capheind wrote:Are you using pre-gens? Because if so then you can just give them a little paragraph backstory and reinforce that in OSR style play the rules aren't everything. Do you really feel they need mechanical differentiation, or could they just be played differently and your rulings based on each characters backstory. I'm not saying that the existing recommendations aren't good (they certainly are) just that if your goal is running it BTB for a con game to promote MF then its easier to go with flavor over optional rules.
And herein lies the problem.
I am using pre-gens, but to compensate for this my style is to allow the players to customise their characters as far as possible. So, sticking with MF as an example, the last game I ran of this had the PCs as aliens creatures come to 21st century Earth for some hunting. I rolled up the characters (8 for a group of 6) and gave them the basic background. They chose the characters and developed their own personalities for them and reasons why they decided to join a hunting party on Earth. Now, this was relatively easy given the fact that there was a gamut of everything apart from PSHs in that party. The players could look at the characters and get an immediate handle on what their characters could do and how they were different from each other. The rest came from them.
Conversely, I had run a prior game where the PCs where all Mutant Plants in a space ark. However, as each plant had different abilities, then the players were able to find a role in the party quite easily. Again, the players could impose their own personalities on the plants and play the game they want to.
The upshot of this is that the players don't have to worry about whether they have the right mix for a party. They create the right mix during the game. As a referee I hate imposing my views of how the adventure should go. If I start giving PCs special background, then I feel I'm imposing them. Besides, if a player wants to have secrets, I don't like putting them up for everyone else to read. Paranoia GM habit that I've never kicked.
Like I said, it's
personal prejudice that stops me from writing character bios, no matter how brief. Not that your idea does not have merit, it's just not one I would feel comfortable using.