NON-TTRPG: Bolvar Fordragon and the Punchin' Bunch

 "Father...is it over?"

"At long last. No king rules forever, my son."

I quit World of Warcraft the other day. I'm not happy about it, and I'm not happy with the way the developers have been handling the game. Today's post isn't really about that, though. I quit over the mechanics of the game, but honestly I'd be lying if I said the story had nothing to do with it. I've largely enjoyed World of Warcraft's story. Honestly. It's not always great, but it's often good, or at least enjoyable. Things took a turn only recently with Battle for Azeroth and its unfocused, hole-ridden mess. A friend of mine often said(at the time) that Battle for Azeroth isn't any stupider than any other expansion, and I only sort of agree with that. The way they were expressing the story that was different, and I thought that was the problem. Shadowlands improved in terms of story but left the rough outline of the style intact: Covenant campaigns are basically the same thing as BfA's war campaign. I finished two out of four(Venthyr and Necrolords) and I can say they're generally telling better stories. So what was the problem with BfA exactly? Was Wordup right all along like he always is?

I caught up with Guild Wars 2 after unsubscribing from WoW. I'd been meaning to give it another chance and removing WoW's unhappy time sink made room for it. I decided to swap mains away from warrior, and that meant finishing the core game's campaign again on my thief. It's a single player only sort of thing that gives okay-to-decent rewards so it's not a bad idea to just slam through it regardless. 

It's not a bad story, exactly. The plot surrounds a necromantic dragon named Zhaitan using powerful magic to raise not just an undead army, but an entire sunken continent full of the corpses of a doomed society. You never get the impression that Zhaitan is power-mad, aiming to take over the world...or even intelligent, really. Dragons in the Guild Wars universe are these inherently unknowable, powerful beasts. It's a nice change of pace. 

I got to the part where a unified army of separate organizations called The Pact is trying to wage a real war against Zhaitan's army of the dead. It's maudlin in places but does an okay job of making you feel as though you're dealing with "generals" step by step and I started to notice something. Every plot point leads to a fight. I mean, this is an MMO right? It has to. It's an obvious thing, but one I never thought of before. I only noticed because GW2 goes progressively through several of these plot points, all on the way to the final one where you kill Zhaitan using airship guns. 

What are we going to do about this Eye of Zhaitan, this thing that seems to know everything about us and feed tactical information directly to Zhaitan's army? Ooh, I bet we're going to kill it. 

What are we to do about the Mouth of Zhaitan, his most powerful minion? Well, I think I'm gonna stab him with these little knives until he doesn't move anymore. 

How do we deal with the bulk of Zhaitan's army? You will never guess. 

Even the Living World stuff I've played that bridges the core story to the expansions sets up another big dragon guy to punch. So what's the difference, then? Why was this okay? Why's Garrosh's story one of the best in gaming, in my opinion, but BfA cratered, creatively? You can handle the raid boss story problem a few different ways, structurally.

Classic WoW has quite a good feel to its story. Sometimes you're directly led into why a conflict is happening, like Onyxia. Most of the time, though, you're led to just infer why you are where you are. The Ahn'qiraj war effort and the various Dark Iron Dwarf zones serve as your connection to your actions, and otherwise the world just lives on. An overarching story isn't expressly attempted, only feel and tone are presented via subplots. Not only do I feel like this is a fine way to go about your story, I actually kind of prefer it. Classic is probably the most immersed I'd ever felt in WoW. 

You could work directly with the idea and meet it head-on. WoW's done it many, many times. People thought it was dumb when Warlords of Draenor introduces its NPCs with title cards like they're wrestlers, but face it: A wrestling vibe kind of works for World of Warcraft. Being straightforward, bold and blunt is even refreshing these days. Garrosh is a bad guy. Here's how he got where he is, and here's where he's going. It makes you want to stop him. By the time he destroys the Vale of Eternal Blossoms you're incredibly invested in the story, and satisfied at the end even though he's not dead. Only defeated. 

I'm not a fan of FFXIV but you can also pull its trick and intersperse the punchin' with cinematics and other, non-violent story beats. FFXIV also even makes it a major plot point that punching the Primals wasn't your brightest idea. The two-edged sword here, obviously, is that you're now using a story method much closer to a JRPG than anything else. Does it work? Well, obviously. FFXIV's popular as hell and people rave about it. 

BfA gives up on the war mid-way through the expansion and eventually pays it off in a cinematic, not a fight. It moves on to essentially tell...extremely shortened expansion stories in its second and third raid tier. I'm honestly a little mad that it blew two excellent long-form ideas in patches. Queen Azshara and N'zoth deserved more time than they got. Full expansions, in the least. The concept of Nyalotha is a rich, compelling idea that was begging to be a whole expansion. 

Let's talk solely about the war campaign plot, which was poised to be the main plot of Battle for Azeroth. Let me get this out of the way first: Yes, I'm saying that the main problem is that BfA doesn't primarily lead into an obvious villain that we have to punch. More than that, it can't. Sylvanas was needed as a plot point in Shadowlands and neither army can be permitted to win the conflict since there's players on both sides. Therefore, it creates a confused, messy direction where a bunch of stuff just happens and the main plot is resolved in a conflict-free cinematic. Then, we're swiftly shuffled off toward mini-plots for our next two raid tiers, the sort of thing that feels almost like a panicked distraction from a story team that ran out of places to take the war effort plot.

But where could BfA have possibly gone, anyway? Neither side can lose or even be shown as obviously wrong: like I said, the players can't be left feeling like losers. The status quo must be maintained, and apparently we can't even handle cross faction grouping. The game has also used the Horde as bad guys several times in the past and ducked responsibility for it by calling the villainous Horde an offshoot or splinter group. It never goes over well with the Horde players and would feel like a tired retread, even if you flipped the script and made the Alliance the bad guys. 

So there can't possibly be someone to punch in this expansion that can be telegraphed to both sides as a threat. Not without some gymnastics in the final raid tier that we all know they're not bold enough to do, like providing a completely different raid to both sides. That is, if you want to legitimately fulfill the plot as a conflict and not just swerve at the last second to have our conflict interrupted by a greater threat that we have to band together to face. That happens to be another plot point they've overused. 

You play through BfA's story feeling like you're getting ready for a fight that never really happens. It speaks to how lame the swerve is that I had to replay the Nazjatar intro more than once to even figure out why it was happening. That's because there was no real point to it and the entire tier was presented as a distraction from the conflict story being out of ideas, before it even felt like it started.

That's what the problem really is. It's not a fruitful idea for a story. Shadowlands is doing better despite a similar(ish) writing style and conveyance method, because the afterlife is a rich source of ideas and has a clear villain we can get excited to punch. Even though I don't think the Jailer is a very compelling villain!

So basically, the thing I said when Battle for Azeroth was launched turned out to be right after all. If you need me I'll be hanging out with Cassandra, watching the city of Troy burn. 

Things that it's weird that Shadowrun 3rd Edition doesn't have, Part One

 "Listen up! This is a robbery! We want to harm no one! We're after the bank's money, not yours! Your money is insured by the federal government! You're not gonna lose a dime! Think of your beloved ones! Don't try to be a hero. Just shut up, and stay down, and this will be over in no time!"

I used to play a lot of Payday 2. It's a very Shadowrun-esque game. Any heist movie or product is going to remind you of Shadowrun, surely. While I was playing it, I often had "Hey, wait a minute..." moments that made me question Shadowrun's specific design philosophies. 

Shadowrun works as a game. I mean, obviously. I have thousands of hours playing 3rd edition and even a bunch playing 5th. But I do think there's some things suspiciously missing from 3rd edition that even 5th edition adds. I'm gonna go over some of them and try to slap some rules suggestions together. This post is mostly full of things that are common in the real world, but later on we're going to see some adaptations from fifth edition Shadowrun.

First on the list is ballistic masks. Shadowrun was made in the 80s so I'm not exactly surprised it doesn't have specifically ballistic masks in it, but it's weird to me that it doesn't have some sort of protective headwear beyond that one weird bike helmet and security/military armor. In addition to that, protecting your identity is pretty important, right? I guess they're assuming you're always going to have a decker on your team but...we all know what the problem with deckers is. I can't imagine they're popular in actual play. Even if you've got one you're still relying on him not getting IC'ed up there, so...it just seemed like a smart decision to me to hide your face. That logically guides you toward trying to find a nice one, one that "does something" and having either a protective item or something that functions as goggles is what most people would think of first.

It would be pretty simple to slap these together. The first option is simply to let someone reflavor a security helmet and just go with that. It doesn't make sense that a ballistic mask would have such a high availability, but at least you're getting the proper performance out of it. This option would let you put cool shit in your ballistic mask as well, which is something I always love doing. However, since they're not exactly an illegal item in real life, a compromise can be introduced. A Rapid Transit helmet is +2 impact armor for 50¥ and availability 4. A security helmet is +1 ballistic, +2 impact for 250¥ and availability of 12. I think, then, something that was +1/+1 for 200¥ and availability 6 or 8 would be reasonable. 

Next up is that it's really weird to me that this is a game about theft and intrusion, and beyond explosives it doesn't have any rules for cutting through vaults or doors. It has plenty of ways to technologically defeat them, but your only ways to bust open a sealed vault if you failed an Electronics check are explosives or that one cutting laser eye attachment. You can't even get a hand-held version of that laser. Payday 2 is rife with power drills: automatic drill rigs are in virtually every mission. It's by design since the core of the gameplay is to make you hold a position for a specific length of time. I've wrestled with what to design here: obviously a drill and automatic press rig shouldn't be that expensive and should be making an attack on the surface every minute or so based on the power of the drill and the bit used. However, I'm at a loss as to what specific values to suggest. Real-world drilling times are highly dependent on a number of factors that, frankly, I don't understand. If I come up with something I'll be sure to edit it in below. 

So, there's this thing, a concept called a Death Cord. Don't google that. The thing I'm talking about is a cord designed to short out an electrical socket or destroy an electrical piece of equipment. Things like male-to-male connectors, unshielded cords that connect ethernet or USB right to the wall socket, or thumb drives with giant batteries attached that dump right into the system when connected. This simple sort of sabotage would be far more prevalent in the age of shadowrunning. Plenty of corporations would likely have measures to prevent widespread damage from this sort of thing, but there's only so much you can do to mitigate it: electricity's gonna do whatever the fuck it wants. In addition to that, there's going to be a lot of locations (even potential shadowrun target locations) where corporations have skimped on protections in favor of low overhead on building costs. Honestly, in 2021 it's hard for me to not imagine a whole fucking power grid going haywire thanks really simple problems like these. Power consumption and demand must be much higher in Shadowrun, and that may mean not every grid, outlet or device is as safe as in the real world. Will corporate locations have breakers in their sockets? Whenever they can, surely. Will a typical slapped-together house in a planned community? Maybe. Will an apartment complex? Don't make me laugh. Thankfully, unlike power drills this is easy to stat out: it's just a device built by Electronics B/R that makes an attack on the system it's plugged into. For power grid purposes this can easily be handwaved: It's either gonna work or it's not. For smaller things like a chip designed to blow a cyberdeck, terminal, or device it's as easy as assigning a damage value. I recommend something like 8D. 

Meme Builds: Brak

"Woah

Hey

Don't touch me."

So Meme Builds isn't for OP munchkin crap. It's for me putting together something that looks fun, cool, and effective enough that you'd want to play it. I don't think this build is overpowered, but it will be irritating in a way the other meme builds haven't been. It'll also require as much explaining as your typical "tricksy bullshit" munchkin build. 

You've been warned. Go grab a drink then dive right in to this. Don't have any coffee, though, because it'll just make you jittery. 

Brak

Class: Fighter

Archetype: Viking

Feats

1 Improved Unarmed Combat

1b Combat Reflexes

2b Dirty Fighting

3 Snake Style

4b Improved Trip

5 Vicious Stomp

6b Snake Sidewind

7 Greater Trip

8b (Rage Power)Unexpected Strike

9 Snake Fang

10b 

11

12b (Rage Power)Taunting Stance

You'll also want an amulet of mighty fists with the Fortuitous ability on it. That lets you take an additional attack when you take an attack of opportunity, at a -5. 

The idea is pretty simple: we're punishing anyone stupid enough to attack you. Here's how it goes. They step up to you, and you pop Unexpected Strike and take an Attack of Opportunity. Then, you take your Fortuitous attack. They swing at you: If they hit, you take your Taunting Stance attack(s). Use one of these to trip them, then if successful take an attack of opportunity via Greater Trip. Then, take another one because of Vicious Stomp. If they miss, you do all of that then take an additional one(or two if it hits) AoO via Snake Fang. You do all this without even spending some sort of resource. To recap:

One from Unexpected Strike

One from Fortuitous
One or more from Taunting Stance
One from Greater Trip
One from Vicious Stomp

Two from Snake Fang

Pros. Well that's a lot of fucking attacks, mate. That's your pro right there. You've also given up very little in terms of regular attacking power, since none of this is on your turn. Greater Trip is also pretty good to have around when you've got friends in melee. You're locked to a one-handed weapon and shield, but I consider it a bonus that you even can use a weapon in the first place with this build considering its ties to unarmed style feats. 


Cons. This section is going to be deceptively large, I just want you to know that. First off, many of those attacks up there(Vicious Stomp and Snake Fang) must be taken with unarmed strikes: meaning without gear or other ways to increase unarmed damage(see Finishing the Character, below) you're stuck at 1d3 plus your mods. You're also going to spend more money on weaponry than other fighters: you're probably buying things like a monk's robe or an amulet of mighty fists in addition to your weapon. You're also giving mostly everyone a +4 to attack and damage against you: You can(and will) use Snake Style to protect yourself vs. their primary attack, but expect to get hit a lot. 

Oh, and your ass is going to run out of AoOs in most rounds. Just accept it. 


Finishing the Character. First off, you have the option of taking the barbarian power Brawler at level 10 to get your unarmed strikes up to 1d6. Otherwise, plan on wearing a Monk's Robe. You'll want a fortuitous weapon as soon as you can as well. Oh, and it goes without saying that you should find any way you can to get more attacks of opportunity.  Your STR probably needs raising as well if you skimped on that to get your DEX up for more AoOs.

Aside from that, Demoralize powers and feats like Terrifying Howl work well with Viking's fast demoralize power. So do shield feats. You're not married to the idea of a shield, but considering what kind of character you are and how badly you want people to miss you, I say you should try to flex that viking shield bonus. 

Later on in your build(level 16+) you have the option of ditching your weapon and shield for Counterpunch for an additional AoO, but I don't think it's worth it. If you adapt this build to Unchained Monk or Brawler, however, don't sleep on this feat. 

I want to mention the feat Antagonize here too, since most people would probably think of that when building this character. Honestly, I don't like it much on the best of days. In addition, the passage that says the effect ends if attacking you would harm it sort of makes me believe the feat just isn't going to work for you. I dunno, if you like arguing with your GM maybe this is a feat for you.

For Full Memery. Oh, lord. I'm sorry but I don't want to be responsible for anyone who chooses to act like Brak in a pen and paper game. 

If You Hate Fun. You're in luck, because the counter-attack master is a staple of action genres. There's a lot of fun to be had in goading people into attacking you or getting into a one-on-one duel. This is a prime character for getting boastful. I don't recommend anyone play a standoffish loner, but this build is also a great way to play someone who doesn't like getting close to people: A germophobe or someone who's sickly and doesn't want anyone else to catch it. 

Future Mouse sighs while Past Mouse runs from Present Mouse

"MAYBE I'M JUST LIKE

PRE-EMPTIVELY THE WORST FUCKING PIECE OF TRASH WHO EVER LIVED

AND I DON'T EVEN KNOW IT YET."

Hey we gotta do something before we start today. I forgot a character in my last post! He's one I really wanted to talk about, too. Just to make sure everyone catches it I'm putting him here instead of editing the previous post. 

William Loman
Boston
Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 5/5. My only amnesiac to date, but a melancholy, drifter-by-choice type as well. The specifics of his story and how they tie into his concept are what make him great.

Personality. 3/5. World-weary, pessimistic and sarcastic. He wouldn't win any awards, but playing someone dealing with cosmic bad karma was interesting. 

Mechanics. 4/5. A tank-focused street samurai. Reasonably effective, and his lack of reaction was made up for in how many bullets he could soak up while laughing. 

Loman should have been my character in Boston for the entire game. He would've fit better and I think I even could have done Smiley's activism/protest stuff better with him. Honestly, I didn't even mention that aspect of Smiley earlier: I think I undersold how much I regret that character. I don't remember him fondly even though Boston was a great game from beginning to end. 

Loman deliberately picked the name of Death of a Salesman's main character and always kept a physical copy of the play in his long coat. It's a play about a man who ends his own life because he laments not reaching an impossible life goal and never tries to be happy with what he's got. So, Loman was happy with his drifting, his dog, and shadowrunning to make a little bit of money. His roaming habits proved pretty useful in enforcing that I'm not playing him that session: After all, he's hundreds of miles away and nobody lets transients into the airport. 

It turned out later that his forgotten past was as a high-end security officer for ARES and he was responsible for terrible things. At some point a corporate rival had his family killed and bound a spirit to him, a karmic parasite. Loman's dog was responsible for his amnesia and all of his bad luck. He realized this after the dog was unbound from him, but regretted it so intensely that he found and re-bonded with the dog, losing his memories again. 

I didn't mean to write so much about him but Loman's story is what I loved about him. John did a good job of picking up on his themes and fulfilling them. It turned a vague reference to Death of a Salesman into a legitimate parallel: To be happy, Loman had to stop trying to uncover his past and just try to be happy with what he's got. 

@}-,-'--

So here we are after that overly long addition, now discussing my internet age characters. I'm going to make a bigger effort to explain the characters, but keep in mind that, just like most of my physical world characters, there may not be much to say. I guess I defaulted to that because of how much I regret some of those PCs and I'm sorry if it made it harder to read. Caution: This is gonna get long. I have more characters with more to say this time. 

Sianalayn Vyanathen
Meritor
PF/3.5e mix

Concept. 3.5/5. Sia was a military brat who tried and failed to live up to her family name and her story was about not living in the past.

Personality. 4/5. I have no idea how to explain this but she was broken but self-mending and it was fun to play out. 

Mechanics. 5/5. A funky sorcerer/fighter melee caster that I remember fondly as being more fun than Magus. 

Sia was built for a game intended to have more personal themes, all of the characters having a "realm" that represented them where tasks had to be accomplished. Sia folded under perceived expectations of her as an elf and a soldier, and in a more-than-just symbolic gesture she used the heart of her realm to change herself into a tiefling. She had an intelligent sword that she created for herself, a big ugly cleaver named BLAME that used artifact domination more than once to keep her out of trouble. It was fun RPing him as a caretaker even though he was ugly and horrible, further enforcing her theme of self-perception and "Don't judge a book by its cover". 

Miyako Summerfield

Mana of Mayhem v.1

Mutants and Masterminds

Concept. 3.5/5. a girl who finds out her uncle is a powerful Oni by getting too close to the urn his spirit is trapped in.

Personality. 2/5. Stand-offish and catty didn't mesh with her group very well. 

Mechanics. 3/5. A mix of trickery powers and being large and hitting people with fists. It was okay. 

Miyako didn't last too long because I wasn't really getting along with the other characters, but I remember her fondly enough. It turned out her uncle wasn't the villain everyone thought he was and was instead a vaguely helpful trickster type. The urn that caused Miyako to transform? He claimed her transformation would have happened eventually anyway. She never did find out if that was a lie or not. 


Arkham Pawn

Mana of Mayhem v.1
Mutants and Masterminds. 

Concept. 5/5. An homage to a classic werewolf myth, Alice shares a body with an otherworldly being and has the ability to "swap places" with her. Had heavy themes of "which one is the monster" which I enjoyed a lot. 
Personality. 4/5. Alice is a sociopath, but the Other was actually kinder. It was fond of bluster, threats and posturing, but at the end of the day it didn't like seeing people suffer if they didn't deserve it. 

Mechanics. 4/5. Alice was basically a skillful rogue and the Other was an agile combat character with adaptation powers to represent being an apex predator. 

Pawn's themes only really come up after the game closed since I wrote a story or two with her, but I like them anyway. I didn't play much before the game closed for other reasons, but it was especially fun being able to have half a conversation in front of the other PCs, only to show them later the scene from Alice's perspective with the Other's dialogue filled in. 

 

Elle Arcineau

Blood Candy
Mutants and Masterminds

Concept. 5/5. The general theme of Elle is taking something that sounds useless and turn it into a strength. She could summon candy from thin air, which sounds worthless until a jet of boiling hot liquid sugar is flying at your face while 500lbs of taffy is dragging you to the ground. 

Personality. 4/5. She's just modeled after Pinkie Pie as a challenge to myself, but she developed into more of her own character later. 

Mechanics. 5/5. She's just a controller archetype, like a Green Lantern, but it was great having lots of utility and CC powers in a game where those things are useful. 

There's a lot to unpack here. It's safe to say Elle's game was a mess due to interpersonal conflicts and the GM pointedly refusing to learn how to GM or even acknowledge his bad habits. Still, she was a blast to play thanks to her personality(which I was even challenging myself by selecting) and the characters around her. 

She was very rich, a fact that I might have dropped if generating her today, but it led for a lot of fun moments and weird plot hooks. Mutants and Masterminds is great for getting creative with wild world details because a few points here and there can justify a lot. I think I liked Elle for how creative I was able to be as well as her relationship with Rela, another PC. In my mind, they settled down and just take a back-seat role in a newer set of heroes, acting like bankrollers and trainers as they take care of their kids. 

Tatters the Clown
Some game about a space station

Some stupid rules-light system

Concept. 4/5. She was an assassin trying to escape her past, but also she was a mime who wanted to be a clown. This is just gold right here. 

Personality. 3/5. She mixes clownishness with a veteran assassin.

Mechanics. 1/5. The system she was built in was really unenjoyable. 

I like Tatters. I'm gonna play her again in a real game some day. Because the game was for a crappy system, didn't run long, and was run by the same GM as Blood Candy, I almost put her in the same category as characters I haven't even played yet. But, technically I did. So here she is. Yet another one of my million rogue types, but unique enough in personality. It's great fun having a secret that you can constantly drop hints to, because it doesn't need to be kept secret from the players. 

Riyo'to
Eorzea Alternate History

FFRPG

Concept. 3/5. He was a young Miqo'te(cat boy) who ran contrary to his race's reputation by being utterly terrified of women. A deliberately light concept for a game I didn't think was going to run long. 

Personality. 2.5/5. Skittish and energetic. Nothing special, but not bad. 

Mechanics. 4/5. An illusionist, which in FFRPG was (bizarrely) a mage focused on AoE damage. Had a burst/burn build that I quite liked.

Riyo'to was okay. Not a big fan, but okay. This was another nothing of a game, but I enjoyed playing him. He'd be much more fleshed out and interesting should I choose to reprise him. 

Seong, the Golden Child, Prodigy of the House of Ten Million Feathers

Hammer of Night

Pathfinder

Concept. 5/5. What would a true prodigy really look like? Would it even be recognizable compared to what we expect an expert to be?
Personality. 5/5. A lazy, sarcastic deviant who also spouted monk wisdom without knowing she was doing it. 

Mechanics. 4/5. A tank-focused monk who took some rogue and the crane style feats. 

Seong was for another game that didn't go long for other reasons, but it was off to a great start and the GM should try again because I think he was pretty good. Hint. Seong was drummed out of a dojo when the new leader failed to understand why the old master kept around someone who was, frankly, an asshole. It was fun to play someone who was so divided into two separate worlds but didn't know it. 

Inkless

Mana of Mayhem v.2

Mutants and Masterminds

Concept. 5/5. If God is omniscient, is it even possible to go against his wishes?

Personality. 4/5. As an angel, she was thousands of years old but mentally "locked" to a 19 year old mindset. Sort of punk, sort of teacher, sort of rebel.

Mechanics. 5/5. Her primary ability was shapeshift, but with some heavy restrictions. She could spend an hour rearranging her points into different gadgets, devices or equipment, but they all had to be discarded ideas, things that could have happened or been created but weren't. They were mostly wildly strange or exotic firearms.

Ah, I love Inkless. She was an angel who ran away from Heaven after feeling like her role as an inspiration to humans was being wasted. Sometimes, the worst thing someone can say to you is "good job" and Inkless is the embodiment of that. She became a teacher at a magical academy, which ended up sending her into an existential spiral: Was even her rebellion planned out by God? It even turned out that Heaven knew that there's a minor amount of "churn" with their agents and is hardly ever concerned with what happens to them. Overall, lovely themes that probably only fit into the specific world that Zero created in Mana of Mayhem. 

A special shoutout goes to her favorite weapon, a sawblade launcher named Sprinkles The Workplace Safety Clown, which would yelp with comedic pain every time it was fired. 

Viktoria Wakefield

The Jegliea Marble

Pathfinder

Concept. 4/5. A stage magician in a world where magic is real functions on a level of a double bluff: If you're not using a spell, suddenly it's so much harder to explain how you're doing something.

Personality. 3/5. She's circus folk so I'm biased toward her, but also this is probably the flirtiest/most sexual character I've ever had and I doubt I'd be able to do her justice face to face. 
Mechanics. 4/5. A funky kineticist/rogue build that really works well: decent support but no slouch in combat. 

Vikky was genuinely a circus performer, someone who does stage magic in a world where real magic exists. I kind've thought it would be a very rare pursuit in a world like that, and the GM agreed. It was a lot of fun having her put together an act and seeing half the audience light up with Detect Magic to try and figure out how she's doing something, only to find out that it's not a spell at all. 

James "Rabbit" March

Lone Star NYPD

Shadowrun

Concept. 3/5. Former orksploitation porn star turned police officer. Probably wouldn't have been police if he wasn't in a game specifically about Lone Star, but it fit well enough. 

Personality. 2/5. He didn't have much. He was a genuinely decent person, but he was in Lone Star so basically nobody else was. 

Mechanics. 4/5. Ork with Wired 3 and assault rifles. You can't go wrong. 

This game kind of ended thanks to the other players. We've had problems with people just...trailing off and not engaging, to the point that we haven't bothered to play in a while. This game was probably that problem at its worst: We uncovered a plot to manufacture a terror event to sell security services and Lone Star decided to just let it happen because they benefitted from the outcome. I loved the plot, but when it came time to actually solve the mystery and stop it, the other players basically just wanted to quit and let it happen. So it did and we stopped playing. I'm still sore, so I don't have a lot of great memories of Rabbit even though I like him. 

Aikiyo the Mockery

Walking the Way

Pathfinder

Concept. 5/5. A mechanical ronin samurai built to replace a toymaker's daughter. Her story had heavy themes of being defined by your past. 

Personality. 5/5. She was called "The Mockery" for more reasons than just being mechanical. She was boisterous and loud and it was a lot of fun. 
Mechanics. 5/5. She was a basic swashbuckler build who used katana, but I love swashbuckler and I enjoyed the hell out of the build. 

Aikiyo's story had great themes of fulfilling her dead "sister's" destiny and wishes versus being her own person. The plot was simple but well told and Aikiyo's motivation through most of it was simply to defeat the main villain to prove she's a better swordswoman than him. It was important to her because her sister, the woman she was built to replace, was turned away as the villain's student and it may have contributed to her death. At the climax of the game, he challenges her to a one-on-one duel and...she refuses. She accepts that she's her own person, even if she was originally created to replace someone. 

I don't play loudmouth braggarts like Aikiyo often because I get worried that I'm causing interpersonal conflict, especially after characters like Miyako where it really happened. Aikyo managed to hit a balance, however, and ended up being a lot of fun. 

Cardinal Seras Heartstring

Pathfinder

Concept. 3/5. I dunno man I just thought someone being a femboy because they're an Aasimar and angels are always described as beautiful and androgynous was really funny. 

Personality. 4/5. He was somewhere between social manipulator and bimbo and I enjoyed the hell out of it. 

Mechanics. 4/5. Cardinal archetype cleric, which turned him into more of a support/social build. 

Seras was for some games that had a false start so there's not a whole lot to say. I like him a lot, though, and he'll be returning again some time. He works best as the leader of a church that he was designed to be, but I'm sure he can fit easily into a typical adventuring guild. After all, a cleric of a love-and-togetherness church is still a cleric. 

Trixie Glimmerskull

Mutants and Masterminds

Concept. 4/5. Something like a demonic bard, she was an infernalist who mocked traditional religion by dressing as a clownish nun. 

Personality. 3/5. The game didn't run long enough for me to really flesh one out, but I think she would've gone somewhere interesting. 

Mechanics. 5/5. a "spellcaster", most of her spells were "dances" which were heavily restricted but powerful. 

I'll be discussing a few short games here which fizzled due to real life stuff on the part of the GM so this may be brief. I remember Trixie pretty fondly for how unique she was. She's...basically a Satanist and it was fun putting together her "magic school dropout" to "making deals with the devil" pipeline background.  

Cable's Daughter

Shadowrun

Concept. 3/5. An homage to a friend's pre-existing character, someone who claims to be the daughter of a legendary stunt driver and wheelman. 

Personality. 3/5. She's basically just Cable. But that's okay. Cable was cool. 

Mechanics. 3.5/5. Adept wheelman. She'd work way better in SR3 over SR5 where she was built. 

I suspected this game wasn't going to work out so I decided to do something simple which ended up working out pretty well. I wrote an intro story for her that I'm fairly proud of as well. Here it is. 

Celine LaRoque

Pathfinder

Concept. 3/5. A butcher-cultist. A pretty simple idea but it had a lot of potential. 

Personality. 4/5. Pushy, prideful, and mean when it suited her. Everything you'd expect an antipaladin to be. 

Mechanics. 4/5. An overrun bully of an Anti-Paladin who could use Touch of Corruption with her armor spikes as she shouldered past you and knocked you to the ground. Great stuff. 

Celine was cool and it was fun to put together a weird flesh-and-bone cult of butchers and leatherworkers. The world she was in was interesting too. She was military and needed a nickname: it's a reference to a book series I didn't read, but her being called "Shank" was pretty cool anyway. The double meaning, of course, is that the shank is a near useless, tough cut of meat...but also the word you use for stabbing someone. She was big, tough, and fun and she's another on my short list for concept recycling. 

Pink Annis

The Last Canto

Mutants and Masterminds. 

Concept. 5/5. Inspired by the monster under the bed, she was a dark fae who didn't feel like she had a place in human society, instead only interacting with it from the outside. Heavy themes of loneliness and being an outcast. 

Personality. 5/5. I mean she's kind of just a chav? But it fit well with her group and she played nicely off Mysteria, who was a straight-laced corporate girl and basically her opposite. 

Mechanics. 5/5. A sneaky rogue DEX grappler type with a heavy amount of points in Shapeshifting, it was fun having an answer for any situation. 

I fucking love Pink. She might be my favorite character I've ever played. I loved playing someone who was a superhero who felt like they had no place in society. In retrospect, I think this was inspired more than a little bit by Robot Man. The game was set in an alternate history London and while I suspect my attempt at making her sound chav-y had her sounding like a cartoon character, I kind of don't care. She was fun. The type of fae she was are called Lurkers, and it turned out that they were the only real unseelie fae left after the actual unseelie court was forced to make a deal with the seelie fae and existed sort of only as a formality. I liked that they turned out to be rebels and punks, problematic but not necessarily evil. 

Pink herself was a vigilante before the game started and was sort-of pressed into joining a large hero group that had several dozen codified groups. It was cool having a character who doesn't really believe in laws and rules forced to deal with bureaucracy. I would've liked a bit more lifestyle RP and some more PCs who were able to stay invested to interact with, but there's always another time. 

For bonus points, I only just noticed now that she goes by the name "Pink" most of the time and that's incidentally the main character of a rock opera about a person who built an emotional wall around themselves, and Pink Annis has sort of done the same. None of that was planned. 

@}-,-'--

I don't know if the relatively higher scores here prove that I'm more comfortable online or just that I'm more mature. I hope it's the latter, but I suspect it's the former. This is the end of our insanely indulgent little road, because while I have a ton more characters I've obviously played over time, I either feel that there's absolutely nothing to say or, worse, I don't remember them at all. I've found at least a half dozen sheets of mine that I can't even remember the game of, let alone the character. That's certainly to be expected when you've been gaming for such a long time, so I'll leave you with some advice: Don't beat yourself up over shitty characters as much as I do. 

Present Mouse roasts Past Mouse while Future Mouse cringes

"YOU'RE EITHER BEING REALLY PERSISTENT WITH THIS TRANSPARENT RUSE, OR YOU REALLY ARE JUST THAT SAD AND INCOMPETENT."




So my local group of players are putting together a document full of gaming memories and it's been a lot of fun, walking through the good memories and putting the bad ones to rest. I'm not sharing the document until it's scrubbed of personal information and already placed publicly, but I do have more thoughts than I'm willing to clog up the document with. I'm going over every character I can remember playing in this doc and other places and putting commentary to it with the sole objective of tormenting myself. Here's the criteria. Everything's rated out of five, focused mostly on how much I regret(or not), and includes comments. There won't be any zeros out of five, because I hate when people do that... Even though there are some candidates on this list.

I'll try to provide context for these characters, but this may not be a great post if you never experienced these games. Sorry!

Concept: how much of an interesting or unique idea they were in non-mechanical concept.

Personality: How much of a personality they even had as well as how proud I am of it. 
Mechanics: How interesting, fun or unique they were to build and play.

Thorgg, Ogre Pit Fighter

Dungeons and Dragons 2e

Concept. 3/5. An ogre who was bullied by his clan for being small, but still stands at 8ft, 6 inches is a pretty good background. Considering how young I was when I designed him it's downright amazing.
Personality. 2/5. Ha ha dumb ogre funny. 
Mechanics. 3/5. No 1e or 2e character is going to get a high rating in this solely because of the systems, but you can do worse than a 2e fighter who dual wields a giant hammer and a spiked gauntlet. 

I was super young when I designed Thorgg and, while I still like him, there's not much to the character. I have a plan to reprise him some day, or at least a spiritual successor with a much more interesting story to them. 

Autonicus Jamble

Sam's Waterdeep Caravan Campaign
Dungeons and Dragons 1e

Concept. 1/5. I misspelled Autolycus from Xena. That's the whole concept. 

Personality. 1/5. Had none. 
Mechanics. 2/5. 2e wizard's pretty fun I guess.

Autonicus only has any worth in hindsight when he cameoed as a con-artist rogue/mage in one of John's games and his legacy included a flying mage tower. I don't hold anything against Sam, though. I had fun, and it is what it is. 

I'm skipping any other characters I played in Sam's games, because I'd just be saying the same thing as above. Sam wasn't that big on role playing as we understand it. 

Chief Tumbling-Dice

Against the Giants

Dungeons and Dragons 2e

Concept. 4/5. It was just LIZARD IN A TOP HAT at first, but first off that's awesome, and second off, I love the idea of a cleric of gambling and chance being so strange and wild. His name is from a slightly racist old Robin Williams joke, but he was never intended as a real parallel to a Native American.

Personality. 4/5. A joy to play for all his little quirks and how little he actually explained to the party. 

Mechanics. 3/5. 2e cleric of Tymora. Everyone knows how fun the O.G clerics were to play. 

Aah, one of the few characters I'll definitely be playing again. An actual chief of a Tymora-worshipping tribe of lizardfolk, he kept me coming back to a game that was otherwise pretty shitty because of some other players. Had a fun cameo later as the person in charge of a giant temple-casino rising out of a swamp. 

Callisto

Bug City and Anything Goes

Shadowrun 2e + 3e

Concept. 2/5. Ooh a serial killer, how original. Rises to 4/5 after I add her obsession with Christian and Jewish religion and numerology later. 

Personality. 3/5. Fun but not in any specific way. I liked the fact that she never came off as a vicious sociopath bent on sacrificing people to get closer to God. 

Mechanics. 5/5. a mage with wired reflexes and an oralchium-plated cyberspur enchanted as a power focus. Lovely build. 

A serial killer who was saved from the death penalty by the bug city breakout. Eventually retconned to be obsessed with Christian faith and a plan to perform sacrifices to bring herself closer to God. First off, I'm not digging the name. In fact, being the second one I lifted straight from Xena makes me cringe into a small puckered ball of shame. She was probably born from the massive crush I had have on Hudson Leick, but I can't hate on the character too much. Unique, and a blast to play in both games she was in. Probably not much option to play her again considering her, ah, "hobbies".

Mr. Smiley
Boston

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 1/5. WHAT IF CLOWN BUT HURT PEOPLE

Personality. 3.5/5. A fairly fun to play but stock generically wacky/avant-garde character. 

Mechanics. 4/5. A juggling throwing adept. Fun stuff. 

Smiley was a vampire on top of everything else, and I think I'd drop that these days. I'd drop the scary clown makeup and go with something more traditional too. For as fun and memorable as he was, I honestly don't have much to say. He was, at the end of the day, a fairly stock character. 

Akuma
Forgotten Realms

Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 1/5. If I could give a zero, I would. A fiendish monk who was bullied for being different. Completely pathetic cliche crap. 

Personality. 1/5 Brooding idiot

Mechanics. 1/5 a poorly built monk further hamstrung by John never actually putting us against more than one opponent at a time.

Honestly, There's not much I can say here. Because of how badly Akuma was pushed around by the plot, I hate him in hindsight. The twist was that he was really a celestial being and he appeared demonic out of guilt and shame and...it just sucks to completely center his character and story around negative emotions. I regret doing the weeaboo honor crap too. 

Anna LaCroix

New York

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 3.5/5. There's a fine line between a classic concept and a bad cliche, but I feel like she lands solely on the good side of it. She was a lifetime criminal and junkie who was sister to a detective.

Personality. 4.5/5. Lovely to play and fun to be one of the "contrary" opinions of the group due to life experience. Cable and Anna had criminal backgrounds which gave them a wildly different perspective than the rest of the group, who came up as government agents. 

Mechanics. 5/5 I know she's just a B&E focused Razorgirl, but she was so damn fun. Tangling people with a whipping chain, getting devastating kicks off with kid stealth legs, and having so much raw movement power is a ton of fun. 

Anna had a good story and was a lot of fun to play. She had great chemistry with her brother(played by Jason) and being the "criminal" in a group of government agents was really fun. Had especially fun interactions with Shadow Mantis, another character who was essentially only on the team due to a mid-life crisis. He went from incompetent and laughable to being able to relate to Anna in a cool way. 

Levistus

Forgotten Realms Evil Game

Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 1/5 another candidate for a zero. Drow mage who does weird stuff. 
Personality. 1.5/5. generically evil with little substance.

Mechanics. 4/5. The Blood Mage PrC was a lot of fun and he was otherwise a very well built necromancer. I liked focusing on the "life" side of it. 

As much as I used to love this character, there isn't a whole lot to say. He's a drow mage who did weird body mod type stuff and had mystic open wounds shaped like arcane runes. I cringe at his concept almost as much as I cringe at the name these days. It was diagetic, he was named after a devil prince, but who's actually going to put that together? Nobody, I just look like a loser. 

Lenore
Forgotten Realms
Dungeons and Dragons 3e

Concept. 3.5/5. She's just an homage to Tarzan, but honestly I feel like that concept has legs.

Personality. 5/5. A lot of fun playing the weird outsider druid who was focused in an animal sense, so she avoided all of the tree-hugger crap and I got to play a savage. 

Mechanics. 5/5. Master of Many Forms was fun and so was playing a combat druid with a focus on abilities and combat instead of spells. 

Lenore was a lot of fun. Great interactions with a character modeled after Samurai Jack, who she eventually settled and had children with. Her story ended up modeling Tarzan very closely as it was revealed she was a shipwrecked noble. I didn't plan that, and it was awesome that the GM(Dale) picked up on what I intended. 

Zero

Las Vegas

Shadowrun 3e

Concept. 3/5. Former CIA wetwork specialist. I could've maybe done better, but I was pretty satisfied. 

Personality. 3/5. Not noteworthy, but playing another "tired veteran" type from the opposite point of view of Anna was nice. 

Mechanics. 5/5. Movement heavy, adaptable, and had move-by-wire. I like playing athletes and she was no exception. 

Zero had a lot of story I was proud of that never came up due to the game imploding. She transitioned after leaving the CIA, so she would eventually have been put in a precarious position of having to juggle the threat of CIA operatives looking for her with not wanting to explain why she's worried that they're looking for a man. 

Cipher
A Stupid Dystopia
Mutants and Masterminds 2e

Concept. 4/5. a victim of my favorite pan-dimensional artifact, the Oblivion Lens. She had a massive shard of it embedded in her back which gave her darkness-themed powers but at the cost of it slowly possessing her. 

Personality. 3/5 a revolutionary which would've been better if she had any agency in the game she was in.

Mechanics. 3/5 a fun physical type who constantly had to take powers to counteract specific NPCs since the GM refused to offer a different fight. 

Cipher might have been a lot more fun if this game wasn't a miserable, idiotic slog. It had a very stupid plot focused on objectivism or something and some of John's worst, laziest ideas. This was the game where he refused to design more than five enemies, deliberately broke rules and had people using fascist authority to make you willingly fail your will saves. I wouldn't revisit her, if only because it would remind me of that game. A new victim of the Oblivion Lens might be in the future, though. 

At this point, I played a ghoul medic then a troll scavenger in Shadowrifts. Neither are memorable enough to even rate. A mix of Shadowrun and Rifts concepts is an excellent idea, but the game didn't get off the ground enough for me to build a core memory for either of these characters.

Skag

Star Wars
SWD20 Revised

Concept. 1/5. the whole concept was Jawa.

Personality. 1/5. because he was pushed around so much he didn't have much of a personality beyond being angry. 

Mechanics. 3.5/5. a mix of tech specialist and fringer with some interesting alternate abilities like his junk-dive power. Fun stuff. 

So yeah Skag got pushed around so much that it caused me anxiety so I'm going to be brief. He's another almost-nothing of a character and I should have come up with something a lot better. I know they can't all be winners, but I hate it when my idea centers around "Oh I guess I'll play one of those."

Placed just before Ramirez is my first character from the Homeworld game, Nomad. He was so unremarkable that all I remember is that I photoshopped a picture of Canti from FLCL as a character pic. 

Cpl. Ramirez

Star Wars: Homeworld
SWD20 Revised

Concept. 2/5. A mechanic turned marine who enjoyed brawling. Could've done worse. She had golden cyberarms. Those were neat.

Personality. 2.5/5. I don't even remember. So it must not have been bad, at least.

Mechanics. 3.5/5. her class spread made for a fun mix of mechanic-driven stuff and combat. 

Ramirez was fun and more of a team player than Nomad. I liked playing someone who got into the military out of necessity but didn't hate it. 

Some Medusa Singer Lady

Social Game

D&D 3.5e

Concept. 4/5. A medusa socialite? I love it. One who's only interested in her petty revenge against a human family and getting famous is even better. 

Personality. 3/5. I enjoyed being vaguely mysterious and intimidating. 

Mechanics. 4/5. I remember she had some expert performer class from a weird D&D book that was interesting. 

So yeah this is another character soured by a shitty game. The social game she was in got off with a terrible start and it never really recovered for me. It was fun setting up a legitimate career as a singer for her, and I liked getting to build an open-air stage themed with tons of statues because of her nature. 

Hakasa
Dark Master
Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 3.5/5 An orc woman has a lot of reasons to leave orc society if you take the forgotten realms info as canon. It's another unremarkable start, but her background of being a mother made it more fun.

Personality. 4/5. It was fun mixing tough and motherly. 

Mechanics. 4/5. a basic barbarian with a lot of sense powers and Spirit Totem, which I loved using. 

The most remarkable thing about the Dark Master campaign was its well-told story and plot, so Hakasa doesn't stand out that much. She was originally from Forgotten Realms and got to interact with another plane's orcs, and that culture clash was interesting. 

Blind Mary

World of Darkness
Vampire: The Masquerade Revised

Concept. 5/5.  A gang runner turned Nun is a classic story, and it gets better after she's shovel-headed and turned into a Lasombra. 

Personality. 3/5. She ended up being a quiet leader type. Unremarkable but okay. 

Mechanics. 2.5/5. not regrettable, but basically an unremarkable Lasombra build. Ya takes the shroud, ya takes the tentacles, and ya uses them. 

Blind Mary took being embraced and finding out that Caine was real as an affirmation of her faith in God. She became a serious Noddist, but I wish I would've done more with that. The game was on the shorter side, but it was a lot of fun and had some solid character interactions. 

Icke
Revenge of the Master
Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 1/5. Another "I guess I'll play this race/class combo"

Personality. 1/5. He didn't have a personality that I can articulate in any way. He talked funny. That's not a personality.

Mechanics. 3.5/5. a small-size brawler. Fun but unremarkable. 

I was dangerously close to swapping characters most of this game and only kept playing Icke because he was mechanically compelling and I didn't want to upset anyone. Our group developed a stigma over switching characters because some former members despised it and we're only mostly over it. I don't know how to describe it other than to say he's kind of a nothing of a character among some other, far better ones in his party and it's embarrassing that I had such a failure so close in my past. I can't get over that Dean played one of his best characters to date, Occam, and I ended up stumbling into the same pothole that made Skag again. 

Vaux
Rise of the Runelords

Pathfinder 1e

Concept. 5/5. Vaux might be an alien. She could just be a tiefling. She isn't certain herself. In addition, her religion, dedicated to slowing down an all powerful consuming force, is just simple entropy philosophy. I'm proud of that.

Personality. 4/5. Vaux is weird, off-putting, and fun to play. 

Mechanics. 4.5/5. Her build is a little messy, but as a support warpriest she's a blast and extremely effective. 

I'm on hiatus from this game, and if I miss a lot of it I'm sure I'll end up reprising Vaux somewhere else. I'm very proud of her concept and story. I like putting together characters with deniable facts to them. She could be a star-spawn. It's not clear. 

@}-,-'--

So that's it for now. I want to go over my internet characters in a different post, since this one went longer than expected. If you lack context for this, I hope you at least got something out of it, even if it's to laugh at how many shitty characters I've had. 

Fallout-Related Post: The Brotherhood of Steel

 "Democracy is: Non Negotiable."

I wanted to do a lot of talking about Fallout coming up. I've been enjoying the game and have a lot to say about it. Not to bury the lede but it's a great game and I think it deserves praise people usually reserve for New Vegas. That game's got its problems too, so it's only fair to forgive Fallout 4 as much as we do NV. So, I've been taking notes while playing in preparation for doing this. 

Then I ran into a problem. It wasn't a slow realization: Talking to Paladin Danse made me realize this pretty quickly this time around. We need to talk about the nature of the Brotherhood of Steel. I think most people who aren't the deluded "NO POLITICS" type would say they're certainly not good guys, outside of Fallout 3's ill-advised attempt to turn them into wasteland paladins with Lyons. I think it's (somehow) easy for some players to miss how bad they really are, though. 

A ground rule, before I begin, is that I'm going to assume that anything in the game is deliberately written as it is and I'm only going to declare something is poorly written as a last resort. This is because I ran into quite a few things I didn't understand until my current play-through and I want to give the writers the benefit of the doubt. For as bad as the main story of the game is, they're going to need it. I'm also doing the best research I can, but keep in mind I may get some facts wrong. Fallout 4 is a big, big game. 

I've done enough beating around the bush. What I'm doing today is going over Umberto Eco's fourteen tenets of Fascism and seeing exactly how well the Brotherhood of Steel fits into the model. I've long considered them a "bad guy" in the series, but Fallout 4 swings very strongly into the direction of them being a fascist organization. I think it only gets to perpetuate itself because of the cut content surrounding Maxson. I'm not sure of the specifics but I often hear it was surrounding the Lone Wanderer relieving Maxson of command for being a crazypants. I'm not sure if this changes the nature of the BoS "ending" to the game, though, and that ending is ultimately a large part of why the BoS are villains. Some of these tenets will have to be adapted to a world that has notably different races like Synths and Super Mutants, but that's fine. 

Spoilers for Fallout Four and a small one for Fallout: New Vegas ahead.

"The Cult of Tradition", characterized by cultural syncretism, even at the risk of internal contradiction. When all truth has already been revealed by Tradition, no new learning can occur, only further interpretation and refinement.

The Brotherhood of Steel certainly are dogmatic and unwilling to learn. In Fallout Four, you either agree with them that the synths need to be wiped out...or you end up having to blow up the Prydwyn. In the Minutemen ending(which is just a catch-all route in case you pissed everybody off anyway), you either work with the Brotherhood of Steel, thus wiping out the synths, or you have to kill them. 

"The Rejection of modernism", which views the rationalistic development of Western culture since the Enlightenment as a descent into depravity. Eco distinguishes this from a rejection of superficial technological advancement, as many fascist regimes cite their industrial potency as proof of the vitality of their system.

WELP. We didn't get far in before we hit a "Ha Ha Ha, oh WOW" moment. Yeah you can say the Brotherhood reject modernity all right, in that they both rule over the whole concept of technology(for our "protection") and also obviously feel like they're superior to the modern post-apocalyptic society at large. I would be shocked if the phrase "Descent into depravity" didn't literally appear in the Brotherhood dialogue somewhere.

"The Cult of Action for Action's Sake", which dictates that action is of value in itself, and should be taken without intellectual reflection. This, says Eco, is connected with anti-intellectualism and irrationalism, and often manifests in attacks on modern culture and science.

Wow. I probably don't have to elaborate on this one, right? Right after the Prydwyn arrives in the Commonwealth, you're given a flurry of excuses by BoS members that decisive action is necessary and good. Danse glibly refers to pre-emptive war as "Kicking down the door" and also makes veiled references to Blitzkrieg. Maxson is repeatedly described as "not the diplomacy type". 

"Disagreement Is Treason" – Fascism devalues intellectual discourse and critical reasoning as barriers to action, as well as out of fear that such analysis will expose the contradictions embodied in a syncretistic faith.

The Brotherhood is incredibly militaristic. They are, in fact, a military. However, the idea of obeying orders without question comes up so incredibly, ridiculously often in the BoS storyline that I feel strongly that they embody this facet as well. I don't even feel like I need to give you many examples: Literally the first time you meet Maxson he's praising his crew for their total, blind obedience.

"Fear of Difference", which fascism seeks to exploit and exacerbate, often in the form of racism or an appeal against foreigners and immigrants.

Synths are compared to the atomic bomb in terms of destructive power, but it's never actually explained to you why. Maxson simply tells you the Synths are evil and expects that to be the end of the argument. When Danse turns out to be a Synth you're ordered to kill him flat out, and the only way to end the quest with Danse alive is to persuade Maxson yourself. Even then, Danse is exiled from the Brotherhood of Steel. To Maxson(and the rest of the BoS) they're vicious enemy spies despite any evidence to the contrary.

"Appeal to a Frustrated Middle Class", fearing economic pressure from the demands and aspirations of lower social groups.

The Brotherhood constantly pays lip service to protecting the average person from threats and even has you carry out orders with that in mind. Does that count? I don't know. I don't get the impression that they see that portion of their job as very important. This is somewhat of a blind spot because they simply aren't appealing to any social group at all. They have open membership enrollment but feel no need to sway anyone of anything: Whatever they want from you, they'll happily take it by force.

"Obsession with a Plot" and the hyping-up of an enemy threat. This often combines an appeal to xenophobia with a fear of disloyalty and sabotage from marginalized groups living within the society (such as the German elite's 'fear' of the 1930s Jewish populace's businesses and well-doings; see also anti-Semitism). Eco also cites Pat Robertson's book The New World Order as a prominent example of a plot obsession.

Synths are compared to the atomic bomb in terms of destructive power and Maxson states in no uncertain terms that they "have the power to completely wipe out humanity" without actually ever explaining why. He simply states that they could "replace us" if they ever outnumbered "us". There's a lot to unpack with this plot point, so I'm continuing this thought below after we're finished with the fourteen tenets. 

Fascist societies rhetorically cast their enemies as "at the same time too strong and too weak." On the one hand, fascists play up the power of certain disfavored elites to encourage in their followers a sense of grievance and humiliation. On the other hand, fascist leaders point to the decadence of those elites as proof of their ultimate feebleness in the face of an overwhelming popular will.

While they do seem to have a low opinion of some of their "enemies" such as Super Mutants and the Institute, I haven't found a good example of this specific hypocrisy. They seem to appropriately treat their enemies as dangerous, outside of the extreme generalization problem with "Synths". 

"Pacifism is Trafficking with the Enemy" because "Life is Permanent Warfare" – there must always be an enemy to fight. Both fascist Germany under Hitler and Italy under Mussolini worked first to organize and clean up their respective countries and then build the war machines that they later intended to and did use, despite Germany being under restrictions of the Versailles treaty to not build a military force. This principle leads to a fundamental contradiction within fascism: the incompatibility of ultimate triumph with perpetual war.

It's all but outright stated that Maxson is declaring war in part(or even solely) to strengthen the Brotherhood of Steel and maintain his leadership. The Lyons faction of the BoS required rebuilding when he took control and was on shaky ground, both in terms of social cohesion and actual tactical position. 

"Contempt for the Weak", which is uncomfortably married to a chauvinistic popular elitism, in which every member of society is superior to outsiders by virtue of belonging to the in-group. Eco sees in these attitudes the root of a deep tension in the fundamentally hierarchical structure of fascist polities, as they encourage leaders to despise their underlings, up to the ultimate Leader who holds the whole country in contempt for having allowed him to overtake it by force.

Everyone by now should be very familiar with their contempt for weakness and worship of bravery. The ridiculous notion of "Failure is not an option" is impressed upon the Lone Wanderer early upon meeting Paladin Danse. While Maxson does not openly show contempt often, he's unwavering, callous and cruel at the slightest provocation.

"Everybody is Educated to Become a Hero", which leads to the embrace of a cult of death. As Eco observes, "the Ur-Fascist hero is impatient to die. In his impatience, he more frequently sends other people to death."

Once again, I feel like their worship of bravery is well known. In addition to that, they throw bodies and technology almost needlessly at their problems. The preliminary scouting team that was "lost" before Danse and his team arrived was six or more members wearing power armor and several scribes. For a scouting mission. Everyone in video games marches happily to their death, but the Brotherhood of Steel seems to particularly revel in it.

"Machismo", which sublimates the difficult work of permanent war and heroism into the sexual sphere. Fascists thus hold "both disdain for women and intolerance and condemnation of nonstandard sexual habits, from chastity to homosexuality."

Unlike Caesar's Legion, there is no sexism shoehorned into the Brotherhood of Steel. Members are as likely to be male as female and the Lone Wanderer faces no indication of intolerance of nonstandard sexual habits. There is(like always) an absence of affirmation of LGBT people, but I don't feel that this can be interpreted as intolerance. 

"Selective Populism" – The People, conceived monolithically, have a Common Will, distinct from and superior to the viewpoint of any individual. As no mass of people can ever be truly unanimous, the Leader holds himself out as the interpreter of the popular will (though truly he dictates it). Fascists use this concept to delegitimize democratic institutions they accuse of "no longer represent[ing] the Voice of the People."

Not only do the Brotherhood of Steel think they know what's best for the rest of humanity, it's a major plot point and the whole reason they exist. Not only do they feel technology is best safeguarded away from humanity, but humanity doesn't have a say in it. In addition, they have no qualms against using that technology for their own gain. 

I have not, however, found an example of the Brotherhood of Steel delegitimizing democratic institutions beyond the small chapter in Fallout: New Vegas refusing to deal diplomatically with the NCR. It can't really be defined as a organization-wide policy and, no offense, I'm not replaying every Fallout game looking for examples of their dealings(favorably or no) with the NCR or local governments.

"Newspeak" – Fascism employs and promotes an impoverished vocabulary in order to limit critical reasoning.

I'm pretty sure they don't embody this one at all. You're told about their motto, Ad Victoriam, but that's hardly an impoverished vocabulary or tactic to limit critical reasoning. 

<<<||||>>>

I'm gonna be honest. The Brotherhood of Steel scored lower than I thought they would. However, we're not done discussing their ties to fascism. Their nature is lampshaded several times ranging from mildly clever to anvilicious. Paladin Danse glibly refers to Maxson's disdain for diplomacy as "kicking down the door" He also describes BoS tactics as an "Overwhelming show of force", a thinly veiled reference to the Nazi Germany war tactic of Blitzkrieg. Maxson is referred to as "Emperor Maxson" in some incidental dialogue and obviously worshipped as the sort of "Strong Man" leader that fascist organizations frequently love.

I don't know if this is particularly a fascist trait but the faction's hypocrisy bears mentioning. They disdain "new" technology in particular(especially the Synths) but have no qualms about building new technological wonders of their own with the Prydwyn. They feel technology is dangerous but only "in the wrong hands", meaning inexplicably they see no problem with rebuilding and re-activating Liberty Prime and call Fat Man Launchers(actual nuclear weapons) a cornerstone of their military tactics. I could rant all day about the BoS thinking they're justified in using Liberty Prime for anything, but the fact is his ridiculous, jingoistic programming is a blind spot for them: They really don't see an issue with declaring an "other" in the way the prewar US Government villainized Communism. 

I'll discuss Synths and their role in the story with way more detail later, but I can't avoid stating this outright so we can continue with our discussion: In Fallout Four's story, Synths are an analogy for minorities in general and black people in specific. They're held in slavery, their rights and even cognitive function is up for debate, and the three general options for the end of the game can be summed up as "Free the Synths", "Keep the Synths as slaves", and "Kill all of the synths". 

Remember I said we'd get back to Maxson insisting that the Synths could destroy the human race after they outnumbered it? I can't help but think this is a reference to The Great Replacement, the absurd, white supremacist notion that "whites" will be bred out of existence by minorities. After all, the Brotherhood of Steel and their "Kill the Synths" ending fill in for one of the two racist points of view in Fallout Four. 

Are the Brotherhood of Steel a fascist organization? Yes, I think so. Are they intended to be? At least in Fallout Four, I'm sure they are. Is this a good direction for the series? I believe it is. If nothing else, the point of the Fallout franchise is that these traits shared among the old-world United States government, the Enclave, and even the Brotherhood of Steel are what led to ruin and apocalypse.

While we'll be talking about the failings of the main story at length later, I think the only major failing here is the player's ability, in the end, to "side with" the Brotherhood of Steel. Fallout Four was almost certainly shoehorned into being a "faction" story thanks to New Vegas's popularity. It presents too many opportunities to entirely miss what we've been discussing and simply feel like the big strong power armor person with the laser minigun. So Cool! Bethesda's gigantic array of Brotherhood of Steel merchandise doesn't help, and neither does some telling content being cut where you confront Maxson.

You might be wondering why I did this. Well, the first reason is that it's going to be super important that you understand the nature of the Brotherhood of Steel when we eventually talk about the plot of Fallout Four. I can predict a lot of arguing or confusion when I inevitably bring up FO4's themes and call the Brotherhood of Steel one of the game's bad guys. I can either panic and post this after discussing the game's plot, or I can just get it over with now. 

The other reason is that it kinda makes me kinda sick when someone misses the point this hard and worships an organization for being "tough" or "badass". It's a superficial read of the BoS at best and I can't help but imagine someone doing the same thing with Shadowrun's Big Eight. To me, that's the level the BoS are at and how they're intended to be judged. Bethesda selling BoS merchandise probably did a lot of damage to their intended perception. I'd say the game was too subtle, but...honestly, calling Fallout Four subtle in any way would be fucking laughable. 


If this post upset you, sorry! But it was probably meant to. 

Campaigns too mean to run

"What you know you can't explain, but you can feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there's something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it's there, like a splinter in your mind: 

Driving you mad."

I'm not great at actually running campaigns, let me just come out and say that. I can't think on my feet very well and I'm not good with encounter design: Notice how you've never seen me do articles giving advice for those two things. While I'm not giving up trying to run games, it means I'll probably always have more ideas than I'll ever use. 

I do get campaign ideas all the time, too. I've had three that I ultimately decided were just too damn spiteful or unkind to actually run. What do I mean by that? Each campaign below has its own reasons, but in general...some ideas are just not very nice. I once knew someone who claimed to be running a game of mortals in the Storyteller universe, only to brutally murder the PCs one by one in the first session. 

Psyche, we're playing Wraith. 

While nothing I came up with is quite that mean, I hope it illustrates what I'm talking about. Some tricks or twists are just too nasty to pull. Maybe I'll run these games some day, for someone. However, at this point I don't mind if the players figure it out early. In fact, that would probably soften the blow enough to make them palatable. 

Dead Pixels in the Sky


It starts with something distant, but worrying. A small group of people notice something far in the sky. Black marks, like the sky is dying. Few at first, and more every day. Nobody else seems to notice them, or even care. More things begin to unravel. Misshapen people in suits, with blurred faces and grainy, distorted voices start to stalk the group. Eventually... they try to kill them. Something is wrong, and these monsters seem to think killing anyone who can see the sky slowly unraveling will stop it.

The players must evade The Editors, piecing together the mystery through increasingly horrible and unraveled areas, dealing with corrupted people, monsters, and artifacts. Cryptic phone calls try to guide the players toward their eventual goal: The unraveling can't be stopped and escape is the only remaining goal. To where? It can't be explained. It can only be shown. 

Because no one can be told what The Matrix is. 

After the events of the movies, a splinter group in Zion was unsatisfied with the state of the truce with the Machines. Neo had broken the cycle, but it wasn't good enough: The Matrix must be torn down, whether or not the people inside it were given a subconscious choice to leave. An EMP bomb was placed at the heart of the Matrix's servers, crippling its functionality. 

Any pod directly caught in the blast was corrupted permanently, the people inside fused to the matrix and their minds altered in permanent, horrible ways. Anyone on the edge of the blast had their connections permanently damaged, and were forced to watch their server corrupt and warp. A forced reboot was impossible while these damaged pods were still online...so Agents were sent to kill the inhabitants(the players) so the Machines could salvage the Matrix. 

~-~-~

So yeah, I could never really justify an entire campaign being secretly a movie reference turned horror. When I had this idea, I honestly started to worry that I'd be physically assaulted at the point I said the line. I did have plans to quote the movie in the game's climax. The main thing that killed this idea was that I honestly dislike Call of Cthulhu's system intensely, but secondarily to that, it relied too much on the final act being a reveal of it being fanfiction. I didn't think anyone would appreciate the ending. I mean it's either a huge anticlimax or a cool "Go back and sift through the details" moment depending entirely on if you liked The Matrix or not. 

Gallows Creek Revival


The Weird West is harsh and New Mexico doubly so, but few people down on their luck could resist the offer painted on flyers spread far and wide across the United States: Move to Gallows Creek and get your own parcel of land and fifty dollars to help you settle in. The players aren't the only ones who jumped at the offer: Gallows Creek is growing swiftly. 

The people here are distant, though. Some are even guarded. Slowly, problems start to rise. The undertaker has been robbing graves, trying to stitch together the perfect wife. The blacksmith is desperate to keep anyone from knowing she's died years ago. Former slaves hiding their identity live next to former confederate soldiers desperately trying to do the same. Hucksters, hexers, scientists, engineers and otherwise live here. A mystery starts to grow: Why's the mayor so jovial? Where'd he get so much money, and what's down beneath the town? 

And does everyone here have a damn secret?

~-~-~

Everyone in the town had a damn secret. Literally every single person. I started to put this together, back when we were young and playership was volatile. I took everyone aside individually and told them I wanted their character to have a secret to keep and gave them some bonus XP or somesuch to achieve it. I probably wasn't subtle about it.

The mayor was a prospector who found an ancient Aztec temple to a god of secrets. He built a fortune off raiding the temple and selling the gold artifacts inside...but spent too long and delved too deep. He caught the attention of the slumbering god, who forced the mayor to bring him sacrifices. Flyers hexed to attract the eye of the guilty were plastered over the Weird West to draw people full of the power it craved to the temple. The players would have had to protect their own secrets or come to terms with them while dealing with the strange, suspicious townsfolk of Gallows Creek. Eventually, they'd have to stop a God from being awoken by collapsing the temple, and the entire town with it. 

Aaah, you can probably see why I decided this one was too mean, right? I had the idea back when I thought manipulating the players was okay if you had a noble goal in mind and weren't just an asshole trying to get your rocks off to causing misfortune. I thought I was being very clever and...well, these days I hate "clever". 



Hand of the Broken King

What begins as a game of high adventure in a land of sword and sorcery soon takes a strange turn. Invaders from another world arrive in force, in massive steel ships that soar through the sky. Men in pure white armor and skull helmets begin to take control of entire cities. They begin to kidnap magic users and send their strange golems to raid magical troves. Their leader wants something that only exists in this realm, a secret he and his kind do not possess: the secret of Magic. 

~-~-~

Hey did you notice that Star Wars D20 is almost, kind of, sort of compatible with Pathfinder? I did. This is another one that's probably too cheesy for me to really run, but I liked the idea of the Empire showing up in the middle of a typical campaign because Darth Vader heard tales of a wholly different way to control The Force. 

The logistics of the game aren't hairy at all, honestly. The players could take feats to become proficient in technological weapons or spend points in Star Wars skills. Eventually I'd open up Star Wars feats as well. Tech weapons would obviously be overpowered, but they can't be enchanted easily: I was tossing around the idea of not letting the players enchant them at all, or at a heavier cost. So, it's a tradeoff. The players de-facto can't use the Force or else the entire plot doesn't work, so I don't have to worry about force sensitive or Jedi characters I'm not in direct control of. 

The problem here was primarily that I felt like a heel for not letting people do Star Wars concepts with the game, but it's contrary to the entire point of the game so I still don't think I'd be able to justify it. I dislike "GM's special toys" a lot and I think they should be used sparingly to keep a sense of fairness. However, people are gonna be naturally upset that they could have played a Jedi or something and I said no. The second the reveal happens and they realize what's going on, half the group would want to make a new character. Let's be real, though: I don't even like letting them play Jedi in the game that's supposed to have Jedi. 

It's also one of those things where I'd try to spend as much time as possible doing cutesy confusing descriptions because the players would obviously have no idea what they're looking at, and as I get older I hate sort of thing a little more each year. Forsooth, you hear a phantom voice exclaiming your position! Surely they are using clairvoyance spells and illusions to mystically shout information to their troops! Completely fuck off with that. 

@}-,-'--

Honestly, feel free to steal any of these ideas, if you want. Never say never, but I'm probably not going to use them. If nothing else, all three require me to be a tricksy little bitch and I just don't like doing that, whether or not these ideas really are too mean. Two out of three are also tied to pre-existing intellectual properties. There's nothing wrong with that necessarily, but I think you need to really knock something out of the park if you're going to do a reference and I'm not confident in my ability to do that.