Carnival Bizarre (Sorcerer)
Christoph Boeckle:
Some minor tweaks were made to the setting presentation to reflect the discussion here, and I changed or completed the descriptors like this:
Added a Stamina descriptor named Party animal: you can feast yourself sick, you never have enough of it. Somehow alarming is the fact that your body doesn't seem to mind.
Changed the Lore descriptors to read:
Scientist: you might be a mathematician, interested in geometry and astronomy; you might be a naturalist studying beasts and plants from afar; you might be a psychologist whose understanding of the human mind is vast. In all cases, your knowledge opens up gates of great power.Pygmalion: you are an artist with a profound degree of mastery. Some of your creations are extremely life-like or have an especially deep impact on those who contemplate them.Ringmaster: you are a master of the show and you direct people and animals alike to the sound of your voice and the cracking of your whip. One day, the whole city could become your circus.Disillusioned: Life in the city is senseless, so you might as well use the system to your own advantage. People are merely pawns, the traditions can be bent and nothing must be respected.Child: Lore = 1. You wish your parents were a bit more present and strict. All seems loose and you are grateful to your imaginary friend for helping you to make sense of this strange world.
So, we got together at Thomas's and his girlfriend's new flat for lunch (we made our own yummy pizzas). I did an oral presentation of the game world (they had read it before hand though) and we discussed the various aspects of character creation. Then we ate, critiqued the Swiss army (Julien is in mandatory service right now) and told disgusting jokes.
Then character creation began. Julien immediately knew what he wanted, Jérôme didn't talk much, even took a quick nap at one point, but still got a nice character together, while Thomas was busy optimizing his character (he was very dubious of the use of the Lore score) and then his demon.
After that we quickly set up a LAN and played a game of DotA before going back home.
I look forward for these social details becoming important in our play in one way or another, and at the very least they're intended to show that this play is amongst a group of best friends, for which this set-up just might get quite close to home.
H.P. Locke, played by Julien
Stamina 2 (deformed: six fingers), Will 5 (eccentric and silver-tongued), Lore 3 (pygmalion), Cover 5 (lock-maker), Humanity 5
Telltale: wears glasses with a key on either branch, Price: Cynical
Kicker: death of relatives by food intoxication
Demon: It's a beautifully decorated lock (telltale: Locke's signature), which has no name. It has an advantage of 1 against Locke through the binding.
Stamina 4, Will 5, Lore 4 (Cloak, Link, Spawn and Hold), Power 5, Desires mischief, Needs to be handled by a clown
Julien's plan is to have Locke take control over the mysterious food sector in this town. He uses his demonic locks to spy on key persons and control access to specific storing places. The actual demon has not yet been placed. I will probably make sure that the clown is a guy Locke would rather have dead, but I still need to prepare the next session.
[N/A], played by Jérôme (he takes time to decide for character names)
Stamina 3 (deformed), Will 4 (incredulous), Lore 3 (pygmalion), Cover 4 (poet), Humanity 3
Telltale: a big burn scar on his back, Price: Scarred
Kicker: his library got burned to the ground
Demon: A possessor who manifests itself with a strange light to the possessed eyes. It has an advantage of 1 in the Binding.
Stamina 4, Will 5, Lore 3 (Spawn, Hop, Cloak), Power 5, Desires mischief, Needs to give applause.
Jérôme's idea is that his character wants to explore the outside world and is thus starting to gather an expedition (with the explicit statement that the actual exploration is not what is interesting to Jérôme). His demon will be used to manipulate key personalities into giving him support in his project. Now somebody burned down his library, including the books about the outside world.
Arthur, played by Thomas
Stamina 3 (graceful), Will 6 (silver-tongued and incredulous), Lore 1 (pygmalion), Cover 6 (writer), Humanity 6
Telltale: black cloak, Price: Lame (he has a limp)
Kicker: Altar, the master of a "hidden hierarchy" of this city, invites him to a private meeting.
Demon: Arthur's lady apprentice Alyssia actually is his demon, on service for his security (he has a good handle on her with a +2 in the binding). Her telltale is that she speaks with a heavy Quebec accent.
Stamina 5, Will 6, Lore 5 (Cover (apprentice)), Travel (there's always a door for getting away), Transport, Link, Perception (she knows where all the important people are and what they do: basically works like the yellow pages of a phone directory), Desires sensual gratification (Thomas asked if other people than Arthur could take care of that on occasion), Needs a glass of water
Thomas's concept for the character is a man in his forties, a cross between Bourdieu and Voltaire, who doesn't believe in the apparent anarchy of this town and is convinced that there are power-structures at work. His quill is his weapon, to the point that some of his writing comes to life.
Notes
Thomas first thought that play would be about finding out the city's secret. I made it clear to all that there was no answer yet and that all that mystery will be in support of their character's stories. All three characters want to deal with a specific weird aspect of the city.
The characters are quite evocative of their respective players, at least in a way that makes sense to me. Only Thomas could have chosen Sensual Gratification for his demon (we don't shun talking about very private things, something I do less with the other two).
All the sorcerers are artists of some kind. Interestingly their art is somehow related to what the players like or do (Thomas is a political scientist, Jérôme and I have very similar tastes in music, and poetry isn't that far from that, Julien and I like to talk about IT and it's technicalities (the demon lock has a very functional nature indeed)). Of course, this is an interpretation, and I could have justified a great number of different choices.
We still need to flesh out the backs of the character sheets which are now either not filled out or only in part. I proposed this because I have not yet created NPCs and that we'd start writing them up in the diagrams as soon as play commences (which has just been postponed so that we may achieve the monthly party quotas...)
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