31 Character Creation Challenge Post-Mortem

 My creativity really had some peaks and troughs this time. More troughs than peaks, really. My plan lasted all of a week, but it wasn’t much of a plan.

I chose Black Powder & Brimstone because it was a new twist on a system I know well (Mörk Borg), and writing these slightly cartoonish Central European horror characters is quite easy for me.

I chose Cthork Borg for the same reason, and because I enjoyed making characters for con games with it.

Terror Target Gemini was new, fun and colorful, and was burning a hole in my pocket. It was a joy to make some morally dubious adventurers.

By Dawn They All Were Dead is my own rudimentary system, and it’s nothing if not simple. The characters were the usual conflicted or tragic ones I make for con games.

I love superhero games, but I practically never get to play them. I particularly enjoy supervillain groups, and wonder how the Absorbing Man, Mr. Hyde and the Porcupine and the rest of them get along in those huge incarnations of the Masters of Evil.

The name Doctors Without Boundaries is really an old joke.

Doctor Sooth was inspired by the Tarnished Angel storyline from Astro City, and trying to imagine what supervillains like Shocker or Captain Boomerang might’ve looked to their kids. A reluctant legacy character. I rolled his powers and got Prophetic Dreams, and thought it would be fun fun if his dad was hectoring him in dreams, like Roy Greenhilt filtered through David Lynch.
Doctor Olympia is a muscle wizard. An rpg joke made real.
Doctor Menagerie is a mix of Marvel Comics’ Collector and a Pokemon trainer. A weird out of context character with a ton of fun creatures to pull out of a hat.
Krimson Karnage started as a name that reeked of Iron Age supers. The image of a bear with a chain gun came from a Russian superhero movie that I haven’t actually watched. I just worked backwards to justify the concept.
Doctor Verity answers the question “what if Iron Man was a supervillain and an idealist”. I can imagine her as a viewpoint character in a comic or novel.
Doctor Larceny is a small-fry with a very useful and specific non-violent superpower. Not really a supervillain.
The idea of an immortal ‘good guy’ superhero has lived in my mind for a while. A person whose ‘only’ superpower is immortality, but has learned so very much in the millennia he’s been alive. A nicer Vandal Savage.
I liked the idea of an undercover hero who just might start to sympathise a bit with the other side.
I chose B.A.S.H. because it occupies a nice middle ground as regards to complexity and choice.

After all the supers I was in a creative trough. I fell back on some partially-made Troubleshooters characters I had in my back pocket.

Then I remembered that I own Sufficiently Advanced, a game I’ve never played. The idea of a posthuman ‘murder mystery’ (in a society where murder is practically impossible) came to me while watching a crime drama (of course). I tried to make characters of increasing posthuman-ness, working from the idea that the future is unevenly distributed.
Enjoying Sufficiently Advanced so much led me to buy Sorcerously Advanced, its fantasy counterpart. It proved to be fun, if a bit more difficult to come up with characters for.

I’ll make a plan again next year, but I don’t expect to stick to it.