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Forum URL: http://www.eyrie-productions.com/Forum/dcboard.cgi
Forum Name: City of Heroes
Topic ID: 2
Message ID: 0
#0, One of the things I like to do...
Posted by Gryphon on Feb-29-08 at 04:01 PM
... with my City of Heroes characters is to give them some quirk that addresses, but at the same time steps around, the standard expectations of the genre.

Take my newest guy, for instance:

When I set out to design Clawdy here, one of the things I wanted to do was make him as unlike Wolverine as possible. I don't have anything against Wolverine, he has his place, but, unlike about 152,000 players I've spotted since I started playing the game, I don't think he has any place in City of Heroes. (Yeah, I know, if I'd really wanted to do that I'd have gone with one of the other claw models. Sue me, I like the Wolverine claw style. The others just look lame to me, except for the flat blades, and those don't really go with Clawdy's style.)

So yeah, I know he looks different, and that was part of the goal (his costume is actually a Crey Juggernaut store display that he stole and gussied up with some Rust-Oleum and Super Sculpy), but the real difference is that he's crazy, but in an entirely different way. (He's also a lot of fun to play as. Perhaps because of his color scheme, he quickly developed a rather Deadpoolian personality. Yes, I know that's ironic.) He firmly believes, for example, that if you rub Infernal's belly, you get good luck. (He used to think that applied to Numina, until someone pointed out that that is, technically speaking, not possible.)

As an aside, Clawdy got the most appropriate pedestrian comment I've ever seen yesterday. Someone walking past in Kings Row as he emerged victorious from a mission said, "Any city protected by brightly colored weirdos like Clawdacious is a city you can feel safe in!" Right on, baby! Clawdacious would ask for your phone number, but he knows you'd make him run like four street sweep missions before you'd give it up and frankly, he hasn't got the time!

Other examples, off the top of my head:

- Captain Photon, mutant hero at large. Originally a member of the same fake-tech-hero school of thought as Clawdy, though for different reasons, he doesn't care who knows he's a mutant now and everybody loves him anyway. Seriously, passers-by on the street yell "We love you, Captain Photon!" Take that, Chris Angstmont. :)

- Prof. Neutrino, trapped in a containment suit and loving it. Sure, without the suit he would fatally irradiate any normal human being in the vicinity, but he's cool. No massive surges of woe here. The suit has many advantages, and hey, it's Paragon City. You know his love life hasn't suffered. As he's put it himself, "Do you have any idea how many invulnerable women there are in this city?"

- Norma Dinsdale, teenage avatar of an ancient Meso-American blood god. Sure, one of her battle cries is "My teen angst burns your flesh!", but really, I mean, she's mostly joking. Her powers are gross and stuff, but in certain circles - such as when you're surrounded by sledgehammer-wielding Skulls - gross is the new awesome.

- The CryoPhreak, thrown out of the Freakshow for being too nice. His hobbies include tinkering with his cryogenic battle gear, taking one for the team, and exploiting weaknesses in the telephone system to avoid paying for calls. He likes children, small animals, and sushi, and always feels bad about clobbering members of the Knives of Artemis 'cause his grandma taught him he should never hit a lady, even a horrifyingly annoying one with caltrops and a cloaking device.

- Tom Townshend, standard brick (Invulnerability/Super Strength Tanker) with a brain. Intended to become a Technology hero anyway before he had his Science Origin. Doesn't really need his gadgets now, so he makes them available to other heroes (like his Tech-origin kid sister Tara, who has no idea how most of her super gear works) and goes along to punch things.

Norma and Tom are going to need proper superhero names someday, but right now neither can be arsed. It's not like either one of them could successfully sustain a secret identity anyway; Norma explodes into a mass of bony spikes and Tom is green.

I do have characters who are just straight-ahead comic-book tropes - They Saved the Brain, for instance, is a standard evil genius brain in a robot body, reveling in his mighty new form's capacity of mayhem and destruction - but whenever I can, I like to throw a twist in there someplace.

--G.
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