Casting Shadows

Weekend 2: Wild Things             Prompt: Wildest Character Concept

I went back and forth on the decision to use the official prompt of the day or not as the most suitable response for a ‘wild-est’ tag is a character I have talked about twice before during previous RPGaDay years. In the end, I decided to go ahead as while this is a repeat for me, it is unlikely to be a repeat for most of the folks who check out today’s response.

If I had gone with an alternate prompt. I would have chosen it from the list of such things found on my first post for #RPGaDay 2018 where I share all of the prompts: The Big List of Alternate Prompts.

Outside In

The wildest character concept that I have ever played was in a multiple GM implementation of the trio of White Wolf games that explored the idea of heroism: Adventure!, Aberrant, and Trinity.

We had played each of these games already, and we were old, old hands with Storyteller, so we were in a good position to play skillfully and explore the settings deeply. We were able to take inspiration from the system and use the system to give shape to other inspiration.

Inspired by the lives of B-movie actors and long-run TV show stars who cannot escape their casting, I created a character who had played a ‘superhero’ on TV and had never managed to live it down. The sudden appearance of actual superheroic beings in the form of the game’s titular ‘aberrants’ was a new twist of the knife. The show’s cancellation had led to a meager subsistence signing fewer and fewer autographs at smaller and smaller conventions, but with such new icons appearing all the time, and a changing world being the result, what was a discarded actor to do? He was in a downward spiral that ended up in a special kind of nightmare. He too erupted as an Aberrant and developed superhuman abilities, but… they were the exact expression of the character he had played on TV.

What would he do with the powers of a god? Try to restart his career? Transition to a new one? Fall prey to the internal politics of these ‘new gods’? Become a tool of Project Utopia and its hopes for a better world?

For added challenge and perversity, when creating the character I stayed away from all the major power sets and instead chose only ancillary abilities and powers, more than human, but not seemingly in the league of the major players…. or was he…? Could I take this odd collection of augmentations and peculiar powers and use them well enough to have this character make a noticeable mark in the world?

Tomorrow

We start our third week, and step under the sway of our third governing word: Describe. The prompt for Monday, August 13th – the 13th day of #RPGaDay2018 is Describe how your gaming has evolved.

YouTube

As has been my habit since the second year of #RPGaDay, I am also keeping pace with the prompts on video. The content of the videos and the blog overlaps, but is not exactly the same, and where the greater emphasis on detail resides varies from day to day.

#RPGADAY 2018

This is the second week of the fifth iteration of the monthly roleplaying gaming celebration launched by Autocratik for all forms of social media. Share your responses however you prefer to share. If you want to get involved, grab and share the infographic with the prompts and jump right in!