The Unusual Suspects: Character Creation

With a tangle of themes mostly worked out for my Demon: the Descent game, I tried something different for character creation. I decided to leave the major decisions entirely in the hands of my players with no guidance from me, theoretically allowing my wife to participate in character creation while I helped take care of our 1-year-old son.

It did not work out so well.

Character Creation

The Plan

I began with a very specific set of goals:

1. Resolve the themes from Questionnaire.
1. For Living the Lie (and a focus on the day-to-day life of demons) I wanted to make sure everyone was cool with dealing with the theme on an individual level. Also I needed to collaborate with two of the players to determine an alternative source of drama and conflict.
2. Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives: for this theme I wanted to ensure that the group realized the action will remain in the ‘real’ world with occasional hops to do specific missions on the other side. I also wanted to outline the major alternate Seattles in play.
2. Solve unanswered questions about the population of demons in the area:
1. Are the PCs part of an Agency (as a group)? Forming one? Trying to join?
2. Two of the agencies are feuding. What do they both want?
3. Discuss The Other Supernaturals: one player brought up the possible theme of other supernatural creatures as major players for or against the God-Machine.
1. I’m very crossover friendly so my initial list of beings to include consisted of:
1. Hunters (since Seattle was the setting for my earlier Hunter: the Vigil game)
2. One or more Prometheans (specifically Infinity who featured heavily in the earlier game)
3. "The Sandmen": a race of memory eating undead who have recently become revealed to the Demons of the city.
4. "Bateman's Children": psychic cryptids living in the north end of the city. They are twisted and evil, even by demonic standards.
2. A few other options suggested themselves as natives of a dimension I had in mind for the Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives game. That dimension would be a ‘faerie’ realm kept independent of the God-Machine by a tithe of souls (in a nice reversal of some other stories involving Faerie and Hell).
1. Changelings: powerful and mad, these fae send captive mortals to the God-Machine to secure the Realm. Now they are extending the Hedge into our Seattle.
2. Mages and Mummies: In an alternate history, Seattle has become infiltrated by cults and conspiracies. These organizations are now oozing into our Seattle even as Demon send their own operatives into this new world. The tithe of souls keeps the God-Machine satisfied as long as it doesn’t become a safe harbor for Demons. As demonic influence grows that world becomes endangered.
3. Geists and Sineaters: Reigning over a spectral version of Seattle, the living, dead, and mechanical must obey strict Laws or face the wrath of the Kerberoi.
4. Answering Basic Character Questions:
1. Incarnation, Agenda, Concept
2. Past: How did you Fall? Create a person, place or supernatural tied to that.
3. Description: of your Cover(s) and Demonic Form
4. Now: What mortals are important in your life right now?
5. Goals: Cipher, Aspirations
6. Future: What big goal are you working toward?
5. Lastly I had some questions about the Ring:
1. Are you just a group that trusts each other or do you have a common goal? If the latter what is it?
2. How did you meet? How did you learn to trust each other?

Finally I planned to give everyone 5 Experiences.

Analysis

In retrospect I was way way too ambitious. I did not get close to accomplishing everything on my list and many important questions were left unresolved by the end of the session.

Since I was taking care of Sebastian and making dinner throughout the session, I wasn’t present to guide discussions. Key items like how the group came together were left unanswered or at least hopelessly vague. On top of everything our most experienced player missed the session due to illness which made my absence more problematic. In retrospect I should have conducted this all via email and the game website’s forum.

My wife suggested that leaving the question about connections between characters entirely to the players was a bit unfair. I could have provided some sample options (a la Apocalypse World) to ease the process.

The Output

We were able to resolve the remaining discuss of themes satisfactorily. For those unsatisfied by Living the Lie, one agreed to be tied up with their cult and its rivals while the other is being hunted by an Exile. The cult leader also helped resolved the nature of the parallel version of Seattle. We will be using an alternate world run by dark sorcerers, mummies, and cults.

As for the Agencies of the city, we established that two of them are competing to subvert the University of Washington. The God-Machine has some scheme in place to control the student body. One group of demons wishes to turn the students into a cult while another seeks to liberate them from the Machine. The PCs just so happen to live nearby.

One cool idea that was tossed away idea in the process: a mayoral race being controlled by the God-Machine. As some people may recall, I had a concept very similar to that. Unfortunately United States politics being what they are right now (and with players on both sides of the political spectrum), it’s probably for the best to avoid this option.

In the end our cast came to consist of:

• A Guardian Saboteur who is an ex-child soldier from Rwanda. As an Angel he watched over his charge and “commander’ until he was ordered to slaughter a school. He then assassinated the man and fled. Decades later he works as a janitor at the university. The Destroyer who was tasked with eventually killing the commander now hunts him as an Exile. The former Guardian’s basic belief system is similar to that of the Punisher: he uses violence to end (hopefully greater) violence.
• My wife’s Guardian Inquisitor who failed to report back in after her charge was killed on schedule. Now she works as an editor for an online paper. Unfortunately I wasn't able to ask her many questions during the session since we were rarely in the room at the same time.
• A Psychopomp Tempter whose mission as an Angel was to create a highly addictive MMO. It turned to be lethally so and caused him a crisis of conscience. He crashed the in-game economy, Fell, and then reinvented himself. He's now running a gaming guild which is secretly a cult. He may also be working as an IT guy under another cover. His old CEO covered up the deaths the MMO caused and later went on to create Candy Crush.
• A Psychopomp Inquisitor who discovered a flaw in the textiles it had engineered. The dyes cause cancer. In trying to fix it (and exceeding the parameters of its mission) the Angel Fell. Now it works as a chemist at a chemical startup, Adamant Industries, building tougher stronger materials. On the side it runs a crafts workshop at the library. It has tried to help the victims of her former mission but very quietly.
• A fifth member remained undefined as that player was absent due to sickness.

How the demons all came together was never well-defined. I suspect if I had been in the room, I could have guided the process better. The group apparently agreed that they met when an Angel tracked one of them down while everyone else was nearby. Details remain unclear on how it was defeated (though everyone joked the one missing player probably drew its attention in the first place).

I'll be arranging one on ones to finish up all the characters next. I’m hoping this won’t take too much time and that we can get this game moving soon.