Amber Characters
Well it’s that time again, when I have to find a compelling concept for a character for an Amber game. This time is even trickier because it’s for a PBEM (play by email) game, which I’ve never tried before, so I really don’t know what to expect from the game at all. In particular I don’t know to what extent it will just be a game about doing things and making plans and seeing whether things work out or not (which I feel like Amber can end up being more a game of, in any case), or how much it can really be a roleplaying experience.
I think this connects a bit with Jason’s blog entry about Roleplaying Games vs. Story Games. And of course it all plays into what sort of character to design since a lot will depend on what sort of game it’s going to be. And I’d really like to make sure my character concept matches the feel of the game well, obviously, particularly since this game may well be lasting a while and I’d rather not be switching characters partway through the game, like I had to in a couple of other of Jason’s games.
One problem I often tend to have is that my characters suffer from being one-trick ponies. This is because I come up with what I think of as a really cool gimmick or central idea for the character and base everything around that, their personality, powers, everything. And that is all well and good. It’s even possible to make characters that have a decent amount of depth to them, surprisingly enough. The problem that I’ve encountered in the past number of Amber games is that I’ve sort of had to re-make them on the fly in-game because the really cool concept or schtick that I came up with turned out to be pretty much utterly irrelevant as far as the game was concerned. So the plot hook that I thought I was providing was never relevant or useful at all.
So this time I was trying to move away from all that and instead ended up coming up with yet another gimmicky concept which may or may not work at all. I’m waiting to hear what Jason thinks of it.
More will follow if this does work, obviously, or if it doesn’t, since I’ll then have to think of something new.
I think that e-mail games might have a much better chance of the GM being able to highlight your character’s focus and thus reducing the chances of your “cool thing” becoming irrelevant. Of course, this means putting some of the work on the GM to make things fit. Heheheh.
So, let’s see…important things to know about a character….
Can he/she/it juggle?
What kind of pudding does he/she/it prefer?
What kind of night spot does he/she/it enjoy hanging out in?
My biggest problem when I’m making up characters is that I feel like I don’t often have enough differentiation between characters. I’m haunted by the notion that Tristan was just Dairmaid with a scalpel, Hill was just Dairmaid with an accent, etc. I don’t want to be That Guy who always plays the ninja, know what I mean?
Is this character going to just turn out to be Eiddwen All Over Again?
Argh!!!
Anyway, I’ve only played in one PBEM, but I liked it. I played a character who was a man of few words, and the email format worked really well with that, because I would draft a response, and then spend the rest of the day winnowing my character’s dialog down to two -or three-word sentences.
I don’t know if I could have done as well if chat was going to be important—which I hope it will be in this game!
Anyway, to answer JP’s questions for my character, Ivara:
Naturally.
Vanilla.
A nudist club.
I feel like the fact that my characters are heavily focused around their shtick means that I don’t have to worry quite as much about them being like each other. But then I worry that they’re all the same character wrapped up in a different shtick, so to speak.
With JP’s latest game I wanted to make more of a departure from that, which I think has worked out better than in the past. Tristifer has been a lot of fun to play in JP’s current game partly because he’s the most humble Amberite I’ve ever played, I think. He’s certainly by far the most polite and soft-spoken. The downside of this is of course that I don’t get to be rude and make in-character snarky comments. But on the whole it’s a fun and interesting experience to play a more likable character.
Anyway, now I have to somehow try to make sure that the new character doesn’t end up being any of Tristifer, Connal, or Aerion. Hence the need for a brand new shtick.
Oh, and I don’t think Hill was a ninja, was he? I thought Connal was the ninja in that game.
I don’t mean playing the ninja in the literal sense, but just being the person who always has to find a way to play their favorite type of character (e.g. the guy who wants to play the ninja, no matter what the genre of the RPG.) My “ninja,” as it were, is the laid-back affable type, who, when threatened, will jump up and beat the living bejeezus out of you.
Hill wasn’t very affable, though, I’ll admit.
Were there any affable characters in that game? I mean, really? Because I sure don’t remember anyone being likable. Or maybe it was just that I didn’t get along with any of the ones who might have been affable. And I know for a fact that Connal wasn’t terribly affable.
Mitchel. Mitchel was totally affable.
Affable and paranoid.
Affable, paranoid, and bitter.
Affable, paranoid, bitter, and ineffectual.
Mitchel was complex.
Did you ever have a feeling like you’re forgetting something?
I just realized what it was. I forgot to kill Mitchel.
Seriously. I hate Mitchel.
You’re totally right.
Because Mitchel was seriously annoying.
In the words of Angel: “That guy just bugs me.”
WtF?!?
What was so annoying about Mitchel? He was just a regular guy trying to deal with a totally messed up situation!