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.