Role playing existing character

[Crzyraccoon]

I look at the first pages of the GURPS basic set and here is an interesting piece of text "Create exactly the character you want to play... your favorite fictional hero, or your own invention.", so may i ask, have anyone ever use gurps to play a existing fictional character, like batman?

[corwyn]

Not play one so much, but I played a hedge wizard illusionist who palled around with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Together, we infestigated murders and weird goings on. In the setting, I became his inspiration for Watson as well as, as he became aware of some of my other abilities, the spark for his interest in the occult.

We tend to prefer to file the serial numbers of historical/licensed characters we play but we haf seen some close proximities: Golden Age Green Lantern using smoke instead of light. I once played a character similar to Bruce Lee's in Chinese Connection.

Though right now, I'm basically playing Shang-chi from the old Master of Kung Fu comic from the '70s/'80s: son of Fu Manchu, work for Neyland Smith, etc.

Another character is sort of playing "the most interesting man in the world". Not exactly the same thing, I guess, since he doesn't haf much in the way of exploits or identifiable abilities. Sort of the writer/studmuffin Hemingway wished he was.

[The Benj]

Originally Posted by corwyn

Golden Age Green Lantern using smoke instead of light .

That sounds really cool.

[Gef]

Not exactly, but I played a reincarnating character who had been several historical geniuses from Imhotep to Gauss; gave me latitude to get them "wrong" because I was not them exactly, but the latest incarnation.

GEF

[vicky_molokh]

Long age, one fella played (for a few sessions) a replica of Bloodrayne (from the game, not the film).
One of the recent players played a very close replica of Lisbeth Szalander with the serial numbers filed off.

[quarkstomper]

The CHAMPIONS group I gamed with when I lived in Darkest Iowa did this almost exclusively for many years. It was run by a husband and wife GM team, and the husband had gone through MARVEL UNIVERSE and WHO'S WHO'S IN THE DC UNIVERSE and made up character sheets for virtually every person listed. "There are some actors whose ambition is to play Hamlet," he'd say. "I get to play Captain America."

I've found using existing characters to be very useful in Dimension-Hopping campaigns and often use them either as "Pre-Gens" or as NPCs.

For example, some years back I ran a convention game in which characters from different settings are snatched out of their worlds and deposited on a mysterious LOST-like island. The characters included Luke Skywalker, Agent J (from MEN IN BLACK), Kim Possible, Zoe (from FIREFLY), Lt. Worf (from STNG) and Number Six (from THE PRISONER) (the latter two I ran as NPCs). I also had character sheets made up for Hermione Granger, Jessica Fletcher, and Sir Launcelot, but I wound up not using them.

I like to call this sort of thing Creative Plagarism.

[Figleaf23]

One game I'm familiar with has a couple of characters pretty closely based on the guys in Supernatural, somewhat points-optimized and with the serial numbers filed off.

[Evil Roy Slade]

I have seen a few fictional characters (with, as mentioned above, the serial numbers obliterated) transposed to different settings, à la Marvel's 1602. Most recently, a player in a Dungeon Fantasy game was playing a faux Tony Stark. I also played in a dystopian future game once where one guy chose to play Alex, the anti-hero from A Clockwork Orange.

In general, though, I have never encountered players who were eager to do this, even in licensed games where the game provided ready-made character stats and all.

[gruundehn]

In a 3e SUPERS game I played the Flash (Barry Allen), but due to points limits it was a very poor version. Personally, I think the Flash is a great superhero. DC did more with that one-trick-pony than one could think possible.

[sir_pudding]

In an upcoming game, one of the characters is Mr. Trent from the Outer Limits, Demon with a Glass Hand .