One thing that I really enjoy in my superhero RPGs is when they include a way to randomly create characters. Looking at the options and figuring out what kind of character can come from the disparate elements is a lot of fun for me. I think Wild Talents probably does it best with the ability to create a character out of a single roll of 11 dice, but the “Guided Method” of creation from the Sentinel Comics Roleplaying Game is a very close second. As you progress through the creation process, you throw different combinations of dice, which then get used in the next step of the process. These dice also provide you with a small list of choices out of a possible 20 in each step that inform what kind of hero your character is, along with what powers they have at their disposal. So I decided to sit down and spend some more time with the system and roll up a couple of characters and see what happened.
Erik Larson, better known as the superhero Tempo was a positively normal boy with a positively normal childhood. Possessed of a strong charisma, he proved very adept at getting people to do what he wanted or to see things his way, and surprising no one who knew him, wound up in front of crowds entertaining people, developing a gift for music.
In middle school, he began to have crippling migraines out of nowhere. He was prescribed several medications that failed to do anything. And then Erik started to hear other people’s thoughts and have visions of things, some of which were about to happen. His parents, recognizing what was happening to their son, sought out help for him from specialists who understood people with special gifts. Erik’s world went from positively normal to something beyond his wildest dreams.
He learned to control these new powers and with that, his headaches went away. He was able to focus back in on his “normal” life, finishing school and working on further developing his passion for music. Instead of going to college right away, he decided to take some time and live a little bit and explore the life of a musician in Megalopolis. Within a few months, he found himself as the lead singer in a band playing gigs several nights a week. And it wasn’t much longer before he found himself linking up with several other young heroes on the other nights. And so “Tempo” started to come into his own, learning to use both of his gifts to help him in his other pursuit.
Ben Erickson
