Casting Shadows

This is another core question for me, and whether it is #RPGaDAY2024 or not, you can practically guarantee that the notion of the RPG character is a part of my ongoing discussions, podcast episodes, YouTube videos, and blog posts. The standard prompt for today phrases it as Compelling Characters and then sets you free to explore and share your thoughts.

An interesting experience that we had last year was finishing up our Alien campaign and launching into a Blade Runner campaign. In both cases, character creation was easy, produced characters we wanted to play that fit well in and were evocative of the setting, which could also work well together.

What I was not expecting, however, was that my sense of the characters made for each game would strike me so differently.

The group of Marines we made for Alien, and the back-up characters, and all the NPC members of the unit fit together in a seemingly endlessly expandable cohesion. It seemed right that these people would either want to work together or would take little persuasion to find ways to work together.

The Blade Runner characters were also easy to conceive of as being part of a unit, and their varied skills were easy to see as parts of a whole unit’s expertise. The personalities we came up with fit together well, and we had some fun banter back and forth while dealing with the pressures of a tricky case… and yet…

Something wasn’t quite right.

Reflecting on Aliens, our primary source for the campaign, the marines in a very real sense compelled us to bond together like a family – quickly and irrevocably. These tough soldiers in the crap up past their eyes demanded it.

Reflecting on Blade Runner, both in original and 2049 flavors, the compulsion was different. The characters we created come from a world of isolation and distrust. Even when with others, the characters in the films seem alone, and even when with others, seem to be looking for relationships different from the ones the have. We played them as friends, but they kept whispering to me that we were just colleagues. Friends were something other people could have and hold.

The streets were dark in LA, and it was raining. We had a team of four with cars that hold two. We new everyone’s first names, but used their last names.

We were cold and hungry and death was the only thing on the table.

In space, where no one could hear us scream or laugh, the underpinnings of the world were just as dark and corrupt, and yet – those Colonial Marines had found a home. They walked in darkness, but made their own light.