[RP] Horizon characters

[chrisvenus]

This will probably be mainly of interest to those that play horizon and possibly other RPers who have experienced the oxford society game.

With the new term starting (or should it be started by now - I guess it depends on your PoV) the next installation of the RPGSoc society game is kicking off, Horizon. I thought I knew what I wanted to do which was a mad scientist rehash. I thought of the sort of things I wanted to make and then I put some points down onto a piece of paper to start off the character generation process. It seems the mad scientist concept I have in mind is impractically expensive. I think mainly because I want to do mad science of a type that has never been done before so I am having to buy lots of expensive skills to give me the grounding needed.

So now I find myself wondering if I want to try for a different mad scientist and be a little more normal (and making your character more normal just seems like a step down on the fun ladder) or think of a totally different character concept. If anybody wants to have a "buddy" character then I am open for offers or suggestions. I guess I could try the mob boss character I had in mind last term but I am not sure I want a character that is goign to be high maintenance as that would probably be (yeah, i know it doesn't have to be but for me it would be).

Hmmm... I guess I might be able to trim down some of the skills I've taken. Oh well, I just thought I'd see what you lot had to say on the matter anyway.

Comments

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

I'm always up for linking characters with people, but don't know if you'd want to join the brood of Anarcholes... unless that is you wanted to be a mad-scientist uncle type, or the eldest son - potentially estranged from his batty father, so you don't have to be in the comedy, you can be a part of Horizon society in the main, but you still have a PC ally in the form of your younger sister (and have a good excuse to wear lots of black - it's a family trait :) )

Part of the reason Horizon suffers from rampant flaw pissing is they dont seem to give people enough points to be as powerful as they want to be (this is not my theory, I should point out - I agree with it, but it ain't mine), so of course gamers cripple themselves to get the cool stuff. The trick with such systems seems to be to load your characters interesting stuff into back ground and flavour stuff as much as possible as this tends to be lower points-costing than physical resources. Such was what I did with Crace, who of course ended up with two points spare but was still a mental character and very interesting and good fun to play.

Good luck in thinking, darling.

[chrisvenus]

Yeah, a lot of the interesting stuff about Frost was from background. And had the advantage of being negative quirks as well. :) On the other hand whether they have given enough points is a debatable manner. The number of points you give out at chargen sets a power level. They always said it was a low key game about the people of horizon rather than the huge movers and shakers of the world. So not being able to afford to be a world shaker isn't unreasonable. In my opinion the "rampant flaw pissing" as you so quaintly put it, should be stopped by a cap on the number of points you get back from flaws. That ensures that power levels are kept on a par and that the most positive points people will ever be able to spend is 20 (for example). In the last game I had 36 points of positive quirks which is thre times starting points which seems silly to me. On the other hand I beleive in going with the system and letting the GMs worry about whether unbalanced power levels are causing problems (and also being a considerate player to help ensure that any such imbalance isn't a problem).

That having been said I do think that more points could be a good thing. For example, being a grey engineer skilled in both steam and clockwork is 11 points. If you don't want negs then you have 1 point left and you haven't even got a job yet.

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

It's extremely debatable, and no doubt will be at some point.

I would have liked a few more points to play with, just because it is tremendously tight manouevring at times with your 12 dp even if you just want to be a bog standard mobster (as the GMs seem to want the staple characters of the games to be). And to be fair, while they said it was low key, they did also allow people to play the heads of crime families, and it said the PCs were the cream of the crud, so while we're not meant to be hugely powerful in the world, we were allowed to be powerful in our social circle - maybe the system should have reflected that with more quirks relevant to low-key society, I don't know.

Capping sounds a good plan, or more harshness from the GMs on allowing character concepts and stomping on people with their flaws.

[chrisvenus]

I don't believe in harshness in character concepts in general. Players should be allowed to play whatever they want within the system. The GMs should only ever really (IMHO) tell people that they might get bored playing a given character type. For example they might say "you can be an explorer if you want but there is not likely to be a need for an explorer at any point in the game". Then its the players choice whether to continue down that line. Of course things outside of the setting are a different matter so if I said I wanted to play an astronaut I should get the no stick.

I'm not sure what to do though and have lost something of my enthusiasm. Frost came together almost automatically and was a joy to behold as it evolved, especially because with Bri and Lucie and later John I had some good people with background links from the start.

What is your character (apart from a relation of Anarcholes?) tell me about yourself and try to enthuse me...

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

My character is Eristopholes the Black, second daughter to Anarcholes the Black and young career woman in the Loyal Order of Hounds (paper pushing). Shortly after the events of Horizon 1 Rita PErez divorces Sam Perez, and a few years later marries Anarcholes the Black. Anarcholes has two children from his previous marriage, who the mother dumped on him a little after he first moved to Horizon. Medea the Black and Eristopholes (Eriph for short) were raised by their father in the Black Tower, until he married Rita and little baby Doom came along.

Most of the character is in its background once again as Anarcholes tried to get them to join unholy cults like any normal father would the cub scouts or the brownies, and they had the joy of bailing him out of the hideous troubles he got into in his mad quest for vengeance against whoever he hated that week. Eriph herself is a nice upstanding young woman, who does her best in the crazy world she finds herself in. Anarcholes is already standing in the Mayoral elections, so that's some fun plot for me from the get-go. Given the lack of deviancy and hideousness she seems a tremendously dull character for me, so I'm interested to see what comes of her over the two terms - I fully predict player twattishness to drive her insane so I end up basically as Anarcholes mark 2, chanting "Doom!" at the players and being another mad cackling villain a la Petrovsky (only without the deviancy).

I don't expect this to be enthusing for you, darling, but I do suspect the thought of their dark Uncle (Anarchole's brother) and his mad inventions/ ingenious death-traps may intrigue you more, or indeed the idea of their romantically challenged elder brother who seeks love in the streets of Horizon to perhaps be of more interest?

[chrisvenus]

Anarcholes brother is a very tempting idea. The trouble is I have vague rules I set myself in character genning for society games after problems with previous characters. One of them is to have some aims and motivations that will last a couple of turns at least and will hopefully drive interactions. The mad inventions/death traps doesn't feel like it has anywhere to go (and I'd been thinking also of the brother who actually can do powerful magic but again nowhere to go). Romantically challenged brother might be interesting though I'm not sure how long lived it would be. I'm goign to hold that one in my head for thought though since its motivation (find true love) that doesn't require any skills and so is easily doable in the 12+- points.

[chrisvenus]

Meant to add on to the end that I'm not a big fan of relationships (as in romantic as opposed to family) with other PCs and with NPCs less so. Perhaps I should modify that to I don't like creating those relationships.

[kissifa.livejournal.com]

Well I figure any member of the Black family is going to be romantically challenged. But no, goals and motivations are good - I need more for Eriph. They just require thought and that's something I've not had a lot of time to do recently. :)

[chrisvenus]

Yeah. I think generally socially challenged really.

[onebyone.livejournal.com]

Rampant flaw pissing is (I would suggest) Lex Kennedy's great legacy in RPGSoc. His approach (based on conversations with him, I didn't actually play in any of those games) seemed to be that people wouldn't do it because it was bad roleplaying, and even if they did it didn't matter because the GMs could always flagrantly ignore the stats once the game started.

So, if played in that vein, such that it doesn't actually matter whether characters are balanced, fair enough. Otherwise: Danger, Will Roleplayer.

[joe-smoke.livejournal.com]

If you fancy a character linked to the Headman of the Ghouls in some way then I'd certainly be up for giving Sternos some more existing relationships
Aside from the mad scientist do you have many other ideas floating about currently; after Frost I presume you're looking at something other than a straight combat bunny for the two term game?

[chrisvenus]

I actually keep getting the petulent urge to play frost again. I'd have no problems with a combat bunny and have vaguely considered a "same sheet, different character" approach to it but am not sure I'll have the time to actually fit a brand new background into the old character sheet. Also don't know if it would work.

I've got other ideas floating around but nothing I'm particularly enthused by is the trouble.

[joe-smoke.livejournal.com]

Well if you're looking for a character similar to Frost then how about being an agent of the ghoulish community- the ghouls are forbidden by the Mayoral Contract from every leaving the City of Horizon, so if they need anything done in the outside world then they'd have to engage a human's services.
Dunno if that sounds at all interesting, just what got spilled out by my Frost + character linkage mental algorithm.

[chrisvenus]

I was having PI thoughts recently so not entirely incompatible with that idea. Might stat something up at lunchtime (err.. that's now, damn) and see what's what.