What are famous character's players like?

[Tvtyrant]

Starting off, I see Thor's player being a very smart stoner. He has a grab bag of powers because he finds combat boring and gets high during combat rolling, but is the smartest player when things are interesting (the talking bits.)

[JNAProductions]

Starting off, I see Thor's player being a very smart stoner. He has a grab bag of powers because he finds combat boring and gets high during combat rolling, but is the smartest player when things are interesting (the talking bits.)

Like... MCU Thor? OotS Thor? Which Thor?

[Xyril]

I don't know if it's verbotten to mentioned other webcomics outside the specific webcomic section, but there's another webcomic that has some fun ideas about the kind of players that would play the various characters in Star Wars. My favorite is that R2D2 is played by a munchkin who took min-maxing to new extremes.

[Tvtyrant]

Like... MCU Thor? OotS Thor? Which Thor?

MCU Thor, my apologies.

His characterization jumps from zany to super genius and back at weird times, always made me feel like I was watching my high friends from high school.

[Xyril]

MCU Thor, my apologies.

His characterization jumps from zany to super genius and back at weird times, always made me feel like I was watching my high friends from high school.

By MCU, do you mean Marvel Cinematic Universe? I can't really think of many times Thor has demonstrated "super genius." He's made offhanded comments regarding advanced alien technology that implies he has a basic understanding of what they are and what they do, but I don't think it's ever been shown that understands how they work. Sort of the way the average human being human being might understand how an iPod works well enough to know it's not a magic box and that it needs to be recharged once in a while, but isn't necessarily any more intelligent than an 18th century human who thinks it's powered by sorcery.

As for comic universe Thor, I am not nearly widely read enough to know what was happening there. He was a frog though. That's pretty zany.

[tomandtish]

I don't know if it's verbotten to mentioned other webcomics outside the specific webcomic section, but there's another webcomic that has some fun ideas about the kind of players that would play the various characters in Star Wars. My favorite is that R2D2 is played by a munchkin who took min-maxing to new extremes.

I'm assuming you are referencing "Darths & Droids" (http://darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0001.html). It's a great read, and NOW the prequels actually make sense.

There's a fair number of this type of comics. I'm unsure if "DM of the Rings" (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612) was the first, but it was definitely the first well-known one.

[2D8HP]

....I'm unsure if "DM of the Rings" (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612) was the first, but it was definitely the first well-known one.


I love "DM of the Rings" (http://www.shamusyoung.com/twentysidedtale/?p=612), it's one of my top three favorite webcomics.

I hope to see the same treatment of the new "Hobbit" movies.

[Reddish Mage]

I don't know if it's verbotten to mentioned other webcomics outside the specific webcomic section, but there's another webcomic that has some fun ideas about the kind of players that would play the various characters in Star Wars. My favorite is that R2D2 is played by a munchkin who took min-maxing to new extremes.

Have you seen the rules for droid characters in D20 or D6? R2D2 can be easily improved! Skills (like demolitions, repair, first aid) are easy purchases to program into the droid, and can add more sophisticated mechanical arms and things like hidden blasters.

I'd also note the chassis can be changed out, but then the question is which chassis would serve better than the standard R2?

[Lord Joeltion]

I liked when Ewan McGregor was the only truly invested player in that dull, generic and pretentious campaign of Space Opera. He played a fine badass space wizard, and even managed to throw a couple good one liners. Too bad he left the group once the campaign changed the DM and the campaign started making a little more sense :smalltongue:

[Friv]

There was a lovely fan thread a while about positing that the characters in Guardians of the Galaxy are actually just the Avengers playing a game. There is a summary of it over here. (http://www.tor.com/2015/01/07/guardians-of-the-galaxy-avengers-dungeons-and-dragons/)

[Scarlet Knight]

"DM of the Rings"! Whooot!

Sorry; Thor's player is not the stoner but the roleplayer. The guy invests the time not only to speak in character, but in "Ye Olde Accent".

[Friv]

"DM of the Rings"! Whooot!

Sorry; Thor's player is not the stoner but the roleplayer. The guy invests the time not only to speak in character, but in "Ye Olde Accent".

Thor's player is the contrarian who insists on putting together a complicated character that does not fit the campaign at all.

GM: Okay, guys, are we ready for our cool science hero adventures?
Al: I am totally ready. I'm going to play as Tony Stark. He's a billionaire playboy philanthropist genius with a suit of power armor he built himself.
GM: How are you paying for all that?
Al: Stacked up on flaws. Alcoholism, narcissism, Impulsive... you know, the ones that don't do anything.
GM: ... uh-huh. You'd better RP them. How about you, Bill?
Bill: I'm playing as Bruce Banner, a tormented loner who was involved in a lab accident that turns him into a giant monster when he gets mad. Sort of a Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde thing.
GM: And he's not just going to become a sarcastic quipper five minutes in?
Bill: ... rude, man.
GM: Sorry.
Bill: No worries.
GM: Okay. Cathy, how about you?
Cathy: Black Widow. She's a super-spy working to protect the world from rogue super-science. She has all sorts of nifty science gadgets that the government builds for her, and she's totally badass.
GM: Well, it's not technically a super-scientist, but... sure. Someone needs to ride herd on these guys. Dan?
Dan: I stretched a bit. You don't mind? Do you mind? I can change. You know what, I'll change. I had this Ant-Man idea...
GM: Come on, Dan, what was your first one?
Dan: Okay, so he's a World War II super-soldier, right? Like, created as an image of the American Dream. And he fought Nazis, and ended up cryogenically frozen and woke up today. So he's a man out of time, patriotic, dedicated, but always alone.
GM: What was wrong with that?
Dan: Well, you said that Cathy didn't have a scientist, and he's the product of super-science, not a super-scientist himself, so I kind of thought that...
GM: Okay, well, don't worry about it. Your Americaptain is cool with me. How about you, Ed?
Ed: I am THOR, GOD OF THUNDER!!!
GM: ... do you mean that you're a scientist who controls the weather to...
Ed: No, I am the actual Norse God THOR, GOD OF THUNDER!!! *presses a button on his phone to make thunderclap noises*
GM: God damn it, Ed, every time!!

[TeChameleon]

Hulk's player is obviously that guy- you know the one.

The guy who plays a barbarian no matter what, and inevitably an orc/ork/half-orc, regardless of party compatibility, appropriateness for the setting, or game tone. The GM managed to get him to tweak it a bit for a supers game, but aside from a bit less of an underbite, the (usually forgotten) pasty nerd alter-ego, and some technobabble, it's the usual smash-everything green rage monster.

Getting clear of the Avengers a bit, Hellboy's player is the poor jerk whose character caught the GM's attention and fired his imagination, so all of a sudden they're tangled in all sorts of prophecies, gained all sorts of nifty toys and abilities that never seem to work entirely as advertised (or that they just don't really know how to use), and attracts stupidly-high CR monsters like flies to honey. Or poop.

Now they're stumbling through the plot, vowing to shoot the next guy that prophesises about them, while the entire universe, which appears to be composed mostly of things that want to kill and/or use them, focuses uncomfortably closely on them.

Batman's player is a hard-core, but notoriously slow, munchkin who got the wrong notes for the game; the GM made a mistake copy-pasting, causing the player to think that the next campaign was going to be a gritty, street-level noir setting with a heavy focus on detective work and limited combat against street-level enemies, instead of the borderline-cosmic-level supers game that was actually being planned.

And instead of wasting a ton of time waiting for the munchkin to make an entirely new character, the GM just handed them the difference in Power Points as skill levels, resulting in a stealth-focused extreme skillmonkey who can trivialize basically any challenge that's not pure combat, provided that they can be prodded out of their sulk long enough to participate.

[Reddish Mage]

Actually, I think Batman's player is a super munchkin that read the game manual thoroughly and realized how to optimally build a character.

He realized that purchasing the superpowers were unnecessary and overly expensive. All the functionality of a superpower can be gained with the right tech. So instead of superpowers, the player used all of his spare powerpoints to purchase extra resource slots, extra skills slots, and special equipment.

Bam! Batman is now the wealthiest and most skilled character on the planet and still had points to spend to acquire equipment with embedded superpowers.

Superman's player on the other hand was new to role-playing and was given extra points. That's how he maxed out strength & speed, and still had enough to purchase a bunch of other powers. The other players, however, told him he wasn't picking things efficiently so they built him a super-fortress and had him max out his knowledge skills.

In the end, the player didn't want to let go of any of his powers, so he took a couple of weaknesses to "rare stuff."

However, with all that power, he made up a really lame backstory about being raised on a farm and working for a newspaper. It didn't make sense so the group came up with the story of him being the last survivor of another planet. They figured out that he would be weak to the earth of that planet and its sun, because that would be really, really, rare right?

The player takes a rather straightforward approach to play, rarely relying on his skills or use his powers in clever ways, he mostly just punches through everything. The GM had to bring out the weaknesses so the player would have to develop a bit more sense to his play style, but the player just keeps jumping into things.

[Durkoala]

I'm now thinking of Jonathan Strange & Mr Norell as a campaignwith the high concept of 'genteel Game of Thrones with wizards', where all players are new to the system and in a soft PvP trying to become the new Wizard-King of England.

John Secundus's player is taking a crowd-based approach, with points in charisma, knowledge and magic theory. Because the game was intended to be fairly low-magic, he invested no points into actual magic power and intended to gain some later in the game. He tries to play off Mr Honeyfoot and Mr Norell against each other, while staying out of the conflict, but Norell's player's command of the game quickly drives Secundus to retirement. His player creates Stephen Black and the Gentleman with Thistle-down Hair, but Secundus becomes a popular NPC and his player is given control of him for a later one-shot set during the climax of the story.

Mr Honeyfoot's player likes dramatic triumphs and intended to use wealth and charm to win the game, but also had some small magic skills. He accepted Norell's challenge, expecting a low-level wizard duel that would give him a chance to eliminate Norell early, but this backfired and Honeyfoot was retired on the spot as a condition of the challenge. Like Secundus, Honeyfoot became a fairly popular NPC. His player next played Drawlight and Lascells.

Mr Norell's player was the only player at the table, including the GM, who really understood the system. He focussed on overwhelming magic power and knowledge and dumped charisma. To nerf Norell a bit for the GM's sake, he gave him a severe distaste for the traditional roots of magic, but in practice, this didn't slow him down much and he eliminated most of the competition by challenging every magician in the area to a duel at once. He then set about dramatically altering the setting so that no new magicians could rise to challenge him.

Strange's Player joined the group later and also knew the system as well as Norell's player. Strange was built as a high-magic-talent, low magic knowledge character, with Mrs Strange as a companion with investigation skills. Strange's player intended to topple Norell and make it easier to access magical knowledge.


I'll add more later.

[Rysto]

Kiritsugu Emiya's player is one of those murderhobos who cuts in part way through the DM's scene and says "I shoot the NPC!" He constantly derails the DM's attempts to create interesting scenarios by killing off anybody remotely threatening.

[Velaryon]

*checks forum rules about thread necromancy* Whew! This thread isn't dead, just on life support!

Let's have a look at Suicide Squad just for fun. This movie might actually be ripe for the DM of the Rings/Darths & Droids treatment.

Amanda Waller - the DMPC, used as a clumsy railroading tool.
Harley Quinn - the DM's favorite player, possibly either their significant other, who gets shown DM favoritism in terms of story focus.
Joker - Harley's friend that stopped by one day and got talked into playing
Katana - the quiet player who is really invested in the game but doesn't like to be in the spotlight. Rarely talks in-character, but often makes good suggestions OOC
Captain Boomerang - the friend that doesn't really care about the game, but is playing just to hang out. Goofs off all the time.
Killer Croc - not a very good roleplayer, always makes a barbarian so he can be the combat badass. This time the group tried to talk him into something new, and the compromise they arrived at was "combat badass plus underwater specialist"
El Diablo - the serious RP'er of the group. Always plans out a dramatic backstory and has his whole character arc planned out with the DM before the game starts. Says they don't want to be the leader, but always makes the story about them.
Deadshot - the player whose roleplaying ambitions exceed their RP'ing ability. They make all kinds of cool, varied characters, but then end up playing them all the same way.
Enchantress - the edgy player who betrays the group because they think it's an "epic twist"
Slipknot - Captain Boomerang's friend who wasn't supposed to be part of the group but just showed up at the first session, so the DM threw together a character for him really quick. He got bored and left after the first combat.