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Jul. 22nd, 2008 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
electricpaladinThe Game: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Revised
Publisher: Eden Studios
Familiarity: See above. I’ve run it once and played it a handful of times. Once I did a cameo as a villainous NPC in the final confrontation, once I played an ordinary White Hat in a game that never got off the ground, and once I played an Israeli magician hoping to hijack the Slayer away from the Watchers in a game that crashed and burned hideously.
I like to start these off with a little description about what the game is, to me. So, what is Buffy, as a roleplaying game?
Buffy is about living in a really grim supernatural world and not realizing it, because you’re just a kid. And as the darkness of the world becomes increasingly apparent, as it rips away your innocence, you have to decide how you’re going to live. Will you try to turn your back on the fight and pretend you can forget the secrets you’ve seen in the dark underbelly of the world? Will you continue to fight, knowing that death and worse wait for you every night? Will you go out in a blaze of glory and leave the work to your less fortunate friends?
Think about it. Vampires – the lowest, as it turns out, on the demonic totem pole – are hideously strong, unfairly fast, and universally sadistic (and often quite creative about it), and there are worse things than vampires out there. The best defense the world has is a cabal of Brits, and their best weapon is a teenage girl who they sacrifice over and over again.
But as I said, you’re living in this world, but you’re a teenager. The journey into (or out of) darkness is only beginning.
The best Buffy character I ever made followed this trope:
1. Imagine an episode that could have happened in the TV show.
2. Take one of the characters who would have seen the secret darkness of the world during the events of that episode, but in classic Buffy style, repressed it all by the next day.
3. Except this poor sap, for whatever reason, can’t forget.
4. Pitch the character to the rest of the players and see what they think.
Of course, this doesn’t quite work for such central characters as the Slayer and the Watcher, who are usually decided on before the first episode. But I don’t want to make the Slayer or the Watcher. I want to make a goony high school student.
My character is was a normal kid until he fell out of a treehouse at age 11 and broke his back badly. He suffered some nerve damage, though he wasn’t exactly paralyzed. After lots of physical therapy, he can get around slowly with a cane, though I think he prefers to zip around on his wheelchair. He hates going to physical therapy because they make him get out of his chair and totter around.
Life has been hard to him. School isn’t really easy for anyone, and it’s even harder when there’s something about you that makes you stick out and stops you from doing what everyone else can do. Still, he’s made the best of it, and he’s only rarely envious. It’s not like he was ever going to be a football star or anything. He focuses on things that his disability won’t get in the way of; he’s into computers, writing, and roleplaying games. He’s not sure if he wants to be a computer programmer, an executive, or shoot for the moon and try to break into the world of professional writing.
Anyway, at some point he met a new doctor who promised he could fix everything with a revolutionary and experimental new surgical technique. What he didn’t tell anyone was that the surgical technique involved implanting a demonic parasite inside his patient’s body. My character and several other patients were apparently cured, but soon plagued by strange impulses and disturbing dreams.
Luckily the Slayer and any other PCs who joined the gang before my character did were there to save the day. They managed to get the parasite taken out before it could cause any permanent harm. Unlike the rest of the survivors, he couldn’t just forget what had happened, so he insisted on being allowed to join up. He’s become pretty handy with a crossbow, so he just finds a place to perch and snipes at vampires and other bad things. He’s handy with the computer, too, and getting better at getting places he shouldn’t.
His appearance: he’s slightly built, with sandy hair and hazel eyes. He’s sort of cute, in the way that high schoolers are when they haven’t grown into their features fully.
His name: Daniel Bird.
As with Angel, the first step is to choose a character type. The options here have different names and point values, though concept is the same. The types are: Hero, White Hat, and Veteran Hero. I think Daniel is definitely a White Hat. He’s just an ordinary kid in an extraordinary world. That means he gets 15 points to spend on Attributes, 10 points for Qualities, 15 Skill points, 20 Drama points, and up to 10 points of Drawbacks.
As with Angel, there are six Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower) running from 1 (abysmal) to 5 (human limit) or higher, with 2 as an average. Daniel’s Attributes are easy: 2 across the board in physicals, 3 across the board in mentals.
Qualities will be fun. First of all, I described him as cute, so +2 Attractiveness it is. A couple of levels of Hard to Kill are probably a good idea, just on principle. Plus, after all those surgeries and the weekly hell of physical therapy, pain doesn’t stop Daniel much. I will also buy him Nerves of Steel (mostly because I have a lot more points to throw around than I know what to do with – a hazard of playing a mostly-ordinary White Hat). I’ll also pick up Empathy, which lets me use my Perception + Notice to pick up people’s emotions. Not like it’s a magic power or anything, but Daniel is just good at reading people.
Daniel is also a bit of a Nerd. He focuses on his mental faculties, and he writes and plays with computers. Fortunately, Nerd is a Quality in Buffy. I’ll apply my two Attribute +1s to Intelligence and Perception and my +2 Skill to Computers.
Robot is a really tempting Quality. I want to play a Robot very badly. Especially a Holy Robot (see username). Daniel, however, is not a robot, holy or otherwise, so my images of electronic paladin characters will have to wait for another game. Alas.
Now, on to Drawbacks. First of all, Daniel is a Clown. He responds to his problems by laughing them off, which is sometimes endearing, but also sometimes annoying. Daniel also has a Physical Disability. Because he can walk (slowly, with a cane) without his wheelchair, it’s more like a missing or crippled leg/foot than missing or crippled legs, although the problem is in both his legs. And finally, he’s a Teenager, which is a 2-point Drawback. Because, if you think back to it, being a teenager kind of sucks.
And wow… that’s six points that I have no idea what to do with. I’ll take two levels of Resources (Daniel’s parents have money, and more importantly, they trust him). And… what the hell, Situational Awareness is a good trait to have when you’re an ordinary goon in a setting like this.
Now I have 15 points to spend on Skills. 3 in Art to cover his writing aspirations, 2 in Computers (which will be improved to 4 by the Nerd Quality), 2 Doctor (he’s spent enough time in hospitals that he’s picked some stuff up), 1 Driving (special hand-operated cars), 2 Getting Medieval (crossbows), 2 Knowledge (see above re: Nerd), 1 Languages (high school French), 1 Notice (just a good idea), and 1 Science should do the trick.
And now it’s time to fill in some details and I’m ready to go! The end.
Next up: Call of Cthulhu.
Abby commented that while I’ve made Jewish characters, WASPy characters, and a Catholic character, twenty-somethings and a teenager, and even a disabled character, there are a lot of things I’m missing. She challenged me to write a gay black woman as one of my characters for this project. And an elderly character.
Well… it won’t be the next one. I want to write a 1920s Call of Cthulhu character, and that game is depressing enough without playing a black lesbian in the 1920s. Maybe my Call of Cthulhu character can be older, though. I can’t be sure. Call of Cthulhu is my Anyway, my answer to that challenge will have to wait. Maybe until Changeling…
Publisher: Eden Studios
Familiarity: See above. I’ve run it once and played it a handful of times. Once I did a cameo as a villainous NPC in the final confrontation, once I played an ordinary White Hat in a game that never got off the ground, and once I played an Israeli magician hoping to hijack the Slayer away from the Watchers in a game that crashed and burned hideously.
I like to start these off with a little description about what the game is, to me. So, what is Buffy, as a roleplaying game?
Buffy is about living in a really grim supernatural world and not realizing it, because you’re just a kid. And as the darkness of the world becomes increasingly apparent, as it rips away your innocence, you have to decide how you’re going to live. Will you try to turn your back on the fight and pretend you can forget the secrets you’ve seen in the dark underbelly of the world? Will you continue to fight, knowing that death and worse wait for you every night? Will you go out in a blaze of glory and leave the work to your less fortunate friends?
Think about it. Vampires – the lowest, as it turns out, on the demonic totem pole – are hideously strong, unfairly fast, and universally sadistic (and often quite creative about it), and there are worse things than vampires out there. The best defense the world has is a cabal of Brits, and their best weapon is a teenage girl who they sacrifice over and over again.
But as I said, you’re living in this world, but you’re a teenager. The journey into (or out of) darkness is only beginning.
The best Buffy character I ever made followed this trope:
1. Imagine an episode that could have happened in the TV show.
2. Take one of the characters who would have seen the secret darkness of the world during the events of that episode, but in classic Buffy style, repressed it all by the next day.
3. Except this poor sap, for whatever reason, can’t forget.
4. Pitch the character to the rest of the players and see what they think.
Of course, this doesn’t quite work for such central characters as the Slayer and the Watcher, who are usually decided on before the first episode. But I don’t want to make the Slayer or the Watcher. I want to make a goony high school student.
My character is was a normal kid until he fell out of a treehouse at age 11 and broke his back badly. He suffered some nerve damage, though he wasn’t exactly paralyzed. After lots of physical therapy, he can get around slowly with a cane, though I think he prefers to zip around on his wheelchair. He hates going to physical therapy because they make him get out of his chair and totter around.
Life has been hard to him. School isn’t really easy for anyone, and it’s even harder when there’s something about you that makes you stick out and stops you from doing what everyone else can do. Still, he’s made the best of it, and he’s only rarely envious. It’s not like he was ever going to be a football star or anything. He focuses on things that his disability won’t get in the way of; he’s into computers, writing, and roleplaying games. He’s not sure if he wants to be a computer programmer, an executive, or shoot for the moon and try to break into the world of professional writing.
Anyway, at some point he met a new doctor who promised he could fix everything with a revolutionary and experimental new surgical technique. What he didn’t tell anyone was that the surgical technique involved implanting a demonic parasite inside his patient’s body. My character and several other patients were apparently cured, but soon plagued by strange impulses and disturbing dreams.
Luckily the Slayer and any other PCs who joined the gang before my character did were there to save the day. They managed to get the parasite taken out before it could cause any permanent harm. Unlike the rest of the survivors, he couldn’t just forget what had happened, so he insisted on being allowed to join up. He’s become pretty handy with a crossbow, so he just finds a place to perch and snipes at vampires and other bad things. He’s handy with the computer, too, and getting better at getting places he shouldn’t.
His appearance: he’s slightly built, with sandy hair and hazel eyes. He’s sort of cute, in the way that high schoolers are when they haven’t grown into their features fully.
His name: Daniel Bird.
As with Angel, the first step is to choose a character type. The options here have different names and point values, though concept is the same. The types are: Hero, White Hat, and Veteran Hero. I think Daniel is definitely a White Hat. He’s just an ordinary kid in an extraordinary world. That means he gets 15 points to spend on Attributes, 10 points for Qualities, 15 Skill points, 20 Drama points, and up to 10 points of Drawbacks.
As with Angel, there are six Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower) running from 1 (abysmal) to 5 (human limit) or higher, with 2 as an average. Daniel’s Attributes are easy: 2 across the board in physicals, 3 across the board in mentals.
Qualities will be fun. First of all, I described him as cute, so +2 Attractiveness it is. A couple of levels of Hard to Kill are probably a good idea, just on principle. Plus, after all those surgeries and the weekly hell of physical therapy, pain doesn’t stop Daniel much. I will also buy him Nerves of Steel (mostly because I have a lot more points to throw around than I know what to do with – a hazard of playing a mostly-ordinary White Hat). I’ll also pick up Empathy, which lets me use my Perception + Notice to pick up people’s emotions. Not like it’s a magic power or anything, but Daniel is just good at reading people.
Daniel is also a bit of a Nerd. He focuses on his mental faculties, and he writes and plays with computers. Fortunately, Nerd is a Quality in Buffy. I’ll apply my two Attribute +1s to Intelligence and Perception and my +2 Skill to Computers.
Robot is a really tempting Quality. I want to play a Robot very badly. Especially a Holy Robot (see username). Daniel, however, is not a robot, holy or otherwise, so my images of electronic paladin characters will have to wait for another game. Alas.
Now, on to Drawbacks. First of all, Daniel is a Clown. He responds to his problems by laughing them off, which is sometimes endearing, but also sometimes annoying. Daniel also has a Physical Disability. Because he can walk (slowly, with a cane) without his wheelchair, it’s more like a missing or crippled leg/foot than missing or crippled legs, although the problem is in both his legs. And finally, he’s a Teenager, which is a 2-point Drawback. Because, if you think back to it, being a teenager kind of sucks.
And wow… that’s six points that I have no idea what to do with. I’ll take two levels of Resources (Daniel’s parents have money, and more importantly, they trust him). And… what the hell, Situational Awareness is a good trait to have when you’re an ordinary goon in a setting like this.
Now I have 15 points to spend on Skills. 3 in Art to cover his writing aspirations, 2 in Computers (which will be improved to 4 by the Nerd Quality), 2 Doctor (he’s spent enough time in hospitals that he’s picked some stuff up), 1 Driving (special hand-operated cars), 2 Getting Medieval (crossbows), 2 Knowledge (see above re: Nerd), 1 Languages (high school French), 1 Notice (just a good idea), and 1 Science should do the trick.
And now it’s time to fill in some details and I’m ready to go! The end.
Next up: Call of Cthulhu.
Abby commented that while I’ve made Jewish characters, WASPy characters, and a Catholic character, twenty-somethings and a teenager, and even a disabled character, there are a lot of things I’m missing. She challenged me to write a gay black woman as one of my characters for this project. And an elderly character.
Well… it won’t be the next one. I want to write a 1920s Call of Cthulhu character, and that game is depressing enough without playing a black lesbian in the 1920s. Maybe my Call of Cthulhu character can be older, though. I can’t be sure. Call of Cthulhu is my Anyway, my answer to that challenge will have to wait. Maybe until Changeling…
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no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 06:19 pm (UTC)Yah, but here's the thing. A lot of times, when gamers (who are usually upper-middle class white dudes) try to play against type, they fuck it up. I stretch things a little sometimes, but mostly I try to play within my experience, or at least within my second-hand experience (my character in Shadowrun is Puerto Rican, for instance).
Not saying that you can't or shouldn't play against type, of course. It's just difficult to do it and do it well. I look forward to your old gay black lady character. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 11:00 pm (UTC)A black character has access to the seemy underclass in CoC, but yeah, may come off strangely for any high society scenes (unless they go as a servant, or are WEB DuBois level of "I can demand respect"). The lesbian part is probably irrelevant in 1920s CoC, since romance is just a horrible horrible idea for many reasons in that setting anyway, and I can't imagine there are many venues where she could acceptably make this relevant.
Ever hear of Delta Green, by the way? The sourcebook is supposed to be incredibly rare, but it takes the Cthulhu setting into the modern world pretty well. Actually played a one-shot of it. Of course, in modern times, a black lesbian would work fine there.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 11:16 pm (UTC)I'll see your Delta Green and raise you a CthulhuTech. Have you heard of it? The Mi-Go come to take over the Earth, Cthulhu begins to stir... and mankind invents giant robots in a desperate, last ditch effort to battle them back. Giant robots, giant biological robots made of human and monster DNA (think Evangelion), and humans melded with strange symbionts from beyond time and space.
It's pretty cool. Not as cool as it could be, but cool.
My Call of Cthulhu character is made. I'll post it this evening when I get back from Man Cult.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 07:03 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-24 04:41 pm (UTC)