The Psychology of Chris's Characters, written by Chris

How do I start a character? Usually with an idea. Back in the day when
I gamed 'round Colonia, Rahway and other points in Middlesex and Union
counties I always endeavored to make something odd. I always had
satisfaction when I'd tell my former friend Brian about my character
then he'd get all Derrida on it coming within a red cunthair of saying
it's stupid and I'm stupid for thinking of it. My character, my idea
and he's not even the fucking game master.


Here's my Wold-Newton family. Theodore Aloysius Blackwood had a rich
family who loved him enough to enroll Theodore at an exclusive private
school but they didn't love him enough to actually love him. The
expenditure of money was how they expressed affection. Even the
enrollment was for Theodore's own good. Throughout his childhood he
was talking to imaginary friends who were spirits, souls which
gathered about him to communicate with the living even if it was a
monosyllabic whisper. The first semester was hell, suffering
atrocities at the hands of teachers and students alike while being
forgotten during holiday break left to fend for himself on the
abandoned campus. At the start of the spring semester in his 10th year
of life he was going to be sexually assaulted again but this time the
schoolmates would murder him and stuff the little corpse into a trunk
never to be found. When he awoke everyone on campus was dead. Bodies
half-hidden under bushes, windows dark and broken and he was called to
meet with the Tremere. The Chantry of the Silver Moon raised him from
that point and when he reached the age of eighteen they brought him
across into their ranks. He found true love with a mortal woman eighty
years later and spent his time trying to figure out how to regain his
mortality so he could die of old age with her.


Someplace with a little more color, four colors to be certain, with
some grittiness power is wielded with abandon. Dexter Norton, son of
Ed Norton, had adventures as a young man with his sewer worker cum
adventurer father. Ed Norton, working the NYC sewers, found an ancient
city deep below New York City and acquired fame. In Dexter's fifteenth
year he lost his left eye in a helicopter crash. Dexter studied
science, acquired his Masters very early and was scouted by VIPER to
be one of their powered armor devs. He didn't know he was working for
VIPER, just a government contractor, and when he realized he was one
of the bad guys he took the Adder armor prototype and escaped before
it could be pressed into service. Slipping into obscurity as a pet
store owner in a town somewhere in Essex County he kept below the
radar by day but came out as Black Adder at night.


As the game progressed I decided he was going to be a womanizer and
like drinking. Honest to goodness I didn't know jack or shit about
Tony Stark at the time. To my credit I didn't go anywhere near that.
Plus Dexter's protectiveness of his secret ID went pathological where
he was one person in the armor and another out of the armor.
Adventures wore on, he proved himself to be the most capable member of
the superteam Checkmate (much to Brian's chagrin). Rumor has it that
he endd up creating a multinational corporation which raised an island
in the Pacific which became his sovereign land. He fathered two
daughters who found him when they grew into women. Carolina and
Xiomara. The former adored him, the latter despised him but it ended
up that Xiomara took over when she realized Dexter was attempting
something great for a new age of humanity. Carolina wanted to hand it
over to coalition led forces so they could chop it up as they saw fit.
Xiomara had Carolina assassinated, announced how the country would
surrender and set a timeframe for a bloodless invasion. She took her
father's work, sent many into waiting generation ships high in orbit
and when the coalition set foot onto an empty island many nuclear
devices were detonated as the ships sped into the yawning void. For
centuries they wandered as gypsies between the stars, never
encountering other life nor their own peoples, before turning back
home. The final scene as I always saw it was one of Dexter's
descendants sitting in the captain's chair on the bridge watching
Earth rise in the windows before giving the orders to read all
weapons.


Should you happen to lift up a rock you'd find The City. Someplace in
southern Canada, a placeholder for Toronto for Americans who care less
for their northern neighbor. Monty Prince, a medical student, got
lucky one night with the woman of his dreams. Before he blacked out he
remembered his mouth being full of cold coppery liquid. Awakening he
saw Lucy staring at him in all her glory. Two abyssal eyes and a mouth
fringed with tentacles around a singular fang. Between the burblings
and gurglings he heard "I love you. We are together forever."


Needless to say he ran screaming into the night. Things got worse when
he realized most of his hair fell out, he acquired a prognathous jaw
with two tusks sprouting up like an orc. Despite the evident
emaciation of his body, Monty Prince discovered he had preternatural
strength and other talents which he used to hide himself from his
amorous sire. In his adventures he learned how to use a sword, used
obfuscate to peep on his female team members and gained many prices on
his head from the Sabbat. The story gets muddy when there are rumors
he made his way to St. Louis and joined the Sabbat to become an
adversary for another group of vampires. I have no part in this and it
was up to one of the New Jersey storytellers who co-opted my
character.


Tangentially to the four color world was another superheroic
character. A company involved with recombinant DNA was uplifting
animals to human-like intelligence. One of those was a rhinoceros
named Mercury. Being particularly dim he fell into a life of crime and
embraced the philosophy of "might makes right". After doing a stint in
Stronghold he had a change of heart and decided to come clean "for the
kids". Still clumsy, still sharp as a bag of rocks but outlandishly
strong and resilient he had a few adventures.


Yet another hero was Shadowturtle. Boris Black, county coroner, found
an ancient artifact which bonde with his body. At will he could assume
the form of a completely black turtle who could move at the speed of
darkness. He ended up killing a kid who was possessed by a demon and
was incarcerated by Special American Tactics. The rest of his team was
unaware of this thinking he was released on his own recognizances.
Instead the doppelganger, which I played, was a puppet of the same
demon who turned on them.


Many years later there was a gangrel out in Colorado who lived in the
tool chest of his pickup truck. With a Toreador and a Nosferatu they
tangled with the Sabbat and helped bring peace to a group of
werewolves along the front range. I've forgotten his name and the game
only lasted a handful of months.


Around this point I started creating my own worlds populated with many
more characters. Reckon most of the time I'll have an idea like
"Nobody ever wonders what the other half of a half-orc is so why NOT
an elf?" From such concepts a character is born like Felix Mousepad
who was created to roleplay rather than roll-play. Circumstances led
to gaming with powergaming munchkins much to my own chagrin but my
love for Lisa, Irv, Luiz and Alden kept me there in hopes I'd be able
to shine with a character rather than wow people with my completely
broken at-will power that's a daily for a non-prestige class. I wanted
to play a personality not a set of powers meant to fulfill some
adolescent fantasy which pastiches the best of Robert E. Howard. Not
very developed but I play him as forceful, thoughtful and charismatic
which does not represent the reality of my own self.


Folks who know me will read into this, see my pain, my scars, my hopes
and triumphs within these characters but when I created them at no
time did I ever think of them as a form of catharsis. Just a character
I thought would be cool to play without being a mary sue.