Hey Ron,

We've been having a pre-chargen email conversation about character ideas (for Sean's Afterglow). Just the big brush stuff at this stage, and focusing more at first on genre than game mechanics.

And so thus unbounded, I'm thinking on a character from an alternate dimension: a scientist, or up a notch, an alien prince who's devoted his life to arcane sciences. His people are threatened somehow, are dying off, and nearly extinct. I'm thinking he's a pacifist, in an enlightened sort of way, so maybe the threat is something predatory. So for several years he's been using some kind of science to expand his consciousness and search for a solution. And what he found was an ancient-tech war android, with pale blue semi-translucent silicon skin and unfulfilled programming directives. So now his consciousness is bound up into the android. His own desire is to save his people...but he's trapped. His own body lies comatose or something. The android's Desire is to "kill the king of the yellow city" or something suitably misinterpretable in the current post-apocalyptic circumstances.

Questions:

1. In your mind, what kind of a demon is the android? I'm thinking it probably has some kind of cloaking ability so it can appear human. And how would you handle the character's stats in play (Stamina in particular) if he's just a consciousness in the body of a war android?

2. You've read the Afterglow one-sheet, and in particular, Sean's definition of Humanity. Should he be concerned about the "alien" and "alternate dimension" aspects of the character concept?

Thanks,

Paul

Hi Paul,

My first response is a big Bleh. Here you have this fabulous setting, and a wild bunch of great descriptors, and cultures and local history and everything. And you say ... my guy's from somewhere else.

It's like when you set up a cool faux-viking culture and make up their mythology and everything, and one player says, "I want to play a samurai who wanders in from stage left." In fact, that's exactly what a player did the first time Judd tried to run a Mu's Bed scenario, as I recall.

So it's just one man's opinion, but when I want to play in the jungle, I want ape-men and tribesmen and ferocious jungle beasts - I don't want Buck Rogers showing up.

Best,
Ron

I agree with Ron, the whole idea of the post apocalypse games is to wallow in setting color, but you 've created a character that has nothing to do with the setting. Gaaaah!.....I used to HATE it when players did stuff like that....

I like the war android idea very much; the alien professor inside, not so much.

Nonetheless, this is the kind of character I'd make for a setting like Afterglow. It reminds me of a novel by Lawrence Watt-Evans called "The Cyborg and the Sorcerer", where a cyborg space warrior lands on a planet where magic works. Not a great novel, but the interplay between the space warrior and theobsessively paranoid combat computer built into his skull is pretty neat. Later in the book, the warrior gets to like some of the locals and tries to help them, and is constantly having to argue with the computer about why helping the natives also helps fulfill his military mission.

In Sorcerer game mechanics, I'd run it as either a Posessor or a Parasite demon, depending on whether the war android's own intelligence can take control away from him or not. Since the character isn't using his comatose body, I'd just make stats for the character as he is in the android body (enhanced Stamina, at the very least). It's not stretching the rules much at all.

Peanut Gallery suggestion:

A Prince trying to save a dying race is a great, great character for this setting. Just locate him *on the planet* The dying race is simply humans or, failing that, a genetically engineered race of intelligent, sophisticated types.

Also, I would totally locate the war android outside your body. But that's because I like Nausicaa...

yrs--
--Ben

Interesting responses!

I had two issues with this character:

1) The 'prince from far away' thing is fine, provided he gets embedded into the setting as a wanderer by way of his kicker. However, the 'alien' bit has two difficulties for me:

A. Aesthetic/setting-appropriateness: already dealt with by other posters.

B. Humanity-related. It seems to me that part of the deal with the Afterglow setting is that Humanity is somewhat tied to 'biological' humanity (and that this is reflected in the humanity definition I gave). Now, there might, in point of fact, be, say, mutant animals, or alien beings, in the setting, which are not completely inimical to humanity, but it doesn't seem to me that such beings are especially appropriate player-characters. Rather, they would be Demons with needs and desires that weren't totally catastrophic (e.g. curiosity or whatever) in nature.

So I too am a little dubious about that.


2) But OK, let's say Paul decides to go with the same character conception and gives up on literal inhumanity. I agree with those who say that this kind of character fits the setting: a guy who psychically transfers his consciousness to a war android in order to travel to another continent, to get the widget he needs to save his civilization, etc. But then he forms ties to the people on the new continent too, and things get complex. Good story fodder there.

But how do the demon mechanics work? Especially if the sorcerer's actual body is in a vat over the sea?

My gut feeling about this is that it would be as a Possessor, which is to say, the Sorcerer wanders around 'in' the Android's body, but has to relinquish control to the war programming - which has certain aims of its own - in order to really cut loose in battle or whatever.

But: what about a Stamina score? My sense is that the demon's stamina is what should matter, if the PC is a possessor in the demon's body. Further, if the demon does get waxed, the character is still OK, though his quest has taken a serious setback. So those are two big advantages, though I don't necessarily mind that if it's the only argument (i.e. I'm willing to let aesthetics and interest trump 'balance' so long as the core power/humanity conflict of the game is still preserved) against the conception.

It might require Necromancy to get such a demon - the 'hide your guts' or phylactery thing that liches and the like do. So that's some serious humanity burning prior to play if so.

Anyway, those are the two issues we're coping with.

Best,

Sean

I think it's up to Paul how it should work -- I could see a Posessor which sometimes takes over control of the body, or a Parasite which withholds access to some its abilities unless the character is following the program.

Oh, it occurred to me that you could have some fun with having the android's mission rather unclear at the start of play -- sort of like how Robocop isn't aware of the secret rules programmed into his behavior until the end of the movie.