Of Gossamer and Characters
After the dissolution of the Star Wars RP that was running online, it was suggested I perhaps make a character for Lords of Gossamer and Shadow. It seems to be tashiro's latest RPG obsession. I've had a lot of difficulty with this.
G&S is what I might call an "anything-goes, multiversal" game. It takes place in a setting of essentially-limitless worlds/realities connected by the Great Stair. So, at least as I understand it, a character can not only be from a Steampunk world, but that world can have totally different (meta)physics from the next one. Firearms may or may not work, magic may or may not be real, and so on. In any given "Gossamer World," what works just works. From one world to another, however, the only stuff guaranteed to work is that which is based on certain powers (and thus paid for with character points) that are fundamental to the meta-reality of the setting.
There's a lot of freedom in that. Unfortunately, that trips me up. Without a solid framework, I have more trouble working out a character. It was suggested that perhaps I should just make a character as they exist in their native world, then go from there. But my early attempts were, at least to me, shining examples of why that doesn't always work.
My first thought was to import a character from FFA. I know them well and like most of them. Unfortunately, as I went through the list, they all felt pretty tied to their own setting. I found I didn't really want to push them off into a "higher plane" where FFA's reality is just one of many. It could be done, but doesn't really appeal.
So then my mind went back to a character I'd made for a World of Darkness game/MU* that never materialized. Arima (as she called herself) was a Victorian-era immortal with a familiar spirit who had built up a lot of knowledge and resources over the years. In concept, she was a weaponsmith who viewed firearms as a good equalizer against at least a fair number of supernatural things in the world, someone who was moderately familiar with garou and kindred politics without being a part of them. I envisioned other players coming to her for assistance (as someone who can provide knowledge and equipment) as the primary means for her to get embroiled in plots. That seemed sound to me as I wasn't sure I wanted to invest time enough to be a direct "mover and shaker" myself.
Importing her into G&S, however, wasn't as easy as I originally thought. Again, she seemed pretty tired to her world. Dropping her in a multiverse where her resources and knowledge are suddenly meaningless the second you step through a Door sort of breaks her entire concept. There's some value to a "fish out of water" story, but it just didn't feel right to me in this case. Maybe that's because she hasn't been played any at a pre-Stair level. Maybe I'm just hung up on the wrong conceptual details. Whatever the case, it just didn't work for me.
It doesn't exactly help that all the G&S powers represent a notable investment of time. Becoming a Warden of the Great Stair requires walking it, studying it, and learning about it for some period of time - and that's one of the least intensive ones. If you're giving a character a power, and it isn't already written into their background, you're probably going to need to insert months or years of downtime for the learning.
Ultimately, it seems like a better idea (to me) to design a character where their awakening to the wider reality is written into their concept rather than tacked on after.
With that in mind, the latest idea I've floated around in my head is similar, but not the same. I'm picturing a mecha tech/pilot from an anime-ish world losing a war with an alien force who "escapes" the fall of her planet through a Door, exploring to become a Warden. The technical knowledge and tactics skills roll over into Invocation and ranked Warfare. At the moment, I'm thinking of making an artifact suit - effectively armor and possibly with multiple forms. I'm also considering a companion AI which I'm not sure would be better as an item or a creature - previously designed as a special hyperspace nav computer, now aiding in mapping parts of the Stair.
That's all similar on the stat/powers side, but the character is already conceived as someone who's walked the stair rather than being so deeply tied to their home world. Heh. In fact, I may have strayed awful far to the other end by writing in that war failure that makes it hard or impossible to go back. Is that overdoing it?
G&S is what I might call an "anything-goes, multiversal" game. It takes place in a setting of essentially-limitless worlds/realities connected by the Great Stair. So, at least as I understand it, a character can not only be from a Steampunk world, but that world can have totally different (meta)physics from the next one. Firearms may or may not work, magic may or may not be real, and so on. In any given "Gossamer World," what works just works. From one world to another, however, the only stuff guaranteed to work is that which is based on certain powers (and thus paid for with character points) that are fundamental to the meta-reality of the setting.
There's a lot of freedom in that. Unfortunately, that trips me up. Without a solid framework, I have more trouble working out a character. It was suggested that perhaps I should just make a character as they exist in their native world, then go from there. But my early attempts were, at least to me, shining examples of why that doesn't always work.
My first thought was to import a character from FFA. I know them well and like most of them. Unfortunately, as I went through the list, they all felt pretty tied to their own setting. I found I didn't really want to push them off into a "higher plane" where FFA's reality is just one of many. It could be done, but doesn't really appeal.
So then my mind went back to a character I'd made for a World of Darkness game/MU* that never materialized. Arima (as she called herself) was a Victorian-era immortal with a familiar spirit who had built up a lot of knowledge and resources over the years. In concept, she was a weaponsmith who viewed firearms as a good equalizer against at least a fair number of supernatural things in the world, someone who was moderately familiar with garou and kindred politics without being a part of them. I envisioned other players coming to her for assistance (as someone who can provide knowledge and equipment) as the primary means for her to get embroiled in plots. That seemed sound to me as I wasn't sure I wanted to invest time enough to be a direct "mover and shaker" myself.
Importing her into G&S, however, wasn't as easy as I originally thought. Again, she seemed pretty tired to her world. Dropping her in a multiverse where her resources and knowledge are suddenly meaningless the second you step through a Door sort of breaks her entire concept. There's some value to a "fish out of water" story, but it just didn't feel right to me in this case. Maybe that's because she hasn't been played any at a pre-Stair level. Maybe I'm just hung up on the wrong conceptual details. Whatever the case, it just didn't work for me.
It doesn't exactly help that all the G&S powers represent a notable investment of time. Becoming a Warden of the Great Stair requires walking it, studying it, and learning about it for some period of time - and that's one of the least intensive ones. If you're giving a character a power, and it isn't already written into their background, you're probably going to need to insert months or years of downtime for the learning.
Ultimately, it seems like a better idea (to me) to design a character where their awakening to the wider reality is written into their concept rather than tacked on after.
With that in mind, the latest idea I've floated around in my head is similar, but not the same. I'm picturing a mecha tech/pilot from an anime-ish world losing a war with an alien force who "escapes" the fall of her planet through a Door, exploring to become a Warden. The technical knowledge and tactics skills roll over into Invocation and ranked Warfare. At the moment, I'm thinking of making an artifact suit - effectively armor and possibly with multiple forms. I'm also considering a companion AI which I'm not sure would be better as an item or a creature - previously designed as a special hyperspace nav computer, now aiding in mapping parts of the Stair.
That's all similar on the stat/powers side, but the character is already conceived as someone who's walked the stair rather than being so deeply tied to their home world. Heh. In fact, I may have strayed awful far to the other end by writing in that war failure that makes it hard or impossible to go back. Is that overdoing it?
I think a part of the problem is that you're looking at it from a meta scope. When I've designed characters for G&S, I've often made it a more 'local' thing, and when the characters go onto the Stair, they don't initially visualize it as 'my world is just one of many', it is more 'my world is my core, and everything else is peripheral'. This means that the world the character is from remains perhaps THE most important world to them, while the other worlds are places to visit / explore, but don't trump their home world - their home world is what defines them. Hmm. Now I've got something to think about.
ReplyDeleteWell, the game is about the meta scope. If I were going to play a nWoD/FFA/whatever game, it would make infinitely more sense to use that game system. G&S is about worldwalkers... y'know... walking worlds. Even if most of the action takes place in the Gossamer Worlds, it's not likely to be just one of them and (in a normal game) players will probably not all be from the same one. This means someone (if not everyone) will be away from home at any given time. The pitch of the game seems to strongly imply the characters are meant to be Wardens at a minimum, even if it isn't technically required. To do that, you have to experience the Stair for a while and gain at least a general understanding of it. With that kind of experience under your belt, it seems (to me) harder to deny the multiversal viewpoint than to embrace it.
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