#RPGaDay2019: Days 26-31

Monday 26th - "Idea"

Like an awful lot of people, I'd love to write a novel one day. Now, I know that when you run a game, it's bad form to have an idea for the story and prevent the players deviating from that (if that's your plan, write the book instead); however, I think there's something to be said for using games as a place to try out ideas, or seeds of ideas, for stories you want to write, and I think this is something players can do as well as GM's. As long as it doesn't detract from other people's enjoyment, I think there's a lot to be said for this method of testing ideas and concepts. Having the feedback from the interaction of others can be incredibly useful and spark new ideas that you  wouldn't necessarily have come to just writing by yourself (though I should write down when I'm inspired in a game as I tend to forget otherwise).

I'd like to try writing a novel with friends this way, in a sort of pseudo-RPG setting, where "dramatically appropriate" rules and where no one person is the GM but rather we're all co-creators of a world discussing how things may progress, probably all running a few characters but able to make suggestions to each other... 

Tuesday 27th - "Suspense"

Initially, I thought I hadn't played in many games where there was a sense of suspense, but then I thought about the current Aberrant game and Bill's death and the Protos mystery, then our repeated failures to take down the Patchwork Man in Deadlands, which hopefully will keep building to a satisfying conclusion, and the suspense of waiting to find out what's happened to Svetlana et al in Pathfinder (just knowing they're missing from our other characters' experience in the world). I've got other examples, too, but they're the easiest to express. Guess I've been left in suspense more often than I thought!

Wednesday 28th - "Love"

I love a love story! The first was in a horror game run at uni, where we played US university (college?) students on holiday who end up sucked into another world and my character ended up in a relationship with one of the other characters (based on that "fear is an aphrodisiac" concept) - the other player involved in that is now married to the other woman who played with us (the other man and I are not married). It was a short game, maybe only one session, but great fun and very effective.

Next was Kella and Reisha, which I've written about in previous years.

Then fast forward and no more romances until Svetlana and Noleski. I created a character for a Cyberpunk game and her girlfriend (to be an important NPC), but we never got to play and I can't find the character sheets anywhere (I wanted to write them up on this blog). Anyway, from Pathfinder I moved into Aberrant and deliberately created a commitment-phobe - but plot and character development saw her enter a relationship that has become steadily more frayed. I've never had the chance to roleplay a failing relationship before, so this is fun (if they just talked it might be salvageable, but if they do ever have that talk it's likely that's the end of it so they keep skirting it). Our Exalted game went on break with Taji finally entering the relationship she was hoping for, and that was a wonderful moment. I really enjoy that character and her love for her brother and now her lunar mate. And in Mage, my character has again fallen into a relationship that is certainly interesting, Ragna being sweet and incredibly naive and her girlfriend being... rather less so.

Thursday 29th - "Evolve"

If my memory serves, in a previous year we were asked how our play style had evolved and I claimed mine hadn't, really. I've subsequently realised I was wrong. There's certain aspects that stay true: I enjoy character-driven play over dungeon hack or even story driven (though character and story driven play are highly compatible) and that's always been the case, but the types of characters I get the most out of playing have changed - less, now, the innocent healers and more leaders or mother hens or prickly characters who still want the best for the team. I still prefer range if there's fighting to be done (though Chrissie'll happily get in the thick of it to throw a few punches), and still prefer the parts of the game outside the battleground (though the White Wolf/Savage Worlds games don't fill me with dread when it comes to combat the way Pathfinder does, because the combat systems are much quicker). I feel I'm getting better at making things up on the fly if I need to (though it's something I need to work on, particularly in Mage). I hope I give and continue to give other players (especially the GM) plenty to work with.

Friday 30th - "Connection"

"Emotional bleed" is a phrase I learnt a few years ago that stuck with me because I love to be so connected to my characters that I feel that emotional bleed, feel their emotions as strongly as my own. I appreciate it's not for everyone, but for me it's what makes a moment memorable.

Saturday 31st - "Last" 

This prompt is hard. I can't talk about the last game I'll ever play, or the last group I'll ever play with, like I did with "First" because I hope that's many, many years away. I don't want to talke about the most recent game I played, because it's not the last in that arc...

Oh, that makes me think! The last game in the most recent Exalted arc ended in one of my favourite endings, with Taji's lunar mate wrapping his arm around her and her leaning against him, surrounded by their friends at an outdoor celebratory party. So which are other favourite last sessions? Two come to mind, both long running campaigns at uni.

The first was Werewolf: The Apocalypse. The Galliard, the Philodox, the Ahroun, the Ragabash all died in the great battle. Only the Theurges, my Child of Gaia and Mel's Black Fury, survived. The world was different now, the changing breeds no more: Mel's character was now a full time human, and mine a full time wolf. They remained friends, though, meeting at a particular location (a lake between the woodlands and the town, as I recall), and generations after, her descendants and mine continued the tradition.

The second was Final Fantasy Noir. Kella had fallen pregnant while the party climbed Mount Gagazet, but (believing she was destined to die) she'd told no one. Reisha had died before she learnt she could survive, so he never learnt about their baby. Until after Zet was born, when Kella relaxed on the Besaid shore with her sister and her sister's twins (fathered by Rax, another party member), and a distant SPLASH caught her eye. It was Reisha, returned to life by Phoenix, with whom Reisha had a strong connection that was never quite explained. It was perfect and made me cry. 

#RPGaDay2018: Day 13 - Describe how your play has evolved

When I first saw this question, my firstthought was "my play hasn't changed that much" - the first games I played in were immersive, ongoing campaigns where I was complimented for my commitment to the world and the layers I brought to the character. I love acting and storytelling, but am not very good at taking on a character written by someone else or at editing a story by myself, so roleplay suits me.

There have been changes: uni was the peak of my roleplay experience in terms of number of games: as well as long term campaigns, I played in one-off games and short campaigns, and had the time, energy and opportunity to be playing in multiple sessions a week. It was amazing and I miss it. These days, I play weekly most of the time, alternating between 2 groups each alternating between a range of long term campaigns. It's pretty good, but inevitably sessions are cancelled from time to time as real life gets in the way, and when you're effectively playing that game fortnightly, it can feel a little sad (don't get me wrong: the biggest reason I'm not playing more frequently across a week is that circus is going really well and I love that. I guess I wish I and my gaming buddies had longer weekends).

Other changes have been the amount of notes I take - I used to take very few, able to rely on my memory with pretty good accuracy. As I've got older (and the fibro fog more persistent) this hasn't been possible, and I've needed to take notes. I used to be in awe of the players who could detailed notes while still fully engaged in the game: now I am that player: that's where most of the detail for my game write-ups posted here comes from. Blogging the games is new too, and something I really enjoy (even if it takes me a while to get started).

The biggest way my play has evolved is in the type of characters I play. While I've always played occasionally outside it, especially when I was at uni I settled into a comfortable habit of playing kind characters, often healers, who wear their innocence like a kind of mental shield and are generally insatiably curious. Kella of the Final Fantasy-inspired game, Kirri from the uni LARP ('Aberddu Adventures'), Plays from Werewolf, Svetlana from Pathfinder and most recently Ragna from Mage are key examples of this archetype. Compassion over conviction, to look at it from an Exalted point of view (although Kella, at least, had very strong conviction). They're young - generally late-teens, certainly not more than human-equivalent early 20's - they're kind, they often have a little magic and a slight trickster side them (Plays was technically a Theurge, but we decided it must have been a very thin crescent to explain her Ragabash tendencies), but their biggest feature is that child-like nature. They can all, with varying degrees of success, be mature and serious, but they at least come across as very innocent. It's a true part of their nature, but for Kella and Svetlana in particular it is more of a shield than the extent of them, and Ragna's learning to apply the same. For Plays and Kirri, they didn't have as strong a mature side and were dominated by their innocence.

I deliberately moved away from this with Chrissie, as mentioned the other day on "how gaming has changed you", and worked to play someone firmer, someone who doesn't pry (however innocently) into the lives of others; someone who's a clear leader. That flowed into Taji - she regained a lot of the curiosity (what can I say? I enjoy playing curious characters. It's a good way to explore the game world), but lost some of the kindness (I'm hoping to start building it into her; the game's at a point where I think she has enough people around her who matter enough to her who are kind and compassionate to justify it), and is definitely not innocent (well, until it comes to love and sex, at least). I'm enjoying playing these characters, and have found I enjoy playing that maturity more frequently more than I expected. It's given me more confidence to explore different character traits, though I also draw from experience of characters that didn't work so well, or characters that I haven't enjoyed playing alongside: I will always, now, try to play a character who can be a good team player (though not necessarily making that their defining feature, anymore), but I'm also quite happy to take the lead. I enjoy mothering other characters - I can see this being my next progression!

What about you? Don't forget to add a link to your response below.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 9 - Campaigns: do you prefer set length or open-ended play?

I looked at today's official question - what is a good RPG to play for about 10 sessions - and didn't have an answer because that simply isn't the way I play, so I needed to look to the alternates list. I was sorely tempted to go back to 2014 again, because today was "favourite die/dice set" and I love talking about my dice.

So many pretty dice

But there on the alternate questions list is a really good question to explain why I'm hard pressed to answer the official question: do you prefer set length or open-ended play?

And my answer is kinda neither. To me, "set length" sounds like "you have 10 sessions to complete this in", and "open-ended" sounds like "this will meander forever with no real idea of where it's going".

I love the homebrew one-off sessions my uni friends run for us when we visit (such as the Cyber-Doggies game from New Year a few years back), and the Pathfinder one-off I created Kally Hopebringer for (that I intend to write up at some point maybe, because it was cool and gave us some answers about a Deck of Many Things Svetlana once handled...), but I prefer campaign play - I like to really get into the skin of a character, until I'm thinking as she is, and feeling her emotions (I love reaching a point where I'm crying in character with real world tears - as long as there's happy emotion too - too exhausting otherwise!), and that's easier to do if you're playing for a while.

I like to have as much time, as many sessions as it takes to follow the story - but I want the GM to have an idea of what that story is, where the major points are and where it's going to end: I love a satisfying conclusion (see previous discussion on the World of Darkness and Final Fantasy Noir games I played in at uni: these had a huge impact on me and both had these powerful, intended conclusions).

And that's great for the games I'm in at the moment. The Pathfinder campaign with Svetlana, Alexei et al has got an end point that Rich, as GM, has had in mind since the campaign started. Our actions in the campaign are shaping exactly how it's going to pan out, and I have sought (and been given) reassurance that Svetlana at least will get a "happily ever after" (one of the problems of becoming too attached, and something I started to expand on as a footnote until I realised I've really got enough to say for it to need a whole post), but we don't know the full details as yet.

Deadlands, we're running through The Flood, so we've got a pretty good idea where the campaign's leading us and what the ending will be, and similarly once we've done that we'll be genning new characters to run through the other campaigns in the series, with the idea being all our characters will be legendary by the end and we can pick which to use for the final confrontation.

Aberrant and Exalted I know even less about than Pathfinder, but again there's epic plot - and an intended ending in the recesses of Rich's mind. I think the Exalted one is due to be especially epic, as fitting the setting. I hope so anyway. I'm really enjoying playing Taji. And that's where I come back to wanting to have as much time as it takes to reach the ending: I don't want to rush things to fit a predetermined real world timescale: I want to be allowed to meander and take side routes and turn things on their head and get back to the main plot and slide away from it again and explore the world until I'm satisfied.

I've enjoyed open-ended play, such as in the ShadowRun campaign that was my first 'serious' roleplay. It worked well for what we had: a mixed group of people who couldn't all make every session, so Tom would give a Run to whoever was available and wanting to play, and there would be dribbles of larger plot feeding in, but it just ran as long as people were interested, and I've always felt a bit sad that there wasn't something more structured to that - especially when I wanted to retire my main character and he realised there was some plot he didn't want to miss out on that required her so he tried to thrust it on us and it all didn't work very well and that's when real life got in the way and I didn't have so much time to play and drifted away. I do regret that - she was a cool character, but I wasn't happy with where the game was heading.

It's like remembering someone who's died: whenever I think of my amazing Grandada, I remember that last time I saw him, when he was fading as the cancer ate him away. Give me a satisfying ending, and I'll only remember the love. (Sorry, overly dramatic; and especially sorry if that comes across as trivialising the death of a loved one. 2 decades on, I'm still cut up by the death of my Grandada, and the fading out is a lot of why. He was a fantastic storyteller and such a loving grandparent.)

I like to have a conclusive ending because life doesn't give these out often. I'm a big believer in Terry Pratchett's Pan narrans description of humanity: "the storytelling ape". We think in stories, tell our lives in stories - but as I get older, I realise more and more that isn't the way life works, and I find it depressing and frustrating. So let me have it in a game.

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDAY2017: Day 7 - What was your most impactful session

I need to give honourable mentions to the Buffy the Vampire Slayer and ShadowRun campaigns that were the first I played in, because they had sufficient impact on me to keep me playing. However, both were long enough ago that, while I remember scenes and snippets (for ShadowRun, particularly inside the Renraku Archology, that I'd love to revisit and actually explore one day - we mostly focused on hiding and staying alive, so I didn't learn any of the secrets), I can't bring to mind any one session that would be sufficiently impactful to discuss here (well, maybe that episode of Buffy where a badly worded spell turned all me (and all the female npcs) into boys ("Make all girls like me" said the lonely boy)).

If you've been reading for a while, you'll know I'm very fond of Svetlana, my main Pathfinder character, and I worry about her future and love her relationship with King Noleski and when she died and found peace in her deity's realm, then was brought back to life and realised one day she would lose Noleski - and not even care she had - that really scared her and I loved it! (Even if no one in the rest of the party did anything. Sigh.)

And there have been some really intense moments in both Aberrant and Exalted. Anything where Bells and I get to have deep character interaction with each other or the NPCs (must be exhausting for the GM...)

I think the most impactful session would be one that took place in a game I talked about back in 2015, for the longest session I'd played in. This was the Final Fantasy Nori homebreew game my housemate, Sith, created and ran for his girlfriend Penny and our friends Owen & Rowan, and there was some real emotional intensity in the game. I'm thinking of a particular scene nearish the end, as we decided to approach Mount Gagazet and I got a load of visions trying to put me off - my parents crying and begging for help, and then my younger sister. She was called Elin and was sporty and fit, but I didn't think much of it until my GM invoked her in that scene - and played her so close to my really world younger sister, Erin (a fitness fanatic and all round amazing person) that I was in real world floods of tears and it was amazing. When he met her for the first time a few weeks later, he did freak out a little, as he saw why he'd managed to get such a response from me!

~~~

RPGaDAY was started by Dave Chapman and is currently curated by RPG Brigade. To join in yourself, follow the questions in the graphic and blog, vlog, tweet, or otherwise share your responses with the hashtag RPGaDAY2017.

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 26, Favourite Inspiration for your Game

I'm really not sure how to answer this, but let's have a go.

It feels like a question to ask a GM, and I very rarely run games (not a whole lot of confidence, love playing, have a lot of friends who really enjoy GM'ing). That's not to say there aren't plenty of things I come across that spark off the desire to create in a role play sense - either to enhance my playing or in a setting creation sense for a game I'll never run. Then again, I could think about the things that have inspired other people to run my favourite games.

Let's start with the latter.

I'm going to go back to the Final Fantasy Noir homebrew game. I've never played a Final Fantasy game to completion. I got a fair way through FF7 on a friend's PS1 before the memory card got wiped and her family got rid of FF7 because they'd nearly finished and couldn't face working through it again and I've watched other people play chunks of 8, 9, 10 and I think 12, but I've never played one all the way through.

But they are beautiful, detailed games, crafted with love.

I love this bit of music and think this is a fantastic cover.

So that might be my favourite inspiration for a game I've played in. The guy running 'Final Fantasy Noir' is a huge fan and did his best to recreate the vastness of the worlds, managing to create a very engaging game in the process. I don't think it would have been my inspiration, but I'm grateful to it.

What about things that inspire me as a player? It depends, but I like using games to try out things I'd not dare to do - to test my own morality, I suppose. I played a Ravnos in a Vampire game once. Her name was lost in the mists of time, but she went by Mathilde at the point the game started. She was a bully and a trickster - she revelled in causing emotional pain to other people. I am not that kind of person but I wanted to understand it, wanted to play with the concept. I was inspired by the idea that vampires don't feel emotion and slowly (or otherwise) lose their connection with humanity, and I wondered how one might deal with that. I guess I was inspired as much by the setting as the desire to explore what could have been a part of me if I'd been a different person.

And if I were running games... I'd love to run something set in Genevieve Cogman's The Invisible Library. I think Lords of Gossamer and Shadow would work really well: the similarities between the settings and the freedom offered by the LoG&S system mean I wouldn't have to make many changes. But I've got a couple of ideas for games set in the world(s) of LoG&S I'd want to use it for first, so that will have to wait.

I've talked about the book before. Parallel worlds with a Library connecting them (very L-space!), with the librarians of the Library trying to track down copies of all the books in existence. The universe is divided between Law (represented by the Library and dragons, although the two have their own agendas and don't work together) and Chaos (represented by the fey races). Librarians don't age whilst in the Library, need to be smart and athletic to retrieve the books, and have access to certain magics by calling on the Library. Parallel Earth's mean a setting players can recognise but which can be twisted to the GM's control.

Reckon a lot of fun could be had with that.

But mostly it's characters I'm inspired to create, as evidenced by the Character Concepts tab above. I've got several to add when I have time to write up properly, and it's all sorts of things that can inspire. Sometimes I just want to create my own version of an archetype; often something I read will send sparks flying; sometimes I'll pinch an idea from a friend or someone or Twitter (I try to get consent when I notice I'm doing it!) - and as with 'Mathilde' above and several of the cyberpunk characters, sometimes I want to explore something opposite to me.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 16, Longest Game Session Played

I know my current (Pathfinder, Aberrant/Exalted) GM is doing his best to take the record, but I remember playing weekend-long sessions when I was a student, so the longest session would be part of Kella's story.

As mentioned on Day 12, she's one of my favourite characters of all time and a large part of that was down to how immersed we as players became in the game, which was assisted by being able to play for extended periods: I shared a house with the GM (Sith) and his girlfriend (Penny), who played Kyann, and our friend Owen (Rax) was the other main player and practically lived there too - and when Rowan (Reisha) joined he was just around the corner too. I know we needed to cram a lot in to make sure we finished the game before I finished uni, so I suspect the final session was the longest.

I've never played Final Fantasy X, the inspiration for this game, so I don't exactly know how it deviates. Our game was set 1,000 years or more before the computer game. The world has a strange mix of magic and and technology-esque items - leaning more towards magic than the world I remember from my foray into Final Fantasy VII, although that is a different place. Kella was Besaid born and bred, golden-brown skin, long hair thick and dark, and a love of Blitzball - the sport that unites the world and is particularly popular in her corner of it. She has a stocky, athletic build and plays passionately, but it's her younger sister Elin who has a real talent for the game. By the end of the game, she'd progressed from white mage to summoner.

Rax (short for Sycorax) was a chocobo breeder, as I recall. He became convinced he'd died and wanted Kella to send him on - I remember the GM saying he was a bit worried because Rax hadn't died but he was so convinced of it, the GM half expected if I tried a sending it would work!

Reisha was a man out of time. When the party was attempting to convince Phoenix to join them as part of Kella's available summons, they found him or Phoenix returned him to the world and left him to their care - I was never entirely sure which, or if something else entirely was going on. I think this was the first time he muttered "I could get used to waking up next to you" on seeing Kella - and then blushing bright red on realising he'd spoken out loud.

Whilst Reisha was the oldest player character in terms of time since birthed, Kyann was oldest in time lived and in maturity. She was a strong, steely woman - good in a fight, but her strength was predominantly that of will. A bit of a loner, she accepted the company thrust on her by fate and circumstance before realising she was fond of the others - close enough to call them friends.

It was her strength of character that meant Kella could survive her final encounter.

It's sadly hazy now, but I do remember avoiding an intended boss battle with the Behemoth King. I'd picked up a ring that enabled me to talk to animals and we ended up recruiting him as part of the party. We climbed Mount Gagazet where Reisha and Kella finally admitted to their mutual attraction. Kella had just enough time to realise she was pregnant before Reisha was killed (?) to save the party - by this time, everyone knew they had to get Kella to the top of the mountain, had to keep her alive so she could sacrifice herself...

It was revealed to them - a vision from the future (characters in the computer game) - that Kella didn't need to die. She chose Kyann to be her final summoned creature - the one destined to kill her. Kyann was taken over and indeed went to fight - but she was fighting within herself because she was determined not to kill her friend - and she won, staying the sin growing within her.

The Behemoth King returned to his herd and the surviving party - Kella, Rax and an NPC, Natasha (daughter of another NPC who'd died along the way) - returned to Besaid for the epilogue: Rax, who'd accepted his life during the final battles and who'd fallen in love with Elin before that, was married to Kella's younger sister and they had twins - Rain and Sky. Rax was on the beach with Kella, watching Elin play Blitzball and watching his twins and Kella's son, Zet, when something fell from the sky, and Kella knew it was Reisha coming home to her - and of course it was. And that's what the picture I chose for Day 12 illustrates. I wrote the scene as a fan-fiction after, and it still makes me cry to read it.

 

#RPGaDay2015 - Day 12, Favourite RPG Illustration

This seemed insanely difficult to me - there's a lot of fantastic art out there and a lot of utter dross. But then I thought, I love some of the illustrations friends have done of my characters, and it'd be nice to share them again here.

1. Kella and Reisha (Homebrew: Final Fantasy Noir)

 

Drawn by my friend Rowan who played Reisha, this depicts the 'epilogue' scene of our game. If you've played Final Fantasy X then you'll know more than me about the long history of summoners who believed they had to sacrifice themselves for the planet. Kella, my character, was a summoner around 1,000 years before the computer game and had become so accepting of her inevitable fate that Reisha was introduced deliberately as a love interest to shake things up a bit. He was a character out of time, found in a chamber when visiting a lost Faythe (Phoenix). He ended up sacrificing himself completely for her just after she'd discovered she was pregnant (which she didn't tell him as she was still set on dying and didn't want him to lose two people); they never found his body.

Of course, there was a way out of the situation that didn't involve Kella's death (just that of another of her closest allies, in another incredibly intense roleplay moment). She went back home to Besaid and a year or so later Reisha fell out of the sky and, in true fairy tale fashion, they lived happily ever after.

I pictured Kella as being somewhat stockier and her hair in thicker twists, but this picture is beautiful to me and summons up strong memories of a deeply immersive game.

2. Jvala (Pathfinder - interlude)

This is my current Pathfinder character as drawn by my friend Abi. It's a great likeness considering how little info she had to go on when I asked for the picture - what I particularly love is the dress, which is pretty much exactly what I picture her wearing to a ball or some such, and I gave Abi no clues in that direction! From the way her hair and skin are shifting slightly in colour, it's clear she's excited about something. Her swords are close by but not in her hands, so she's unlikely to be angry or afraid - I think she's probably trying to hide the fact that she's thrilled to be going to the party she's off too, but she can't control the way her inner flame flickers behind her skin and through her hair!

3. Svetlana (Pathfinder - main)

Again drawn by Abi from very basic info. I love the way she's captured Svetlana's joy and innocence. The dark leaf armour is much nicer and more imaginative than what I'd pictured and I love the plait! 

Svetlana sits jointly with Kella as being my very favourite character, possibly because they share this innocence that they wear almost as a shield against the harsher side of the world. Kella's was ultimately rewarded: she didn't have to die and her beloved was returned to her. Svetlana's is gradually being stripped from her - wrenched from her desperate grasp. Her death and time in Erastil's realm has hurt her badly because it's shown her how little time she will actually with her love and she finds it very difficult to know that once she's dead that won't matter to her: it makes how she feels matter more now. The political circles she is expected to navigate when not fighting demons are also teaching her not all people are as good as she wishes to believe...

Another thing the two share is a sense of duty to a cause bigger than themselves. For Kella, she grew up knowing about summoners and their sacrifice and I think that made it easier for her to accept the mantle when it was passed to her: she knew what she was doing was necessary for the good of everyone and, although I don't think it mattered consciously, she also knew that as long as she succeeded she would never be forgotten and would always be honoured. Svetlana has more internal conflict. For a start, she now has two duties: to Brevoy and to Golarion. For the good of Brevoy, she must try to tame her chaotic nature and learn to play the political game, but that seems irrelevant when placed next to the threats to Golarion she has discovered whilst fighting in the Worldwound and whilst off in another dimension. Here, her life and her love are in danger but she must fight on and not give up for the sake of her world. She does this with more reluctance than Kella, perhaps because this is all newer to her. She's also, unlike Kella, an only child, so I think there is a little more selfishness in her. But she fights on nonetheless.

As always, with thanks to Autocratik.

 

RPGaDay - Days 24, 25 and 26

#RPGaDay

Day Twenty Four – Most Complicated RPG Owned

The most complicated game I’ve played is a homebrew created by my friend Rowan and set in the Star Trek universe. It’s wonderful, having grown organically to suit the needs of the group. The character sheet is pages and pages long, covering different roles in the ship (command, engineering, science) and also personal life. Each page is a spider’s web showing how skills grow from other skills – you can’t progress a skill further than any pre-requisite skills already are. And sometimes prerequisites come from a different page.

And that’s before you have to do anything. I can’t remember the dice system except I think it’s D100 based and sometimes you want high and sometimes low so you roll your die, tell your result and relevant skill level and GM works from there. And certain results automatically mean weird stuff happens and also the GM rolls a D100 and if you get the same number something good happens but if you get the digits reversed number something bad happens (and something downright random if the number is the same digits, ie 33). Most of the numbers that have auto-wibble meanings reference geek culture in some way (eg 66 for Order 66 in Star Wars) or from particular previous in (or out of) game experiences.

For the main players, it doesn’t feel complicated because the system has grown around them; for Husbit and I, coming in to cameo whilst we visited one weekend, it was massively complex. But in a really wonderful way, and I think that comes from it being a long-running, oft-adapted homebrew system.

For the most complicated game I own… it’s a while since I’ve played most of the games I own, but I remember them all as being fairly straightforward. So I’ll stick with Rowan’s amazing Trek homebrew.

Day Twenty Five – Favourite RPG No One Else Wants to Play

World of Darkness. Have been watching Supernatural with Husbit and thought that may encourage people to want to play Hunter, at least, but no joy. I do miss World of Darkness.

Also, no one else seems to want to play Abney Park’s Airship Pirates, even though it looks amazing and is all steam-punky and Husbit (at least) is into that. But between Aberrant and Pathfinder I am spending a fair amount of my free time gaming (or blogging about gaming) so I probably don’t really have time for more games anyway.

Day Twenty Six – Coolest Character Sheet

For Day 11 (weirdest game), I discussed the Window system and a game in a setting called ‘Dockyards’. In the comments below, the GM was kind enough to share my character sheet from that game, and seeing it again did give me a lovely fit of the giggles – Kismet was great fun and the Window encourages a verbal style over numbers. She really has more skills than the system encourages, but I was having too much fun writing skills that way. I’m not sure it counts, though.

In the Final Fantasy Noir homebrew game I was in, Kella’s (a lot of my characters have names beginning with K. Not sure why) sheet was beautiful. The GM had prepared them in presentation binders because there were several pages so things could be spaced out clearly with screen shots from the console game. That was pretty amazing.

But coolest character sheet not handwritten or from a homebrew is probably the Deadlands one. I can’t remember if the sheet we were using is the one from the book or if it’s a fan-created one we found, and the books are at the bottom of a heavy, precarious pile so I haven’t checked, but I rather like this.

We use paper clips to mark the ammo, wounds and spell points, so you don’t end up damaging the sheet with constant rubbing outs and that works because they’re at the edge of the page. The back is character background, gear, permanent injuries and spells, but the ammo, spell points and wounds are in the same place so your paperclip still marks them whichever side you’re looking – which is quite handy.

The imagery matches the setting, too, and the fact someone’s thought about it is nice.

Lizbeth is the character I played in Coffin Rock

Although, now I’ve seen the Numenera sheet I have to admit that does look gorgeous!

With thanks again to Autocratik. 

RPGaDay Day 8 - Favourite Character

#RPGaDay

Day Eight – Favourite Character

Isn’t this one of those things you’re meant to never ask a roleplayer? I know I’ve certainly done my fair share of boring other people to death with my beloveds. Indeed, the primary purpose of this blog was to be able to share detail of various characters without having to see that glassy-eyed response in my audience…

But the truth is there is something lovely about the enthusiasm with which a geek speaks of their favourite characters, so I’m really pleased to see this here.

I love most of my characters, but those I am most deeply attached to are, probably unsurprisingly, those I have played the longest – so Kamaya, Plays, ‘Mathilde,’ Kella and Svetlana are I think my top 5. It is very hard to pick between them.

Kamaya

Kamaya was my character in the first ShadowRun game I played – a Canadian Japanese-Native American elf adept born to a human family, she had travelled to Seattle to avenge the death of her brother (hooked on BTL’s). She joined the game after achieving this and feeling at a loose end. I intended her to be more of a pacifist, only killing if necessary and using non-lethal bullets. Of course, these don’t pierce the armour security guards inevitably wear so I soon gave up on my lofty ideals and was as much of a killing machine as the louder players and NPC’s (there were pacifists in the group, but they were quieter so placed less peer pressure on me).

When the GM got his hands on the Magic in the Shadows supplement, we adapted the character to be a shaman-adept, with Cheetah as her totem because she was so fast. Her preferred weapons were some uzi-type gun whose name I forget and her monofilament whip – she lost this in the Renraku Arcology (which I would love to revisit because we barely scratched the surface) but on the next corpse was told she could find another (yay for puppy-dog eyes) with a target number of 30-something on a D6. I reached 40.

Eventually, Kamaya became so powerful I felt it was time to retire her. I had a nice little plan to set up a chain of pubs, clubs and restaurants and set herself up as a fixer with these as her front. The GM wanted to tie off one plot (we’d seriously pissed off Ares Corps) so had her best friend (NPC wolf shaman Tark) cranial bombed to death in front of her. Was a bit upset by that because it meant I couldn’t retire her, even though we’d agreed it…

Starlight aka Plays in Shadows

My character in the modern-day Werewolf part of the Awesome Uni WoD Campaign, I have spoken about Plays before. I really liked her innocence and child-like nature (a theme we will return to with both Kella and Svetlana) but am not going to add to what I’ve already written. 

‘Mathilde’

I played Assamites in the Vampire parts of the WoD with Starlight/Plays. One of the other players played Ravnos, and they looked a lot of fun. So when another friend at uni invited me into her Vampire game, I jumped at the chance to try them out.

The game was set in Austria or somewhere in that area, in the early 19^th Century. My character introduced herself as Mathilde, a Toreador passing through. It didn’t take long for the other players (although not their characters) to twig there was some masquerade going on: I kept making vaguely feline paw-to-face style motions. Owen, playing the excellent Russian Malkav Jana, had me pegged as a Gangrel from the first session I joined. I think he was as amused as I when it finally tumbled out I was actually a Ravnos.

My character never had a set name – she was old enough to barely remember the name she’d used when alive and was known by those other Ravnos on the same path as her (one from the Ravnos book) as Ursel (something the other players never knew) and chose a new name for herself every time she changed location. She’d been born in India and had grown up as part of a group of travellers with a Ravnos vampire living in their caravan. She’d had her eye on my character, and when I was deemed old enough she changed me with the agreement of my parents.

I really liked the character. Most of my characters are healers and basically nice: this character had ‘bully’ as her nature and her weakness (which worked very well with Jana’s nature of ‘egomaniac’: every time I bullied her it was all about her so we both regained willpower. An accidental bit of powergaming!) She was where I learnt about being a trickster and I found that a lot of fun and very liberating.

Her primary focus was chimestry. She was very fey/wyld orientated – her overall goal was to wipe out all vampires to free the energies caught up within their bodies. One NPC, a Lasombre called Maxmilian, ended up blood-bound to her because he wanted chimestry and she wanted the shadow power whose name momentarily eludes me. His tentacles were thick and tentically. I always pictured hers as more delicate and tendrilly – like a bramble or climbing rose.

Kella

I’ve spoken about Kella briefly before. She was my character in an epic homebrew game based on Final Fantasy 10. Kella started out as a white mage (of sorts) and ended up a summoner. She had a child-like naivety that was an external façade, a shield to protect her from the horrors of the world. Inside, she was steel and determination but to be able to maintain that she needed this other appearance. Svetlana can be a bit like this. 

I think Kella is so dear to me because she had a younger sister that my GM played exactly like my real world younger sister without having met her, for her beautiful love story and for the intensity of the game itself: it left me in tears more than once.

Svetlana

It’s probably obvious that I rather like Svetlana. She’s my character in the Pathfinder campaign that makes up a large amount of this blog and she’s lovely. She’s optimistic, confident and caring – she is, in many ways, the person I would love to be. Kella and Plays share this with her (although there are times when I would love the lack of care for others that marks ‘Mathilde’ – the way she does things for her own entertainment without even considering another may have feelings that could be hurt. Liberating in small doses, but not something I could deal with doing in the real world).

I’ve said a lot about Svetlana in various places on this blog so I’m going to leave you with my GM’s description of her: 

With thanks again to Autocratik. His Day 8 is here. 

Falling in Love (Fantasy Style!)

I remember one time when discussing the ShadowRun game that was my first 'proper' taste of roleplay being told off by another player for expressing an in-character interest in 2 of the NPC's. The other player knew I was 'in a relationship' (of a sort) with a third player and deemed it inappropriate for my character to fancy anyone other than his character. I have to disagree: it's a game! It's story-telling, too, so relationships should be realistic to the characters involved - not to out-of-game politics. If a relationship between characters happens, all players should be mature enough to recognise that it's a game. But that memory - of it being implied it was in some way 'improper' - means I've been a bit shy about this post.

Anyway, rant over: it can be great fun to have an in-game romance. 

I once played in a short horror game – four players: myself, Ben, Rob and someone else I forget (possibly Kit?). We were playing American students on a summer break. We’d rented a small cabin by a lake in the middle of nowhere. There was a boat to a little islet in the middle of the lake, so we spent time playing around there. There was also an abandoned mine with ‘danger’ signs all round it, which we avoided accordingly. Mostly we had fun with bonfires and boating and hanging out in the sun: the GM (Pete) had to use plot hammers, hooks, and railroading before we would investigate the abandoned mine that led us into the other realm where the real game was meant to take place. It was funny to watch him get exasperated with us, but we were (or at least, I was) genuinely enjoying pretending to be students on summer vacation.

And once we were there, in this strange kingdom overseen by a shadowy figure whom we did eventually meet, it was actually pretty scary; in a creepy ‘getting under your skin’ manner rather than a gore-fest. I sat beside Rob and as the game progressed our characters were getting physically closer and closer until – without it being explicitly said or even intended – it became clear there was a romantic interest between them. And it made sense: fear is a known aphrodisiac*. (Ben and the other player drew apart, which was also an interesting response to fear – more of a ‘freeze’ response, maybe).

I like Rob. At the time, we hadn’t known each other long so it was a gentle relationship – I think he and I curled up on the sofa together, possibly held hands but that was about the extent of out of character contact. It was, though, the first time I had a character begin to fall in love.

Anatomical Heart Pendant from I * Love Science - so pretty!

Ah, and then Kella and Reisha! I desperately want to do a massive post about Kella, but she’s so dear to my heart and the game was several years ago so I fear the details are too fuzzy and my narrative skills too poor to do the story justice (at least for now).

But as a quick summary, the game was ‘Final Fantasy Noir’ – a home-brew game based on Final Fantasy X and set some 1,000 years earlier than the computer game**. My character, Kella, was from the southern region of Besaid. She played Blitzball for pleasure (although it was her younger sister, Elin, who was the real star at that, playing for the Aurochs) but her real skill was in healing and white magic. Ultimately, she became the summoner (the role was up for grabs, but it fit her character better and the others went down other routes), which meant we knew the game would end with her death.

As we were approaching the end of the game (or at least getting nearer the mountain, Gagazet), a new player was introduced. His character, Reisha, I found out later was deliberately brought in to be my character’s love interest: she had so steeled herself to her fate that it was felt something needed to be given to her for a reason to live! It worked beautifully. Rowan and I are very good friends anyway, so I could curl up on his lap and have my hair stroked both in and out of character and it not be weird (even when his now-wife brought in cups of tea).

The relationship was built elegantly – Reisha is out of time in Kella’s age; returned to life (or otherwise dragged to the present day) by Phoenix. As the party healer, Kella rushed to him to make sure he was ok. His eyes fluttered open and he muttered “I could get used to waking up next to you!” – before going bright red and being very embarrassed. This was repeated a few times, either where they fell asleep beside each other or where he was hurt and she healed him. Their approach to each other was tentative, slow. Shy, almost.

It was a beautiful moment on the mountain when Kella and Reisha finally declared their love for each other (much to the amusement of the other characters) and then snuck off: Rowan handed me the cherries from the packet of Tangfastics we were devouring (at the time, RPG snack of choice!) as a little metaphor for the moment.

A little while later, being a powerful white mage, Kella realised she was pregnant but it would be a while before she would be showing. Realising it was early enough that she shouldn’t have too much difficulty hiding this from her friends, she elected not to tell anyone: it was going to be hard enough for Reisha (and the others) to lose her, but for him to lose his unborn child was more than she could bear to put him through. And then, of course, she managed to survive the final challenge but Reisha vanished somewhere in the process. It was very, very sad.

We ran a post-game session to tidy up loose ends. Kella is sitting on the beach with her little baby son, Zette (I didn’t know how to spell the mountain where he was conceived), with her (NPC) sister and the twins Elin had had with another player character, Rax. There’s a sadness to Kella that didn’t exist before. Her favourite Aeon, the local Valefor, swoops in the sky above and the Aurochs, Besaid’s Blitz Ball team, are practicing in the sea when there is a sudden loud splash. Everyone is startled, but Kella realises this is Reisha, returning to her just as he promised. And as she pulls him from the water and heals his injuries, his eyes flutter open and he mutters once more “I could get used to waking up next to you” – this time with no embarrassment. (I actually wrote this up as a bit of ‘fanfic’ and the intensity of the game was such that reading it even now, 7+ years later, it still makes me cry!)

Kella and Reisha, as drawn by Rowan

It is a bit different when the other player is actually the GM: you can’t curl up on their lap, for instance (because you may see secrets!) and this brings me on to Svetlana and Noleski.

I love their relationship – as mentioned above, it’s many years since I’ve had a decent love story in a game and it’s actually something I really enjoy, which is probably why I was up for it when the others began their joking. There are a few problems – his role (as King) means he can’t come travelling with us, which means most of the time spent together is as downtime, which in turn makes it harder to build the romance and closeness between them. Also, when your character’s lover belongs to another player you can roleplay the lovey-doveyness when focus is on other players, but when it’s an NPC it means everyone else has to stop and wait – and not everyone is comfortable with watching romance-play.

But as I said, I really like this relationship. It helps that I really like Svetlana, of course. I like the juxtaposition between the two, as well – Noleski has been raised a noble, steward to the king, and has had kingship thrust upon him. He has accepted this as a duty. Svetlana was raised a peasant and has accidentally earned her way into the nobility through her courage and love of adventure. I like to think that part of Noleski’s attraction to her is her relaxed attitude towards rank: that she sees him as a person, not a king (and is attracted to him as a person, not a throne).Neither of them has sought the political power they've received and I think it is more of a burden to Noleski because a lot of the time Svetlana can ignore it. That, no doubt, will change.

I’m looking forward to the future of their relationship. That she’s a half-elf just turned 20 and he’s human and in his late-20’s/early-30’s means there could be some interesting issues of aging and mortality down the line: if that sounds a little forward-looking, there was talk at the beginning of the game of ‘playing down the bloodlines’, ie, periodically resetting and playing as the descendants of our characters. On that note, having a chaotic-good, fey-blooded, half-elf rogue/sorcerer mother and a lawful-good, human noble/fighter/king (I’m surmising from what I know) father gives me a lot of scope to play with when building future characters. I think Svetlana and Noleski would like a large brood, even if Svetlana’s adventuring means Noleski might need to do more child-rearing than is traditional for a male monarch (although I have a vivid image of Svetlana using her left arm to shield a baby in sling across her, rapier in right hand fighting off some vicious enemy; so maybe she’ll only hand them back to him when they’re old enough to toddle ;-) ).

In the shorter term, dealing with Svetlana’s recent brush with death could be… interesting. Despite the issues she’s currently dealing with, she will want to pull herself together for his sake – and her mum’s! Hopefully, he’ll help her get through it but there are a few longer-term problems that could arise from this that I won’t go into because "Spoilers".

I would like them to be able to spend more time together, but can’t see a way of doing that without drastically changing the flow of the game, or at least significantly reducing Svetlana’s role in it (which would be a shame). But it’s nice to have a love interest.
Of course, it could all go wrong: he could be killed or turn out to actually not be very nice, but I hope not. It would hurt Svetlana too much!

*I remember reading an article about an experiment into this several years ago. Can’t find the article I originally read, but this mentions the same experiment.

**I’ve not played FFX but think I’m probably not giving too many spoilers away to anyone else who hasn’t because, of course, the game was run through one person’s interpretation and also edited to suit the group and all the usual caveats etc. So apologies to anyone who has played it and for whom I am now destroying beloved memories by not understanding the game properly.