Characters Can Be Crazy

Most of my posts here are about board games, but in the last couple of weeks I've had two new RPG's start, one as a PBEM and one as a live on-line experience.  This has me in an RPG frame of mind, so today I'm all about that bass our last live gaming session.

We played in google hangout, and the system and world are home-brew D&D knock-offs created by +John Williams.  A couple of weeks ago he sent us a slimmed down rule book, some world background info, and let us make our characters.  The rules have a lot of random generation tables, and all 3 of us PC's used those to a fairly large degree. 

This, in my mind is point #1 where things started to go really right. Whenever I've made a character in the past, it has involved things like "What does the party need?" and "What's something really cool I can do?"  This isn't a terrible way to make a character, but it does lead to me often making similar characters with similar traits that all play in a similar manner.  Using the tables here gave me something I never would have come up with on my own - and that's a great thing.  It allowed me to break out of the mould I had been in for a long time, and forced to me really think about how my character will react in different situations.

How my character
spent the game
The second thing that lead to this being a great session is also a character creation tidbit. This game requires you to pck or generate things like background occupations, medical conditions, psychological traits, personality traits, and quirks.  Having some of this decided for me (again, by random table) set a base for me to build my character around.  It turns out I was a nervous person with a nervous little laugh, and a pyrophobe.

Part 3 of kick-ass game night was our GM.  +John Williams set a simple scene for us with almost no NPC's to worry about.  Instead the action centered on the relationship between us 3 PC's (myself, +C.D. Gallant-King and +Dave Geno).  We had just been thrown together and had to figure out how to deal with the scary things happening to us, all while not knowing how the other PC's may react. 

This is my legacy.
A few highlights of that interaction: +Dave Geno's character had a bit of a foul mouth and foul temper, and it irked my high-strung nerves.  I *MAY* have pushed him down the stairs in to the cellar where he *MAY* have put his hand through a putrefied corpse.  Later, after being hounded by a ghost, my character thought that burning the bones we found would be a sure-fire (pun intended) way to get rid of it.  Being a pyrophobe, I didn't have any experience on how best to accomplish this safely.  So I doused to place in oil, struck a spark, then fled while screaming at the top of my lungs.  I will admit that in hindsight this did very little to help ingratiate me with the rest of the party.  There were some harsh words as we stood out in the rain and watched the only shelter for miles around crumble in a smoking heap of rubble.

Now the real question is "What happens next time?"  I think I might have to watch my back, as I'm not so sure my friends will actually be friendly.

Comments

  1. C.D. Gallant-KingSeptember 28, 2014

    I will refrain from saying too much here as I will probably write a blog post soon to share my own thoughts (including how convincingly Dave plays creepy weirdos and how you obviously prefer John as a GM over me).

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jason SalvatoriSeptember 29, 2014

      I don't prefer John as a GM. I did find it interesting to compare the different styles you have. Also a lot of the character creation items are shaping up in a similar fashion in our FATE PBEM game.

      Delete
  2. John WilliamsSeptember 28, 2014

    You guys played really well, got into character, and of course, burnt something down - so all in all, a successful session. The only thing I noticed from my end was that I had some trouble hearing people, so my reaction time was a little off. But, next time we play I'll wear headphones, and that should help.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Jason SalvatoriSeptember 29, 2014

      Technical details like that we can iron out over time, but the game itself is the important part and that went smashingly. Or burningly I guess?

      Delete

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