Lets pour one out for the characters that had cool story potential that didnt get to follow through because they died or the game fell apart.
Had a wizard hating ranger named Greg who was eventually gonna get revenge on the sorceror/noble who killed his dad, but the game imploded a few sessions in.
What about you? You ever had a story thread that died out because of a poor dice roll or a shitty group?
(OP)
I made an edgy Antipaladin grandpa who just wanted to party. The GM forgot to tell me that the entire campaign world was run by a LG Theocracy, enforced by paladins and clerics.
rip
> Here's to Chirag, the most excellent Indian Motherfucker who had started down the road to Narco-Alchemy by making a crazy Bhang Drink.
He was also a medical student specializing in pharmacology, so he had easy access to all the stuff. Skinny as a rail although he always had the munchies, just sterotypical enough to reveal that I, in fact, am not from India myself.
Also, here's to Mark Odin Tarrence, a 56 year old truck driver who is obsessed with youngish strippers in school girl uniforms and with the speed and strength og someone at least thirty years tounger. Also an unwitting Avatar of the path of Masterless Man.
Here's to you both and if I ever get invited to another UA campaign, I won't join unless I'm sure the game won't fail or my shift times won't change.
CAPTAIN MIDNIGHT! was a character I made for a supers game. The idea was to do a comedic 60's setting, with some mild deconstructive elements.
Captain Midnight was a true-blue patriot, billionaire genius philanthropist and loving father. He was actually one of the first "Super Heroes" in the setting in that he was one of the only people to put on a costume after gaining his powers and decide to use them to protect the innocent and catch evil-doers. He organized the players into the first Super-Team, and insisted that they all have codenames and outfits like him, much to the chagrin of some members of the team.
His powers were ironically darkness-themed, but he was himself incredibly optimistic and naive. My long term plan with him was that he was going to eventually be worn down by the increasing brutality and grimness of the world, until finally he became an out-and-out villain in an attempt to unite all the heroes against him. He was going to be a sort of more pathetic version of Ozymandias from Watchmen, based partly on Captain Metropolis.
>"Someone's got to save the world, don't you see? I can't do it alone..."
Was going to be his sort of epitaph once he was finally revealed.
The group disbanded after only two or three sessions. The games themselves were very fun, and frankly I'm secretly glad we never got to his heel turn.
Vishal Pendarkhar, you were the best 14 year old superhero with no social skills and way too much confidence ever.
>that had cool story potential that didnt get to follow through because... the game fell apart.
God, I've had so many of those.
One of my favorite-ever characters to play was in a 4e game--a light-hearted, roleplay-heavy, comedy-centric game mostly comprised of players pretty good at improv (and one person who I think had autism whom I invited out of guilt).
The character was an Inspiring Warlord loosely based on Don Quixote. She was obsessed with the tales of adventurers past and sought glory, despite being far from the brightest bulb in the box. I loved coming up the the dumbest, most oblivious, foot-in-mouthiest things to say and declaring them with absolute confidence. But the game only wound up lasting a few sessions, and it got a bit less fun when we were joined by someone who seemed to have legitimate trouble understanding the basics of comedy joined, which I admit was my fault.
There was also a MAID group I was trying to put together, and I really, really liked my character concept. She was an angel banished to earth to learn the meaning of service. The archangels, for their part, were imagining a soup kitchen or something.
She wasn't exactly the brightest either (it's gonna sound like that's a trend, but it's just coincidence; the smarter characters I play weren't for games that fell apart quite so quickly) and often had trouble remember what exactly humans were and were not capable of doing. I had this idea that she'd determine that opening jars was just physically impossible, then conclude that the Master must have magic powers because he was able to do so.
Pic related, it's the second character. I might or might not have had a huge crush on the guy originally slated to be the Master, and I might or might not be bad at subtlety in that regard.
To 'Seabob', the monk played by my Uncle during one of the first games I ever ran. He stunned an orcish warband long enough for the other players to defeat them by opening his robes suddenly, describing himself as totally nude underneath, and as he flashed them he shouted "SEE BOB!" before throwing himself headlong and naked into the crowd.
This, coming from the same man who argued he should be allowed to use his Reflex save instead of a Dexterity roll to catch a fish from a river... because in his words, "only someone with good REFLEXES would be able to do that! It's in the name!" and at my tender young age I had no idea how to say no to him, either as a new GM or his young nephew.
>My long term plan with him was that he was going to eventually be worn down by the increasing brutality and grimness of the world
Aw, man. That would've been a bummer.
>I'm secretly glad we never got to his heel turn.
Turning evil isn't as fun as people think it is, and as aside, I think it's kinda played out as a character arc (not that I don't think there's a place for it). Personally I think it's much more interesting to see characters who get knocked down but get back up, and who manage to (more or less) stick to their morals when tested. But then that's just me.
Seems like an odd thing to do when playing with a young relative, but okay. How old were you?
Here's to McDougal. My unaugmented Half Scottish Half Japanese Martial Artist dude in a Ghost in the Shell style Shadowrun game. Only one in the squad that was without cyberware or bioware, yet could punch holes in a tank with his bare fist.
Game died the day before the 2nd session, when we were half-way through a job.
>Seems like an odd thing to do when playing with a young relative, but okay.
Yep. Very typical behavior of my Uncle in general. Well, both uncles really, but this one in particular; I was somewhere around age 9 he told me that joke about the pedophile taking the girl into the woods, coming back alone, etc. as well as the one that goes "would you ever tell your parents if you found a condom in your butt?", "no...", "cool, what are you up to this Tuesday?". And that was in front of both my mom and grandma, who are also fairly strange/caustic people.
>How old were you?
Honestly hard to remember. Probably 13 or 14, so not too bad. I remember thinking it was very funny at the time.
Oh, all right. I think anything mid- or post-pubescent is when that's... okay, but I sure wouldn't condone it.
Agreed. Dealing with him as a player that early on was actually pretty ideal for me in terms of GM skill improvement; I got my first "that guy" experience out of the way pretty shortly, hell of a learning curve though that was initially both frustrating and offputting.
Had a warforged paladin that had a solidified shard of a dead deity lodged in his chest, and started to discover the dead deity was the one he was worshipping, calling into question where his powers were actually coming from
but then three people stopped showing up, that guy joined the group and the other two new players were /v/-tier morons
Had a character that would I would use when I could pop into a friends game when our schedules lined up, was a mobster who scrapped the bottom of the barrel for cash whenever possible to pay back his stupid huge debts, only got to use him once though.
>one person who had autism
>tg
Admit it to yourself, user.
Here's to Orc, my Shifter Warlord. I tried to use him in two different 4e campaigns but they both died. Orc wanted to join the army more than anything in the world, but alas it was for humans only. So he shaved off all his hair and told the recruiters he was a retired boxer, hence the mashed up face. I had to do so much feat wrangling to get my bluff up enough for that guy.
She only wanted her breakfast nook back.
She spent 10 years digging herself out of poverty, going from thief to a successful, legitimate general store owner, and finally got the breakfast nook in her apartment. Then she got accused of a crime she couldn't have possibly committed.
Then the DM on roll20 called it quits after 1 fucking session. I'm still so fucking furious because he didn't even let me collect my character's sheet and other info before he flat out deleted it.
here's to my insane middle-aged trucker who specialized in improvised weaponry, specifically the use of wooden tables and chairs.
it was a really stupid game, just a one shot, but i loved him.
Had a really cool idea for a character in a Werewolf: The Forsaken game I saw on Roll20. It was set in 1920's Australia, so I made an American WW1 vet from the deep south turned city cop who decided to move out to Australia to bro it up with his old Aussie warbuddy. Became a werewolf. Was a good ol' boy werewolf, basically.
Me and some other dude got approved for the game and then the DM went "okay now that I know you can make a character, here's several premade characters that you must pick from".
Jesus fucking Christ. Reminded me why I don't go looking for games on fucking Roll20. He didn't want tabletop players, he wanted people to act as characters in his interactive novel or some shit.
Pancho Salsa. Not so loosely based on the mannerisms of Sancho Panza.
After shit got real heinous 4 sessions in we had a wrap up session before starting a new campaign. Pancho went back to train horses with an NPC bro. Skeletal horses.
>5e campaign
>Play as transmuter wizard
>Formerly a battle mage for a militaristic human kingdom, deserted after first battle ended in disaster
>Became apprenticed to an insane old man wizard who had his own tower
>Campaign hook is old man wizard gets kidnapped
>Trapeze around the continent to rescue him
>Go through a ton of bullshit
>Die in the final battle to save old man wizard
>Get resurrected by unknown third party
>Something went wrong, he came back as a vampire
>Fall in with a noble family of necromancer elves
>They want him for his vampire nature
>vampires have been extinct in this world for centuries
>Gets set up with a sweet necromancer tower for a base, a couple now-vampire necromancer elves for partners in evil
>All set to actually be a BBEG for another party
>Goes on a mission to get some stuff for necro tower
>Meets a dwarf cleric
>Gets smited into ash
Here's to all those support characters I played since I didn't want the party to die for no reason.
Here's to Axebeard McDorfnuts or whatever the smash-happy diplomatic bastard's name was, whose last session was filled with acted out torture and literally everything coming back to haunt us somehow.
Here's to that fatass Undying Light warlock, who was given disadvantage on account of his Dexterity score being a whopping 3 while trying to climb up from the edge of the mountain.
Here's to that attempted All Paladin Party that was shot down by That Bastard Who Couldn't Compromise Even If A Gun Was Pointed At His Head and His Girlfriend Was About To Pull The Trigger.
And here's to fucking Chongo, that damn tiefling cleric who actually purged heretics and died happy. If only I could've had more characters like him.
i had a saturday morning cartoon of a mad scientist guy who would experiment with making freaky beasts. was in the middle of taking down a bioscience facility that stole my research, had a backup plan of making a magic vat of flesh go aberrant with the soul of a far gone angel, and was on my way to fight the head of the place with my big four armed gorilla with one hell of a combo set up. game fell before the boss door, fml. i had the long term goal of reverse engineering a parasite that had no known magic cure for its disease and cloning a man who was gradually turning more into a machine. all in the name of evolution, baby.
So many characters that died before character sheet ever hit table... Because the DM panicked and flaked or something happened before the first session. Or told me no. Examples
>OWoD Vampire, embraced by a sabbat malk before selling the coven out to the cam, allowing them to take Tacoma. Was also a loli and a pro-dom focused on building up her estate to get vengance on the vampire that killed her Prince and took his position. Was going to have her old Lasombra coven master show up to bring even more drama. Game was cancelled on basis of one group member having fucked up experiences related to an ex who played the game.
>3 separate l5r characters. All games canceled when the group discovered the DM was going to run a hyper-political game that ended with true evil winning,
>A warforged barbarian in a fairy tale-ish land, who tried to discover what emotions felt like, so a girl who fell in love with him asked the local witch to make him a heart. It was a teapot. It cracked when she had a heart attack and died the first time she served him tea. DM told me "great character, not world appropriate"
>2 Eclipse Phase characters, both really fucked up fetish fuel. Discovered I was the only player that was actually interested and had read any portion of the rulebooks
And others that I have forgotten, with a list made more complicated by the fact that I create characters just to get a feel for the system.
From games that died after the first session...
>Rogue that ended up with a bank account that was the budget of several small nations thanks to accidental time travel (from DM's plot) and a cunning use of pathfinder's investment rules (aided by the DM being an accountant). All said character really wanted to do was be a very lethal bob ross.
>7th sea, runaway Sorte Strega, who helped steal an entire nation using only FASHION! Seriously, when the strega really blesses you and the merchant takes advantage of Porte messengers, rolling 14k12+15 will obviously beat TN 15. [cont]
>We didn't even say a single word (TN 15 because social contests went against WIllpowerx5. Enemy frenchy holding San Augustine had will 3). Also, major RP drama from the man she loves marrying her new queen, and the fact that she absolutely loved her magic. GM panicked over not writing a 2 thousand page setting bible detailing all the effects our new nation had and refused to run it again.
>Second attempt at 7th Sea, make an Eisen Sherrif, member of the order of St. George. Used the Loring school of dual wielding panzerhands. Was going to be fucking awesome. Same GM as above.
>Pathfinder. Custom setting. Investigator trying to not be a dick in a city of dicks. Helping an oracle out on her pilgrimage (something our opposed religions both hold as sacred). Was going cool until GM (different one this time) broke down over the fact that she only ever learned how to run modules. I tried to take over, but Oracles player refused to participate (said player is my constant shitty game-dropping GM) because apparently the DM needs to be him or someone that will abuse him. Or something. He's a fucked up dude. WHich sucks, because he is fucking amazing RPer.
>FR, trying 5E. Playing a dragonborn who was brought over from a completely different world of dragonborn, because canon D&D dragonborn are fucking stupid. Same shit player/gm soon makes us drop the game because he is afraid of going against FR canon.
The reason why the awesome painter rogue didn't last past three sessions is because I left the state after reporting the severe emotional abuse of children.
Sebastien Belfor Theron, a rouge trader who was shelved before his time because the campaign died.
The shenanigans we got into on our short trip together! Fighting in a knight tourney, having a bar shootout with the arbites, nuking a super-palace during planetary assault, zero-g skateboarding in orbit to save the crew, distracting an entire planet with a flotilla's worth of prostitutes, freeballing an infiltration on the highest guarded royal palace in the sector, cucking a planetary governor, mad-maxing on some barren shithole, getting your tongue cut out by a warboss.
You will be missed deeply, and maybe one far off day, you may yet return to earn your place among the stars.
I had a kobold that escaped a losing fight with some adventurers, wandered wounded about the wilds for a while and came upon a monastery. He was taken in and given aid, and after gave his labor for food and board, started up a life there and amongst day to day life took a shine to learning ways of conventional healing. After some years he decided to part ways, wanting to go wander the world, learn things about life outside cowering in burrows, and find someone to pay forward the help that was given to him
He was the first departure from all the chronically edgy characters I wrote and the game fell apart in two sessions. That kobold just wanted to help a brother out.