Usually as I begin my current chronicle, I also begin the planning stages of my next one. Currently, I’m running a revisitation of my World of Darkness chronicle, inspired by the limited run revival of the X-Files. For those who haven’t played the game, it can venture into some dark territory and visit some rather heavy themes. I’ve noticed that after I run any World of Darkness game, I tend to want a lighter setting, something like a superhero game.
And oh boy, my group and I certainly love our superhero games! I’ve managed to collect twenty five core books and numerous supplement materials…even I think that’s crazy! Although my group enjoys exploring new settings and new characters, they also definitely have their favorites. Most of them eventually get around to converting characters they have played for over a decade into whatever superhero system we happen to be playing at the time.
What’s interesting is that, each time, the demands, freedoms or restrictions of certain settings and systems force them to change some aspects of their otherwise familiar heroes. Sometimes, it forces them to answer questions about their characters they never considered asking them. When given access to new interpretations of similar traits, we open our eyes to new storylines we may not have otherwise thought to explore.
To give you an example, my first incarnation of my most beloved hero character, Velocity, was for the Champions game. The character at that point was very street level, low powered and felt like he was missing something. I didn’t get to make the character anywhere near how I envisioned him. So when I began playing DC Heroes again, I had the opportunity to do right by my original vision. Paging through the Roster Book, I noticed Vandal Savage had stats for Velocity-9, a drug that granted superspeed.
I thought the idea of my character Velocity having perhaps acquired his powers from an overdose of the drug and taking the name a neat little bit of never-before explored back-story. I even gave him a drug addiction because of this bit of newly acquired history. Drug addiction in various forms would follow the character around for some time, even when switching systems or settings. The drug of choice changed, of course, but that storyline continued to unfold.
When going from DC Comics to Mutants and Masterminds, Velocity gained much more depth, as the system allowed more tinkering with his abilities and background. He really found a home in this system. Because of the low costs of power building, I was able to give him a lot of speedster tricks I hadn’t been able to afford in DC, and he got more powerful. I gave him the ability to disperse his physical body in proportion to how fast he was going, avoiding the sonic boom, unless he really wanted to cause one.
I also added a new bit of trivia; Velocity’s speed is actually unlimited. As he approaches infinite speed, his body also converts to infinite energy, but the ranks expressed in his character sheet were just the limits he could run without risking an irreversible dispersal into energy, what he called Terminal Velocity. He even had to push himself beyond this limit, perishing in the process. I needed a successor, so I created a family for him, namely a brother.
While I enjoyed transferring my character to Marvel Cortex, it was something of a step backwards, as the system embraces simplicity to speed up the task resolution. What the games does do very well, is allow individual expression of the character in the form of Distinctions and Milestones. It allowed me to get back to what I loved about the character without the weight of all the years of stories or complicated rules getting in the way.
Now I’m getting ready to convert him into Savage Worlds, using their Super Powers Companion. It should be a nice mix between the crunch of Mutants & Masterminds and the simplicity of DC Heroes. I find myself excited at the possibility of exploring the character again, finding ways to express his years of history while giving birth to new possible plots to explore.
I never thought about it before now, but there’s a little risk in jumping over to new systems with beloved characters, the risk of them not living up to what they were before, of souring our perceptions of them, but I find the rewards far outweigh any risks. Maybe that’s why we convert characters from system to system; to see them in a different shade than we had before. If you haven’t tried it, or did, but chalked the attempt up to a failure, give it another go – heck – give it several. you have nothing to lose but good times and maybe a deeper, more developed character.
Alex Montoya
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