Stepping Into Character and Tripping

So several weeks ago, I had to change characters due to an intense, intimate, albeit short-lived love affair with dynamite.

Unfortunately, I'm frustrated with Rex O'Malley - I can't find the right voice for him - there's no rhythm for where he fits into the group dynamics. Initially, I thought of him as a loud, boisterous man with a certain joie de vivre - live large, live fast, and probably die in hail of bullets, monster gore and a beautiful woman under one arm and a bottle of whiskey in his mouth.

I realized the problem last night as I talked to my wife, I, semi-inadvertently, created an adrenaline junkie - semi-inadvertently in that while I didn't say "Hmm, I wonder what a Weird West adrenaline junkie would look like?" But instead, I created a man who was seeking fame, fortune, and to keep himself distracted from certain unpleasant truths. Unfortunately, since he joined up with the group, it has been fairly quiet, first a funeral and some travel, then interacting with a Southern *cough* gentleman. Last night, we dealt with an angel and some bandits, the latter would have been the right moment, but apparently dealing with an intimidating bandaged priest (who played his part beautifully) and several more angry and irritated gunslingers was a bit much.

I knew I should have just started shooting.

So, erstwhile reader(s) - how do you find your voice, when there's nothing naturally flowing forth to inspire you? Give it time and be patient? Try to create situations in which it'll come out? Modify other aspects to try and "fit" in better.

I've got some plans for the potentially long train ride west, so we shall see what happens then. It can't be quiet all the time.

Borderlands vs. Deadlands

I should love the Gunzerker in Borderlands 2. Abilities based around surviving and wielding two large rapid fire guns and laughing maniacally? Yeah, I should be all over that shit.

However, in reality? Nope, I'm all about playing the low-risk percentage game of sniping at a distance and ensuring that there's plenty of room between me and the bad guys. PLENTY of room. In the first Borderlands game my primary weapons were a sniper rifle and a rocket launcher - my special ability? Punch things repeatedly. Just a touch of a intended vs. actual play style mismatch there.

However, sit me at the table and I'm FAR more likely to do something reckless. Why? Because it is fun, because it livens up the story, because there's a motivation other than shoot and loot. There's a purpose to the recklessness.

All gets back to Robin D. Laws' player types - Borderlands 2 brings out my tactical side, "What's the lowest risk method to accomplishing my goals" despite the penalty for failure, death, being so minuscule; whereas gaming at a table, I'll do something foolish for a good story despite the penalty for failure, death and/or loss, being so very final.

In short, death/defeat in Borderlands is boring and annoying so I avoid it. The kind of death and defeat I get in gaming, if meaningful, can be dramatic and engaging so I'm willing to risk it. Just something that came up last night as I started on my third character in Borderlands 2 as none of them have really "gripped" me as fun.

Well THAT didn't go according to plan.

So Jacob "Jake" Jobson got himself a serious case of obliterated last night at game. Note to self: When charging maniacally at the bad guys while carrying six sticks of dynamite: 1) Ensure that they aren't 500+ yards away; and 2) make sure they can't throw fire at you.

The first problem lead directly to the second problem causing the primary problem - a rather large detonation.

Oops. And this kids is why you don't carry dynamite with you at all times.

So now I have to decide what to play next as the GM only managed to kill off three of the six characters (we lost the Bless'd, the Huckster, and the butcher). Jake's tale was one of seeking redemption with a touch of vengeance thrown in.

I'm pondering a few different options.

Rex Morgan, Monster Hunter At Large. Possibly a veteran of the civil war and definitely a veteran of the Weird West, he's a two-fisted gunslinger with a lot of knowledge of what goes "bump" in the night. Cool under fire, he hunts down and takes trophies of his kills.

Ishikawa Masayuki, Humble Shinto Priest. A long way from home, he's seeking something in this foreign land. He speaks softly and carries a large stick as he passes through the crowds.

Alan Blackhart, Noble Church Knight. Dedicated to his church he's been sent from the mainland to this rough and tumble country at the Church's command. Fights the Church's enemies with holy steel and a stout heart.

Gregory Beck, Inventive Engineer. A veteran of the civil war, he served in both the artillery divisions and in at least one inadvertent instance crewing a Gatling gun. However, he's a long way from those days serving as a railroad/civil engineering blowing holes in mountains and other feats of intellectual daring do.

The first two characters have most of my love. Rex might be a lot of fun to play - but I have issues playing - how to I put it - vivacious, fun loving characters. Especially in horror games. Oddly enough, once you've seen a vampire create a doll out of random human parts and a broom handle, the idea that one could go laughing and cheering into the next battle just lacks verisimilitude in my head.

The other thing that hurts is that with the loss of the Father, we've lost our downtime healing, which means, with the change that you draw chips at the beginning of every arc and not every session, getting wounded is easy and heals real slow.

Rambling and Pondering on Stunts

Normally I'd apologize for two months of silence, but I've been busy with family (a couple of birthdays) and focusing on other areas of my life. Good stuff, but it has kept me busy.

But I have been gaming. The Deadlands game run by a good friend of mine is still going like gangbusters as we are coming closer to resolving a/the major storyline. My huckster is doing fine for all that he's grappling with what might be something beyond mere lust, and the fact that he may have a demon living inside of him.

The same friend is trying to start an Eclipse Phase (well the bare bones of the setting) game, set pre-Fall, and it is going to be a Leverage/Ocean's 11 style crime game; what should be folks used to living in the grey areas of the law doing good things for good people.

I'm looking forward to the game, now that character creation is over. It was painful. So many points to spend and variable rates of costs. Just so painful. I transferred to a spreadsheet generator and discovered I had another 100 points to spend. Whoops.

The other thing that struck me was how you differentiated characters - skills, advantages, flaws, and equipment. I just kept looking for "stunts" or something similar to change how I use "guns" versus how this other guy uses "guns".

And as I get settled into my job (gee only took almost 6 months), I find myself playing around with system creation more and the idea of modifying or creating something useful for my table. Something that works well with what I want to do, and encourages people to play in the way that I want them to play at my table. Something that rewards a character having motivations and connections to the world around them. I'm no Rob Donoghue, but luckily I'm more than willing to steal liberally.

Now I can see why Eclipse Phase creators decided to have the only variable on skill usage being "So what specialization do you get +10%" in. They have around 50 skills (and that's counting all the skills such as Piloting that specific focuses that must be taken as one skill), and coming up with all the variable usages would have been insane. And also, not what the game is about - it isn't about what you know, it is more about interacting with the world and the horror out there.

I'm going to try and be better about writing here, even if it is just small random gaming updates of what's going on inside my head. We'll see how long that lasts.

What I Find Horrific

Wednesday was my usual Deadlands game and I had a great time there, but it did cause me to realize something - I'm a horrible player for horror games (consonance for fun and profit!).

A lot of horror is built around disempowering the protagonist. And that doesn't make me feel afraid or nervous, it irritates me, rather than causing me to want to escape my deep-seated reaction is to turn and charge.

For me, the horror in games is the consequences of choices made - having to make horrible choices versus having gruesome things happen to my character, especially if there's no control over it. "This horrible thing happens to you." "Do I get to try to avoid it?" "No, there's no escape." "Oh, well fine then."

It is probably why I don't like horror movies much - they aren't scary - they can be startling and cause me to jump and react; they can be gruesome and cause me flinch or become nauseated; but horror? Fear? Scared? Not really.

For me horror are those moments when someone looks around them and say, "My god, what have I done?" That's horror. Shock gruesomeness doesn't horrify me, nor do bad things happening to me that I have no control over. But something horrible happening that I could have prevented? Now that's horrifying because then I'm an agent of the awfulness that on some level - it is my fault. Remove agency and you don't have horror, you have life.

This isn't to say anything bad about the GM, I'm the one who can't do horror games. But I've should have realized that, even in Call of Cthulhu games I tend to be a fighter, and I tend to make choices that interact with the plot versus avoiding it in an attempt to save my life/sanity.

Plus it is a game where the fun for me comes from interacting in the world. Sitting somewhere safe makes for a an alive protagonist, but not much fun. Just some sleepy, pre-work thoughts on horror.

Gaming Again.

So this blog went into hibernation, mostly because I stopped gaming.

My Changeling game wrapped up in March, and while it ended fairly well (in the way of a satisfying ending), I didn't really have much to say about it.

My daughter was born in April. Exciting and very distracting.

About June/July I started getting itchy again. To the point where I was really tempted to run a game again, despite me feeling burnt out on running games, just to do it.

Luckily, I managed to badger one of my friends to run a game. After a few badly timed attempts, we have a Deadlands game off the ground, aptly described by one of my fellow players as "A fallen Southern belle, a journalist, a mysterious drifter, a priest." Which seems so very stereotypical and almost Whedon-esque. I'm playing the drifter in that little future fiasco.

Similarly, some networking I did earlier in the year is paying off, and I may get into a Dresden Files game. I'm excited by that because, on paper, Fate should be what I'm looking for in a system - joint world and integrated character creation; exception based rules system that minimizing player overhead, and a conflict resolution system that works for many different styles recently.

Finally, I did a one shot of Eclipse Phase at Labyrinth Games and Puzzles this past Sunday. I have enough material for a couple other posts - either later today or later this week, but I wanted to take a moment to state that the store is pretty awesome - not tailored to me, but that'll probably be its saving grace, my interests are too narrow/too specialized to be common enough to support a business model.

So I'm gaming again. Probably the past four months is the longest I've gone without gaming since I started gaming 16 years ago; and I missed it once I recovered from sleep deprivation.