12 RPG Questions - 4. Can you name a character you'd loved to have played more?
I'm sure that when I wrote this question back in November last year I had a specific character in mind. But now? Not so much... so please, let's endure my wanderings as I take you back through my memories to times long past (oh and those from just 12 months ago :P)!
1. The Captain
Back when I joined my first real RPG group (you know the serious one where campaigns lasted more than one session!) we started a GURPs Super Heroes in Space game. While the campaign itself soon deteriorated into ever repeating circles of 'who could squeeze as many points out of my costume/item/etc', early on it was a lot of fun. When my first character ended his storyline (chasing so enemy I'd created back in character gen), I replaced him with The Captain, a fighter pilot with a range of special abilities (the exact details I can't quite remember). What makes him memorable is the art a school mate of mine did for me. As such I had a bit of an attachment for The Captain (I still have the character sheet somewhere, I think!).
As for the fate of the Captain? Unfortunately he was last seen in the midst of a horde of vampires, guns blazing (well that's the way I like to remember him, we did roll out his death and it was - as GURPs tends to be - pretty lame!)
Why would I want to play him again? - the unfulfilled potential. The Captain had a lot of story (both mechanically and background wise) that was never explored. That and I've always felt that his death was a cop-out by the GM...
2. Jessica
Another character from the earliest part of my gaming career, Jessica was a young psychic created for an Aftermath campaign. Rolled up totally legitimately, (in Aftermath the chance of having psonics is very remote) she had very potent and deadly powers, but equally numerous numbers of personal flaws. I remember playing her as a very fragile soul, I suppose a combination of characters like Drew Barrymore's character from Firestarter, and Rogue from Xmen. It was hard to try and play an innocent and lost 16 year old girl when I wasn't more than a few years older than that, and so I remember happly the time when one of the older guys in the group (he was roughly the same age as I am now!) came up to me after a session and said how impressed he'd been with my playing. He said that he'd expected Jessica to be either a nympho or an amazon - you know the typical female stereotype a teenager who have made, but instead he thought I had got her character down almost pat. I recall being very chuffed at hearing that from an older peer!
Sadly I don't recall what happened to Jessica, but I suspect that was about the time the group broke into two (long story - I think it was partly due to dynamics, partly due to numbers!) and the guys I went with ended up playing D&D.
Why would I want to play her again? - Discovery. Funny as it sounds I had a real connection with Jessica, and truely felt I that she should have had a chance to get over the troubles she faced!
3. Gabriel Toombs
I played Gabe - a Huckster - in the Deadlands game Mash ran last year. I built him as the character the 'could' have been responsible for the 'event' that had seen the mysterious deaths of everyone from the character's home town(barring the characters, of course). He had a love/hate relationship with his brother Raphael (played by Emma), and was on a long, very self destructive, slide. He died trying to redeem himself (and attempting to save Raph and Clint - Mat's character), but they didn't trust him enough to take the opportunities he had to offer...
Why would I want to play him again? The Truth. It'd be great to know just what had happened, and if Gabe had been responsible for the Event! He also had a reckoning with his brother in the offing, one which could have gone either way, not to mention the eternal struggle he had with this Manitou (As an aside I see I wrote this after Gabe's death - Gabriel has finally found rest; shot down by Lady Jane after colluding with the devil. While he'd maintain that his decision was the only forseeable way of saving his friend Clint, and his brother Raphael, it is likely that the others will see his 'betrayal' as a self centred and egotistical act that almost resulted in the entire group dying. Still, now dead and buried, he is - to a certain extent - at peace both with his past and the demon he carried within him for so long.)