Welcome back, True Believers! In the Danger Room, we’ll look at a custom Marvel Heroic Roleplaying datafile together (either one of my own creation, or someone else’s) and go over the design points of the character.
Last week, I showed you how open the possibilities were in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying for creating a character from another IP. However, Akuma–the character I chose an an example–is from the Street Fighter universe, which has crossed over with Marvel several times. This time, I wanted to try to create something a bit more foreign to the Marvel Universe, while still making an interesting character that could actually be played.
Ultimately, for inspiration I came back to what is one of my favorite video game RPGs of all time: Final Fantasy VI.
Custom Character Example: Setzer Gabbiani (Final Fantasy VI)
This custom datafile represents Setzer immediately following his failed abduction attempt of Maria at the Opera, roughly 1/3 of the way through the game. Here’s a brief description blurb for you, if you’re unfamiliar with the character:
Setzer Gabbiani is a playable character in Final Fantasy VI. He is a Gambler who lives on the wild side. He is the owner of the world’s only airship: the Blackjack. In the SNES version he is neutral at the beginning of the war, reluctant to openly oppose the Gestahlian Empire after having made profits from their work. (Source: http://finalfantasy.wikia.com/wiki/Setzer_Gabbiani)
When it came to creating Setzer for use in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I had some pretty simple design goals:
- Emphasize the risk-taking aspect of the character.
- Provide a way of representing Setzer’s special ability, Slots, in the game.
- Give the character the unique ability to pilot his airship, The Blackjack.
Affiliations / Distinctions:
Notorious Gambler can be used for a lot of Setzer’s actions and represents the fact that he is generally well-known to everyone. Daring Airship Pilot is fairly straightforward, I think, and can be used for actions involving vehicle use. Grief-stricken Wanderer refers to Setzer’s past with Daryl. For those who don’t know, he feels guilt for a woman who died in a race with him, and whom he loved dearly. This backstory is further elaborated on in his Limit and his first Milestone.
Power Set:
Gambling was the product of my desire to truly represent the risk-taking of the character. In Final Fantasy VI, Setzer actually makes his physical attacks with various pieces of gambling equipment: darts, dice, and cards. I wanted the SFX names to represent this flavor.
Beyond that though, I wanted the power set as a whole to be high-risk, high-reward and to portray the gambling nature of the character. My idea was to give Setzer the ability to roll many d6s, since these have a fairly large chance of coming up as a “1”–which cannot be used for total or effect dice. In addition, six-sided dice are what are normally used in real life for games of chance involving dice, so it just felt right. The Stacked Deck, Doom Darts and Man of Many Talents SFXs give Setzer access to these d6s.
Having decided that I wanted Setzer to roll many d6s, I went about designing Slots. I thought the best way to represent Slots was to use three dice coming up with the same value. Rather than force the player to make a Slots attempt, I decided it was easier and player-friendly to just let it trigger if it happened, but to have some of the effects key off whether or not the action succeeded and to make it only work on a player’s action and not their reaction.
Running some quick and messy calculations, I discovered that on 5d6 there was about a 20% chance of a single number coming up three times, but that includes 1s, which are useless for Slots as well as for total or effect dice. As a result I tried to make the effects from Slots powerful, but not insanely so. The most powerful effect is on three instances of 7, which is obviously only possible if Setzer chooses not to split into d6s. For the effects themselves, I used Slots effects from the videogame and modified them to work in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, trying to keep them close to the original while making them each different.
I also ended up re-wording Slots so that it stated that it happened after action resolution so that dice re-rolled with the Fixed Dice SFX would be the ones used for Slots resolution.
Setzer’s Limit, Memories of Daryl, is indicative of his emotionally-closed identity. He eventually does open up about Daryl, but not until it becomes absolutely necessary.
Specialties:
These are all fairly straightforward. Specifically though, Vehicle Master was an important addition as Setzer is essentially the only person in the party in Final Fantasy VI who pilots the airship.
Milestones:
The Woman I Loved is all about Setzer’s emotional struggle with what happened to Daryl and how he ends up reacting to other women as a result.
“My life is a chip in your pile. Ante up!” is based on Setzer’s line as he joins your party. I wanted this milestone to be about his commitment to the party and how they deal with his risk-taking nature.
Of course in Final Fantasy VI, the reason Setzer is recruited by the party at all is his airship, The Blackjack. I felt it would be appropriate to create an item power set for it.
As the Details section indicates, only one hero can be the “pilot” of the airship at any time. The pilot is the only one who can add the power traits to his or her dice pool unless otherwise stated in the SFX.
The SFX for the airship are mostly utility-based, and don’t enhance the power of the pilot, although they can let him protect the people on it. I felt this was in keeping with the airship’s use in the game – it isn’t a weapon, but rather a mode of transportation, a base of operations, and sometimes a battleground.
Obviously, as an airship, staying airborne is a priority. The Airborne Vessel limit means that if you lose the ability to fly, you better fix situation quickly. The Bulky limit was put in place simply to prevent stacking of reflexes when that isn’t very representative of someone who is piloting the craft.
Conclusion:
So there you have it: Setzer and his airship!
I hope you’ve enjoyed this session in the Danger Room. I’d love to hear any feedback you have about either datafile. As always, if you have any custom Marvel Heroic Roleplaying content, I’d love to see it: let me know in the comments!
That’s… pretty awesome, actually. I don’t have the time to play this sort of game any more, but I love that their system is flexible enough to do this sort of thing. That’s a hallmark of Good Design in my book.
Thanks for sharing!