I was just talking to a friend about some dodgy people I've known, and it occurred to me that in terms of memorable and interesting personalities, many of us have met some strange people. "Him, he's a real character", we might say. So I think we could write about some of the "characters" we've known, and people might be able to use them in their games as NPCs. I change the names to protect the guilty.

I flatted with a gambler once, he was my head chef in a hospital kitchen in Auckland. David was his name. Every day he'd get home from work, light up the first of many smokes, and flick on Foxtel to watch the racing channel. He'd be on the phone, "Hello, this is David, TAB account number 3214, I'd like 15 each way on race 223. Cheers." He had a mate who did gambling as a full-time job - studied the horses. David pretty regularly lost money, then about once every three or four weeks he and his professional gambler mate would win a few thousand, and go to the pub and then the brothel. He used to tell me about it. "I had this little gooky [Asian] chick bouncing on my cock. You like gooky chicks? It's okay if you don't, you either like 'em or you don't."

He had an old mate who'd been in the Navy with him, nobody called him whatever his real name was, it was just "Ginger" for his red hair. Ginger was mad - paranoid and aggressive. Used to smoke copious amounts of gangja, it'd sent him mental. David was quite stable, though, didn't touch the weed, just not very politcally correct. Ginger was a cunt, I hated him. Three chefs living together, the most exciting thing we ate was grilled chops.

Then in Adelaide I flatted with my childhood friend Rivka, she had an on-again off-again relationship with Bob next door. In South Australia you could then grow up to 10 plants "for personal use" and it wouldn't be a criminal offence, just a civil one. As the fine was something like $500 a plant at most, and the plants would when cut and dried retail for $1,000, or up to $5,000 if you could be bothered portioning them out into ounce bags or joints, it was a profitable enterprise even if you got caught. He had a spare room with a lot of fluro lights and hydroponic gear, he used to sit at home and smoke bongs, sometimes I'd join him, not touch the bongs but play Playstation with him. He used to be a triathlete, and had a lean and muscular physique with wild red hair. He was not at all aggressive, though if someone started a fight with him he enthusiastically responded - he'd never start it himself, but he did love it and sometimes go looking for it, saying that his favourite kind of pub was one where there was a hole in the wall above the urinal where some poor cunt had had his head put through it. When I returned to Melbourne he asked me to take a couple of kilo bags to sell there, I politely declined. He had a kid with Rivka, and is now in Melbourne leading a respectable and hard-working life, though not with her. Other people have a "gap year" where they travel, he had a Weed Year... or two.

So those are a few of the dodgy "characters" I've known. How about you guys?

No, we really don't need our own "creepy gamer" thread. Even if it does contain the T word.

None of those I mentioned were gamers, nor were they creepy. "Dodgy" is not the same as "creepy". Now please contribute "characters" you've known, or fuck off.

Characters, anyone?

My additions are up at Freelance Traveller already. Just look for the NPCs created by Jeff Hopper.

I could mention the vast crowd of kids I knew growing up who were cutters before cutting was popular and cool, and the merry band of shoplifting theives we all were.  Ah, youth.

No, I roomed with a guy for about three years. Funny thing was, we could have traded ID cards at any time. Same height, hair color, eye color, build. Didn't look anything alike, but fuck if you could tell from our cards.  Parker, that was his name.

Parker was from Boston.

Actually, he was from Greensboro, North Carolina. But he'd lived in Boston for a month way back when he was about 12.  Then a year or so in New Hampshire after that. But fuck all, he was from Boston, accent and all.  He had more work troubles than I can name, constantly under threat of being fired, demoted and promoted a dozen times while I knew him.  He'd do that weird "i'm not touching you' shit if you ignored him. Kept an AK under the matress of his bed, never loaded. Don't know where he got it, didn't ask.

Parker could drink, and would at the drop of a hat. Of course, step two was to pick a fight with anyone he could.  During the time I knew him he got thirty stitches across the back of his neck from a beer bottle and somehow got Viking's jaw busted in a street fight. Viking? Six foot six, four hundred pounds of muscle blonde dude. Parker picked a fight with an entire street gang from the stories, and Viking, being the good wingman he was (if slightly stupid. Wish it was stereotypical big dumb guy, but no, Viking was dumb) waded in to rescue him. Lead pipe beats mass any day.  

The dodgiest thing about Parker was his on again off again girlfriend. Trailer trash, built like a crack ho. She was into... well, that doesn't matter so much, but Parker would occasionaly share her with his freinds. She hated his guts, but stayed with him. Why? Because he'd magically destroyed her oviaries and she needed to steal his soul to get revenge. Some weird shit like that.

I could mention the Shoe, but really the worst thing he did was snore... out of rythem.  Aside from the whole 'silver spoon rich kid working a shit job to get back at his parents' angle, there wasn't much else to talk about.

Strangly, the dodgiest was Mr. Clean. I don't remember his name. He got off work earlier than everyone else. Like two in the afternoon. He'd spend the entire afternoon every day cleaning the common areas of the building. Hallways you know.  Never had a girlfriend, never wanted one. He had to photos that I can remember. Marylin Monroe and a picture of a deer he'd shot.  He went to bed before 9 at night and woke at the crack of dawn... to clean before work I guess.  Always cheerful and freindly, but had absolutely nothing to talk about.  THAT is a creepy motherfucker. No hobbies, no interests, just cleaning and every once in a while he'd go back to his folks to go kill shit for fun.

Quote from: SosthenesNo, we really don't need our own "creepy gamer" thread. Even if it does contain the T word.

God bless you dude, I always thought that thread was just as F**ked up as the people they described, I just don't understand the entertainment in being cruel,

The guy who springs to mind is the one who performed his own dental surgery. He lived in a room over the garage of a boarding school! I don't think he had a job and i have no idea why the school allowed him to stay there, but anyway. This bloke used to drill his own teeth instead of going to the dentist. Thing is, of course, he never had a filling to go into the hole. So he wandered around with drilled teeth that would inevitably get infected...at which point he would pull them out. Shane McGowen had nothing on this geezer.

My buddy Tom is a player character if I ever met one.  He was an amateur boxer in his youth, and an outdoorsmen with encyclopedic knowledge of guns.  He's a good shot and has taken combat shooting training seminars.  He's worked a lot of jobs, including sales, auto mechanics, and housebuilding.  Currently he's a repo man, the best one I've seen in 10 years in the collection business.  Tom used to be a heavy drinker, but now his leisure time is split between fishing, fixing up his wreckers, watching black & white cowboy movies, and getting drunk on the Lord at the fundy church.

Gamed with a guy back in the 80's who - and I swear this is no exageration - would know at LEAST one person no matter where we went. As a group we'd go to the movies - he'd know someone there. Out to eat? Same (and usually not wait-staff so that easy explaination is out). Mall? Yup. Some random off-the-wall place like Six Flags? It was like a damn reunion. Every place we went. The joke in our group was that you could parachute him into the middle of Red Square and he'd know someone. And he was a glad-hander of the first order, very disarming and outgoing. Probably would've made a good politician if he weren't kinda ... odd.

Don't know where he ever got off to, but I'm sure he's surrounded by people he knows.

Quote from: WerekoalaGamed with a guy back in the 80's who - and I swear this is no exageration - would know at LEAST one person no matter where we went. As a group we'd go to the movies - he'd know someone there. Out to eat? Same (and usually not wait-staff so that easy explaination is out). Mall? Yup. Some random off-the-wall place like Six Flags? It was like a damn reunion. Every place we went. The joke in our group was that you could parachute him into the middle of Red Square and he'd know someone. And he was a glad-hander of the first order, very disarming and outgoing. Probably would've made a good politician if he weren't kinda ... odd.

Don't know where he ever got off to, but I'm sure he's surrounded by people he knows.

In Shadowrun, he'd be a damn good fixer.

:cool:

Jimmy was, quite simply, one of the single most egotistical human beings I have every met.  He looked like a dead ringer for Cary Elwes, and had very nearly a similar cavalier attitude to the real Elwes' Robin Hood, plus a Dr. Cox like mean streak, combined with the kind of overcompensation that comes from having a penis that, according to an ex-girlfriend, was the size of your average pinky finger.

He was also the most hideous powergamer you have ever seen.  That man could break any game.  Didn't matter what it was, he could find a way to make a character so ungodly powerful that nations would tremble in his wake, and GMs hated his guts.  Such was his ingenuity however, that even deprived of his power on the character front, he would still somehow manage to bring down any campaign with ease by figuring a quicker solution to the problem or enemy at hand than the GM could ever have imagined.

When some friends and I began developing a set of LARP rules, it was him we took them too, because we knew that if any man could find every last loophole, weak point, imbalance, it was him.  

To him, it was the creator's own fault for doing such a poor job of balancing their games.  Spotting these imbalances and loopholes and broken rules just comes as naturally to him as breathing.  I'm sure given time and effort he could probably make a game whose intricate balancing would make D&D look like Rifts, yet he's never expressed any interest in doing so, primarily because I think even if he did develop the "perfect" game, he'd never play it, because he'd lack an outlet for his own instinct for rules manipulation.  either that or he'd never finish it, cursed by his own gift to always see the tiniest flaw in his own work.

Really, he was a fun guy to hang out with, but God help me, I will never game with him again.

Were Koala sounds like he's describing ACE TALKINGWOLF
J Arcane sounds like he's describing Perfect Brian.
Kyle's comment about changing the names to protect the guilty doesn't sway me. Why would I want to protect the guilty?

Adrian was quite the character. Actually a nice guy, just clueless and couldn't cut the munchkin gamerism. He had no concept of self-awareness or personal space...he tried to get as close to you as possible while talking. So I would step back, to maintain my "personal bubble". Then he'd step forward to close the distance again. As soon as I became aware of this, I started a game. I was able to lead him across an entire parking lot without him being aware of it. When he (FINALLY!) stopped talking, he was like, "wow, how did we get all the way over here?" Just clueless. My group asked me to ask him to stop coming several times. Every time I told Adrian this, he'd swear that he could change and stop "whatever it is they hated" but then he'd start again IMMEDIATELY, without pause, once we let him back in. Just clueless.

And you know, we were pretty mean to him. Although he was one of the very few people I'd ever had to ban from my Open Table, if he turned up tomorrow ready to game...I'd probably let him back in, just to see if he'd grown up any over the years. And to find out whatever happened to him.