character creation, i
A few weeks ago, I held the pre-session for one of my upcoming campaigns for 2025, Shadowlands: a slow apocalyptic campaign where technology is gradually ceasing to work and people are turning back to magical arts. This resulted in first draft character sheets, which I've been reviewing and discussing with players. By now, nearly all the details are sorted out.
The campaign is based in the fictitious American state of Winnemac, borrowed from Sinclair Lewis's series of realist novels from the 1920s and 1930s: specifically, in the small city of Vulcan. There isn't much information about Vulcan in Lewis's fiction, so I made some up! In my version, it currently has just under 40,000 inhabitants, and is the site both of Vulcan Community College and of Winnemac Wesleyan University, a modest denominational college that offers an M.Ed., a D.D., and a few graduate courses terminating in a master's degree aimed primarily at teachers wanting to improve their qualifications. Its name come from the establishment of a factory by Goodyear back before the Civil War, which made vulcanized rubber products until it closed in the 1990s. There's a small Potawatomi reservation nearby that runs a casino.
There will be five player characters:
Kang Hyongmok ("Mook") is a former North Korea intelligence officer who defected to South Korea, formed a relationship with the CIA, and eventually arranged to live in the United States, where he ran a firm that did industrial counterespionage and, less officially, industrial espionage, though he retired a few years ago. He was trained in North Korea, covertly, in divination with the aid of spirits (officially disavowed by the Marxist government), which he still practices; he managed to befriend one spirit which came with him to the United States. His outstanding trait is keen perceptiveness.
Koman k'che nene gachinwa (legally "Ned Koman," also called "Cat" from a childhood name) is a full-blooded Potawatomi whose father died when he was quite young, after which his mother moved to the city, leaving him in the care of his grandmother, Moktthewan minke gises. She trained him in various traditional arts, and eventually passed on a tribal relic to him. He's a shaman and a "contrary," who is gender-fluid, but has also pursued a career as an archaeologist, and teaches as an adjunct at both universities, helped by exceptional analytical intelligence. While working on his Ph.D. he secretly collected a piece of rose quartz from a dig, which he included in a medicine pouch that grants him +2 Expression to present himself as either a man or a woman; he has the ability to make other enchanted objects.
Abram Burnett is Cat's younger half-brother, born to his mother and a white man she married; the two met briefly not many years after that when she died young. Abram has lived entirely in Anglo society and doesn't pursue his Native American heritage; this is something of a source of tension between the two, as Abram is also an adjunct, teaching history, so they encounter each other professionally. Secretly, though, Abram practices the magical path of shapeshifting; after his mother's death he began having strange dreams and developed an unusual affinity for animals, and not having a mentor or a source of tribal lore, he became an autodidact with a significant library of magical texts, many in German, which he speaks. He can't yet fully change into animal form, but his potential form is a coywolf, and his development of his theriomorphic self has given him enhanced social skills that he's applied to a secondary career in local politics, which has gotten him a seat on the Vulcan city council.
Brody Dudzinski is a fairly young man of Polish descent, now in a wheelchair. His skills are largely technological, but include the ability to keep high-tech devices working and to invent one-off gadgets with extraordinary function; he's not formally trained and doesn't know a lot of theory, but he has keen perception and can figure devices and computer software out intuitively. He's also pragmatic enough to have looked into the occult and has mastered a ritual that disrupts hostile magical spells. His technical skills have given him a good income.
Rose Lloyd is the youngest: raised on a farm outside Vulcan and home schooled, she qualified for admission to Winnemac Wesleyan at 17, where she's taking courses in classical languages. She's a classic redhead and exceptionally attractive. Her magical talents began to manifest in her childhood when the attentions of an older male relative made her uneasy; the initial effect was that she constantly built up static charges that kept other people from touching her, but she was able to discipline herself into electrical attacks and also into small-scale weather effects. In her teens she acquired a familiar, a handsome black cat whom she named "Jeffrey," after Christopher Smart's cat ("For by stroking of his fur I have found out electricity"), and who offers her advice and sympathy.
It looks as if the common ground for these five is going to be one or both colleges, where they can run into each other. C commented to me that all of them seemed to have developed their gifts in response to some form of trauma. That may lead to some interesting roleplaying. . . .
The campaign is based in the fictitious American state of Winnemac, borrowed from Sinclair Lewis's series of realist novels from the 1920s and 1930s: specifically, in the small city of Vulcan. There isn't much information about Vulcan in Lewis's fiction, so I made some up! In my version, it currently has just under 40,000 inhabitants, and is the site both of Vulcan Community College and of Winnemac Wesleyan University, a modest denominational college that offers an M.Ed., a D.D., and a few graduate courses terminating in a master's degree aimed primarily at teachers wanting to improve their qualifications. Its name come from the establishment of a factory by Goodyear back before the Civil War, which made vulcanized rubber products until it closed in the 1990s. There's a small Potawatomi reservation nearby that runs a casino.
There will be five player characters:
Kang Hyongmok ("Mook") is a former North Korea intelligence officer who defected to South Korea, formed a relationship with the CIA, and eventually arranged to live in the United States, where he ran a firm that did industrial counterespionage and, less officially, industrial espionage, though he retired a few years ago. He was trained in North Korea, covertly, in divination with the aid of spirits (officially disavowed by the Marxist government), which he still practices; he managed to befriend one spirit which came with him to the United States. His outstanding trait is keen perceptiveness.
Koman k'che nene gachinwa (legally "Ned Koman," also called "Cat" from a childhood name) is a full-blooded Potawatomi whose father died when he was quite young, after which his mother moved to the city, leaving him in the care of his grandmother, Moktthewan minke gises. She trained him in various traditional arts, and eventually passed on a tribal relic to him. He's a shaman and a "contrary," who is gender-fluid, but has also pursued a career as an archaeologist, and teaches as an adjunct at both universities, helped by exceptional analytical intelligence. While working on his Ph.D. he secretly collected a piece of rose quartz from a dig, which he included in a medicine pouch that grants him +2 Expression to present himself as either a man or a woman; he has the ability to make other enchanted objects.
Abram Burnett is Cat's younger half-brother, born to his mother and a white man she married; the two met briefly not many years after that when she died young. Abram has lived entirely in Anglo society and doesn't pursue his Native American heritage; this is something of a source of tension between the two, as Abram is also an adjunct, teaching history, so they encounter each other professionally. Secretly, though, Abram practices the magical path of shapeshifting; after his mother's death he began having strange dreams and developed an unusual affinity for animals, and not having a mentor or a source of tribal lore, he became an autodidact with a significant library of magical texts, many in German, which he speaks. He can't yet fully change into animal form, but his potential form is a coywolf, and his development of his theriomorphic self has given him enhanced social skills that he's applied to a secondary career in local politics, which has gotten him a seat on the Vulcan city council.
Brody Dudzinski is a fairly young man of Polish descent, now in a wheelchair. His skills are largely technological, but include the ability to keep high-tech devices working and to invent one-off gadgets with extraordinary function; he's not formally trained and doesn't know a lot of theory, but he has keen perception and can figure devices and computer software out intuitively. He's also pragmatic enough to have looked into the occult and has mastered a ritual that disrupts hostile magical spells. His technical skills have given him a good income.
Rose Lloyd is the youngest: raised on a farm outside Vulcan and home schooled, she qualified for admission to Winnemac Wesleyan at 17, where she's taking courses in classical languages. She's a classic redhead and exceptionally attractive. Her magical talents began to manifest in her childhood when the attentions of an older male relative made her uneasy; the initial effect was that she constantly built up static charges that kept other people from touching her, but she was able to discipline herself into electrical attacks and also into small-scale weather effects. In her teens she acquired a familiar, a handsome black cat whom she named "Jeffrey," after Christopher Smart's cat ("For by stroking of his fur I have found out electricity"), and who offers her advice and sympathy.
It looks as if the common ground for these five is going to be one or both colleges, where they can run into each other. C commented to me that all of them seemed to have developed their gifts in response to some form of trauma. That may lead to some interesting roleplaying. . . .