Characters

Primary Characters

Primary Characters are central to the game’s theme, roleplay, or history. A Primary Character's main restraint is that there are some established events that we assume they were present for, and some established acts that they undertook. Small details may be changed, but to use an example: Batman cannot easily be played in a "Year One" style due to the vast number of other PCs who would require major alterations due to having trained with him, such as Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Cassandra Cain, and so forth.

As with all things, this has some wiggle room. If you have a great pitch for how to take a Primary Character in an "early career" direction while leaving a narrative opening for others, then staff is willing to hear the pitch and to try and figure out a way to make things work.

We do not maintain a list of Primary Characters, nor are there specific requirements for activity or roleplay. That said, Staff prefers to see more activity from certain characters than from others due to their complex relationships with the larger game. Long periods of time with minimal amounts of RP will result in staff nudging a player to consider moving to a different character.

Once any character is on the grid, they're 'locked in'. New applications have to consider the broad scope of previous roleplay and work in conjunction with the previous momentum.

Restricted Apps

Restricted concepts need more help to get out the gate and we cannot guarantee they will be workable. Please speak to a staffer before beginning chargen with any of the below concepts.

• Characters from Unapproved Media Sources (see Approved Media Sources)
• Inhumans from the city of Atillan.
• Green Lanterns - Earth canonically only has two Green Lanterns at any time.
• OC Kryptonians, Martians, Kherubim, New Gods, Amazons.

Banned Concepts/Characters

Our motto is "never say no". The below apps are character concepts that are generally not going to be workable under most circumstances.

• Cosmic Entities (Sandman, Death, etc…), Eternals, & Celestials
• First Gods (Nabu), Elder Gods (Chthon), primarchs among the New Gods (Odin, Zeus, Highfather)
• Characters from non-comic inspired IPs such as Star Wars, Transformers, Care Bears, as examples. This includes characters that require untenable campaign/thematic settings.
• Multiverse duplicates of existing characters. These will largely need to occupy an AU RP sphere, and the player of the 'primary' character has creative control of clone activites in the mainstream continuity.
• Characters who are not conducive to a cooperative, productive RP atmosphere (Carnage, Eros, Kilgrave, etc…) These characters may be available for plots but not as appable characters due major conflicts with our consent rules.
• Canonical Characters that are props or comic effects (Howard the Duck, Ego The Living Planet, Danny The Street)
• Animal characters who are “pets”. Characters like Devil Dinosaur, Lockheed, Krypto may be controlled/emitted by their respective counterparts instead (Moongirl, Kitty Pryde, Superwoman, respectively as examples)
• Characters under the age of 15

Reserved For Plots

Certain characters are reserved for players who have demonstrated maturity and consistency on the game. Staff uses +kudos and other activity trackers to gauge suitability. Truly epic-scale villains can be made accessible for plot purposes or, rarely, for regular use as a character. Access to Reserved characters is on a case-by-case basis and must be part of a Staff-reviewed plot arc. Examples of some Plot-Reserved characters are below.

• Darkseid
• Joker
• Thanos
• Galactus
• Brainiac
• Apocalypse
• Amazo
• Red Lanterns

Power Explanations

There is often some debate about how certain superpowers work, or how they interact with the game world. Here, we consolidate reference material for general use of superpowers.

This simplifies chargen slightly. You can simply remark "This power works as described as in our Wikipedia entry." You can then define limitations or exceptions to the rule as necessary.

Cross Levelling

There's a strong temptation on superhero games to start helping other characters out with new gear and talent.

This is one of those issues that treads out of 'what's fun' and into 'what makes for a good story'. Yes, it would be awesome to give Cap's Shield and Thor's Hammer to Wonder Woman while she's wearing Vibranium armor and wielding the Infinity Gauntlet full of Lantern Rings.

This is really, really bad writing.

As much as I loved Infinity Wars, look at Parker getting the Iron Spider outfit. In two movies he went from 'sweat pants and goggles' to 'classic Spider' to 'Ultimates Marvel Alliance 2 Sweet Unlocked Special Armor With Max Stats'.

Try not to look at other characters as means for power-levelling, rapid advancement, or sweet rides and cherry gear. Look at other characters as /characters/, first and foremost. There are often good and proper reasons not to just hand out sweet swag-- Tony Stark might not trust someone with his Iron Man armor, or Diana might feel that training mortals too much makes them too reckless. Batman might not give his proteges the BatTech because he wants them to learn not to be dependent on it. Find a balance that serves the needs of the narrative, rather than trying to 'game' the game and rapidly kit your character out with all the cool stuff.