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Dear AJ,
During the time where I was usually the player in the games rather than the GM, I was one of those 'always plays the same character' types. I somehow always wound up the comic relief character or the gadgeteer. We did a lot of super heroes, Star Wars and Star Trek. When we had a guy who owned a copy we ran Ghostbusters. Part of this has to do with my (albeit limited) background in acting. I don't think it is entirely possible to play a character who doesn't have at least some aspects of yourself to them. The best actors are always drawing on their own emotional life. Thus- I wound up playing either: a) shy, klutzy, neurotic characters b) brilliant but socially inept characters c) sarcastic wiseasses or d) shy, klutzy, neurotic, brilliant but social inept but utterly sarcastic wiseasses. Other times it was because the party already had a super strong fighter, a wizard, the non powered super skilled guy, the healer/medic/priestess/circus performer and that meant they needed something for me.
Yes, someone of those characters returned when I GMed the same games. In most cases it was easier to dig up the beginner version of the sheet than it was to create a whole new character. Other times- I was taking over GMing duties from the previous GM. It worked great for MIB because my character- Agent Q- was agoraphobic so having him be demoted to NPC and spent 90% of the game in safety of his lab made a great deal of sense.
As for the guy who blatantly cheats-- that's what I love about Marvel diceless. No rolling. If he doesn't have the skill level and necessary energy pool to complete an action- it's not happening. He can design as powerful a character as he wants-- I can still just throw a mimic, adapter or flesh eating nanohive after him. Or if he took reconstitute self as a modifier an adapting flesh eating nanohive. Back when I was playing more roller games-- I caught a player doing it. I let it slide the first time. The second time -- I gave if a minus two highest D6s penalty. (This was in West Ends DC Super Heroes.) His character was dead by the end of the session. He never tried that crap again. In fact he never actually bothered showing up for gaming again.
Finally-- if you hate silly holiday episodes you'd hate gaming with me. One year- making in my weekly gaming days- we did three weeks of holiday themed episodes in Illuminati University. One of which was an homage to every 80s cartoon show ever where in Santa Claus was kidnapped by the groups three main villains- Azazel the demon, the evil wizard Gygax the Destroyer and the new time travel dean Benjamen Franklin. It was a silly set of episodes even by IOU standards. Though after the January break the game went from silly variant to weird- which you might have liked more.
See ya,
Jess Willey
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