Coming Out Of Left Field

Some of the best times you can have while playing RPGs is the really wild stuff that you can't plan for.

You know what I mean. That totally screwball idea, that thing that blindsides your GM from nowhere.

See we love it when everything goes to plan, right? We GMs love setting up a moment that goes off without a hitch, seeing the thing develop from point to point until the party are where you want them and the story point pops off. Sure, it's been a little bit hairy here and there - maybe there's been a couple of times where a little handholding was necessary, and perhaps some clues were missed...

...but you got to the bit you needed to get to, and you get to deliver the blow that you had up your sleeve the entire time. And hopefully the party enjoy - or at least appreciate - it.

The stuff of legend, though, is when you go so far off the beaten path that at least one person is helpless through laughter and half of the campaign notes suddenly seem bone-crushingly inadequate for what you are dealing with.

Two examples I will quote include when myself (a sickly but heavily-armoured cleric of Pelor) and my travelling companion (a dashing spellsword) got to the castle of the evil lich in a D&D 3.5 campaign, took one look at the front gates, and flew up onto the roof to go in through the top of the tower - getting the drop on the final boss of what was effectively a dungeon, and having to clean it out after he was dead...

...and the GM of that game pulling exactly the same trick in a Pathfinder game, going into an overrun guard bastion in the first campaign book through the roof. Dropping in, murdering the big bad, getting mythic power, and then liquidising the rest of the fell creatures present like a BlendTec commercial.

Most recently, this happened to me. I was the GM in the driving seat. I've been running a game of Eclipse Phase for a few months - you've probably seen a couple of my blog posts about it, but if not, look here and here, that will clue you in - and I have been typing up each session as a read-along that you can read here. Take a look - it's called Before The Devil Knows You're Dead.

This particular thing is some kind of murder mystery. The party are putting together some clues as to why someone was killed, and they discover that there's a lot more to it than random acts of violence - in fact they have a short list of other potential targets, and one of them correctly guessed the inciting agents within minutes of seeing the original crime scene (much to my combined joy and nervousness).

So they find out the identity of one of the other potential victims, and go to talk to her. One of the characters is highly social, and is also a genuine psychic. So I get ready to provide some snippets of information before the inevitable happens...

...and then the way it gets played out - the interview turns into a confession, which turns into the party smuggling the potential victim (who isn't so innocent herself) off of the habitat in a body bag assisted by octopoid gangsters, stealing her identity, and using it to accidentally incite a couple of stampedes before finally turning the murderer against a mob of gangsters, resulting in mutual destruction.

What started out as being some kind of Maltese Falcon sleuthing ended up like using a laser pointer to direct a cat into a pile of action figures.

And I had genuinely not really planned for that, at all.

But it did the job!

(Meme not technically accurate cos people totally got killed but:)

Fellow Game Masters - I know it's scary when the party go off the rails. I know. But sometimes it will actually add to the world you are making. For me, it produced another long-term NPC that I can use, and some long-term problems that I can bring back down the line. And even if it doesn't add anything - who cares? Sometimes, we're here to laugh like idiots at the dumb things we just did.

That's what the hobby is about, right?

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

A Whole New World (Of Hurt)

As I mentioned a couple blogs ago: I love the process of planning a game.

Just taking the world as it is presented to you - reading through the core book (or whatever other setting books you have to hand) and extricating the stuff that speaks to you, the stuff that you can do something with - I take a significant pleasure from that. A joy, almost.

Like, I am sure this is a similar thing that people get when the series of books they are reading or TV series they are watching breaks new ground, or shows them an interesting place or set of characters. When the clues start falling into place about who runs things, why it looks the way it does, what moves behind the scenes.

It is at this stage that I start having to ask myself questions.

Where should my characters be? Is it a place they actually want to be? What cool things can happen there? Why does this place work as a setting? How does this locale make their lives easier, or harder? What kind of people inhabit this place? What facets of society do I need to emphasise?

Usually by this point I have started to put together NPCs - I'll already have one or two based on what people have told me about their character. Now's the time to double down on that. They are in Place A, so I need a bunch of people that work with Group B, and a whole bunch of folks with Criminal Organisation C.

Now, the physical locale is important - but it's the people that make it. It's the people that your players are going to interact with, and remember. Antagonists and allies (and bemused bystanders) alike. That's why it is important that you should, not only have a whole bunch - but also kind of like them. Memories of certain NPCs will linger. NPCs like Golden Knife, the brutal Triad boss, and Cole-626, a psychic nutcase who took a liking to the bodies that one of my PCs was trying to acquire.

I mean, there was also this guy, who wasn't an NPC at all. But look at that face. Cadence, you absolute shit. (Yes he looked like Jinnai from El Hazard, the only bit of art in this or the past blog that ISN'T from the Eclipse Phase team.)

Names are important, for NPCs. I knew I was going to need a lot - so I recently put out a call asking for names, and sure, some of those names were dumb. This is the internet, after all. Some of them, however, were solid gold. A bunch of them will get used.

The names can tell people about the NPC in question, or about the setting, or about the prevalent culture. The names can have stories behind them. This being a future in which you kind of get to dictate who you are rather than having it dictated to you by external forces, a lot of folks go by nicknames.

There's BluePink for example. BluePink is an uplifted octopus - an octopus with the intelligence of an above-average human, sentience, sapience, and full rights of existence across the more civilised (less corporate) bits of the solar system. BluePink has a different full name but it is expressed using the chromatic skin that octopi have, so he has to shorten it for you poor normies that can't speak octo-chroma.

Stories start happening, right there, as you put your people together. As you draw in personalities with different agendas, different ways of seeing the world, different power levels, you will find conflicts and alliances forming naturally.

That's before you start asking yourself the big questions about plot.

The game itself offers you a big metaplot to dig into. It asks questions. It sets up significant conflicts, that your characters may well fall on one side or the other of without your input. It gives you all the tools you might need to spin out a story of political intrigue, violent revolution, total war, alien horror, creeping dread or criminal enterprise. It's a brilliantly in-depth setting like that.

That comes down to your characters, too. What do they care about? What do the players playing them care about? Does it seem like your mob of characters are primarily criminals that pay only lip service to the law? Are they mostly fun-loving anarchists that get their kicks ruining authority figures? Are they all gloomy ex-military types that drink too much? Do they have a shared love for alien artifacts and xenoarchaeology?

Now, I have my characters, or at least I have their basics. Unless any of them have last-minute changes of heart, I vaguely know the circles I think they will want to move in, and I can totally use that. None of them seem terribly opposed to each other, which is always good - you don't want to have to deal with PC conflict unless you really have to.

So now I get to immerse myself in this world, mostly crafted by the folks at Posthuman Studios, put through the lens of my own mind, flavoured with my characters and a dash of what the players at my table are bringing me. That gets to be where my brain goes for however long this game runs, and it is gonna run for a while.

This is my happy place.

And if you're not on board for this, you may wanna give me a clear berth, because guess what I am writing about for National Novel Writing Month?

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

10 Years After The Fall

So the last one was a downer - lets take things back into the realm of positive.

I love me some roleplaying games. You know this to be true, if you are a long-time reader or know me personally. What do I love about them? All sorts - but one of the things I love the most is planning the next thing. The next character, session, plot arc, campaign.

Currently I am engaged in two such campaigns.

The first is a very much back-to-basics Pathfinder game. Starting at level 1 and doing a standard dungeon run. I almost always do the more character-based or gimmicky stuff, so it's unusual for me to just roll with "you kick in the door, there's four goblins and a chest, what do". It's kind of fun though. Liberating almost.

The second one is my favourite, hands down - and it's called Eclipse Phase.

Now some of you know about this. Some of you have played it, heard me yap about it - a handful of you have played it with me before, or with other people.

I ran it for a long time - over a year, easy. Two different games involving two different groups of characters, though the player base remained essentially the same, even if one player insinuated themselves in halfway through the first run.

There's some games that you can play without really knowing the setting very well. Like, Dungeons and Dragons? As long as you know your dwarves from your elves you can muddle through - unless the campaign is specifically very political, social or character-based, you can probably get away with a bluffer's guide and what you have learned from the thousands of derivative settings you've seen bits of already.

Then there's games wherein you really, really do have to know the setting - because so much of the game depends on it.

Eclipse Phase is the second one, which is okay, because I love the setting so damn much.

Welcome to the post-apocalyptic transhuman future, wherein the near-extinction of the human race and the obliteration of life on earth has left us in a position to actually change things - sometimes, even, for the better.

It asks and answers political questions. Like: what is it that ends up killing the world? Where do we go afterwards? What do corporations do when there's no government telling them what to do? What do people do when scarcity stops existing? How does democracy work when in space? Where is humanity's home if humanity can't go back to Earth?

That's before you get onto the bigger questions, like: what threats are big enough that they actually threaten humanity's entire existence? And what do we do to stop them wiping us out?

The thing about having a setting so in-depth - the thing about having a large world that has fleshed-out politics and situations and a distinctive feel - is that when people are putting their characters together, it's easy to find them a place in the world, and thus, in the narrative.

This is the part I love, see. Putting the NPCs together. Building the bits of the world that don't already exist. Looking at the backstory of the characters I have and boosting what I am doing in those sectors, taking plot points aboard to use for my own.

The stories that can come out of it stick with you.

Okay, maybe it is because out of a lot of the folks I game with now, their first game was Eclipse Phase - but there are others who I have played it with who have been veterans at the time who have also enjoyed it. I've covered those stories before, specifically in blogs like this one about RPGs in general.

It remains, though - I think good times were had. I don't want to blow my own trumpet but I like to think that I contributed a little to that. Like, sure, it is a sci-fi horror setting, but that doesn't mean that everything that comes out of it has to be horrible.

For every moment wherein a near-immortal adrenaline junkie comes face-to-kind-of-face with an inscrutable creature that may have been his former travel companions, there's a near-farcical hallucinogenic quest from one end of Extropia to the other, resulting in nude bas-reliefs being left on the outside of the asteroid for the universe to see.

For all the awful destruction wrought by the severing of the space elevator on Mars, and the millions of casualties that resulted of it, there was the moment wherein Captain Persephone of the Lethe decided that - rather than deliberately forget - she would remember, and went back home to Mars to find out what it was she had left behind.

And for the awful horror of discovering that the planet whose ashes we are stood in up to our ankles is Earth - not in a game I ran, but in the same timeline - there is the moment wherein you turn aside the freighter moving at a sizeable percentage of the speed of light, and you miss the habitat housing millions by mere inches. Close enough that you could reach out a hand and touch it... close enough that the people on that habitat can look out, and see you, and love you with all their hearts for almost losing your nigh-immortal life to try and save their own.

That's the moments you get for a game like this. That's what makes the work worthwhile, the planning, the plotting, the inspiration for a hundred different personalities in a dozen different locales. Crafting combat scenarios like Yuen Woo-ping, assembling conspiracies like Richard Condon and nightmare sci-fi scenarios like Philip K Dick. It's what makes it worthwhile, when eleven years later, you can still talk about that time that you found an AI living in an abandoned factory in Martian orbit and realised your pilot was the one that coded it.

This isn't a sponsored blog. I just wanted to splurge my love for the game, as I await the arrival of the hard copy of the 2nd edition core rulebook - and as I plot like a crazed madman to drag my hapless players into the transhuman future of 10 years after the fall, once again.

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

The Best Of The SNES (Mana From Heaven)

Warning: nostalgia ahead.

So when I was still in school life was pretty simple. It didn't look that way but hey, I know better now. All the stuff I thought was important - well, it was important to me at the time, but in the grand scheme of things, wouldn't add up to much.

I have a lot of fond memories. Very few of them are school related. Perhaps fully half of them involve video games. I was that kind of kid. I personally had a Sega Megadrive, for a time; but as much as I may have defended it, the games that I really enjoyed were on the Super Nintendo.

Like, don't get me wrong. I got untold hours of fun out of the various Sonic games (hey, remember when the WORST one was the FIRST one?), the two Shining Force tactical RPGs, Gunstar Heroes, Rocket Knight and its sequel Sparkster, Soliel, Landstalker - it had a solid roster of titles to keep me busy.

The thing is, there were a specific set of games it didn't have; some of the best games ever made.

Like yeah, Mario Kart was groundbreaking. Super Mario World was exceptional. Super Metroid was one of the coolest games I ever played.

Really, though - mean the RPGs.

On one system, at around about the same time, you had Final Fantasy 6 (or 3), potentially one of the best Final Fantasy games ever made. Chrono Trigger, a triumph for game and narrative design and writing. Legend Of Zelda: A Link To The Past, one of my favourite Zelda games, and maybe still my favourite - I haven't played Breath Of The Wild yet. (I know, bad show, John.) As well as these three titans, you had the third of Square's trio of classic RPGs, and one of the most fondly remembered games of the era:

Secret Of Mana.

Where my people at.

The game itself is a masterclass. It looks amazing - it pops off the screen, the colour choice and pixel art so very well done, and the addition of the Mode 7 rotating semi-3D map just made it feel like it was above and beyond. The combat was tactical but fast-moving, and rewarded good reflexes as much as forethought and planning.

It was more accessible than Final Fantasy, for a beginner. The ability to get the hell out of the way when the enemy swings for you is a godsend. The plot, likewise, is less twisty. That's a good way to put it, I think. Twisty. Only having three characters to worry about made it seem simpler, too, even if managing all three of them at once was probably harder than - say - Chrono Trigger's system.

I've played it... who knows how many times. Always on a borrowed Super Nintendo, until I discovered what ROMs were... and then, years after it came out, I made a rather startling discovery.

It turned out that Secret of Mana wasn't an original - or at least, not an individual outside of an existing franchise. No, it was part of an ongoing series of games, the first of which had come out two years previously. It was the Seiken Densetsu series, but the first one had been called - get this - Final Fantasy Adventure. It was officially a spin-off of Final Fantasy, coming out the same year as Final Fantasy 4 (aka Final Fantasy 2 in the US, yep, this gets confusing). Seiken Densetsu 1 even includes various staples of the Final Fantasy series, using sprites taken directly from the original Final Fantasy game (Mystic Quest Legend here), and featuring a chocobo that one has to ride at various points.

Here's the thing. Not only was I shocked to discover the existence of a prequel for the game I adored...

I found out it had a sequel.

This sequel was called Seiken Densetsu 3, and I coveted it so desperately that I - at one point - endeavoured to learn Japanese and travel to Japan to buy a copy. Because it didn't exist outside of Japan. This was at the point wherein local copies of Chrono Trigger and Final Fantasy 6 had just absolutely spiked in price because of lack of accessibility, let alone this game, a game that had never left Japanese shores.

One day I discovered it had been codified as a game ROM. So, lacking any other way of playing this game that I desired so badly, I downloaded it on my buddy Matt's computer - and had to use a piece of software to split the ROM across three floppy discs, because this was before the days of affordable CD-writers or portable hard drives. Our entire lives were contained in 1.44 megabyte sized chunks.

I got it home. I fired it up.

I couldn't understand a damn thing because it was literally totally untranslated.

I played it anyway, and I loved it.

Two years separated these two games, take a look...

Look at the difference. It's astounding.

With six characters, each selectable as a main character and backup characters, and such an immense graphical overhaul, it was a huge improvement. The sound, too, was tweaked. The combat system was already pretty fantastic so that needed precious little adjustment, but the game included an actual day-night cycle, wherein enemies and NPCs would act differently depending on what time of day it was. There was even a day system, each day corresponding to a type of magic or element, strengthening that element on that day.

Hell, one of your main characters was a werewolf who was deadly at night.

Halfway through the nineties, here was this game, this pinnacle of the art of 2D pixel RPGs. Final Fantasy 7 was out two years later, as the Final Fantasy series took its step into 3D; Ocarina Of Time took the Zelda series the same way a year after that. It isn't a very controversial statement to imply that there wasn't a better 2D RPG released - not perhaps until the comeback of the genre currently occurring.

Access, though; access was the problem. As Super Nintendos got rarer, the games themselves became harder to find. As mentioned the prices had already spiked. I remember hearing at one point that a copy of Final Fantasy 6 was in CB Games on Union Street (callback) for about £80 - and that was in the nineties, given inflation that's almost £150 now.

That was for games that came out over here. Seiken Densetsu 3 was one of the ones that didn't. It became a unicorn - I could pine for Chrono Trigger, could dream of the day when I could by a cartridge and an old SNES to play Mario Kart again, but the Mana sequel was gone.

Throughout the years, though - the old games started coming back. Before people started shutting down the ROM sharing sites that were prolific among folks my age that grew up with 16 bit consoles, Final Fantasy 6 was released on the Playstation in 1999. A Link To The Past came to the Nintendo virtual console in the Wii era. A hard-to-get version of Chrono Trigger came out for the Playstation in 1999, but was circulated more widely for the DS in 2009, and was ported over to many mobile devices and PCs later. A mobile port of Secret Of Mana itself came out in 2009.

Seiken Densetsu 3 remained a unicorn, but spoiled with legal access to all the old RPGs that we had loved so much - and the release of the Mini Super Nintendo containing most of them - eased the swallowing of that bitter pill.

Until earlier this year I heard a rumour that someone had copyrighted the term Collection Of Mana.

Trying not to brick myself in sheer excitement, I casually ignored most of E3 2019 - I kind of hate it as a convention - but kept my ear to the ground for even a whisper of news about the unicorn maybe finally reaching our shores.

It was a week later that I got the news.

Isn't it gorgeous.

The collection of characters to the right is your three from Secret Of Mana - Randi, Primm and Popoi - and above the seed is Sumo and Fuji from Final Fantasy Adventure...and to the left, the six main characters from Seiken Densetsu 3. Angela the princess, Duran the swordsman, Hawkeye the thief, Riesz the amazon, Kevin the werewolf and Charlotte the priestess.

This means that not only does this collection contain Final Fantasy Adventure, the game that takes some Final Fantasy tropes and smashes them into a Zelda world overlay. Not only does this collection include the non-remastered non-3D Secret Of Mana - but it also includes Trials of Mana. Seiken Densetsu 3 itself. Translated and localised.

It happened. The unicorn arrived.

And that's the sad story about why a grown man saw an advert for a Switch game and had to stop himself from crying.

But I mean, if this crystalline moment of childhood happiness was condensed into a software form, and for over 24 years you couldn't have it because of ephermeral reasons - and then all of a sudden, it gets gently placed within your grasp... maybe you'd shed a tear, too.

I mean, it just goes to show, too - you give people access to a thing at a reasonable price, and even if they'd pirated or copied it previously, they will buy it.

After all, Game of Thrones still made money, right?

If you'd care to share my blog with your friends, I'd appreciate that! If you'd like to thank me in a fiscal form for entertaining you a little bit, I do have a Patreon right here, but please - no pressure. Thank you for reading, and check my social media to the right to keep in touch.

Adventures In Albums

So you know that I like my music and I like my tabletop roleplaying games, right?

Well I got asked a very interesting question by my buddy the other day:

(Pardon the rubbish screenshot.)

And my response, at first, was just one word:

Yes.

But then I really got thinking about it.

See, concept albums are cheating, sort of. Like Dream Theater's "The Astonishing" and Nine Inch Nails' "Year Zero" (the latter is only vaguely a concept album, but concept enough). They already have a story, a shared world, a contiguous thematic running through every song. They already proceed at pace through a narrative. Likewise Dream Theater's "Metropolis Pt2: Scenes From A Memory," itself a sequel to a song on a previous album - and likewise a large swathe of Coheed & Cambria's output, Rush's "2112", Daft Punk's "Discovery", Fear Factory's "Demanufacture". All of these albums tell a story, and putting together a roleplaying campaign from an existing story isn't all that challenging.

Of course, you do come across the difficulties in terms of wanting the campaign to be accepting of player choice - you don't want to railroad them too hard, because that gets pretty tedious. Take it from a player who has been railroaded a fair amount. You end up either slumping into inactivity just to let the game play out its course, or you fight desperately against the rails - neither of which are ideal.

So maybe it is easier to take an album that doesn't already have a story, and tie the disparate songs there into a singular narrative befitting a campaign.

Now, you'd have to pick a game based on the album, too. If you primarily play Dungeons & Dragons, then putting together an album based on the bleak audio soundscape of Burial is going to be difficult. Likewise, playing a gritty game of Cyberpunk 2020 to the wizard-based brilliance of Uriah Heep is going to be tonally awkward.

You also want an album that has sufficient breadth for a variety of scenarios to occur. I mentioned Burial? Well if you want your campaign to have a victory parade or any kind of fanfare or ceremony, then you are not going to find it in Burial's back catalogue. That's not a criticism. I love a bit of Burial. I just know the sounds he creates.

So I mean, there's a way to put this theory to test - it's actually doing it.

Let's hammer it down. Let's pick an album.

And I pick an absolute stomper, that I have loved since the first time I heard a single track from it. The record that brought Metallica into the limelight, that taught James Hetfield how to sing and reminded the world that metal existed. The eponymous album, Metallica, also known as The Black Album.

What game goes with this particular epic?

Well with songs like Of Wolf And Man, The God That Failed and Holier Than Thou, some kind of setting with monsters and religion is necessary, but beyond that - we have an open playing field. So let's go with D&D or Pathfinder. (My folks tend to play Pathfinder but I know D&D has a big PR campaign right now.)

We start with, not a setup of the locale or anything, but dreams - and every single one of the player characters is having an awful nightmare. Truly awful. None of this "you're naked in class" bullshit. No. Truly awful. (Enter Sandman)

The characters wake up. It's been the third straight week of awful nightmares in this city, and things are getting desperate. Some people are doing terrible things just for relief, just to get some sleep - things that the local Theocracy simply can't abide, so the adventurers are tasked with putting an end to a particularly troubling incident wherein a man claims the nightmares are possessing him. (Sad But True)

Then a traveller comes into the town. They approach the priesthood of the Theocracy at the same time as the party are being debriefed about the man's reported possession. The wanderer claims that she knows why everyone is having nightmares, and that there is an evil that needs to be dealt with. The Theocracy, of course, throws this out as nonsense - though they clearly know something. (Holier Than Thou)

The party is dismissed. So is the stranger. That night, the stranger visits them and tells them to leave. The people in this town won't survive the predation of the creatures feasting on their nightmares. They are too tied up in their hollow Theocracy and their little lives. They all retire for the night, probably after some philosophical or moralistic banter - and in the morning, the stranger is dead in their bed. And the party are arrested for the crime of his murder. Cast out of the town in banishment. (The Unforgiven)

So they leave. They have to travel a long way, because the town is way out in the desert - it's a long way to the nearest settlement that they haven't been banished from. In this time they run into some evil creatures that attack them - though these creatures are wide-eyed and painfully slender, obviously having not rested or fed properly in a while. (Wherever I May Roam)

The adventurers reach the next settlement - which is militarising. Mercenaries roll in every day, following the crusaders that arrived last week. After some potential initial aggression, the party becomes aware that the crusaders are here to purge whatever evil is giving the entire continent nightmares - an evil located in the town they just left. If they give away where they just came from, they get asked a lot of questions, but it becomes obvious - soon, the crusaders are marching to war. (Don't Tread On Me)

The adventurers are offered... well, a fairly exorbitant sum to march with the crusaders - and if that doesn't entice them, then maybe there can be other ways to convince them to go along. They are about to depart when the town is attacked - by demons, led by a half-demonic werewolf whose bearing and manner is strangely familiar. It is during the battle that the party are made to face their own worst nightmares, brought back from the very beginning session. They have to fight their deepest fears made flesh. (Through The Never)

When the dust clears, many of the crusaders - and mercenaries, and innocent townsfolk - are dead. It is time to lick wounds, count cost, and really look one's selves in the eye. Decide what they want to do. Decide if they can let this evil continue. Hopefully - they cannot. So they saddle up with the remaining crusaders to go put an end to this nightmare menace. (Nothing Else Matters)

It is partway to the quiescent town that the campaign started in that they are ambushed, yet again, by the werewolf - and during the ensuing fight, in which he singles out the party, he brags that his master cannot be stopped. The prophecy is nigh at hand and the entirety of (insert name of region here) will drown in their own nightmares, and his lord will come forth and feast on them! It was so easy for him to conceal himself in this town! To adopt the mantle of a pious priest, to turn the other priests to his way of thinking! So easy for such an alpha predator! ...the party kill him, obviously. (Of Wolf And Man)

Upon reaching the town again, they find it closed for business. Significant numbers of the townsfolk are missing, or malnourished and lethargic. The priests of the Theocracy wander the streets, wailing in despair and yelling snatched fragments of their holy texts. They speak of the thing that lurks in the darkness of their chapel now, of how they cannot sleep because they know it feeds from their nightmares. Some are crazed enough to attack the party - they have lost their faith, they have seen the promises of their god (delivered through the high priest of the Theocracy, now a dead werewolf) come to nothing, they have lost everything. (The God That Failed)

There it is - the temple. The party has the chance to rest up before they make entry. Upon kicking in the doors they find themselves facing down some minor demons, but their real enemy is the crushing waves of negative feeling flooding the chapel. Anguish, hopelessness, hatred, fury, despair, misery. That's the worst thing - crushing misery. It makes what should be an easy fight that much harder, as they fight their way into the catacombs. (My Friend Of Misery)

The final battle looms. The party enter the catacombs - and find a shadow. Nothing but a shadow, that welcomes them with waves of nausea, self-loathing, more misery. As they reel against this assault they notice the shadow split into multiple shapes, with glowing red eyes, forming - yes, it's the trope - copies of the party themselves. The DM should have, by this point, worked out their standard tactics. Turn their own tactics against them and see if they can work out how to defeat themselves! (The Struggle Within)

If they lose, then the shadow absorbs them... and moves on to absorbing all of (insert name of region here). But if they succeed - then a true evil has been defeated. A dark force responsible for nothing but misery and anguish. And as the town and the crusaders alike herald the party as heroes, everyone knows they are going to get some sleep soon.

And there you have it. A campaign from an album.

That was kinda fun, actually.

So, in reply, Pat: yes, yes you absolutely could.

The Bumper RPG Audience Participation Post

Soooo I game a lot.

Yes, video games, but the thing I really enjoy doing - my Thing, as it were - is roleplaying games. I've made plenty of posts in the past on the topic, so you could probably work this out about me.

Well, I decided to go all in today. I asked for questions, comments and anecdotes on the topic, and you didn't disappoint.

I will ALSO be providing links to some cool stuff - youtubers who do a great job of teaching on the topic, podcasts and actual-play posts. All put together either by people who are my friends or people I respect.

So with no further ado, and names removed to protect the innocent, we'll begin with the questions.

Does LARP also count? ;) - ...yes, I used to (and still in a limited fashion do) LARP. Though not the spongy-sword type. My knees just aren't up to it any more...

Which character that you've played/encountered do you most wish was real? - Well there's a few I've played that I am very glad were NOT real, and even more that I've encountered - Rotsnik the Murder Goblin being one of them. But in terms of who I most wish WAS real, hmm. Out of characters I have played I would say that Perdix, the cheeky and charming Fate/Time Mage, would be a true blessing to the world if he really existed. Out of other people's characters that I have encountered, that's a hard choice - but Brayla, a certain Alchemist of devil-may-care attitude and incredible skill, would be a brilliant person to meet at a pub.

Do you ever wish you'd taken the blue pill? - Never. I've had so many good times, learned so many useful skills and made so many good friends through the hobby that imagining my life without it is just impossible.

Do you take a little something of yourself into your characters? Or do you like to completely escape? - Depends on the character. Yonks ago I did a thing about traits I like seeing in RPG characters, and a couple of them are traits I think I have. I think it's a really hard thing to make a character that is nothing like you, too. Like, at the character sheet stage you can do it - but when it comes down to actually playing that character and judging what they would do in a situation, removing yourself from that decision-making process is really hard. It can be kind of liberating to play a character that is deliberately very unlike yourself, though. I mean, my Rogue Trader captain was a million miles away from me and he was one of my most enjoyable plays.

What is the most memorable encounter you have played through, and one that you have ran in a game? - Hah, okay. There's a few of these. There was the fight against a group of evil Magi who were trying to hatch a dragon egg at Glastonbury festival, while AC/DC played Thunderstruck. There was the fight wherein we had to kill our friend Patrick (who was the villain in his own story) in Carisbrooke Castle. There was the moment when myself and the spell-slinger did a dungeon backwards, and the follow-up when the DM of that game found the perfect opportunity to do the same thing in a totally different scenario. There was the time that we as an evil party ambushed a nominally good party, and slaughtered them, and then they reversed time with a Wish and ambushed US instead and made my flying mount vanish from underneath me and I fell a hundred and fifty feet to the deck... in terms of encounters that I've run myself, though. I remember someone meeting an alien entity when I ran Eclipse Phase - coming face to face with the creature (which had no facial features) and freezing... then it just turned and moved away. I was pleased with how that went. That and wrecking Mars with a space elevator cable and giving my party a minor phobia of the intro of a Thrice song.

If you could DM for a group of famous people, who would you choose for your group? - I know this one. Vin Diesel, The Rock, Wil Wheaton, Felicia Day and Kevin Smith. Usually I prefer to run for four but I am sure I can stretch to five with a mob like this. (The best thing is they all game and I know they do.)

Did you ever have a transition from playing a game "games master" to become story teller? Most of the games I've played with you running the story seems forefront. - I have done a blog about this as well, kinda. It just so happened that the vast majority of my formative RPG time happened in a period and with groups that primarily played games that were heavy on the narrative. World of Darkness specifically calls the person that is running the game the Storyteller, for that precise reason. I just like there to be a plot, you know? And I've never been the kind of gamer that finds the plot gets in the way of rolling dice and killing dudes. Just never happened. So I run the kind of games I like to play in.

Are there any systems or settings which appeal to you but you haven't yet played or run? (pretty open I know but legit curious 😅) - OH yeah. Feng Shui, Tales From The Loop, Over The Edge, Nobilis, Continuum. I've played Mechwarrior but only once and I've love to play it again. Shadowrun's more recent editions. Cyberpunk. Never played Cyberpunk, would love to. Numenera. Infinity. Quite a few!

Are there any things you've seen in media that you've wanted to(or have) introduced in your games? Possibly a bit of a cheat given that they're based on DnD but I loved the "Individual Magical Effect" from Goblins comic, and the portrayal/explanations for both alignment and attempted redemption in Order of the Stick. - Oh a lot of things. The magical effects from Goblins is one I actually use. The criminal underworld presented in John Wick is something I am planning to use at a later date. The notion of the Doomsday Clock is something I use in my games, but haven't had to actually make it tick for a long time.

To explain - the Doomsday Clock is something you can have when you have a group of players that you feel you may have to keep in line. If you feel they are acting out, or getting distracted, or generally being doofy beyond your capacity to deal, you add a tick to the Doomsday Clock. When it has ticked to thirteen - a Bad Thing happens. It can be useful less as a stick to beat your party with but more as a reminder that time at the table is limited and we want to make it a good time - and you can totally use it as an excuse to bring in that bad guy that you've wanted to use in the past three campaigns!

Have you ever TPK'd a party or been in one? And if not, why not! - I've been in more than one. My first real D&D game. We found a baby dragon. Then the mama found us. Then there was one in Vampire, wherein the car crashed and the world ended when we attacked the Prince. The last time I played Paranoia it was a TPK, but I think that has to happen. In truth, I don't think I've ever actually run a TPK. I don't often set up a scenario in which all my players will DEFINITELY die, there's almost always a way to live, and my players are often smart people. In fact the one game I set up and ran at Nine Worlds con in 2015 that was designed for my players to die in a dungeon - for purpose of having another party finding the dungeon half-completed later - the party actually succeeded, against all odds, and made it out alive. Maybe I'm just soft on my players, I just don't like killing PCs unless they have earned that bullet.

What the longest running game you've been in? - In terms of tabletop, that would be the "Quantum Leap" Pathfinder game, in which we ran six (it ended up being about eleven) different game modules, from Level 1, to Level 20 Mythic 10. And in each scenario we would appear in the world where we were meant to be, in new bodies (or sometimes old bodies), and do the job, before being snatched away by the powers that be. That ran for at least a year and a half, maybe two years, and it averaged out to once every two weeks. If we're talking online I've been RPing a single constant game world with my girlfriend since about 2012.

Whats the longest single continuous session you've done? - Hard to say. I know that back when we used to play Dark Ages Vampire and such there were some all-day sessions. Though I think the actual longest has to be the Epic Game Weekend in Colchester, wherein we put in two solid ten-hour days of RP back to back. Slightly ruined by drama but that was the game in which my lvl36 Cleric of Hades was blasted off his Nightmare and had the good grace to look surprised and dismayed before plummeting to the ground. (He lived.)

What do you do when a party does something completely unprecedented and you've not prepared for that scenario? - The last time this happened (and I can remember the last time this happened) I laughed helplessly for a solid thirty seconds, then asked for five minutes so I could go plan out what was going to happen next. Your players will NEVER think badly of you for doing this, in fact they will take the time to crow and preen about how they were able to throw a googly past God. They should take pride in the fact that they've sideswiped you so hard.

Are there any particular setting or systems you just won't play in? - System AND setting? MERPS - Middle Earth Role Playing System. The fucking table game. Yawn. Uh. I don't find Paranoia that fun, but I can be convinced. There's a lot of systems I would rather not play but would give a shot to anyway, precious few that are Hard No systems. The ways you can guarantee me not wanting to play the game: 1) random generic medieval fantasy boredom, 2) modern world coffee shop roleplay without any differentiating factor from a soap opera, and 3) a rule system so loose and fluffy that it is basically just seven friendly thoughts printed on candy floss.

How hard is it to keep track of the math and modifiers during high level games? - It can get pretty difficult, depending on the game one is playing in, the class of character one is playing, etc. Playing a Level 20 Mythic 10 Cleric of the Goddess of Death was actually relatively easy once I'd done all the maths to work out precisely how many dice I rolled to achieve certain things. But that's the benefit of planning things out beforehand. There is no shame in having a cheat sheet. Attacks with and without power attack, against your chosen foe, using different weapons - work it all out ahead of time, maybe with the player at the table that really enjoys maths (me), and then you aren't stuck in a Number-Based Anxiety Loop when asked to roll to hit the Aboleth Goddess later.

What do you think people can gain from roleplaying? Not any one specific system or game but generally. - Lots of things. Empathy for one thing - pretending to be someone else can make you sensitive to their needs and the way in which they see the world, which can lead to understanding that other people are different but still worthy of care and attention. Problem-solving and teamwork are two gimmies, too. You take a bunch of office folks on a team-building weekend and a table full of gamers and give them the same challenge - using these materials to cross this river then climb this wall - and I guarantee you that the gamers will work out how it is done before the team-building folks even agree on who is in charge. Mathematic competency is helped by working with numbers constantly and there being a reward for making those numbers work. Descriptiveness, imagination, communication, social skills - all things improved by regular guided RP. I think schools should offer it as an after-school or lunchtime club activity, advertise it heavily and even reward those particularly devoted to it. It can offer so much.

Why is it more popular with boys/men? - I don't actually know, but I could probably lay the blame for that at the feet of the kind of culture that embraced D&D back in the eighties. As many jokes were made about girls not being allowed at the table as were made about D&D players being afraid of sunlight and not washing. I think, though, these days it is a lot more evenly split - and I know this is only anecdotal evidence from one perspective but I think over half of the people who contributed questions and anecdotes to this blog weren't male. So who knows? I think they should be for everybody.

How do you balance the needs of players who prefer narrative vs those that are all about the conflict/battle bits? - Difficult, but - as a player grows and gets better at gaming in general, they start to want to expand their horizons more. So no combat monkey will be a combat monkey forever. Usually. It's not always difficult to include narrative AND conflict, though. Sometimes that conflict can drive the narrative and inform it. Sometimes the war you are fighting is the story that you are following. In the end, though, it can be very rewarding to play a character who is good at one thing that is stuck in a situation where doing that thing isn't the solution. I particularly enjoy playing characters who are very combative who are put in scenarios that simply can't be solved by fighting. It's a challenge - it lets me get my beak wet in terms of roleplaying characters put in situations that aren't their standard fare. Though in the end, if you have a player who wants to quit the game because they only want to do A and there's too much B - that's a conversation to have. Everyone wants to have a good time at the table, and being constantly dragged away from the situation that you want to be in is no fun, but always getting what you want is no fun either.

I think another interesting one is how to control a setting if the actions of one player is stressing out another... - So that's not so much a setting issue as it is a party issue. I know this has happened in games I have played in and run, wherein one player goes full kamikaze and is intent on taking everyone else with them, or gets bored and goes off and does something that is widely accepted as being a Bad Idea. The thing with being a group of four imaginative people with different characters and abilities is that disagreements as to how to handle something often happens, especially if those characters have different morality systems. It's for this reason that I don't often run games in which people play evil characters, not because it stops folks disagreeing, but because a good character will try and reason with their wayward team-mate, whereas an evil character may well just murder or cripple them. If it is a question of someone doing something deliberately at the table that really stresses someone else out, then that's a thing that needs to be talked about out of game. Again, we're all here for a good time, not to be slaved to someone else's power fantasy - and if we can't come to an agreement on how not to fuck with each other, then someone has to step away.

Maps or no maps? - Depends on the game and the needs of the players. A dungeon dive without a map is difficult, and a game wherein knowing the facing and positioning of the enemy in a combat situation is important can usually be benefited by having a map. I tend to like running minds-eye though, because that way we can get into fun descriptiveness of kung fu style wire stunts and how we do things in relation to our opposition, rather than desperately trying to work out how to move those last three feet so you can get a +2 on your attack roll.

Dice or LARP? - I prefer dice, if only for fact that I am far less physically capable than 99% of the characters I would end up playing at a LARP. Not just in terms of beating snot out of people with boffer weapons but in terms of being able to stand up for more than ten minutes without being in significant pain.

From questions, we move onto anecdotes and contributions.

I contribute this, just for shits and grins - This comic is great, you oughta read it.

My dice bag is a snake! I only have one set of dice, tho, lol - Your dice bag is adorable and I love it. See below.

The only new RPG thing I’ve done recently is write an actual play for the first time. If you could mention it for me I’d be grateful. At nearly 8000 words of effort now I would love to have some more readers! - Which I will gladly do. The game is SLA Industries, something I have played and enjoyed myself, purely on the basis of there being a weapon called a Boom Hammer. A sledgehammer with a socket for a shotgun shell and a pressure plate that sets it off when you hit someone with it. You can find the AP right over here. Go look, folks. Follow with me the adventures of ACU Puncture limited.

How about the time I spent months setting up a transition to 2E on exalted online and had to go to a funeral and when I got back you and the rest of the team completed the transition and sanctioning with 0 problems. - I'm gonna lay that at the feet of your superb planning, because I don't remember having a lot to do with it. In terms of online RP, though, it's always good to have a reliable team under you in a chat environment. Nothing worse than constantly thinking you have to check up on the people allegedly meant to be helping you out.

In one of my first games (with my brother's friends) the DM had set up a big mystery for us to solve. I still don't know all the specifics, because it became one of those games where no one could get time to get together after the initial meeting, BUT! We were interrogating some low-level minion and getting nowhere when I looked at my spell list, leaned over to show it to my brother, and asked 'I can cast this, right?'. MY brother said 'yes' so I said 'I cast Zone of Truth!' The DM just about flipped the table, and we found out info that should have taken us several sessions right then not 5 min after we started. (and I'm not making this up cause of that famous DnD game thing, this really happened) - I love shit like this. It's what we live for. In fairness, though - the DM should know that the spell Zone Of Truth exists. Like, it would be pointless me planning on something being a secret if one of you can literally just pluck the idea out of my NPC's brain. Like, why wouldn't I use the tools in my toolbox to achieve my goals? When you have to get REALLY clever is when you want information to be kept secret but the party have all sorts of ways of finding it out - how to increase mystery while you have spellcasters that can scry on distant locations and know if the people they are questioning are telling the truth. That'll work out your writing muscles a bit. It takes the greater person to hold their hands up and admit that the party got around their little scam, though. Like you know you are a good DM when the party sees clean through your bullshit smokescreen and hits the nail on the head, and you can just admit that they did it and move on with the game.

Here's a good one. Back when I LARPed V:tM and W:tA, we used to congregate in the basement of the WTC. one night, cops had been called about some rowdy dude in the other tower - but they zeroed in on us... We all started getting up to leave, except the dude who was supposed to be "dead" at that moment... we had to spend 20 mins explaining to the cops that he was just unwilling to break character, and then four dudes hadda carry him out XD - When we LARP'd vampire, one of the folks that showed up to the game brought along a realistic prop of their character's primary armament. This ended up being a problem, because their primary armament ended up being an MP5 with a laser sight. We're out in this park at like 10pm and these two police walk past, and I have this perfectly framed view of the guy in question arguing with someone else, while these two coppers clock the fact that he has what looks like a machine gun strapped to his chest... this was post-9/11 too.

I ran logistics for our LARP back 5 years or so ago. A friend of mine, who had been staffing, decided to play an event and call in all his backlogged production. I had to print up tags for 200 in-game "intoxicants". Took forever to get them all printed and cut, stamped and signed as legit. I deliver them, he goes into game and, within about 20 minutes, trades every single one of them to an NPC for in-game "drugs". >.< I was so freakin' mad. They then spent the rest of the event addicted to the in-game drugs and stealing everything that wasn't nailed down to fence for more drug money. I was actually in-game for that event, too, and we spent the entire event hiding every single bit of loot we acquired because they kept stealing everything. - Ugh. See, this is obnoxious. The idea of making someone put in the at-home work to make this scenario pan out... like, the amount of effort put in doesn't come close to equal to the payoff. I'd be mad too.

I would like to follow this little lot with a selection of links, to things that I think my gaming people will find good.

I'll start with a podcast that I really enjoy - Cosmic Crit. It's a Starfinder podcast, and Starfinder is one of the games I am really into at the moment. The players are neat people, the stories make me chuckle, and it's generally a good listen.

I'd be remiss if I didn't talk about The Adventure Zone. It's longer, so there's more of a backlog to catch up on, but it's worth it. The McElroys are entertaining at the worst of times, and in this they are on fine form.

There's some folks on YouTube that deserve a look, too.

Satine Phoenix is involved in gaming on Twitch and has a lot of guests that are well worth a listen to. Also those ELF EARS I never thought I'd like something elf related but ELF EARS

Seth Skorkowsky will provide you with advice and anecdotes in his inimitable style. He's a funny guy who knows what he is doing.

Matthew Colville is someone I've only come into contact with relatively recently, but his three videos about politics are essential viewing for budding DMs.

And there you have it. One bumper crop of reader-contributed RPG content. Who'da thunk? It turned out pretty good. This is a topic I can hold forth about for aeons, so I'd best not dwell. Maybe once a month I can turn this blog into Dungeon Corner or something. I dunno.

If you made it this far, thank you for reading - if you contributed, thank you for your contribution - and if you're gaming this weekend, may the crits be ever in your favour!

Putzing With The Plot

Dungeon Crawl.

The very words make my SKIN crawl. They're just...boring. Just. Boring. Check for traps, pick the lock, open the door, kill the monsters, solve the puzzle, rinse, repeat.

Of course, they can be made more interesting. Making the dungeon make sense, for instance. Why have just a random coagulation of caves and junk when this place could be a sprawling catacomb for the thousand generations of a noble family's dead? A literal hidden fortress, carved out of the back of a cave by orcs? The basement of the tower of a Dark Lord (tm) that remained even after the tower was obliterated by the Chosen Ones (tm)?

My first RPG experience was Heroquest. From that came Advanced Heroquest, then a brief stint at D&D, before I fell into the pitch blackness of the World of Darkness. You find a dungeon in WoD, you are probably about to learn a lot about the person who owns it, and not necessarily the kind of stuff you can bring up at the dinner table.

WoD became my RP mainstay for years. Absolute years. I just stopped playing the kind of game where you'd grab a sword and yomp off into the dark to kill a big bad. It was all about shades of grey and narrative and the motivations and struggles of the individual.

Then along came Eclipse Phase, which - with its posthuman technology and its potential for absolute existential horror - provided a whole plethora of opportunities for doing something else. Something new. Here's a system where you can do both. You can worry all about the Tharsis League's most recent push toward industrial action on Mars, while also kicking in the doors of an exhuman terror cell to clean house.

I like it when a book messes with a standard narrative - I like it when a stereotype is used in an interesting way or the expectations of the reader are used against them. I love it when a movie does this, too. Arrival is a killer example. It takes a viewer's assumption and uses it to inspire.

So why wouldn't I like doing it in an RPG?

The thing I did most recently in Pathfinder...well, let's maybe not give away too many details. The players might be reading this after all. But suffice to say, a not-insignificant number of individuals the world over have lost their memory and have no idea why - and that number includes some of my players.

Because why not? I don't just want to run a number-crunch where we work out how many times you can roll to disarm traps before you fail one and lose some HP. I want my players to think. I want my players to have to wonder about if this is really the way their characters - specifically their characters with the problems and limitations that they are currently suffering from - would solve this problem. What they would assume to be the right path. How they would deal with the notion that, just maybe, three weeks ago, they didn't feel the same as they do now.

I get too invested in character. I love playing a character. I get the feeling that there's some RPGs that are more geared toward being your character, playing them and engaging with them (and through them the rest of the group), than others.

So I like putting folks in places where they can explore that. Where they can decide what they think is the best or right way forward. Chances for them to talk to each other and the denizens of the world we're making.

Generally taking the good old-fashioned narrative and turning it on its head can be good for that.

Character Characteristics

So the world is truly awful right now, and terrible things have happened to good people, and some terrible people haven't suffered any consequences. Puerto Rico has been demolished, and the US citizens there aren't getting the support they deserve because, frankly, the administration is racist. Shit is hitting fan in a big way.

I don't know if I have anything to say about that, that hasn't been said. Climate change is real, support and protect people even if they're a different colour to you, and stop being such pricks to each other.

So instead, rather than sink into the dark place of seething at the evil and inaction of others, I am going to take my brain for a walk into the world of role-playing games - a favourite hobby of mine.

Let me ask you this: is there a group of people you know so well, that you can predict how they will react to most situations with a high degree of accuracy?

If you've gamed for a while, with a similar group of people - like maybe three or four gaming groups, or say ten or so people that are in various games you are also in - then you may notice that people have habits with their characters. I know I have blogged before about the traits I like to see in characters, especially my own. Sometimes, though - people have traits that they don't even necessarily recognise in themselves.

Like for example one of the guys I have known since I was a wee bab - he has a series of traits that are solid enough to warrant remark if they aren't adhered to:

1) The character must be a survivor, above all else.
2) The character should be able to make a pit, hole or trap of some kind, rather than engage directly.
2.5) The character might have a follow-up trick that makes that pit, hole or trap deadly.

Further musing on this revealed that it isn't just him that has stuff like this. I am not gonna mention names - hell, the people reading this might know who they are - but still.

Another player has a total lack of emotional connectivity to the character, or anyone that character really interacts with. They also have a habit of getting bored, and either escalating the situation exponentially, or sitting it out.

Yet another usually ends up playing a Viking. Whatever character they are playing, they manage to become a Viking - and generally have the same problem-solving attitude.

In a similar mould, another player always appreciates a good big guy. Not always - this has changed recently - but the big guy with the big gun or the big axe is a solid fan favourite.

We all know the player that wants to talk before they fight, and that's a good thing to do. The same player also has a knack of working out a way around actually engaging a situation as expected, instead taking a side route or defeating a challenge via left-field methods.

A particular chap has three character traits nearly omnipresent in their characterisation - sarcasm, a noir aesthetic, and a willingness to try almost anything. Usually accompanied by a blink, a head wobble, and the word "Sure".

Everyone also knows the one with the detailed backstory. Family, special things that they do, a long list of traits relevant to the place their character is from. This doesn't always necessarily translate into something useful in a fight or a conundrum, mind.

One guy I know always plays a Dwarf, another always plays an Elf, regardless of what their actual characters are.

One person in particular has a tendency for their characters to have vices that they indulge in at any opportunity - not to a disruptive level, nor an unrealistic one. They are just particularly venal. They always cleave strongly to a particular theme, too, which changes from character to character, and may not have much to do with their class or type.

Another is deceptive. Like at every opportunity. Wheedling and conniving, even if there's not necessarily anything to be gained from doing so.

Do you see yourself in any of these particular traits? Do you see a weird, potentially embarrassing list of RPG quirks that I display when we game together? Pop a comment down below.

Something with depth, next week. I promise. I just needed to get out something less grim.

RP Characters - What Makes Us Tick

While discussing the origins of various RP characters with someone not so long ago, I did a mental head-count of the haracters I played, and came to a few realisations.

There are certain character traits that I seem to fall back on, a hell of a lot. Some of them are personal standards, some of them are quirks, but they're all things that recur in my characters - and I decided to, for fun, list them.

I like playing characters that make things. Sculptors, mechanics, swordsmiths, coders, magic item artificers, tattoo artists - the idea of a character making something strongly appeals, if only because I value and respect the ethos that goes into it.

I like playing characters that are competent combatants. From raw-boned two-fisted gutsy brawler to full-blown spec ops tactical, sword master to sniper, swords-at-dawn to knife-in-the-back. Even if the character isn't a designated ass-beater, I still like to know that if necessary, they can beat ass.

I like playing characters with strong convictions. Someone that believes in something - whatever that something may be. A total belief in a god or cause, or a moral compass so strong it overcomes all doubt. The real world often makes such a thing difficult, but not in RP-land.

I like playing characters that defy stereotype. Hackers that aren't teenage wunderkinds, assassins that are fairly sociable, fighters that aren't walking tanks. Stereotypes exist for a reason - I just get a twisted kind of joy out of deliberately bucking a trend.

I like playing characters that are smarter than the average bear. It's hard to simulate intelligence above and beyond your own - but at times it is harder to play someone dumb as a post. Especially if the character isn't one that particularly calls for high intellect.

I like playing characters with engaging backstory. Especially if I can tie that into another character's story. Making throwaways isn't something I've ever enjoyed doing, and I'd rather concieve a bio that someone never uses, than have a PC with no history

I like playing characters that are musical. Not necessarily musicians in their own right, but certainly with an appreciation for it. This mght be simply because I find it hard to play someone that doesn't love or enjoy muic, but hey, it still counts.

I like playing characters wth personality. I want someone else to be able to describe them without mentioning physical description, job, class and name. The age-old character test. So when someone else says "...but that's not like them," I get a warm fuzzy feeling.

I like characters wth interesting names. Minor, yes. But it's true. Nicknames, double-barreled names, titles, obscure meanings - a name says a lot about a character. Sometimes it says a lot about the character that isn't even true, which can be fun in and of itself.

I like playing characters with weaknesses and flaws. A character without flaws, be they hero or villain, is boring - and sometimes a charater' flaws and strengths can come together to make them something greater than the sum of their parts.

Following this I decided to list the hit parade of some of the characters I've played in the past, and score them on the traits previously mentioned - if they display a trait, they get a point, score from 1-10. I'll also list what game system they are from and what they were.

Crowbar (Eclipse Phase, combat engineer / soldier) - 10/10!
Canny Hare (Exalted, Night-caste thief / courier) - 9/10
Blazing Hammer (Exalted, Dawn-caste swordsmith) - 9/10
Corbin Anyson (Pathfinder, Human Rogue) - 8/10
Lady Elysian Kore (Pathfinder, Human Paladin) - 8/10
Rayze (Pathfinder, Human Fighter) - 8/10
Hakim al'Sham (Pathfinder, Human Cleric) - 10/10!
Rotsnik (Pathfinder, psychopathic goblin) - 5/10 (well he IS a goblin.)
Grimm Redmayne (Pathfinder, Dwarf Fighter) - 8/10
Hunter Arlington (Scion, Son of Hachiman) - 8/10
Callum Jameson (Scion, Son of The Dagda) - 9/10
Arthur (Mage, Moros Arrow) - 8/10
Ihsan (Mage, Acanthus Mysterium) - 9/10
Perdix (Mage, Acanthus Free Council) - 9/10

There's more of course. But these first examples really impressed on me just how similar I make my characters.

Are they all the same? Far from it. Those who've played with them will probably attest to that - but it's the similarities that make me think, and make me wonder if there's a reason why I like playing these characters so much.

Maybe they are traits I see in myself, or wish I could see in myself. Maybe they are values I see in people I respect or care about. Maybe when I make a character, I end up making a character I want to be, want to look up to.

It's hard to say. But it's something to think about, at least.

Thoughts? Comments? Any interesting traits that are common in your own characters? I'd love to know.