Something other than
Dec. 5th, 2005 08:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rhienellethSo I'm posting about RPGing. Not online RPGing, but traditional tabletop with dice and character sheets RPGing. Which means an extremely small portion of my f-list will even find this remotely interesting. In point of fact, I can only think of 2-3 other RPGers on my f-list. But I'm posting about it anyway.
I both play in and run roleplaying games. My most famous games (by mine, I mean games I ran) have been a Star Wars game and a Mage game. In both games, I was famous for my villains. As in, players still talk about them in reverant tones. But see, I've come to the conclusion that this must be because so un-villainous in my real life (ie "angelic";), that people just don't expect my villains to be really bad. This is a gross underestimation on their part. I love bad guys. They're usually my favorite characters (not that you didn't already know that, right? *cough*Sark*cough) When I create one, I make him/her charismatic and intelligent, and often powerful. But they also have flaws and weaknesses that could be exploited by a smart player. Unfortunately, there's the whole "underestimation" thing working against them.
As an example, Kadric, my Star Wars villain, was a dark jedi. One of the players was playing his long lost sister, a good jedi. Another was playing a "princess" type character, and both of them were just sure they could turn him and save him. Well, they could have, if they'd gone about it the right away. Instead, he ended up turning his sister into his apprentice and top assassin, while the princess became his wife and he became ruler of her people. (She was just sure this would eventually save him, you know, through love. I warned her, I did. She didn't listen. The results were not pretty, and she did not save him, and her character ended up an alcoholic. Yeah. Not quite how I pictured the game turning out. The other players, btw, were smarter about their decisions and didn't end up turning to evil.)
My point in saying all this is to talk about a game I'm currently playing in. The DM wanted us to play a party of evil characters. Ok. Sounds great! I'm playing a Melnibonean(sp?), which you'll only recognize if you've read the Elric books by Michael Moorcock. If not...hmm, think dark elves only not elven, and their magic system is based on summoning and controlling demons. Since he started running this game six months ago, this DM has basically run us as if we're a good party - trying to prey on any hidden morals we might have to get us to save villages and stuff. I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish. He's a psych major, so who knows? Anyway, his latest thing has been having his character, a succubus, assume my character's form and have her go out and...er...do her succubus thing, seducing the men of the town we're in and the like. We're playing again tonight, and it should be interesting. This goes back to the "people don't ever expect me to actually play evil" thing. Valeska (my character) is most definitely not a succubus. She thinks all these people are beneath her anyway, and she's a warrior bred and born and has a demon possessed blade. The first guy that pinches her butt is in for a nasty surprise, and thus far she hasn't been privy to Dawn's actions while wearing her face. I told Bill last week that Valeska was unlikely to react well to discovering this. This was sort of my delicate way of warning him that Valeska might well kill Dawn when she finds this out. (This would not be difficult - Dawn is not a combat character.)
Oh, they're here. Should be interesting, like I said.
I both play in and run roleplaying games. My most famous games (by mine, I mean games I ran) have been a Star Wars game and a Mage game. In both games, I was famous for my villains. As in, players still talk about them in reverant tones. But see, I've come to the conclusion that this must be because so un-villainous in my real life (ie "angelic";), that people just don't expect my villains to be really bad. This is a gross underestimation on their part. I love bad guys. They're usually my favorite characters (not that you didn't already know that, right? *cough*Sark*cough) When I create one, I make him/her charismatic and intelligent, and often powerful. But they also have flaws and weaknesses that could be exploited by a smart player. Unfortunately, there's the whole "underestimation" thing working against them.
As an example, Kadric, my Star Wars villain, was a dark jedi. One of the players was playing his long lost sister, a good jedi. Another was playing a "princess" type character, and both of them were just sure they could turn him and save him. Well, they could have, if they'd gone about it the right away. Instead, he ended up turning his sister into his apprentice and top assassin, while the princess became his wife and he became ruler of her people. (She was just sure this would eventually save him, you know, through love. I warned her, I did. She didn't listen. The results were not pretty, and she did not save him, and her character ended up an alcoholic. Yeah. Not quite how I pictured the game turning out. The other players, btw, were smarter about their decisions and didn't end up turning to evil.)
My point in saying all this is to talk about a game I'm currently playing in. The DM wanted us to play a party of evil characters. Ok. Sounds great! I'm playing a Melnibonean(sp?), which you'll only recognize if you've read the Elric books by Michael Moorcock. If not...hmm, think dark elves only not elven, and their magic system is based on summoning and controlling demons. Since he started running this game six months ago, this DM has basically run us as if we're a good party - trying to prey on any hidden morals we might have to get us to save villages and stuff. I'm not sure what he hopes to accomplish. He's a psych major, so who knows? Anyway, his latest thing has been having his character, a succubus, assume my character's form and have her go out and...er...do her succubus thing, seducing the men of the town we're in and the like. We're playing again tonight, and it should be interesting. This goes back to the "people don't ever expect me to actually play evil" thing. Valeska (my character) is most definitely not a succubus. She thinks all these people are beneath her anyway, and she's a warrior bred and born and has a demon possessed blade. The first guy that pinches her butt is in for a nasty surprise, and thus far she hasn't been privy to Dawn's actions while wearing her face. I told Bill last week that Valeska was unlikely to react well to discovering this. This was sort of my delicate way of warning him that Valeska might well kill Dawn when she finds this out. (This would not be difficult - Dawn is not a combat character.)
Oh, they're here. Should be interesting, like I said.
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no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 05:31 am (UTC)*sigh* Why do you have to live so far away huh?
I am well known for my general psychological evil especially while running avatar games. (Where you play yourself, and then everything goes to hell. Occasionally quite literally.)
I miss running them, but I miss playing in a good game even more...
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 05:38 am (UTC)Stormbringer, with the demons and the hurting and the biting and the lighting-on-fire-of-insolent-people-who- deserve-far-more-terrible-fates-than-such-a-petty-death, is probably one of my favorite games of all time. Aside from being a great system, the world is so rich, so twisted, and so deep and deadly, that it makes for a certain flavor of game that is nearly impossible to generate in nearly any other genre.
From demon cloaks that devour souls, to wells filled with writhing chains animated by the dead and the damned, its one of the games that defines my mindset as a gamer. Hell, a group of players under my storyteller worked for over a the course of a endless summer to financially bankrupt Pan Tang in preparation for a Meln' invasion. When they finally revealed their plot to the storyteller, at the moment they were setting the economy into spiral, the look on his face was priceless.
Hell, I even moved the carnival from Something Wicked This Way Comes into the Young Kingdoms, and ran my first game with pre-teen characters facing - and being destroyed by - an unknowable evil that even the Demigods of the world could not begin to understand.
In short, I'm jealous, and enjoy yourself. The only thing better than a psyche/science major running Stormbringer, is a true psychopath running Cthulhu on a dark and stormy night. Those are hard to find, as the good ones really know how to hide...
-Dthon
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 06:44 am (UTC)But, boy, I got away with some great stuff in some very large games because of it :D (I did online White Wolf and LARP.)
no subject
Date: 2005-12-06 09:48 pm (UTC)Go, Gangrel, go!
-Dthon
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:13 am (UTC)Mark finally started running a different game every other week, so we'd actually have something to look forward to now and again. Bill (the DM of the traveling game) is a friend, and once upon a time he ran great games. Something has changed, however, and now it's the Game That Never Ends, complete with random encounters and giant bats (don't ask, really.) We try to move things along, and he stubbornly keeps going at a snail's pace.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:17 am (UTC)Someday we'll have a good RPG group again. Hopefully.
no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 03:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2005-12-07 07:20 am (UTC)