#RPGaDay2018: Day 11 - Wildest Character Name

One of the things I love about Exalted is the character names. Bells is very good at these: Cathak Kito "Resplendent Blade Resonating Eternal" and "Quiver of Arrows Tipped with the Sun" (which is actually short for something even longer); I'm less so: Cathak Taji "Dawn's Dancing Butterfly" and Amaryllis "Blazing Shield of the Sun".

It turns out, I'm not particularly one for 'wild' names. I like Kismet as a name: it suited the character (a wild, bipolar young woman who'd grown up in the Dockyard, learning from books with no concept of which were fact and which fiction, and little regard for the lives of others - you can read more about her here).

I think the 'wildest' name has to be my werewolf, Plays in Shadows. A homid, she was born and raised on a hippie commune as "Starlight Moonbeam Acorn Rainbow", which I think shows why she generally went by her Garou name!

Taking part? Share a link to your response below!

RPGaDay Days 30 and 31

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Day Thirty – Rarest RPG Owned

It’s not rare per se, but I don’t know anyone else who owns Abney Park’s Airship Pirates. It looks so shiny and pretty and I really want to play!

Day Thirty One – Favourite RPG of All Time

Ooooh, this is a hard one. Let’s face it, I am loving the Pathfinder campaign I’m in, but it’s the campaign rather than the game. And that’s true of many games – the game, the GM, the players are more important in making something enjoyable than the system.

That said, I think the old World of Darkness Werewolf is probably my favourite. There are certain people I wouldn’t play it with because I think their style would distress me because it’s not how I picture the game, but the game I played at uni was amazing.

So, can I explain why I love it? For a start, it’s a game where I get to role handfuls of dice at a time, which is always nice. It’s a game in which you are very powerful – again, something I enjoy. I need that escapism sometimes (it’s why I’m loving Aberrant – to be so powerful. It’s fun and freeing).

I think maybe because it’s a game that encourages teamwork. A werewolf pack has to work together, to defend each other’s weaknesses and support each other’s strengths. I don’t know many other games where that feels as important. And I’m not saying I need it in a game, either – sometimes a bit of inter-party conflict or mistrust can be fun (I love Vampire, too).

A lot of my love for it is down to the amazing game I was in at uni, with my lovely Starlight. Playing a character you can really get into helps. It was a wonderful story, very intense. That helps too. The other characters were fun and interesting and complimentary. We worked well together.

The background and fluff also catches my imagination – I’d love to play with the other changeling breeds. I want all the supplements and books and a few weeks to just curl up with the Puss and enjoy them.

So that’s it then. 10 days late, but I’ve finished. I’ve really enjoyed the challenge and having some structure to write to. Look forward to taking part on time next year.

With thanks to Autocratik. 

RPGaDay Days 20 to 23

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Day Twenty – Will Still Play in 20 Years

Really difficult question, because it isn’t just about the games I love but about what the people around me want to play (hence my distinct lack of World of Darkness since uni :( ). Which probably means something D&D based, even though I’m not the biggest fan (I am loving Pathfinder but that’s down to the campaign; there are other systems and settings I prefer).

Hopefully, though, periodic Deadlands, something Cyberpunk’y (such as ShadowRun or Cyberpunk), something supernaturalish (like World of Darkness or Buffy). And also homebrew systems and settings.

Day Twenty One – Favourite Licenced RPG

I’ve played two – Buffy and Firefly (there’s a slight theme here…). I loved both, although I think Buffy was a simpler system (that could just be because I joined a pre-existing game so they’d had time to get their heads around any kinks or quirks, whereas I was in the pilot Firefly game with a brand new book so none of us knew how it worked until we started).

In a similar vein (although, as a homebrew, not strictly a licenced RPG), I did love the game my friend ran based on Final Fantasy 10.

Day Twenty Two – Best Second Hand RPG Purchase

Thank gods for Ebay! A lot of my books (that haven’t been inherited or donated by way of permanent loan) have come to me from Ebay. My favourite? Hmm… It’s hard to choose but I’m going to go for the Nuwisha sourcebook for old World of Darkness’s Werewolf.

There’s something about Tricksters that captivates me. I’ve said before that I’ve grown up on fairy tales and world mythologies and Trickster lore is a part of that – not maybe an area I am as knowledgeable as others (on developing a fear of vampires as a small child, my Dad explained they weren’t real – but then taught me how to defend against them. I slept with a stake by my bed and garlic on the window sill for years), but certainly an area that fascinates me.

I think it’s partly the moral relativity of Tricksters (I’m particularly thinking of the Norse god Loki and of fey Red Caps at the moment) – I’m incredibly, frustratingly, embarrassingly socially compliant in most ways, so the freedom that the Trickster’s code represents is something I crave and fear.

I really like the fluff. Gaia’s Tricksters showed up in the epic Apocalypse campaign I played at uni, and when I attempted to run a game after that I made sure they were around. Very pleased with the purchase.

Day Twenty Three – Coolest Looking Product

I think technically ‘product’ implies ‘item released for general sale’ – which would mean ploughing through my dice collection once more (it’s grown since I last mentioned it: Husbit picked up a ‘pound of dice’ and I carefully scavved the ones I liked best). So instead I’m going to show off again some of the shiny things my GM (Pathfinder and Aberrant) has made/bought for us.

For Aberrant: ALL THE QUANTUM!!! is represented by glass beads.

ALL THE QUANTUM!!!

In Pathfinder, as well as some lovely envelopes and scrolls complete with wax seals, we’ve got this wonderful book that slowly fills as we manage to translate more and more of it – and the accompanying runes (handmade, again). Some of the runes within the book actually come from the magic system a GURPS game my brother ran that my GM played in, which is a nice bit of crossover. I wasn’t in the game, but I know my brother was really pleased with the magic system. Something to do with building words. It sounded really clever and interesting.

Beneath the book and paper the runs are on, you can see our homemade battle board - plywood with a grid drawn on then plasti-coated. That's also pretty useful, but less cool.

With thanks again to Autocratik. 

Starlight Moonbeam "Plays in Shadows" Acorn Rainbow

When I started uni, I was lucky enough to be invited to join a long-running World of Darkness campaign. The group (Mel, Sith, Boyd, Gog and GM Ed) had been playing through bloodlines in both Vampire and Werewolf – Vampire from sire or grandsire to childe or grand-childe, and in werewolf using normal ancestry. They started back in Roman times and were running through to Apocalypse (at which point, a larger group also played the Hunter experience). At the time I joined, Werewolf (the more popular of the two games) had reached modern age and Vampire was in Dark Ages – but running through the second time as Sabbat.

The Werewolf party consisted of Mel’s homid Black Fury theurge, Boyd’s lupus Get of Fenris ragabash, Sith’s metis Silent Strider ahroun, Gog’s homid Fianna galliard and Ed’s GMPC* lupus Red Talon philodox. For those who don’t know, homid means ‘human-born’, lupus means ‘wolf-born’ and metis means ‘dirty freak of nature offspring of 2 Garou’ (most Garou breed with either humans or wolves, as metis are sterile and deformed). Theurges are spiritual/shamanic; ragabash ‘tricksters’; for galliards, think bardic; philodox are leaders and ahroun are the fighters – all Garou can fight, but the ahrouns excel at it.

No one was surprised when I elected to be a Child of Gaia (although Boyd did roll his eyes). Because I’d never played World of Darkness before, I was playing something of an audience surrogate so I could make mistakes without it being out of character - I took the 'no common sense' flaw for the same reason. We set it up that my mother was a bit of a ‘free love’ hippy and I’d never known my father, which was a good justification for having no idea about werewolves and kinfolk and the rest of it. I was raised on a commune that I had no real attachment too (abandoning it completely and kinda heartlessly after becoming a werewolf) – possibly because my name was “Starlight Moonbeam Acorn Rainbow”.

My game began, then, with my first change and the existent packs’ discovery and subsequent rescue of me. The moon was a crescent that night, so the Black Fury was pleased to have a young theurge to take under her wing. It seems to have been a very thin crescent, though – there’s a distinct flash of ragabash to my character, manifesting in a very playful and cheerful nature. Her excitement at discovering her Garou nature – and particularly her delight in entering the Umbra – left her playing chase through shadows and earned her the Garou name “Plays-in-Shadows” (I’m cross with myself that I cannot recall the names of the rest of the pack).

Plays’ (as she was most often known) biggest vice was cannabis, due to her hippy upbringing, but it’s possible the laid-backness that results from this was part of why she dealt so well with the massive changes on learning she was Garou. She loved spending time in the Umbra, particularly with pack totem Bear, and the novelty of being able to assume the shape of a wolf at will never wore off.

The pack tended to fight all in hispo (dire wolf) form; a well-practiced technique with each wolf taking turns to attack from alternate flanks when facing down a large opponent. Initially, Plays was reluctant to fight, particularly in training, but soon realised the necessity of it for her role in the coming Apocalypse.

The caern from which the pack operate is one that had been set up by the other players in an earlier stage of the game, so it was fun to hear the tales being told and, I think, nice for them to tell them to a new audience. Various tales of past heroes were also told, and again I enjoyed guessing which player was responsible – a nice side effect of entering a game such as this late.

Most of the time, we hung around the caern or in the Umbra, but sometimes we had to venture into the human realm. This wasn’t too bad for Plays or the Black Fury, but much more of a pain for the guys; particularly the metis and the ragabash (who really objected to puny human form and especially to wearing clothes and being flirted with by the Black Fury’s sister). We would all bundle into the awakened yellow mini named ‘Delilah’ that belonged to the Black Fury and would only start if you sang the Tom Jones song to it. We didn’t fit very well.

As mentioned above, the pack totem was Bear. This meant the pack had to work harder to earn honour, but Bear was an amazing totem. When the game ended, the Child of Gaia tribe totem (Unicorn) had been killed and Plays was one of very few, possibly the only, Child of Gaia to survive (being in another place entirely when it happened): her trust in Bear elevated him to status as the new totem for the tribe.

The game ended with only the Black Fury and Plays having survived from the pack – as theurges, they had been involved in an important ritual whilst the others fought the forces of the Weaver and Wyrm to enable the ritual to complete and died dramatically in the course of this. The final tableau was of a normal human woman and a wolf, side by side – it seemed fitting, somehow, that Plays was born human but would die a wolf. The Garou part of their nature had ended.

It was a very epic game and one of the players made a set of mix-CD's for the soundtracks to both Werewolf and Vampire but unfortunately I can't remember what was on them! I also painted up a bunch of dire wolves as keepsakes for the party but can't find Plays to share a photo.

*I know some people have real attitude when it comes to GMPC’s, but in this game it was useful because other players would sometimes run games and it helped to have a regular character/pack member for the normal GM to play in these circumstances. He mostly stayed quiet when Ed was GM’ing