Casting Shadows

Today’s Question:

What is the character moment you are most proud of?

Another challenging question, particularly if you are, like me, usually a GM. There are a few like this this time, but hopefully, it has not been so long since you have run a character that the details are lost to time.

I had to dig fairly far back, about a decade, to a supers game that I have mentioned in the past in conjunction with RPGaDay, about a favorite character. While perhaps not my favorite character ever, the game, the people, and the story that was created stands out as among the best I have ever been a part of, and that is saying something.

This question is about a character which got a lot of support from the entire group both in its creation, and in its implementation. Being an Aberrant character (White Wolf, supers genre) it was one based in a world much like our own, a few steps into the future.

This character was built around the concept of rejecting one’s own identity and in doing so, served as a reflection of the street-level struggles around him, as well as the major moral and philosophical struggles which would ultimately bring the world to the brink of destruction in the wake of the growing conflict between humanity and its new breed, the Novas.

His journey from out-of-work B actor to Nova was very public, and very messy. He was alternately praised and derided by the press, but slowly grew into a grassroots hero and friend to law enforcement. His tangles with greater forces were often humiliating and laden with consequences, but little by little he became a hero that inspired others and helped him find himself.

The moment of which I am most proud when playing him was when all had been stripped from him and he was being used as a patsy by radical Novas to foment distrust, hatred, and fear in humans, and show other Novas that they were nations unto themselves, beholden to no laws but their own morality.

Used and betrayed, and caught in a spiral of destruction, he found himself face to face with a blue line of officers, and through our relationships with the NPCs in the campaign, through the assistance of the other players taking on roles not their own, and through the great pains taken to make the characters as lifelike as we could, the vision of those officers standing up to protect citizens when they knew they had no hope of doing so was an image that hit like a hammer blow.

One of the amusing elements of the character as he was introduced at first was that he was given to willful outbursts, focused narcissistically on himself, and seeking escape from his lot in life. His efforts to be a hero usually ended up in innocents being hurt, even when he could count the fight as a win. When it came to battles of will, though, he always lost. Always. His urges, his fears, attempts to control is mind…all of these always got the better of him. He was strong of hope, but weak in will.

Until this time.

This time, the dice and the masterful scene-setting of the GM worked in concert to produce a rebirth.

Breaking the chains of his mental imprisonment and in that moment breaking the chains of his self-hatred and confusion to find peace and a sense of purpose was a powerful and dramatic moment of which I, as a part of that group, am extremely proud.

#RPGaday

Tomorrow’s Question:

What is something impressive that someone else’s character has done?