Okay, after having the game for ages and talking about it for ages -1 with my fiance, we finally sat down late Saturday night and made up characters and setting for a Breaking the Ice game.  She's been reluctant, because (a) two people is a weird kind of RPG, compared to her experience (b) "but we've already done our first dates, why would we do it again?" and so forth.

Anyway. I dont' have the character sheet and word webs with me, or I'd get them up here as well, so I can't talk about this in huge depth yet -- I will get them up here, though, because they're AWESOME.  Here are a few highlights.

Rating: R
Genre: Action Adventure (her decree -- who am *I* to argue :)  We mentioned stuff like True Lies, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, and Gross Point Blank

We swapped Optimism and Pessimism, because she doesn't like playing guys, and we couldn't think of anything else.  Honestly, I'm not a pessimist... I'm just not an optimist when compared to HER; she's like a Power in Nobilis.

The Word webs were insane.  After the first couple words, all the new words we added were connected to at least two other words, not one.  They looking nothing like the examples in the book -- they look like total WEBS.

I'm playing a smooth-talking guy (related to his work) who likes to do outdoorsy stuff and plays bass in a band for fun.  My Conflict is the fact that I'm a widower:  looking at my (blue) word web, it's clear that was parachuting with my wife, we landed in the ocean, and she drowned in the parachute silk.  I have an idea that it might have been an 'on the job' thing.

She's playing a Gun Expert (work related) who has other attributes like envious, violent, heavy drinker, and "Dairy Queen."  It's complicated.  Her (purple) web has words like Bruise and Hit on it.  Both our webs have, I think, Torture.  She has Velvet. I have Silk... there are layers and layers and layers.

Then there's this other thing.

Her Conflict is: "I'm supposed to kill you."

I cannot.  Wait.  To play.

More later, when I find the sheets and can scan the webs.

Oh, Doyce--I can't wait for you to play either! You had me at Gross Point Blank.

best,
Em

ps and Dairy Queen!

Okay... I think I blew up the power supply on the only PC in my house that can run my awesome but very old scanner, so I ran over to Bubbl.us and recreated the word webs.

For the sake of simplicity, both webs are on the same page, and just for fun I drew in the two 'connections' between the two webs: "velvet" and "lies."  These kids are gonna be FUN. :P

"Blue" is my guy's web.  Purple is my fiance's character's web.  I think what was so interesting about the web is that, by the time we put on about the third word, we were drawing additional connections to it from other words -- it just happened.

Also: we did a few too many words -- we were up to 8 each on the Blue web before I noticed that we were supposed to stop at six.  Rather than erase any, we just set the limit to 8.  Hopefully that won't screw anything up.

CHARACTER SHEETS

I'm still having some problems with good traits for my guy, I think simply because I need a better picture of him in my head.  Here's what's so far:
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COLOR: Blue
Conflict: Widower

Self: Optimist (switch), Traveler
Work: Charmer, Athletic
Play: Musician, Risk-taker
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And for her, we have...

COLOR: Purple
Conflict: I'm supposed to kill you.

Self: Pessimist (switch), Envious, Violent, Dairy Queen
Work: Gun Expert
Play: Gymnast

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Err... and I forgot to actually include a link to the word web, didn't I?  http://random.average-bear.com/img/BtI.pdf