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Jul. 10th, 2008 10:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electricpaladinThe Game: Aberrant
Publisher: White Wolf
Degree of Familiarity: Low. I’ve made Aberrant characters before, but it was a while ago, and I’ve never actually run or played it. Abby wants me to, though…
Phase One: Human
Step One: Concept
The most inspiring super-hero thing I’ve consumed recently was the graphic novel Ex Machina, and I kind of want to riff off that. What really excited me about Ex Macina was the dichotomy between easy heroism and real heroism, and the uneasy combination of heroism and ambition that we always seem to get in our politicians.
For those of you who haven’t been lucky enough to read it, Ex Machina is about a perfectly ordinary civil engineer who gets exposed to an alien thingy and turns into some kind of machine Jesus. He tries to use his powers to do good as a superhero, but when the world proves too complicated to save with a jetback and the ability to talk to machines, he decides to run for the Mayor of New York instead.
But I want to take this in a different direction. My dude is a nice Jewish boy from a family of nice Jewish doctors. But he didn’t have the skill to be a doctor. Sure, he’s bright, but he’s a little ADHD, he didn’t get the grades in high school to get into a great college, and he didn’t get the grades in college to get into even a cut-rate medical school. So, instead, he turned his quick wits and desire to save lives to a different, but similar profession and became an ambulance driver.
But his desire to save people has been frustrated by, well, how much the world sucks. He goes out on call after call, and usually people die. And because as he’s just the driver, there’s not much he can do while they’re dying but drive fast and pray.
And I have a name: Jacob Weissman.
That’s as far as I’m going to take his backstory in this stage of the game; like Adventure!, Aberrant has a two-phase character generation process that treats my character’s human life and nova life as two separate parts, and this time I want to it properly, since I fused the two with Adventure!.
Now that I’ve got Concept out of the way (Ambulance Driver), the book advises me to move on to Nature and Allegiance. None of the Natures really jump out at me, but after a little while, I decide to go with Leader. This guy is a born leader – he has that charisma and infectious energy – but he’s never known what to do with it. Sure, he was always the leader of his gang of friends in school and I think everyone on all his shifts looked up to him, even the paramedics.
As far as Allegiance goes, I think this Jacob is unaligned. Officially, anyway, though I’m sure he has greater sympathies for some organizations than others. For example, I’m sure he’s quite fond of Project Utopia… not so much of the Teragen. He never got affiliated after his eruption, and he knows better than to publicly align himself with any of the nova organizations that exist at the moment.
Step Two: Select Attributes
This is a White Wolf game so I start by prioritizing his Attribute categories: 7 points for primary, 5 points for secondary, 3 points for tertiary.
I think mental is Jacob’s primary. He’s really smart. Not, as it turned out, doctor-smart, but smart nonetheless. Based on my understanding of ADHD (and where I want to go with the character), I’m giving Jacob a 2 Perception and a 4 Intelligence and Wits. He’s sharp and fast, but he has a hard time staying focused on anything long enough to take in the details.
Social is Jacob’s secondary. Appearance is at 2 – he’s attractive enough to make it in politics, but no Johnny Kennedy – Manipulation and Charisma are at 3. He’s just got that thing.
Physical is tertiary. Average across the board. I’d like to buy him better Dexterity (driving) and Stamina (late night shifts), but I’ll see what I can do with freebie points.
Step Three: Choosing Abilities
I get 23 points to spend on Abilities. Yay!
Brawl 1 (you know, he knows how to fight if he has to), Might 1 (lifting patients on to gurneys), Athletics 1 (just ‘cause… I dunno, he plays basketball with the rest of his team sometimes), Drive 3 (seriously), Awareness 2 (part of the driving – he has a hard time paying attention, but he has pretty good situational awareness), Academics 2 (he picked up more than you’d think in school), Bureaucracy 1 (lots of paperwork in his business), Computer 1 (a man of the modern day), Engineering 2 (works on cars), Linguistics 1 (he knows how to say “how much does it hurt?” in lots of languages), Medicine 2 (advanced first aid, but he is the driver), Science 1 (see Medicine), Streetwise 1 (he lives in a lousy part of town), Command 1 (born leader), and Perform 1 (see above re: leadership).
Step Four: Backgrounds
7 points in backgrounds – go!
Allies 3 (he’s got some buddies; members of his team, people he plays basketball with. They were his ‘backup’ when he was a superhero and his entourage now that he’s a politician. I’ll work out the details later.), Contacts 1 (doctors & nurses), and Resources 2 (I looked up the pay on the internet – decent for a single guy).
Step Five: Finishing Touches
Willpower 3, Initiative 6, various running speeds…
15 freebie points!
Drive goes to 5 and I’ll buy a specialty in Ambulance. This will be almost certainly totally useless, given the character’s ambitions, but I can’t resist. I’ll also buy another point of Medicine.
And I’ll buy an extra point of Quantum, because the Heal power requires a rather high Quantum, and I want it.
Phase Two: Nova
Step One: Origin
The book instructs me to decide on the situation of Jacob’s eruption into novahood. I think he was called out on one of those really terrible calls. A little girl had been caught in a gang crossfire. She was riddled with bullets – it was really ugly. Jacob had had a weird headache all day, but he had gone to work anyway. He was helping lift the girl into back of the ambulance, and she was bleeding everywhere and having seizures. His fingertips starting itching, and he did what he’d always wanted to do. He put his hands on her, and there was a flash of white light… and she was healed.
Anyway, he spent a year or two trying to be a superhero, but it didn’t go too well, and he decided to lose the costume and run for mayor. There.
Step Two: Nova Points
I’ve got 30 nova points. They are like super freebie points. Rock on.
First things first. I think super powers should do one or more of four things: enhance a character’s strengths, mitigate his weaknesses, give him what he wants, or challenge challenge his assumptions about himself or the world.
Quantum goes to 4. That’s all I need for Heal. I’ll buy more if I have points, later.
For powers, I’ll start by buying Healing, which doesn’t really need levels, and a level of Bioluminescence (for the angelic glow). Also, one of my favorite things in the world that superheroes can do is fly, so Flight goes on the list.
Mega-attributes are fun. I’ll take a level of Mega-Charisma and Mega-Wits.
He could use a little more Willpower – 5 it is!
Finally, I’ll spend my last 5 points on stuff my character acquired while being a superhero and since. One nova point buys 3 Attribute points: Stamina and Dexterity go to 3, Charisma goes to 4. One nova point buys 6 Ability points: Bureaucracy goes to 2, Command goes to 2, Perform goes to 2, Rapport goes to 3, Streetwise goes to 2, and Style goes to 1. One nova point buys 5 Background points: 3 points of Followers (assorted aids), 2 points of Influence (becoming increasingly well known in his city).
I get to pick one free enhancement for each of my mega-attributes. Mega-Charisma gets Commanding Presence (duh), and Mega-Wits gets Synergy (born leader, used to working with a team).
Step Three: Phase Two Finishing Touches
No taint, no aberrations, soak is normal for a person of his stature.
The book asks some questions. I shall answer them.
How old are you? 30. Jacob is out of college and definitely old enough to know he’s probably not going to med school, and also old enough to have a credible chance of becoming mayor.
What do you look like? Jacob is a big guy, burly, but not unattractive. He looks pretty good stuffed into a suit, though. He's got a slightly olive complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes. He looks pretty Jewish.
Did you ever notice you were different? If you asked Jacob, he’d say no. He thinks he’s an ordinary guy, just a little dumb (which he isn’t). Right now he’s hiding that insecurity behind a lot of “look at me, Ma, I’m a politician now!” bluster, but really he’s not too fond of himself. He failed at the most important thing his family wanted for him.
Anyway, he’s always been really quick. Maybe that’s a proto Mega-Wits thing.
How were you discovered? I think Jacob set off as a superhero without any patronage or training. That’s the kind of half-cocked thing he would do. I think he ended up going to a Rashoud facility and learning to control his powers when he gave up superheroing.
What are your quirks? He’s quick, smart, charismatic. He plays basketball (badly) and is generally friendly.
Who is important in your life? Jacob’s friends, his teammates, his family.
What do you own? Jacob lives in a slightly ratty little apartment with his anime collection and his old (prematurely purchased) medical textbooks. Now it’s also full of books on politics and history and a few remainders from the merchandising he did back when he was a superhero. He’s more fond of all that stuff than he likes to let on.
How do you perceive other people? Jacob is a real extrovert. He just loves people. He likes to be with them. He likes to make them happy, to see them smile and make them laugh. He also has a serious self-esteem complex. He wants to be liked, approved of, and respected by everyone he meets. He is scrupulously respectful of baselines – potentially to the point of taking shit he shouldn’t – because he doesn’t want to be one of those novas.
Skipping the question that would involve the rest of his team…
What are your motivations? Well, Jacob wants to be mayor. He has seen what it’s like to do fake good – to run around in a costume, saving a life here and there, posing for the cameras and signing contracts for comic books and toys and donating the money to charity – and now he wants to do real good. He also wants to be respected. Not just loved: respected and admired. He’s spent his entire life feeling like a screw-up because he couldn’t be a doctor, and now he finally has a chance to make something of himself… he’s really intent on not screwing that up.
And there we go. That’s Jacob Weissman, formerly the nova superhero called Uriel.
EDIT: I swear, I'm not usually even remotely this derivative. I promise. My next character will be completely original ant not in any way resemble anything anyone else has even thought of. It's true.
Really.
Publisher: White Wolf
Degree of Familiarity: Low. I’ve made Aberrant characters before, but it was a while ago, and I’ve never actually run or played it. Abby wants me to, though…
Phase One: Human
Step One: Concept
The most inspiring super-hero thing I’ve consumed recently was the graphic novel Ex Machina, and I kind of want to riff off that. What really excited me about Ex Macina was the dichotomy between easy heroism and real heroism, and the uneasy combination of heroism and ambition that we always seem to get in our politicians.
For those of you who haven’t been lucky enough to read it, Ex Machina is about a perfectly ordinary civil engineer who gets exposed to an alien thingy and turns into some kind of machine Jesus. He tries to use his powers to do good as a superhero, but when the world proves too complicated to save with a jetback and the ability to talk to machines, he decides to run for the Mayor of New York instead.
But I want to take this in a different direction. My dude is a nice Jewish boy from a family of nice Jewish doctors. But he didn’t have the skill to be a doctor. Sure, he’s bright, but he’s a little ADHD, he didn’t get the grades in high school to get into a great college, and he didn’t get the grades in college to get into even a cut-rate medical school. So, instead, he turned his quick wits and desire to save lives to a different, but similar profession and became an ambulance driver.
But his desire to save people has been frustrated by, well, how much the world sucks. He goes out on call after call, and usually people die. And because as he’s just the driver, there’s not much he can do while they’re dying but drive fast and pray.
And I have a name: Jacob Weissman.
That’s as far as I’m going to take his backstory in this stage of the game; like Adventure!, Aberrant has a two-phase character generation process that treats my character’s human life and nova life as two separate parts, and this time I want to it properly, since I fused the two with Adventure!.
Now that I’ve got Concept out of the way (Ambulance Driver), the book advises me to move on to Nature and Allegiance. None of the Natures really jump out at me, but after a little while, I decide to go with Leader. This guy is a born leader – he has that charisma and infectious energy – but he’s never known what to do with it. Sure, he was always the leader of his gang of friends in school and I think everyone on all his shifts looked up to him, even the paramedics.
As far as Allegiance goes, I think this Jacob is unaligned. Officially, anyway, though I’m sure he has greater sympathies for some organizations than others. For example, I’m sure he’s quite fond of Project Utopia… not so much of the Teragen. He never got affiliated after his eruption, and he knows better than to publicly align himself with any of the nova organizations that exist at the moment.
Step Two: Select Attributes
This is a White Wolf game so I start by prioritizing his Attribute categories: 7 points for primary, 5 points for secondary, 3 points for tertiary.
I think mental is Jacob’s primary. He’s really smart. Not, as it turned out, doctor-smart, but smart nonetheless. Based on my understanding of ADHD (and where I want to go with the character), I’m giving Jacob a 2 Perception and a 4 Intelligence and Wits. He’s sharp and fast, but he has a hard time staying focused on anything long enough to take in the details.
Social is Jacob’s secondary. Appearance is at 2 – he’s attractive enough to make it in politics, but no Johnny Kennedy – Manipulation and Charisma are at 3. He’s just got that thing.
Physical is tertiary. Average across the board. I’d like to buy him better Dexterity (driving) and Stamina (late night shifts), but I’ll see what I can do with freebie points.
Step Three: Choosing Abilities
I get 23 points to spend on Abilities. Yay!
Brawl 1 (you know, he knows how to fight if he has to), Might 1 (lifting patients on to gurneys), Athletics 1 (just ‘cause… I dunno, he plays basketball with the rest of his team sometimes), Drive 3 (seriously), Awareness 2 (part of the driving – he has a hard time paying attention, but he has pretty good situational awareness), Academics 2 (he picked up more than you’d think in school), Bureaucracy 1 (lots of paperwork in his business), Computer 1 (a man of the modern day), Engineering 2 (works on cars), Linguistics 1 (he knows how to say “how much does it hurt?” in lots of languages), Medicine 2 (advanced first aid, but he is the driver), Science 1 (see Medicine), Streetwise 1 (he lives in a lousy part of town), Command 1 (born leader), and Perform 1 (see above re: leadership).
Step Four: Backgrounds
7 points in backgrounds – go!
Allies 3 (he’s got some buddies; members of his team, people he plays basketball with. They were his ‘backup’ when he was a superhero and his entourage now that he’s a politician. I’ll work out the details later.), Contacts 1 (doctors & nurses), and Resources 2 (I looked up the pay on the internet – decent for a single guy).
Step Five: Finishing Touches
Willpower 3, Initiative 6, various running speeds…
15 freebie points!
Drive goes to 5 and I’ll buy a specialty in Ambulance. This will be almost certainly totally useless, given the character’s ambitions, but I can’t resist. I’ll also buy another point of Medicine.
And I’ll buy an extra point of Quantum, because the Heal power requires a rather high Quantum, and I want it.
Phase Two: Nova
Step One: Origin
The book instructs me to decide on the situation of Jacob’s eruption into novahood. I think he was called out on one of those really terrible calls. A little girl had been caught in a gang crossfire. She was riddled with bullets – it was really ugly. Jacob had had a weird headache all day, but he had gone to work anyway. He was helping lift the girl into back of the ambulance, and she was bleeding everywhere and having seizures. His fingertips starting itching, and he did what he’d always wanted to do. He put his hands on her, and there was a flash of white light… and she was healed.
Anyway, he spent a year or two trying to be a superhero, but it didn’t go too well, and he decided to lose the costume and run for mayor. There.
Step Two: Nova Points
I’ve got 30 nova points. They are like super freebie points. Rock on.
First things first. I think super powers should do one or more of four things: enhance a character’s strengths, mitigate his weaknesses, give him what he wants, or challenge challenge his assumptions about himself or the world.
Quantum goes to 4. That’s all I need for Heal. I’ll buy more if I have points, later.
For powers, I’ll start by buying Healing, which doesn’t really need levels, and a level of Bioluminescence (for the angelic glow). Also, one of my favorite things in the world that superheroes can do is fly, so Flight goes on the list.
Mega-attributes are fun. I’ll take a level of Mega-Charisma and Mega-Wits.
He could use a little more Willpower – 5 it is!
Finally, I’ll spend my last 5 points on stuff my character acquired while being a superhero and since. One nova point buys 3 Attribute points: Stamina and Dexterity go to 3, Charisma goes to 4. One nova point buys 6 Ability points: Bureaucracy goes to 2, Command goes to 2, Perform goes to 2, Rapport goes to 3, Streetwise goes to 2, and Style goes to 1. One nova point buys 5 Background points: 3 points of Followers (assorted aids), 2 points of Influence (becoming increasingly well known in his city).
I get to pick one free enhancement for each of my mega-attributes. Mega-Charisma gets Commanding Presence (duh), and Mega-Wits gets Synergy (born leader, used to working with a team).
Step Three: Phase Two Finishing Touches
No taint, no aberrations, soak is normal for a person of his stature.
The book asks some questions. I shall answer them.
How old are you? 30. Jacob is out of college and definitely old enough to know he’s probably not going to med school, and also old enough to have a credible chance of becoming mayor.
What do you look like? Jacob is a big guy, burly, but not unattractive. He looks pretty good stuffed into a suit, though. He's got a slightly olive complexion, dark hair, and dark eyes. He looks pretty Jewish.
Did you ever notice you were different? If you asked Jacob, he’d say no. He thinks he’s an ordinary guy, just a little dumb (which he isn’t). Right now he’s hiding that insecurity behind a lot of “look at me, Ma, I’m a politician now!” bluster, but really he’s not too fond of himself. He failed at the most important thing his family wanted for him.
Anyway, he’s always been really quick. Maybe that’s a proto Mega-Wits thing.
How were you discovered? I think Jacob set off as a superhero without any patronage or training. That’s the kind of half-cocked thing he would do. I think he ended up going to a Rashoud facility and learning to control his powers when he gave up superheroing.
What are your quirks? He’s quick, smart, charismatic. He plays basketball (badly) and is generally friendly.
Who is important in your life? Jacob’s friends, his teammates, his family.
What do you own? Jacob lives in a slightly ratty little apartment with his anime collection and his old (prematurely purchased) medical textbooks. Now it’s also full of books on politics and history and a few remainders from the merchandising he did back when he was a superhero. He’s more fond of all that stuff than he likes to let on.
How do you perceive other people? Jacob is a real extrovert. He just loves people. He likes to be with them. He likes to make them happy, to see them smile and make them laugh. He also has a serious self-esteem complex. He wants to be liked, approved of, and respected by everyone he meets. He is scrupulously respectful of baselines – potentially to the point of taking shit he shouldn’t – because he doesn’t want to be one of those novas.
Skipping the question that would involve the rest of his team…
What are your motivations? Well, Jacob wants to be mayor. He has seen what it’s like to do fake good – to run around in a costume, saving a life here and there, posing for the cameras and signing contracts for comic books and toys and donating the money to charity – and now he wants to do real good. He also wants to be respected. Not just loved: respected and admired. He’s spent his entire life feeling like a screw-up because he couldn’t be a doctor, and now he finally has a chance to make something of himself… he’s really intent on not screwing that up.
And there we go. That’s Jacob Weissman, formerly the nova superhero called Uriel.
EDIT: I swear, I'm not usually even remotely this derivative. I promise. My next character will be completely original ant not in any way resemble anything anyone else has even thought of. It's true.
Really.
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 01:17 pm (UTC)And by the way:
and he decided to loose the costume
LOSE LOSE LOSE
no subject
Date: 2008-07-11 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-12 02:07 am (UTC)