Quote:
Originally Posted by Fred Brackin
The more important question might be if the traits you adopt to represent marathon running help you make a good character for other purposes?
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To me, this is in fact the central question. Why is being a marathon runner important to the player? There are lots of possible reasons, so it's always useful to think about _why_ you think that would be an interesting or useful or advantageous character for the game. Then you can focus on traits that address the real underlying goal.
"Runs marathons in his spare time" (from the OP) is probably not the player's end goal. There's some reason that seemed interesting, but we don't know what. Maybe it's just an interesting background quirk, so complicated builds trying to replicate some exact world record time are irrelevant. "Runs marathons in his spare time" doesn't suggest to me that the character even wins, much less is a world leader. It could just be a Quirk, with no character traits needed at all.
But there's probably some action-adventure to be expected, and it's be nice if the background concept did influence game outcomes in some way -- hence the apt suggestions for Very Fit, HT, and so on. Is the character supposed to exhibit (in game situations) exceptional endurance? Be able to sprint away from enemies? Dogged persistence? "Runs marathons" is a way to indicate those sorts of abilities, but isn't itself those core abilities. If the player can identify what the cool and interesting schtick for the character concept is, it's easier to identify game traits that will help that actually show and make a difference to game suggstions.
If the game is in fact all about running marathons, then focusing on the exact speeds there may be exactly on point. Maybe the character is a speedster, with a personal Quirk that he refuses to use his superpowers to solve mundane problems in order to feel more normal. Maybe a lot of things... but it's that high concept that helps direct character creation, not exhaustive analysis of the most cost-effective combination of all traits in the thousands of pages of rules. Start with the concept and player goals; then find traits that reflect those.