Last day of the year in a year where nothing has been normal...but then again, my "normal" died more than three years ago. As such, as fucking awful as 2020 has been on a kind of macro scale, for me personally it hasn't been so bad. I've managed to avoid getting sick, as have the people in my family. I still have my job and I'm able to do it remotely, and I'm union in a union job where the union still has a leg to stand on, so overall, I can definitely say it could be worse. It has been worse.
I told Michelle today that I didn't want to die, despite what my own brain has been telling me for the past few years. In my lucid moments, I know that's the case, but lucidity has been a kind of oasis for a while now. Mostly it's been grief, guilt, and other unpleasant emotions, and feeling that way for multiple years at a time makes one wish for death, even if it's just so that the mind could stop.
I don't get "real" like this on my blog often because there is no goddamn point. I have very few readers anymore, and the folks who do read are either close friends who already know my mind-space, or casual folks who are just here to see me talk about RPGs or movies or whatever. And that's fine. Consider this an anomaly. I have no plans to start talking about myself or life any more than I normally do, I'm not rejoining social media, and I do not and will not have any professional contact with the RPG industry. This is how things are. Denial, bargaining, anger, grief, acceptance.
Speaking of which.
The Game: Wraith: The Oblivion 20th Anniversary Edition
The Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: Lots, but I'll delve into that a little below
Books Required: Just the one
Ah, Wraith. Far and away my favorite World of Darkness game, and probably just behind Promethean if we include Chronicles of Darkness games, too (Beast doesn't crack the top five). Wraith was the game that got me into WoD, and instilled in me the taste for long, sprawling, interconnected chronicles, akin to our current-day cinematic universes. I did a character for Wraith 1st Edition here, but of course, new edition, new character.
Reading Wraith 20, I'm stuck by a) how easy it is to slide back into the WoD headspace (something similar happened when reading the other 20th Anniversary Editions), and b) how much I really just do not care about the whole Stygia/Dark Kingdoms/political side of things. Don't get me wrong, it's not that I don't care for the non-Skinlands aspects. I love the Tempest, the Midnight Express, and even the idea of Necropoli, but like, the guilds, the renegade/hierarchy/whatever the other one is conflict...feh. When I ran Wraith back in the mid-90s, the focus was always on the characters, their Fetters and Passions, their Shadows, and what was going on in the Skinlands. Sure, I brought in all kinds of shit from other WoD games, and I did use the Hierarchy-related stuff, but the best moments were when the wraith characters got to be ghosts.
Wraith, even more than most oWoD games, really wanted to be what we'd now think of as an indie game. It was too big for its conceptual britches, and it had to make do with all of this extra crap bolted on - including, I'd argue, Stygia and the Charon mythos and the Maelstroms. It also had to make do with this dumb system where 1s cancel successes, but like, that's life. Or death.
OK, let's move along. One of the things that happens to me a lot is that when I hear songs, I tend to think up characters (works in reverse, too; find the song for the character). I had a concept for a Wraith character that I never did anything with, but I'm gonna do it tonight. Here's the theme song:
Step One is concept and so on. So, my character is Dustin "Dusty" Mayhall. Dusty played guitar in a country/western band, and then the lead singer got this gig in Los Angeles. They went out there, took more gigs, became more of a rock band, Dusty kinda hated it but whatever, it paid the bills, and then the other band members booted him because he wasn't down with their whole persona.
Dusty stayed in LA and took whatever jobs he could, and wound up teaching guitar, among other gigs. One of his students was a girl named Mel - 18, just out of high school, the daughter of two moderately famous Hollywood folks. Mel had done some acting when she was younger (sitcom), but wasn't really interested in it long term and really hated the lack of privacy that came with fame. She did like singing, though, and she was picking up guitar pretty quickly. Dusty had never really wanted to be a father, but he was grooving on the "cool uncle/teacher" role he'd found with Mel.
And then one night, Dusty got a phone call from Mel. She'd run away from home, she was at a dive bar, she was scared and wasn't really sure what she was doing. Dusty started heading downstairs, slipped, fell, and fractured his skull. He was in surgery three hours before he died, and remembered hearing his phone ring with Mel's ringtone before he lost consciousness.
And then Dusty woke up - kind of. He went to the bar that Mel had mentioned, and she was there. Weirdly, Mel can see him and hear him, and since then they've traveled together. Dusty hasn't told her anything about the Underworld or Stygia or any of that nonsense. That shit's for the dead. Mel's still alive, and Dusty's going to stay with her until she's ready for him to go.
Right, so. What would be "Concept" in most WoD games is split into Life, Death, and Regret. Life is Musician, Death is Accident, Regret is Love. That's easy enough.
Nature and Demeanor. Hmm. Dusty affects a kind of world-weary country boy thing, but it's less curmudgeon and more grizzled mentor, so I'll call Demeanor Pedagogue. His Nature is Caregiver, that's easy.
Step Two, Attributes, the usual OWoD 7/5/3 spread. Hmm. I think Social/Physical/Mental, perhaps? Maybe with some freebies thrown at Wits later? So Charisma 4, Manipulation and Appearance (bleah) 3, Strength and Stamina 2 with Dexterity 4, and even 2s in Wits, Perception, and Intelligence. Sounds good.
Step Three, Abilities! Again, usual deal, 13/9/5, not more than 3 in any one with these points, completely stupid and arbitrary divisions of Talents, Skills, and Knowledges.
Well, Talents is gonna be primary because there's a bunch I want. I'll put one into Alertness, Awareness (it's so goddamn dumb that these are separate, especially for ghosts), and Athletics. Two each in Empathy and Expression...wait, what's the difference between Expression and Performance again? OK, Expression is more way with words, so I think I'll skip it. Dusty's not a songwriter.
So, three dots in Empathy, one in Intimidation, two each in Persuasion and Streetwise, and that leaves me two...I'll put one in Brawl and one more in Awareness.
I think Skills are secondary. Three in Performance, obviously. Two in Crafts, one in Drive, one in Etiquette (country boy charm), two in Leadership. Might add to these later.
Finally, five in Knowledges. Two each in Academics and Bureaucracy, last one in Occult, boom.
Step Four is Advantages, and we start off with kewl powerz (Arcanoi). I gotta refresh my memory on how these work. Ooh, they complicated this. Arcanoi are now split into Initiate and Common, and you can apparently have either or both at a given level. Getting the initiate stuff, though, requires Guild membership. I don't see Dusty being too into the Guilds, but if there's something I really want, I may have to rethink that.
Well, I know I want a dot of Embody, but probably not more. Just common, thanks. Two dots of Keening, also common powers. First dot of Lifeweb, definitely. And how about first dot of Outrage? Sounds good!
Passions! These look familiar, anyway. 10 points, each needs a goal and an emotion and a rating.
Well, I want something related to Mel, obviously, but "Protect" seems a little simplistic. "Help Mel Find Herself" is better, and the emotion is Love, of course. I'll put it at 5 dots. Hmm. I've been pretty focused so far on Mel, but I need something else. Let's say that Dusty is still annoyed with his old bandmates, especially since they're getting famous-er and using some music he wrote. I'll say that "Never Let the Band Forget Me", emotionally focused on Jealousy, is the Passion, two dots.
OK, one more Passion (rather, 3 dots). I feel like I want to circle back to Dusty being a general Caregiver, so I'll say that his last Passion is "Protect the People at the Bar". What's the emotional focus, though? Dusty feels like he's a guardian angel and he's focused on that bar (it's gonna be a Fetter) because it's where he was trying to go when he died. Responsibility? Duty? Oh, how about Respect? That works.
Fetters! Mel, 5 dots, obvs. The bar probably needs a name, let's call it Carmen's. Three dots there. Finally, 2 dots into the band members (the band is called Catamount).
Backgrounds! Seven points here. I'll put four into Eidolon, two into Haunt (the bar's storeroom), and one in Legacy (the music that Catamount stole).
Willpower! I start with 5, and then I get...
Freebies! 15 points. Let's see. Well, I think I want a dot of Strength (because Outrage), so that's 5 points. I definitely want a fourth dot in Performance, and I'll take a second dot in Legacy (8 spent). Heck, let's take the second dot of Embody (13 spent), and for the last two, I'll buy another dot of Intimidation (I have a feeling that protecting Mel might sometimes take the form of manifesting and doing spooky shit).
That's it! Oh, wait, Shadow. Not mentioned in chargen, that's weird. Oh, wait, it's in the chart. See Chapter Six. OK, then. So, first I need an archetype. What's Dusty's Shadow like? I think he's superior - he's a bigot, he looks down on everyone, and he views Mel as a stone around his neck. He thinks Dusty should have sold out, gone solo, and left the other band members in the dust. The Director works nicely.
Now I need Angst; rolling my Willpower of 5 I get three successes (ugh). So my permanent Angst is 3.
Dark passions! This one's easy. I get 7 points, so I'll take "Get Rid of Mel" (Spite) at 4, and "Kill the Band" (Hate) at 3. Note that Dusty's Shadow doesn't necessarily want to kill Mel, just get shed of her. He doesn't care about her enough to kill her. The band is a different matter. Actually, given that, I'm gonna flip those ratings so Mel has 3 dots and the band has 4.
So now, 10 freebies, which I could use to buy Angst, Thorns, or Dark Passions, but there's no cost listed for Angst so I guess we're just going with Thorns? Oh, wait, in the example of Shadow creation it costs 2 freebies for a point of temporary Angst, so there we go. I'll spend 4 and give the Shadow a 2-point head start. That leaves me 6 for Thorns. I'll spend 5 on Shadowplay, and then that leaves 1 more, so I'll take a 1 point Tainted Relic (a guitar).
And that's basically everything. As a ghost, Dusty looks more or less like he did in life - late 30s, hair down to his shoulders, light beard, flannel, blue jeans, cowboy boots. Always has a guitar pick in his fingers, but never a guitar (unless his Shadow comes out to play). Light Tennessee accent, gentle voice, rarely raises it (again, that's a Shadow thing).
That'll do it! This makes my 500th character, so I'm going to do a new index post, but that'll come in the new year.
No comments:
Post a Comment