Okay, I like Tom's idea from the "Religion in the Game" thread. Let's run with MY problems creating a character. Yeah, I know that's not exactly what this thread is for, but, well, I didn't know where else to post it.

Alright, this doggy, dead, not-religious character I have for Deadlands is a pc version of Ellen from "The Quick and the Dead." Except not as wussy. Imagine if, in the last scene of the movie, Herod and Ellen actually kill eachother. They both rise from the dead, and Ellen's mission in uh, life?, is to put Herod down for the final dirt nap. All Deadlands mechanics abou the Manitou apply.

Non-Dog related problem: I'm a lame-ass gamer. Not only did I not make this character up myself, I keep recycling characters. I feel like I should make up a new character for Dogs, otherwise I'm just not the gamer I think I am. Why do I recycle characters? I seem to make up a single character I like for each genre (SciFi, Horror, Superheroes, Western), and I'm rarely capable of making up a second character I'm interested in.

Dog related problems: 1. If I use Ellen, there needs to be some kind of character logic for me. Here are two solutions I propose:

Alternate Universe Ellen: Herod and Ellen shoot it out in a town close to a community of the Faith. Herod and Ellen kill eachother. Ellen's the only one who rises from the dead. The Branch says, "You're gonna be a Dog," obviously because I've been raised to serve the Faithful.
Problem: Perhaps this is the goal in Ellen's training: she wants to learn to walk away from the Faithful and that's the thing my trainer has to work out of me.
Related problem: how to get a dead person whose not affraid to die again and who knows how to use guns really well to go to training if she doesn't want to?

Already Killed Herod Ellen: Her original mission is completed. Now she's got no purpose. She roams around, doing Good in the superman/angel sense and either stumbles into a community of the Faithful or, as Tom suggests, gets killed (again) and rises (again) Can you hear her screaming, "WHY CAN'T I JUST DIE!?!!!!?" Again there is the problem of how to get her to go through training when she doesn't want to (central to her character makeup). I like this one better than the Alternate Universe Version.

I know I'm holding on to her back story a LOT, but that's the point. I'd be interested in transplanting her to Dogs because it's Ellen. And it's not Ellen without the Deadlands backstory Once she's in the Dogs universe, none of that Deadlands Manitou mechanics has to apply anymore; and besides, it fits right in with the demon possession mechanic of Dogs anyway.

Cool flavor I thought of, assuming any of the problems stated above gets resolved ....

She goes through training. None of the women in the community want to make her a coat. First of all, she's dead, and, despite what the Branch says, they are resistant to the idea of risen dead folks being anything but bad. Secondly, she's a woman gunslinger - that's just not socially acceptable, and is a bad example for the young girls. They might start getting ideas. Third, she's not of the Faith. Three strikes and you're out, according to the local womenfolk. They give the pioneer equivalent of the "scheduling conflict" thing Vincent talked about - "Oh, I have to help Sallie Mae make dinner tonight" "Oh, Billy-Anne's quilt isn't finished yet," the excuses for NOT making Ellen's coat are infinite, and it never seems to get done, because no one is out and out defying the Branch's decision.

However, one little 12 year old girl thinks Ellen is really cool (yes, much like the movie). She already had those ideas before Ellen ever dug her way out of the dirt. So, she secretly nabs little bits and pieces of cloth here and there and sneaks off, gets up in the middle of the night, hides the sewing stuff in an old broken crock pot in the root cellar, does whatever it takes to make Ellen's coat for her in secrecy. She fininshes the coat in the nick of time, and has her childhood friend (a boy whose kinda sweet on her or her really nice feminist older brother), run the coat over, swearing him to secrecy about where it came from, just before Ellen is about to ride off.

So, y'all, help me work it. :-)

Krista

Krista, feel free to start new threads! Everybody else, too!

-Vincent

Here's my totally random take.

Complicated History
(Herod and I killed each other, but I came back. The local bish took one look at me, dirty from the grave, and he sent me off to be a Dog. Was he right?)
Acuity: 3d6
Body: 6d6
Heart: 2d6
Will: 6d6

Traits
I'm dead, 1d6
I'm a wicked good gunslinger, 2d10
I dislike men, 1d4
I distrust people, 2d4
I'd rather not talk to you, 1d6
I'm a Dog, 1d4

Relationships
Herod, who stayed dead, 1d6
The little girl who made my coat, 1d8
Available: 4d6, 1d8

Possessions
My coat, made from snips and scraps by a little girl.
My two guns, 1d4+2d6 each.
My horse, 1d6.

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I hope that during her training she solved a serious problem without using violence. If she did, she gets "I solved a serious problem without using violence, 1d6." If she didn't, she gets "I haven't solved a serious problem without using violence, 1d6."

---

The deal is, character creation is the start of your character's story, not the end of it. I have no idea whether the bish was right to make this undead woman a Dog. Does she find her soul? Is she an angel (of destruction? of mercy?) or is she deeply, troublingly human? We'll have to play to find out.

---

But if you're going to actually play Dogs, try showing up to the first session with no character in mind. Make your first few choices just arbitrarily ("Strong history, why not! Let's see, maybe I'll put my most dice in Acuity...") and let your character take shape during the process, not beforehand. If you don't get a good character that way, the game's broken and you should tell me.

-Vincent

edit: Wait, it's integral to the character that she doesn't want to be a Dog? Hm. There has to be some reason she's choosing to go along with the bishop, or she's not acceptible a'tall as a Dogs character. Maybe she thinks that if she disobeys him, she'll go to Hell? Which maybe she's seen, y'know, a glimpse of? Then take one of the d10s from "I'm a wicked good gunslinger" and put it in "I'm afraid of Hell."

Hey Krista,

Non-Dog related problem: I'm a lame-ass gamer. Not only did I not make this character up myself, I keep recycling characters. I feel like I should make up a new character for Dogs, otherwise I'm just not the gamer I think I am. Why do I recycle characters? I seem to make up a single character I like for each genre (SciFi, Horror, Superheroes, Western), and I'm rarely capable of making up a second character I'm interested in.

Non-Dog related offering: check out on making the same character over and over.

Paul

Re: What forces my character to go through training?

It's a good point. But there are a couple of obvious answers:

1.) She's dead. No one from her old life would ever associate with her and most people would rather attack her with a shovel. But, despite their obvious discomfort, the people of the Faith are not only taking her in, they're offering her a really important job in their society. When you're of the restless dead with no job prospects and shunned by most of society, being a Dog doesn't seem half bad.

2.) She's non-Faithful. When bad things happen to Faithful communities, it's the work of demons. Non-faithful may chalk it up to superstition or bad luck, but the Faithful know what's really going on. Now Ellen is one of the weird, supernatural things and she can more clearly see that yes, there are demons and they possess people and they're supernatural and evil. In this context, she might relish the chance to go clobber some of them.

3.) She's bored. Her major goal in the afterlife accomplished...what else you gonna do? Given that you're dead and all (per #1 above).

4.) She's tired. She'd really like to die. But if anything's gonna get her, it's probably going to be a demon. So being a Dog is an opportunity to root out and attack something that might finally kill her.

Tom

This does leave me wondering how Lazarus got along after he came back...

Jake

See the Last Temptation of Christ. Pretty neat. I don't know the story that well (no thanks to the brutes who try to cram it down my Semitic throat), but it was a neat twist on the story.

As for playing the same character again and again, Robin Law calls it a "specialty". There's a player in my krewe who, without fail, plays Captain Blood. I think I'm going to have to give him some ships to steal. Well, more ships to steal...and women to woo...

Me, well, I used to play villains. Then I played an aloof Buddhist for a while. Now I play an absurdist magus. At each point, there's been something I've been trying to work out with myself. I think it's great that RPGs exist, for just this reason. Oh, and the fun with your friends.