My Top Three Characters

"Tomorrow is the dawning of a new day. ONE WITHOUT YOU IN IT!"


I was talking to Ray and he asked people for their top three characters. I urge everyone to answer this question in their own way, because it's a lot of fun looking back. I didn't respond immediately to him, because this question kinda fucked me up for a little bit. I've played so many characters with so many people. I started to wonder how you should even quantify this question. Is a character less valid if you only played them in a short game? Hell, I have characters I love that saw ten or fewer game sessions. Fuck me, do NPCs count? For sake of sanity, I'm just going to talk about favorite NPCs separately. Should you let drama or even the game's plot affect your decision? Sorry to say I did, even if that's not very fair. I rarely end up hating my characters, but some that I really like were either fucked with too much or were in games that were too awful, and it makes me not enjoy remembering them.

I'm rarely masturbatory on this blog, so I hope ya'll don't mind me doing it this time. Here we go, in no particular order, because otherwise it'd feel like picking my favorite kid.


Elle Arcineau. Nobody who's played a game with Elle in it or even heard of the character is surprised by this pick, I think. She was the first time I decided to challenge myself with a character, due to online, text based games letting you flex better without feelings of social anxiety or embarrassment. I picked a lot of traits that directly opposed the ways I usually play. I don't like casters and favor melee, so she's a ranged controller modeled after Green Lantern. I favor large, broad and strong characters, so she's five two and slender. I play wilderness types, she's a rich, ambitious city dweller. I usually hate expies, so I modeled her after a pre-existing character. She's bubbly, easily distracted, I could go on. I put together a ton of traits I usually shy away from and decided fuck it, if I don't click with her I'll just change characters. It was a four-color superhero game, so a rotating cast wouldn't be weird. Luckily, it worked and she remains one of my favorite characters.

Elle is a young CEO of a powerful company who built a fortune due to her insane ambition and a little bit of thanks to insight granted by her mutant powers. She can summon and control candy. The idea was, like Speedball or Paige Guthrie, to take a power that sounds dumb or useless and twist it to her advantage. Candy isn't as funny or dumb when it's white-hot molten sugar sticking like napalm, hundreds of pounds of caramel anchoring you in place or a jawbreaker so tough and flying so fast it can literally break your jaw. So thanks to a super-powered sense of taste and her power, she sold candy patents for nest-egg money then moved into investment. She hired reformed mad scientists and, by the time the game began had moved into being a large tech company. It was surprisingly fun to RP. Her devices led to taking a feat that let her wear any clothing she wanted instantly, and that was a huge amount of fun to watch her fashion sense go down a weird rabbit hole of bright colors, animal patterns and odd mixes.

It was also fun to play someone so hyper and distracted. She's mouthy, and pushy, and aggressively nice. She's comedic. all things I didn't think I'd enjoy as much as I did. She got turned into an elf at one point in the game (It was a modern world but with elves. Just go with it.) and it marked a pretty nice, memorable turn for her. She even had a great romance with another PC, Rela C'rar. And yeah, she was 'involved' with like half the PCs and NPCs in the game in some fashion too, but Rela is the one she married.

I adore Elle, but out of the three characters presented, She's the only one I'm not likely to play again. She's great, but I like the idea that she's happy somewhere with Rela and they act as controllers and leaders for a team.

I have a ton of stuff I could probably share, but I'll keep that for another day. I'll leave you with some of the pieces of artwork of her that were commissioned as a gift.

Elle Arcineau, by Lemonfont

Elle Arcineau, by Valerie Nystrom.

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Inkless, Professor of History and Runaway Angel. This game really wasn't THAT long and was plagued by being unable to push forward sometimes, so I guess some people would think it was weird that she made my top three, but I love her pretty dearly. This is another Mutants and Masterminds character, set in a world where magic, mystical things were constantly happening just underneath the surface. She was a professor at a University that both taught and protected those sorts of people who knew the truth and could use magic of their own.

Inkless, or Thessa as she was known once other Professors asked for a more normal name, is literally an angel. She is an eternal being of light that's supposed to live in the Christian idea of Heaven. She was a sort of muse(It's not the same as a Greek muse, I know. Shh.) who was meant to go down to Earth in secret and urge people on to greater things. As you'll start to see, I love Inkless as a person but I also love all of the themes that came together to make her. She "ran away" from her duty in Heaven because she didn't feel like she was making an impact. She started to dread the idea that she can only ever do what she was made for. That nobody can truly defy God's design. The catalyst? a well-meaning Archangel told her she was doing a good job and that she was appreciated.

I think everyone knows how bad that can fucking sting when you don't think you've done anything.

She slums around Earth for years, encountering fantasy types of all kinds. This was a world where EVERY Religion was "Right", and it became obvious that Inkless wasn't alone in the way she thought. She eventually gravitated toward the University and became a professor. It wouldn't occur to her until much later that she still wasn't able to escape her "duty" of inspiring people.

Because an eternal being would go insane and perception of time would prevent interaction eventually, Angels(and most other celestial beings) in this world were "locked" at a certain perception, a certain mental maturity. They can change, of course, but it isn't that common. Despite being hundreds of years old, Inkless was eternally locked at nineteen, mentally. This was a source of a lot of her issues. She hated responsibility, but was rabidly protective of her 'kids', to the point that it caused some arguments.

I got to play with some pretty serious and fun themes, all in all. Ones like being able to grow beyond your purpose or duty and giving people a second chance. I don't know when or where, but I'd love to play her again.

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Chief Tumbling-Dice. Yeah, this might be a shorter one but he's no less loved. I was a kid when I made him, and he's a D&D 2e character at heart. It means there's neither any heavy themes nor a super interesting build to talk about, even though he had a pretty fun set of stats when he cameoed as an NPC in a 3.5 game.

The name came from a stand-up comedy bit from...I think it was Robin Williams. Obviously it's a pretty crass joke on the fact that Native Americans build casinos. I loved absurdity so I ran with it. He's a devout (and sincere) worshipper of Faerun's Goddess of Luck, Tymora. He also happens to be a lizard-man. He wore a tall top hat with feathers stuffed in the hat band. He had a black vest, black dress slacks(tailored for his tail. Obviously) and no shoes, because you can't put shoes on claws. These days I imagine him as wearing spats like a cartoon character, I won't lie.

We needed a party cleric for Against the Giants, and if I was gonna be forced to play a cleric I was gonna have fun, god dammit. He made zombies(because those corpses are LESSER races, they don't count), happily waded into combat, and had a floating skull he hit people with. I honestly don't remember if that was some kind of item or just me reflavoring the spell Spiritual Weapon.

The Chief also had a thing for random chance. Obviously. It was matched only by his love of bluffing and fooling people. He became an ad-hoc leader for a while(He IS a Chieftain, let's be fair) so he would generally lead the party on where to go. He'd roll dice(he owned several pairs) then decide between however many corridors were there. The joke always was, from the beginning, that he never revealed the method he was using. I waited for someone to question him so I could drop the punchline that the rolling and the decision were 100% removed from each other. He was just rolling dice then deciding where to go. Two completely separate actions.

In twenty years, nobody ever asked. Call me optimistic but I'm hoping there's at least one person out there who had no idea.

In my mind, his whole tribe are named similarly. Names like Cashed-in-Chips, Double-Down, Marks-the-Cards or Bets-On-Pocket-Aces. They run a massive Casino-Church in the middle of swampland, using secret underwater passages to get around faster than their patrons and to hide the riches they've collected in service to Tymora. I'll definitely play him again some day.

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Because I'm wimping the fuck out I have some honorable mentions. I've played a ton of beloved characters. They're my babies. Hey, if you don't like it...write your own blog!

Riyo'to. A miqo'te street urchin who learned black magic by spying on classes. It was a lot of fun not only playing a kid, but one who was basically scared of women. That's completely opposite from the usual male miqo'te stereotypes and kind of why Riyo'to exists in the first place, that subversion. He grew up with fifteen sisters. You'd be scared of them too!

Seras Heartstring. Seras needs a rebuild mechanically, but he was a blast. He's a good person, but kind of the male equivalent to a ditzy blonde. He was a comedy character, with tons of jokes surrounding his feminine looks(He can be mistaken for a woman. I figured that was valid for an Aasimar) and that he was a priest of fertility and bounty. It was my first time since Elle playing a comedy character and I feel like it worked really well. He's definitely due for more time and another game.

Blind Mary. You'd think more Vampire characters would come up, and while I've played a lot, she's my favorite. Mary had an interesting life, from Latino gang member, to devout Nun, to Lasombra shovel-head. Her faith was never shaken, and in fact she took the vampiric curse as proof that God is Real. She was quiet(maybe too quiet) and I never did enough with what she knew of the Book of Nod, but I loved her. Note: Not actually blind. The nickname was metaphorical, from her gang days.


So that's it, I hope me being wholly masturbatory at least entertained you a bit. If you were hoping to see a character on this list and didn't, don't be sad. I've got so many beloved characters that this was very hard for me, and it was very close.