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.