Campaign Journal 2013: Character Creation

Originally published July 31, 2013 

Now it is time for character creation. Last time my group finalized their ideas for what my new Changeling: the Lost game, The Price was about. We narrowed it down to a tale of four children living in late 90's Detroit who find a way to a Goblin Market where all their dreams can come true, for a price. In our next session we made firm decisions about the characters: who they were, what they wanted, and what they could do.

I went in to this session with several questions written down that I wanted to answer before we were done:

• What do they want?
• Who is the local bully?
• Who is related to whom?
• Where do they live?

The logic behind these questions was generally simple. Since this is a game about the price paid for one's dreams, I need to know what they want. The family connections and living place matter for the setting as a whole.

The idea behind establishing a bully was as this character would be a potential target for the PCs once they gain some power. Also I wanted to play with the idea of fantasy verses madness by having important NPCs reflected in the Hedge. On this side the bully might be just a kid but on the other side of the Hedge there may be an Ogre with a more than passing resemblance to him. What if they eliminate the Ogre? Does the bully also vanish? Does that mean they killed him?

On the mechanical end, I made a list of merits culled from World of Darkness: Innocents and adapted to the God Machine Chronicle (GMC) rules. You can find those here. I also included some converted Changeling: the Lost merits and told my players they could hold back merit dots to buy some of these merits. The Changeling merits can be found here.

Warning: merging rules sets

Some of the choices made during character creation were pretty interesting. I think the character of Marco was the most surprising. Sarah, the player, hadn't come up with much detail for her character earlier so this session was the big unveiling for him. Marco turned out to be the bully, a simple teen looking for respect. His major problem with that was that he was looking for respect from his mother's side of the family: a clan of racist Italian-American mobsters. Marco was half Irish and century old prejudices would forever keep him from becoming a made man.

Sarah and Mike, another player, decided their characters were siblings, both children of the McQueen family. Their Italian mother was a drunk and neglectful parent and their father was a workaholic who spent all his time at the mechanic's shop. Their parents were separated, a break possibly started when Mike's character, Rocco, was a small child. With his mother indisposed by drink, Rocco was left unattended by some stairs. A tragic fall left him paralyzed from the waist down.

Rocco put his lost physical ability into his mind. He became a child prodigy, a whiz at computers and skilled at building things. However he still wants to walk again. Ultimately Mike wants his character to become a hacker activist. We'll see.

The other two players, Alec and Grace, also decided that their characters were siblings, this time of the Callaghan family. Like Marco and Rocco, they are children of a mixed marriage. Their mother is a Russian Romani. As such they too have to deal with some prejudice. It probably isn't helped by her "job" of holistic medicine, supplemented by some natural medicines (i.e. drugs). On the other hand while their father is a traveling actor (or possibly a grifter), their parents are still technically together.

Of course having his father gone most of the time is the perfect thing to gripe about for Alec's goth teen, Miroslav. Growing up with a name like that also must have been hard and helps justify his mopy teenage ways. He is one of the outcasts of the school with his one true friend being Rocco, a kid 3 years younger than him. Miroslav has perhaps the easiest and hardest desire: magic. It is going to be fun tempting him.

The last character is Nikki, Miroslav's younger sister, and a classmate of Rocco. Nikki seems like a normal kid though perhaps lacking in friends. She want to be able to create art. She has a lot of skill but isn't able to make original artworks. Grace is thinking she might be an expert forger in the future. She was the one who introduced Rocco to Miroslav.

Mechanics wise the big items were merits. Rocco took the Prodigy Merit and put 4 dots into Computer. Rocco and Marco both chose to hold back some merits to grab Brownie's Boon later on. Miroslav grabbed Eye for the Strange (which lets him identify supernatural things), a nice library of occult books, and a Charmed Life (which should help protect him if things get dicey). Finally Nikki, our budding art thief, gained a number of merits to help with that as well Hedge Sense (which allows her to find gates in and out of the Hedge). Between Hedge Sense and Charmed Life, I think there may be something to their Gypsy blood.

In addition to the characters we determine the rough nature of their parents as well as some of their friends and neighbors. There will be a crazy cat lady in their apartment building as well as a homeless man who might know something of magic. There is the local goth community, the popular clique of which Marco belongs to, online hackers Rocco hopes to join, and some "friends" of Rocco's in the real world.

Again we had a great session and we found Google Hangouts to be great way to connect online, compared to Skype. I am now hard at work on filling in the names and faces of their friends and families as well as planning the first session. You can check out the progress at the campaign website.