I have a thing I'm going to do with my RPG characters (writing, RPGs)
(I'm going to be titling all of my future posts this way - title and then topic, to make my posts easier to identify down the road.)
I was feeling disappointed that I could not continue a couple of favorite characters, some of which I've run for years and am not done with, and some of which I just put a lot of work into, in the games that gave birth to them.
So, I'm going to start writing what amounts to OC fanfic.
These characters meant a lot to me, and I'm sad about leaving them behind.
One is in a Star Trek game, an Andorian security officer (Jerk with a Heart of Gold) whose story was far from over, at the last time that I was able to play him. I held him out for my best friend's game for years, but the game never got off the ground for one reason or another. He had a lot of family drama, and PTSD from the Dominion War. He started off as a negative character - a petty tyrant whom I, as GM, enjoyed pitting the team against. But over time, I grew to "get" him, and see his side of things - he wasn't "all bad" and he was on his own personal journey. And over time, he becomes better - and when I finally left off with him (as he was transferred to the new assignment), you could even say he was on the path to becoming a good guy. This is my oldest character who is still "active" in any way (I've far from retired him in my mind; he's been ready to start in the game that never launched, for a few years, during which time I've written some material about his past and about the interim between his assignments).
His human wife, an engineer, is interesting as hell to me; I have since deepened my understanding of this character. I've realized there is a touch of engineer oddness to her - not quite autism spectrum, but not quite neurotypical.
I love the exploration of both characters that came about as a result of writing their budding relationship. I feel sad about not getting to play them.
There is another character I have that's fun to play, but whose game stalled. This is in Vampire: the Masquerade. Glitch is a Nosferatu, a diminutive asexual hacker and gutterpunk who revels in what she has become. She did not get to really "go anywhere" as a character, past about three sessions.
The thing with all of these characters - all of them, including the Andorian, could eventually have their serial numbers filed off and still be written about in a way that's my own intellectual property (think about how 50 Shades is really Twilight fan fiction). The Andorian character is such an archetypal character in some ways that I could write a similar character as a human or in another alien culture.
The human character is a character that could appear in many different types of story, and still fundamentally be the same person. The vampire is... a vampire, I just wouldn't write her within World of Darkness.
I was feeling disappointed that I could not continue a couple of favorite characters, some of which I've run for years and am not done with, and some of which I just put a lot of work into, in the games that gave birth to them.
So, I'm going to start writing what amounts to OC fanfic.
These characters meant a lot to me, and I'm sad about leaving them behind.
One is in a Star Trek game, an Andorian security officer (Jerk with a Heart of Gold) whose story was far from over, at the last time that I was able to play him. I held him out for my best friend's game for years, but the game never got off the ground for one reason or another. He had a lot of family drama, and PTSD from the Dominion War. He started off as a negative character - a petty tyrant whom I, as GM, enjoyed pitting the team against. But over time, I grew to "get" him, and see his side of things - he wasn't "all bad" and he was on his own personal journey. And over time, he becomes better - and when I finally left off with him (as he was transferred to the new assignment), you could even say he was on the path to becoming a good guy. This is my oldest character who is still "active" in any way (I've far from retired him in my mind; he's been ready to start in the game that never launched, for a few years, during which time I've written some material about his past and about the interim between his assignments).
His human wife, an engineer, is interesting as hell to me; I have since deepened my understanding of this character. I've realized there is a touch of engineer oddness to her - not quite autism spectrum, but not quite neurotypical.
I love the exploration of both characters that came about as a result of writing their budding relationship. I feel sad about not getting to play them.
There is another character I have that's fun to play, but whose game stalled. This is in Vampire: the Masquerade. Glitch is a Nosferatu, a diminutive asexual hacker and gutterpunk who revels in what she has become. She did not get to really "go anywhere" as a character, past about three sessions.
The thing with all of these characters - all of them, including the Andorian, could eventually have their serial numbers filed off and still be written about in a way that's my own intellectual property (think about how 50 Shades is really Twilight fan fiction). The Andorian character is such an archetypal character in some ways that I could write a similar character as a human or in another alien culture.
The human character is a character that could appear in many different types of story, and still fundamentally be the same person. The vampire is... a vampire, I just wouldn't write her within World of Darkness.