressed with “game balance” — our game group seems to prefer interesting characters, but they don’t tend to be min/max or power gamers.
To a certain degree, I find it can depend on the players and the GM. You have to have players who actually believe they can DO things when they’re playing the weaker characters, players of the more powerful characters willing to let other people get the spotlight, and GMs who realize they need to spread the love around the table regardless of the power level of the various characters.
I’ve had players at my table that need encouragement to act when they’re in the lesser roles and I’ve played in games where the GMs only let the ‘chosen one’ actually do anything interesting. That’s one of the reasons why I like seeing at least a degree of mechanical balance built into a game.