Have you ever seen it work well, where players portray characters from the source material.  Have you ever seen someone play Luke Skywalker (rather than some random pilot/jedi) or someone play Batman (rather than a random dark masked avenger), or someone play Conan (rather than some barbarian), and the thing actually worked out well?

On the contrary, have you ever seen someone screw it up beyond all recognition?

RPGPundit

I've had game masters portray established characters well, but with one exception I've not seen players do it. The problem is motivation. Players are usually trying to win, and unless you are playing a storygame with a gm that won't abuse character flaws, playing a flawed literary character is impossible.

For example, a player playing batman or 007 let's himself be captured so he can learn about his enemy. This works in the literature because the badguys have personalities and goals that the hero can use. In a story game or as an npc, the gm will simply say it works because that is normal for the character.

In a traditional rpg, the gm will probably make escape impossible or kill the captured hero because he is trying to think of what a logical enemy would do. For that reason, players won't let batman act like batman (walk in talking, no gun, let himself be captured, take hostiles alive) because they know they will just be punished for it.

That's why you get things like batman with a sniper rifle, superman using his heat vision from space on everything, kirk using teleporter bombs while not going on away missions, double o 7 calling for backup...

Played a pickup evening game of Star Wars SAGA, where one of the players played Darth Vader.  Turns out Darth Vader wasn't played very well and died before the game ended.  (The player was playing Vader in a chaotic-evil stupid manner).

Quote from: ggroy;449628Played a pickup evening game of Star Wars SAGA, where one of the players played Darth Vader.  Turns out Darth Vader wasn't played very well and died before the game ended.  (The player was playing Vader in a chaotic-evil stupid manner).

Vader is chaotic stupid. He confronts heroes on his own, goes on away missions, pilots starfighters during battles he should be leading from a command ship, kills his own generals with magic, doesn't give a fuck about the empire beyond his immediate use for it...

Quote from: Cranewings;449629Vader is chaotic stupid. He confronts heroes on his own, goes on away missions, pilots starfighters during battles he should be leading from a command ship, kills his own generals with magic, doesn't give a fuck about the empire beyond his immediate use for it...

True.

The player in question was playing Vader like a hack and slash D&D type character, going around killing everything (opponents) in sight.

Quote from: ggroy;449632True.

The player in question was playing Vader like a hack and slash D&D type character, going around killing everything (opponents) in sight.

Did he get the idea from the videogame "force unleashed?"

Quote from: Cranewings;449633Did he get the idea from the videogame "force unleashed?"

No idea.

I didn't ask.

I've played in at least a half-dozen one-shots where the players played established characters: Buffy/Angel, Batman & allies, and original Star Trek.  It generally worked fine.  Obviously players can play the characters badly, but players can play any character badly.  It's often a lot of fun.  I remember particularly having a lot of fun playing Cordelia Chase and Batman, and several sets of players all got into playing Kirk and company.  

I don't think this would work well for campaign play, and I've never tried it.  (Though I would note that Marvel Superheroes, the second Doctor Who RPG, and others do suggest it.)

The time it worked for us as players was "Anime death match" using TFOS.

Quote from: RPGPundit;449622Have you ever seen it work well, where players portray characters from the source material.  Have you ever seen someone play Luke Skywalker (rather than some random pilot/jedi) or someone play Batman (rather than a random dark masked avenger), or someone play Conan (rather than some barbarian), and the thing actually worked out well?

On the contrary, have you ever seen someone screw it up beyond all recognition?

RPGPundit

I think being given specific characters to play rarely works. At least it hasn't in my own experience. But being asked to play a particular type of character, or being given general directions to improve party cohesion can work.

When I ran MSH in the 1980s, most players played one of the established Marvel characters and generally did a pretty good job of it. Of course, the people playing in my games were generally Marvel fans who knew the characters they were playing well -- sometimes better than the then current writer of that hero.

I was going to stat up William Garrow, Lady Sarah, John Sutehouse etc. for Tough Justice and Sophia Baddely, Elizabeth Armistead, Harriet Wilson Cora Pearl and of course Cathrine "Skittles" Walters for Courtesans but then I thought the tone of both is more lets play with history rather than lets play history.

Plus most historical PCs will be overpowered. How else would they have gone down in history?

My experience is similar to what another poster said here: that it is much easier for a GM to run an established character than a Player, because the GM's only goal should be to run the character accurately, whereas a player will be conflicted between the goals of accurate portrayal vs. optimum "success" for his character.

That said, in fact I would say I have seen it work on many occasions, where players of mine have had established characters to play and have done it marvelously.  My Legion campaign being a prime example.

RPGPundit

I've always wanted a barbarian/fighter to be like Druss from Gemmell's series...

I have had players playing as various marvel characters in the TSR Marvel Super Heroes RPG. It's been a long time, but it didn't come out too badly. Maybe superhero gaming lends itself relatively well to this because

A) most players have some or another superhero that they're enough of a fan of to have a decent handle on playing them

B) of the popular RPG genres, comic book superheroics has a certain palpable sense of "how things work in the comics" that most players can instinctually understand how to buy into (and, as a bonus, has a lot of precedent for how assorted teams work) and

C) since a given superhero almost always has been portrayed by multiple writers, artists, and/or actors, the player has room to play his own version of the character within the popularly understood range of that character. When Batman has been both Adam West and Christian Bale, the player has some latitude there.

Most fictional characters are going to be kind of a fish out of water even in an RPG closely fit to their own setting. It would feel odd, I think, for Conan to be adventuring with five other guys who were all more or less his equal. On the other hand, I suppose it might play fairly well if you had two players, one Fafhrd and one the Grey Mouser.

But I don't really remember having tried to run anything like this outside of the superhero genre...except for one very farcical Forgotten Realms adventure where one PC was a mystically summoned Kareem Abdul-Jabbar.