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Doc Rotwang: A Request!

Started by RedFox, December 20, 2006, 11:00:08 AM

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RedFox

December 20, 2006, 11:00:08 AM
I love your Adventure Funnel.  Might I ask for something similar?  Call it the "PC Background Funnel," or the like.  Basically, a way to give a concise, gamable character outline.
 

Dr Rotwang!

#1
December 20, 2006, 11:45:20 AM
Hmmm.

...

...hmmm.  Okay, it's First-Draft Time.

I'm a big fan of the whole one-line PC background thing (which I nicked from "Deep In The Game") -- you know, like "A is ".  I guess you could use that in place of the "Goal", and just call it "concept".  

Some examples:
   A haughty princess is stranded and wants to go home
An uptight ex-marine is pursued by the mafia
A headstrong young Jedi is having trouble with The Dark Side
A stupid fighter wants to kill things and take their stuff

Pretty simple so far.  It occurs to the reader that those three elements are what's going to define the character the most, so let's work with them one at a time; put the charcter's trait at the top of a list, and start writing down ways that he or she displays that trait.  Things he does, things she says.  Anything that identifies that trait.  (Yes, it's totally OK to write down stupid stuff here, too -- this is about generating material, THEN shining it up real pretty.)

Next make a column for the Class/Role.  This list is where you'll brainstorm skills, abilities, preferred tricks and things that would identify the character as a princess/gladiator/shoeshine boy/huge Rush fan*/etc.  You can even write in stuff that is contraryto the role, either to make it a point that the PC NEVER does/is this, or sometimes does/is these things despite him or herself.  Remember, you're not marrying anything here.

Finally there's the motivation.  This one, I think, will look the most like The Adventure Funnel; it'll be more plot-like, and will probably consist of reasons why your character is in this situation. You could even write it out like this:

   Jim's on the run from the mob because...
   ...he owes them money
...he double-crossed them
...they think he's Sal Monelli, a rival family's hitman
...he knows where to find Sal Monelli
...they want him to be their hitman
...he's a clown and a clown kicked their mom
...etcetera.  

Finally, you just start crossing stuff off your list, spinning other stuff around, looking for it to fit together...basically gving yourself a bunch of material to work with.  You can decide to keep as much or as little as you wish; the idea, like RedFox says, is to generate an outline, not the whole show.  

I will try this out and see if I'm not just, you know, talkin' outta my butt.

Oh, and, hey, 'Fox -- thanks for the luuuuv.

*What game are you playing, and can I join?
Dr Rotwang!
...never blogs faster than he can see.
FONZITUDE RATING: 1985[/font]

James J Skach

#2
December 20, 2006, 12:20:47 PM
You could make this a little web app that people could use.  The structure is there, just hav the code randomly generate the traits, class/role, etc. based on the system the user chooses.

Hmmm....
The rules are my slave, not my master. - Old Geezer

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Dr Rotwang!

#3
December 20, 2006, 12:40:42 PM
Here you go.  This is where I got the One Sentence Character Concept Maker.
Dr Rotwang!
...never blogs faster than he can see.
FONZITUDE RATING: 1985[/font]

RedFox

#4
December 20, 2006, 01:50:05 PM
Awesome.  Both the one-sentence thing, and your PC Funnel.  I can't wait to see it polished up. :)

*I'm trying to work up some characters for Conspiracy-X, but I keep over-complicating them.  Here's the two I've made so far:

A FBI Field Agent (Mulder clone)
James Mason grew up on a farm near Laingsburg in northern Michigan, child of Bradford and Elizabeth Mason.  As a child, James was precocious but morally grounded.
While attending Laingsburg High School, his childhood friend Harold Laughton disappeared during a camping trip in Sleepy Hollow State Park.  James and Harold's sister Margaret were the only witnesses to what James described as abduction.  Despite his vivid account of blue lights in the trees and Harold falling unconscious and being dragged off by shadowy, inhuman figures while James was frozen in place, the local authorities eventually wrote it off as another teen runaway.
Upon graduation, Mason went to Michigan State University where he pursued and eventually attained a bachelor's degree in Law Enforcement.  During his college years, he pursued studies of cryptozoology and other fringe sciences with his elective and extracurricular activities, determined to understand what had happened in Sleepy Hollow.  Upon graduation, he immediately applied for a position with the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
A determined new recruit in the FBI with a history of interest in the paranormal was guaranteed to alert Aegis, and consequently his recruitment into the conspiracy transpired a week before his formal recruitment into the Bureau.

A MKULTRA Psychic Pawn
Ahmad Yousuf Adwan has a very personal grudge against the NDD, and is haunted by a past he cannot remember.
Normally an ethical, righteous human being, Ahmad loses all reason and moral restraint when given a chance to punish the NDD or uncover what he believes to be the truth about his history.
Project MKULTRA is not only Ahmad's benefactor, employer, and savior, but is also the architect of his identity.  Ahmad Yousuf Adwan is a fiction, a personality created by MKULTRA to fulfill the role of psychic avenger.  Ahmad was actually a Palestinian freedom fighter named Mahdi saad Amshah captured by the Mussad after he incinerated the Israeli soldiers who fired on protestors at a new settlement.
Highly unstable in custody, an Aegis CIA asset had him taken in to MKULTRA, where he was broken down and reprogrammed.  Now he is convinced that he was an immigrant college student that the NDD had given over to the Greys for psychic experimentation.  Doped up on mind control drugs and in a laboratory set with men wearing rubber alien costumes, Aegis staged a rescue operation.
Luckily for Aegis, Ahmad responds well to drugs of all kinds, and has been honed into a powerful psychic operative.
As Mahdi, he had been a canny and charismatic leader, and despite the heavy mind-altering medications, some of that continues to shine through.
Mahdi saad Amshah is near the top of many international terrorist watch lists, but Ahmad Yousuf Adwan no longer wears his face.  After cosmetic surgery, Ahmad finds a certain disorientation upon viewing himself in the mirror.  Despite this, and a host of other mental problems, he continues to take the drugs prescribed by his MKULTRA benefactors.
Ahmad is intent on finding the NDD operatives who captured him both to mete out punishment for what they did to him and to learn why they had done it to him.
His MKULTRA supervisors supply him with few leads, and his own recollections are hazy and often contradictory.  As he grows more frustrated, he takes out his aggression on any NDD personnel or patsies he can get a hold of.
Ahmad is one of the most rare and dangerous psychics imaginable, a pyrokinetic, and Aegis is well aware of the dangers involved in such an unstable asset, keeping him under as strict observation as possible.


My character backgrounds always seem to come out like this.
 
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