Campaign History, Character Creation and RPG Philosophy

Okay, so some years back I began a new campaign targeted on the next generation of the Wild Hunt.  With very little imagination I titled the effort the Lothlorien Academy and it was good.  At least I was having fun.  Unfortunately two of my players did not get along and the game fell apart after several months.  But . . . like all of the characters I create, more than a few of this group got under my skin.  The result of this ‘infection’ became the Legacy.

Legacy is purely me, no players have been hurt or even involved directly.  A solo campaign?  Yeah, I know, weird but to me its really just another form of writing.  The . . . conflict in Lothlorien Academy (LA), with real players, to me was some of the best RPing I’d ever been involve with.  The idea as teenagers discovering their powers and the angst that went with it.  Let me tell you, the angst was way over the top and there were many fantastic RP moments.  The main problem was, for at least one player, separating the game and reality.  Now, to be fair, the player was going through a major, major crisis, physically as well as mentally, and isn’t totally responsible for what came to pass. When I am involved in a game I tend to ‘channel’ the personality I have created to the point of ‘NO, he would NOT do it like that’ and nothing anyone can say or do will EVER get me to go against the character.

Anyway, Legacy.  Here I had a dead campaign, LA, unfortunately the characters I’d created would not leave me alone.  I felt they deserved more.  I felt they deserved a life.  One of the final scenes in LA involved the angry departure of two of the characters, all RPed, some I used that as a basis for what came to be Legacy.

Every character I design, especially ones I use as a PC, are living, breathing beings and Nat Ryan was no exception.  From the beginning I had doubts about him, more or less despising’brick’ characters’ but something in him hit home.  And once I began to play him in LA with others he developed into a fully realized personality, one that was forever stuck in my mind and clamoring to get out.  Problem was, no matter how much I wanted to continue playing him, the fact was the group had exploded and nothing I could do would ever put it back together.  I was alone in my need to continue the story.

The crux of the LA break up was a romantic triangle, pretty typical of teens.  Jessy loved Nat, Nat loved Wren, Wren didn’t trust her feelings for Nat, Jessy hated Wren, Wren was mostly indifferent, Nat felt guilty about Jessy but loved Wren too much, Wren started to give in to her feelings for Nat, Jessy did something stupid, said stupidity almost destroyed the Nat/Wren thing, Jessy ran away from home, Nat and Wren left the LA together and settled back in Nat’s home town.

The seed of Legacy.

Now I had two characters separate from the central core of the Wild Hunt and Seattle Hunt.  I couldn’t let it just die, sorry Jessy, but that’s the way it is.  Thing was, Wren’s player had IRL things to do and we sorta drifted apart but I had to write the story.  Enter the trope of a government sponsored school for teen supers.  Now I needed other students to round things out.  One, Zach, I brought over from the LA campaign, not that Zach’s player had anything to do with it but the character was a little lost and Nat had become his best friend so after a little background stuff the player never explained, I brought him into the story.  Others, Christiana, Alicia, Fuji, Josh, Slater and Ember began as someone else’s initial character design that I’d created but had been left with very little info on background when they vanished into the ether.  *Note: 99 times out of 100 the characters other people play are constructed by me as I know the game system far better than any of my players.  Generally it starts with a few hundred questions on my part and the occasional answer on the player’s part.  I try hard to bring to life the player’s vision.

NPCs to me are as ‘real’ as any PC I’ve ever made.  If they weren’t I’d never be able to portray them properly so in the last couple of years I have put just as much effort into NPC background as any PC I’ve every played.  I know a lot of character designers begin with a concept, a rough background and build the character from there.  I work the other way around.  I make a character first, the background forms from what I put together and once I have the personality in mind, I begin to write the background.

No character design survives in tact the process of writing a background.   As I write small things begin to creep in, like Fuji’s totally opposite personality when she’s playing an MMORPG.  I don’t go into a back story with any preconceived notion of the character.  To me writing has always been like watching a movie I’ve never seen before.  Things just unfold as the story progresses.

Usually I begin like most writers, with a hook.  It can be something simple like ‘Nat Ryan is a surfer’ or something deeper like ‘Slater is a genetic experiment by the Red Queen of Genocide‘.  Rarely do I have to struggle with a story as most of the time any problems stem from getting thoughts to computer.   From there the story just . . . becomes.  Rarely do I have to struggle with a story as most of the time any problems stem from getting thoughts to computer.   This is the situation lately.  I have so many ideas its hard to get it out.  I am hoping to use this blog to sort of organize my ideas.

Recently I decided the Legacy team wasn’t the first class in the new government school for the paranormal hence the creation of the Minutemen team.  As many Champions players already know, the term Minuteman was usurped near the beginnings of the Champions Universe by the anti-mutant group, Genocide.  In my campaign just after 9-11 the President demanded his Secretary of Defense set up some form of ‘offical’ superhero group.  One of the stipulations he made was that the first team would be called the Minutemen, thereby taking back the name from Genocide.   This team I designed from scratch with the exception of Nemesis and Mercury.

For this new American team I knew I’d need some kind of iconic names from the member but most are sort of trite and over used so in all cases the names were altered, Spirit for Spirit of America, Bell for Liberty Bell, Eagle for American Eagle, Liberty for Lady Liberty, Glory for Old Glory and Ranger for, well, the US Army Rangers . . . Bolt I am thinking about and Mercury I sort of associate with the Mercury dime but Nemesis is all the player’s idea.

As for power sets?  Ranger’s a half brick, Spirit has molecular powers, Bell sonic, Eagle has wings, Glory light powers and Liberty was a last minute addition with the power to teleport the team, hence ‘liberate’ them in a pinch.  Also I wanted a more representative mix hence my first African-American, Latino, Latina and Native American.   If they are too stereo-typical, I apologize but Superhero RPGs sort of rely on stereo types.

Once I’d ascertained power sets, I wanted to have them come from widely spaced areas of the country, Maine, Alaska, Los Angeles, Philadelphia,  St. Paul, Dallas with an Army brat tossed in for good measure.  I wanted a variety of home life situations, the Mentioned Army brat, artist, musician, ecologist, gang member, cop’s child, rich rancher . . . plus a variety of family lives . . . no parent, overbearing father, distant artists, single mother, extended family and nuclear family.  Each had to have a mind set, dreamer, realist, flippant, rebel, oppressed, pampered . . . patriot.

Once I’d defined who was who and what, the background took shape.  Then the integration into a whole new social situation.  I had to get in the heads of each to determine how they feel and relate to every other member of the class.  I am still working on that.  Once that was done, they had to meet Legacy and again the integration and relationships.  That’s still ongoing.

Anyway, this is what I have currently on my mind, the whole time wishing I had players willing to take up their characters once more.

RPG

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