Ye Cast of Thousands

[caraig]

For some reason, as I was in the lobby of the hospital today, I found myself considering all the characters I've played in online games and my feelings about them. Since Mom is doing a lot better now, and looks like she'll be coming home possibly even early next week, I thought I'd jot down my ruminations on some or most of them. So, if you can excuse the excessive ego-primping, I shall make my presentation.

• Bluegreen on FurryMUCK was actually the first truly RP character I made (in recent memory) and also was the first female character I'd made. She had no real defined role at first; later on I tried to make her into a sort of 'OpFor' character, someone to provide an organization for 'player characters' in FM to oppose, more of a plot device than an actual evil persona. Nothing much ever came of it, I'm afraid, outside of a few fun RP scenes.
  
• Chastity. Ah, Chas. Also an FM character, she was one of the longest-lived RP characters I've played. A lot of fun times playing her, but also a lot of frustrating times. Looking back on her, there are a lot of things I wish I could have done differently. I wish I could have played her as being more assertive and less passive. I certainly wish I'd had a tighter rein on some things. A lot of heartache might have been avoided then. Or, maybe not. I can't control how other people play their characters. Chas was retired from active play; she or rather a character inspired by her might appear in some writing in the future.
  
• I have to include Dariel Cholis here. He really was the first 'morally questionable' character I played, even if he was a puppet/NPC. While he saw himself as an avenger for the deaths of his countrymen, he was more of a rebel, and eventually stooped to terrorism and violence. Though he ended up in a penal colony, playing him was interesting in that it was a different viewpoint than the typical 'white hat' that was so prevailent in FM.
  
• Poor, confused Dermott. I say "confused" because this was a character who started with such a clear-cut story and concept -- a rarity for me, most of my characters "grow into" their personality -- and never really lived up to it. He was to have been a swashbuckling space pirate, but I guess he was sabotaged from the beginning; I could do 'swashbuckling' moderately well (when I was paying attention) but the 'space pirate' part was always a pain, and Dermott drifted from 'blackhat' to 'greyhat' fairly quickly, until he became just another person occupying space. Part of the problem was the very nature of who he was versus his profession: romanticised piracy depends largely on a fictionalized setting where the ships you can go after are unarmed and tractable, and willing to surrender quickly with few or no casualties. It most decidedly does not work when everyone and their brother are armed with petajoule grasers, photon torpedoes, antimatter toothpicks, and surface-to-orbit particle beam revolvers. Boarding actions in such cases usually follow the following formula: "Stand and Deliver!" *too many explosions to describe here* "Run away!!" Besides all that, as a character Dermott just got into bad situations -- only two really good situations come to mind, those being the Rule of Seven brawl in the Wandering Path, and the rescue of the kids in the ship hurtling towards a star. Most of his personal development made the character muddied, confusing, and susceptible to, well... getting into further bad situations. I still fully intend to vindicate him someday in fiction, as soon as I can come up with a model for space piracy that doesn't involve massive bloodshed and can make such a character reasonably sympathetic.
  
• Benedict Matthewson of Talantal, from a game called Heartwood. Benny was a novitiate priest to a 'civilized' god of knowledge and observation. The interesting aspect of his character was his increasing heterodoxy: he was friends with a number of people whose 'barbaric' faiths were opposed -- or, rather, suppressed -- by his own. In time, Benedict would have just learned too much about the non-Imperial faiths to really remain trustworthy, and there would be a reckoning either with his church or with his god. He was interesting to play and I was hoping to see what would happen to him. Sadly, the game ended and Benny was retired.
  
• Horatio St.Geneveive from Starfall was a slight departure for me. He was the gadgeteer and alchemist of the family, the fourth son, introspective, quiet, bright, but kind of withdrawn. I adored the character development he went through, from the withdrawn fourth son to slowly coming out of his shell and into his own. While with Benny I really started getting into dramatic (okay, maybe "melodramatic") roleplaying, with Horatio there was the added dimensions of familial, political, and romantic entanglements, which made him a more complex and interesting character. Like Heartwood, however, the game sadly ended.
  
• Douglas Percival of Indigo. Doug was a bit of a change for me as far as characters go: he was supposed to be the brick, but he was the ship's engineer as well. An added complication was that the character was from an oppressed minority in the game-world; looking back, it's interesting to remember that I was kind of disturbed about playing a character in such a situation. Again, the nature of the character made for a lot of potential development, and develop he did.
  
• Kabatstselael, or by the name he started the game with, Rosenstern. He was my character in an In Nomine game called NachtMusik. The players in this game were angels, with Rosie being a Mercurian of Novalis -- basically, the people-person of the group, and a hippie to boot. But Rosie was young, not much more than 300 years old, and that meant a lot of room for character development which was amply filled. Coming into his own as the face man of the group -- which he never really fully grew into -- and just growing into his role as an angel was a unique roleplaying experience. I thoroughly enjoyed NachtMusik, and was sad to see it retired.
  
• Father Henry Thomas Kavanaugh from the second iteration of Weston. Kav was a strong departure for me on two fronts: First, he was a gregarious character, much more open and forward than most of my past characters. Second, he was just plain nutters. Not only did he talk to God, he talked to his cat, and the cat talked back to him. Though (enjoyably) nobody -- including myself! -- was ever really sure if the cat wasn't actually nothing more than just a slightly mangy and mostly disinterested feline. Kav also started a trend I had, for doing more research into characters' backgrounds than I used to. Kav, a former member of the French Foreign Legion, would wear a ring with the Legion motto, "Legio Patria Nostra;" and every so often he would start singing "Le Boudin." I found I really enjoyed the little touches that added color to the character. Playing him as a slightly loony type was also lots of fun!
  
• Vij Tarot, or "Vijaren Ssri'cartel Norelsivar," was a character first on the Neverwinter Nights server called Menzoberranzan, then on Myth Drannor, then on Gatecrashers before being retired. He was another character of mine who started with little more than a name and a general idea of what I wanted to play -- in this case, a sterotypical elven archer. As it turned out, Vij probably developed the oddest and most complicated set of experiences that I can recall. Though he started out morally neutral, he had ups and down, between consorting with demons, and trying to get away from said demons (multiple times,) trying to raise a family, trying to keep a bunch of genocidal paladins at bay, dealing with almost equally genocidal demonic elves.... I enjoyed playing Vij but some of the character interactions -- more to the point, some of the players I delt with -- I could have done without. One of the problems with FurryMUCK was that you never really had any say in who you were playing with, you kind of had to deal with them without any choice. You could ignore them, but that wasn't an option on a NWN server where their character could, well, kill yours dead. For the most part, I have good memories of Vij, and he had one of the more dramatic developments of character I've had, but he, sadly, has been retired.
  
• Mrrin Shadowflower, also from an NWN server, was a strong departure from my norms. She was evil. I think it's safe to say that she was really the only evil character I'd yet played. And she wasn't "evil" in the style of a vampy domina, either. She was a hin, a halfling of the Forgotten Realms. Granted, because of her heritage and a surface raid by duergar, she had drow coloration and bright yellow eyes, but she was still a halfling. A halfling assassin. It's always the ones you least expect, isn't it? She got her start, actually, when I was playing around in the Aurora toolset and stumbled upon this character model for a halfling which had the property of being able to have the eyecolor changed. A few experiments later, and there was Mrrin, already creeping me out with those seemingly huge yellow eyes. Mrrin came off as kind of ditzy, having a problem with prepositions and definitive articles, barely being able to speak Common without some trouble. An interesting detail in Third Edition D&D: assassins add their Intelligence modifier to their attack rolls when doing a Death Attack. You can see where this is going, can't you? Yep, underneath the ditzy facade, with Mrrin cherfully holding up a canister of smokepowder with which to make 'Big boomies!' was the razor-sharp, calculating mind of an assassin who could not only speak Common fluently, but also Halfling, Draconic, Dwarven, and Elven. Even so.. sometimes I had loads of fun playing Mrrin just as the way she presented herself as; it was fun and in a way comforting and comfortable. The main trick with her, however, was the same as with Dermott: I just couldn't be evil or dastardly or desperate enough. For starters, I really dislike Player-versus-Player situations, and I just couldn't play a character who really couldn't care less about everyone around her and would slit any throat for some gold. A big trick with her was playing her in a way I was comfortable with and yet keeping her evil. It wasn't ever easy, but even so, I'd like to play Mrrin again someday since she was, first and foremost, a sneakthief.
  
• Qiang-Wei Long from Son of the Dragon gets a special mention. Like Mrrin he was an assassin, and thus I suppose you could say he's evil. But the focus was different; Son of the Dragon was based off of Hong Kong blood operas, and in that milieu an assassin could be honorable and professional, and still likable, in a sense. When looked at as 'hired retribution,' a freelance assassin for the Tongs could, I suppose, still be likable and personable. He was also a little more forward and personable than most of my characters. Part of the enjoyment of the character was the interaction with the other 'leading role,' Chou. Son of the Dragon was a short-term game, and Qiang-Wei was retired.
  
• An Ying Xing of Bloody Idols has a special place here because I was on the verge of wanting him to die! The game was going great, the character was fun to play with: a Hong Kong gambler with Lady Fortune on his side and a penchant for the feminine mulan quan wushu martial arts style. It wasn't that I hated the character, on the contrary: I enjoyed playing him immensely. It was just that the whole theme of the Feng Shui game was cinematic role-playing, and since it was a one-shot there wasn't going to be a real campaign, per se. In the climactic battle with the boss, An Ying was severely wounded and it really looked like he was going to die. It was a really emotional and powerful scene. He pulled through, though, and the game continued on to a satisfactory, and quite cinematic, conclusion. Like Son of the Dragon, a big part of the enjoyment came from playing opposite the other lead, Rain Xiao, and the banter and interchange between the two added to the fun. Also like Son of the Dragon, Bloody Idols was a short-term game.
  
• Steven Ansel Kananga of Idlewild. Again, like a lot of characters of mine, Steven started out as a name and a basic concept. In this case, Steven is a character from the "modern world," and is a monk devoted to Pelor. Then things got very weird. Steven's own experiences have run the gamut, not confusingly so but making for a large set of experiences. Sometimes it's a challenge because Steven isn't the smartest, most dextrous, or most personable of people (to look at his character sheet) so I sometimes forget to play within those parameters. Yet even with those statistics, playing Steven has included a lot of character development since the experiences have been pretty darn varied.
  

Looking over that list, it strikes me that the most enjoyable times I've had role-playing has been the character development. It wasn't so much as getting to the point of a defined character, really; the most "fun" characters never stopped developing. Even to the end of the game they were still growing and subtly changing in relation to their experiences. I'm pretty system-agnostic; the actual system of the game is pretty immaterial so long as the game-world is interesting, and the character is given a chance to develop. I seem to be slowly moving from 'developing a really cool character' -- looking at some of the early characters I've played, namely Chas and Dermott -- to simply 'developing a character,' like with Horatio, Douglas, and Steven; none of them started out particularly exceptionally but the vast enjoyment I got was from their development. With characters like Mrrin, Kav, and An Ying, though, I still show a bit of a desire to want to play a character with an interesting twist or schtick. ^^

So, all that being said... I'm going to end here. ^^ I hope that if you read through all this it was at least mildly interesting or amusing, and maybe lends a bit of insight into the convoluted mess that is my mind on RP. ^^ Pax.

EDIT: Listening now to Rob Dougan's "FuriousAngels" which was An Ying's 'theme song,' so to speak. I wonder if I can think up other, appropriate theme songs for the folks in this rogue's gallery.

Comments

[ruggels.livejournal.com]

From the outside perspective, Chastity came acros as attractive, and businesslike, and had a somewhat "U.N." appproach to things, in that she never seemed to come to a decision, until the bulltest started flying. she had "proincipled positionsfrom which she seemed to govern from, but she also semed to oocasionally make some poor character judgements, or was too "Charitable", in her assesments of some others. The fact she came from a lower tech milieau, oddly enough gave her (for me) more moral authority. For me, "The right people" looked up to her, and respected her.

Dermott, was there, but for me, he seemed.. "comic"? If that's the word for it. He was a Pirate in the middle of a WW2 small surface unit engagement. His sails get shredded with fifty cals, and the lanky sailors with the garands just look at your folks "cutlasses" with confusion, and then shoot if there is any hostile intent, and then Dermott would run. it seemed that the "Piracy" to be succesful on that server meant that the folks were more high tech thieves, and mercs, stealing fixed assets rather than attacking any shipping. Attacking shipping seemed a very Military activity.

On the whole, I just cannot imagine you ever playing a ruthlessly desperate "black hat", or some cherfully amoural type, You always seemed to be a total white hat :-)

Scott

[collie13.livejournal.com]

Aww, thank you, Jonathan! Reading your thoughts on your characters was really encouraging. It's nice to know games we were both in, or that I ran for you, were enjoyable for you. Let's do more! ;)

...or should I say... Ace! ;-D