Theme and Niche

Here is where we start to really get to define our character. In the iHero campaign, I've imposed a "niche" rule where all player characters must have a mostly unique theme and fit into a unique niche. This is to promote variety and dynamics amongst the heroes. It is, however, not to say that different characters cannot have similar powers.

That being said, once a niche is established, another hero won't fit into that until the original is killed or retired. This will disallow Supergirls, Guy Gardners and 50 mutant telepaths. At least as playable characters. The idea is to give each character a unique place in the story.




Let's take a look at one of Marvel's most used archetypes (aside from the low-powered street brawler), the mutant psychic.

Psylocke, Jean Grey, Revanche, Karma, Professor X, White Queen, Stepford Cuckoos, Shadow King, Rachel Summers, Cable, X-man. That's 11 psychic mutants off of the top of my head (14 if count the Cuckoos individually), and only 1 of them is technically a villain. A few minutes research on the X-Men Wiki turned up; Hellion, Franklin Richards, Legion, Madame Web, Kid Omega, Mastermind, Cordelia Frost, Astrid Bloom, Blindfold, and apparently even Apocalypse has telekinetic abilities. That's a total of 26, plus a few more not listed who may or may not be mutants.

G'damn.

Now in it's defense, the X-men have been around for 50 years, That's a lot of time to create superflous brain buddies to replace the ones you arbitrarily kill off. Problem is you CAN arbitraily kill them off. And that robs each character a bit of their uniqueness.


Now let's be clear. I am not saying that characters cannot have similar powers. Especially more mundane ones like blast or flight. What I want my players to do, is come up with characters that have theme and fulfil a particular niche.

Those are both general terms and we'll talk about them more later.

I rest my case