Interesting Challenges

[Warren Verona]

So I was curious. What makes your main N!Prime character interesting (and I mean main as in the N!Prime Char you enjoy playing most) for you as the player.

To help clarify the question I’ll start this off.

Here, I play only Revenant. Revenant is actually a big stretch for me as far as gaming experiences go since most of the characters I play (in aberrant) are usually the more comic relief type (fun guys with a sense of humor) heroes like Spider-Man. He gets the job done, but not before pelting his opponent in a series of cheesy one-liners.

Reven is an interesting change because I’m not used to playing a character filled with so much anger and hatred. Sometimes it’s hard for me to keep him IC, especially when I’m in a good mood IRL and all I want to do is <Little Nicky voice> “release the goooooood!”

So, what makes your PCs interesting for you, what challenges do they present to you as a player?

[Wakinyan]

Well obviously I love Wakinyan for what he might be.

He is a creature of intensity and extremes.

Every action he makes is one weighed by not just his mind but his tainted instincts. They do their best to make him an utter boar of a social creature (in human standards)..

Yet I try to show that there is something more noble and majestic inside him. Something that is primal and perhaps simple but with a savage nobility to him.

Then of course I add a big helping of teenager which does not help things at all.

Trying to play this maelstrom of a character is rough at times. Knowing what might not be the right thing to do but doing it anyway because it is what he would do.

The challenges, rewards and consequences are what he is all about and why I enjoy him so much.

[Emily Williamson]

Although Login is a bundle of sugar-powered fun, Emily is the character I really enjoy playing. Mainly because she has more depth than any other character I've played, in part because she's a blatant self-insertion (her life is like what my life would be twisted into if they had to make a drama about it, heh). Her aberrations are fun (I'm a very shy person, and it's quite an experience to play a character whose every emotion bubbles up visually to the surface), she's the artist and the performer I'll never get to be (though I ahven't explored that part of her yet) and she has her psyche divided visibly into the three Freudian components (not sure if anyone has noticed this, but "the Red" is Em's id, and the cautioning voice that calls her "Millie" is her superego, more or less) which is always fun to write about.

It is difficult to interpret a character with such an all-encompassing hormonal imbalance as Em has. I have self control problems, but she simply doesn't have self-control, unless she makes a disproportionate effort, which she doesn't do very often mainly because she can't. She's also difficult to describe in her full lightshow-weirdness all the time, especially when I'm half-asleep and rushing to post before I go to school, and I realize I occasionally forget to put in as much detail as I could into her involuntary expression. Also, I get the impression I sometimes don't make EMily's mood very clear, and it may look like her personality changes are arbitrary or fruit of bad roleplaying. I assure you that they're all on purpose, and seem logical at least in my mind (not that it can be trusted farther than you can throw a brick)

[Velvet]

Velvet is a distinct change of pace for me. I typically play the "Amazon" sort of character- the efficient, headstrong, brass-bound warrior wenches. In Star Wars, for example, it's a Mandalorian mercenary; in Exalted a militant Fire-Aspect swordswoman or, on the more primal side, a Lunar huntress. They're a lot of fun, especially with the right party, but I wanted to try something different here... hence the creation of an almost entirely social character with no real combat abilities.

I'm enjoying it so far, and I'm having a great time stretching my roleplaying muscles, so to speak, by trying to portray her convincingly as a person rather than a character. She's a hedonist by nature, sure, but to me that doesn't automatically mean she's a nymphomaniac- it means she loves life and takes opportunities to enjoy the fullness of what it has to offer... whether that be sex, a new dessert, skydiving, a silk dress, etc. I've had fun breaking the "Xena" stereotype with my pencil/paper characters, and I'm hoping to do something similar with Velvet here.

[Ghostwriter]

Samhra is almost as blatant a self-insertion as Emily - we are both bookworms with autism who come from backgrounds of domestic violence (though it was my mum who suffered all the crap boyfriends, not me). The closest she ever was to me as a person was in her Codex stage - I am not as sensual as she is.

I do have a slight tendency to play 'victims' or people very good at feeling sorry for themselves. Irini Mikhailova erupted during abuse by her pimp and Quanta erupted during Ibiza. But I also try to take new concepts and see what I can do with them - Irini is sexy and edgy, which I am not, and Quanta is a competent cook, which I am most definitely not!

I rarely play bricks - Serendipity is about the closest I've ever gotten with her 'beat 'em up' attitude.

So N! Prime offers me plenty of challenges.

[Doctor Nova Madigan]

Flicker is an extremely ordinary person who has erupted and is dealing with the way her life has changed. I think there's a lot of story to be told there.

[Timeslip]

Character I enjoy playing the most? Dear gods, it's a tall order just to figure that one out....

I mean, yeah, Timeslip was my first here. She's a re-do of an older TT character, and thus near and dear to my heart just for that. She's not afraid to take risks to really step out there and experience whatever can be experienced, to grow as much as she can grow, and I love that about her. OK, and the starfield appearance rocks.

Sandcaster is another port from TT-ville, and again brings warm memories with her. She just has this innate practicality that I almost envy on some level; an ability to take whatever crap the world may fling her way and process it via well-grounded solutions that don't require Fat Cracklin' Cosmic Powers o' the Gods (well, that and a lot of Alka-Seltzer). At the same time, though, she doesn't have any idea how to come to terms with her own emotional needs and sexuality...and is all the more human for it.

Then there's Thoughtwave, who I made from whole cloth with the intent of just seeing what would happen if a Psiad was introduced to this nuthouse. The sole intent for the character was her initial fiction, after which she was supposed to disappear. Yet, she put down tenuous yet tough roots in what rocky soil she could find, and managed to grow on me. I might think she's an idiot for putting up with what she puts up with, but damn if the girl doesn't have some moxie, and damn if she doesn't manage to somehow stand with these various godlings and actually hold her own. For her honesty, for her innocence, for her steadfastness, for her caring and passion and her love for that ridiculous bird through thick and thin, she gives me the warm fuzzies.

And oh gods, The Crusader. The fracking Crusader. When I am in desperate need of cheering up, I hunt through the fiction section for his empty-headed grin and his goofy monologues, and within minutes I'm smiling. When a fiction is getting so damned grim that it would put a booger look on a pitbull, I shift into The Crusader mode, have him merrily twist the current situation into a rambling combination of corny comparisons and mixed metaphors, and *poof!*; there's comic relief. Yeah, he's more two-dimensional than a sheet of typing paper, but I love him and his goddamned cape nonetheless.

But Brother Jacob I do not love.

[Singularity]

Ooo, I love topics like this. But please excuse the rough nature of my thoughts: it's about bedtime for me.

Singularity started as the worst kind of bully I could imagine and remember from my childhood: selfish, narcissistic, delusions of grandeur, ignorant, and spiteful of anyone smarter and/or weaker than him. So, with him as a worthless hunk of flesh, I gave him unlimited potential and set him loose on the world to squander it. Twelve years later, I slapped him with my conscience, watched him crack after realizing just how... well, wrong he was and I started playing the character just after the throes of realization had left him. Hence, I used him for exploring penance with a small measure of self-exploration and introspection at first. As time has gone on, the focus of the character has flipped as he learned how to deal with realizing he was once a horrible person and figuring out how to go forward from there. Though I would never want get the deluge of horrible realization like he got, I do somewhat envy Singularity for the sense of peace and harmony he's managed to reach. Then again, I'm more pragmatic than he is.

Sam Grey started as an experiment in writing in the first person as well as an outlet for exploring the hard boiled detective genre. But by the time I got the character fully formed in my mind and on the site, he gained an aspect of someone who's willing to do the dirty things that need to be done to make good things happen. He's not out there like the Operative from Serenity, but he's killed when it's necessary. I admire his blunt honesty despite not always agreeing with his tactics. And I really need to keep his story going.

Mythic... heh. Harold started as a mundane and shy gamer and the classic nice guy wallflower. Then he erupted and found out just how freaky his subconscious really is. In the very long run he'll accept and fully realize relative status as the modern version of an Asgard (linking back to his heritage) but he'll be staring awed up at the gods walking around him for now. And I'm having fun working with a character who's younger, less experienced, and much less confident than myself learning how to do deal with all of the changes.

And, finally, Ulysses Bailey has been more of a quasi-NPC for me. I normally only bring him out if my education is applicable to a situation or if requested by another player. Otherwise he's just too simple to use on a regular basis since I intended him to just be an outlet for all of this legal thought stuck in my head.

[kestrel404]

Alchemist is far-and-away my favorite, because he has so much backstory. Not just the stuff I've written, but stuff that's still coming to light, and will probably continue to be found out, by himself and others, for quite a while.

I suspect all the really good stuff will have to be cleared with Chosen, or else simply labeled non-canon. But he's still quite fun to write for. Also, he's the character I love to dump problems on.

Dorothy is interesting because she's so different from myself. I made her slightly geeky just so I could relate a bit. Other than that, her concept and motivation is spelled out on her character sheet, and might as well be public knowledge. She's pretty much an open book...except she'll still probably always surprise you.

[Vixen]

Vixen started out in an OpenRPG game that was sort of like Aberrant, but with far more nebulous causes to superpeople showing up - no one knew just where the powers were coming from. So Vixen tried to capitalize on that mystery by being a woman of science who'd become, apparently, a creature of mythology. Unfortunately, the game fell apart, and the character's not popular in my circle of friends - my best gaming buddy, for example, has a friend who shits bees when confronted with a 'furry.'

I was also tickled by the idea of someone who gains superhuman abilities, and really is more enamoured with the just plain 'normal' abilities she lacked for so long. That sprang out of reading Elliot S! Maggin's introduction to Kingdom Come, where he pointed out that "superhuman" is relative to the human experience, which has changed in a lot of ways in our past century and hasn't changed in a lot of others. In that sense you could say that Vixen's evocative of Captain Marvel - someone who lives in both the mundane world and the big, oversized superworld. (I share Singularity's massive woody for Superman, too - but Captain Marvel is evocative of a lot of the themes common to White Wolf games.)

On N!Prime, Vixen's evolved down interesting paths - I always intended her to be more down to Earth, focused more on mundane friends and family and getting pulled into the nova world almost against her will. As a result, she doesn't get involved too much in threads simply 'cause she has no real reason to - she doesn't feel like she's got much in common with other novas, who seem to have such different prioreties than she does. Also, since baseline presense on N!Prime is practically nil, I've noticed an overall tendency to be solipistic towards them - many seem to act as if they aren't technically real. (This may be a White Wolf tendency as well.)

So in soem ways I've painted myself into a corner with Vixen - but it's okay, 'cause I like this corner. If I were to summarize Vixen with one sentence, it would be "a superhuman who happens to think that her superpowers aren't the most important thing in her life."