I've been playing roleplaying games for about fifteen years now, and created a lot of characters that I really like. Since I stopped writing fiction after college, RPGs gave me an outlet to exercise some of those skills (particularly in the area of character creation).
These are a few of my favorites. This is by no means a comprehensive list of characters, but just a representative sample from recent games:
- Major Vic Grayson
- Setting: Modern American military in Yrth / GURPS Special Ops & GURPS Fantasy
Victoria Grayson grew up in the circus, as part of a family of aerial acrobats. When she was old enough, she joined the U.S. military. She worked her way up the ranks and joined the Special Forces. One day, she was leading a small elite group in the Balkans on a mission to arm and train the locals. They were riding down a river with three rafts of armaments when a strange fog came upon them. When the fog lifted, they were on Yrth -- a medieval fantasy world.
Due to their discipline (and superior firepower), the party quickly became major power brokers in the region. I count this as one of my favorite campaigns of all time. - Walter
- Setting: Illuminati University; (Teenagers From Outer Space)
Picture H.R. Giger's alien from Aliens. Once you have that image clearly in mind, make it scrawnier. Dress it in a white shirt with pocket protector, bow tie and high-water plaid pants. Put glasses on the alien, add a really nasally voice, and remove both aggression and any possible social skills. Meet Walter!
Walter comes from a (stereo)typical thermonuclear family: Mom's a real monster, Dad's rather meek, while older brother Biff (a jock) and younger sister Agnes (a facehugger wearing a pink polkadot bow) make his life miserable. He has an encyclopedic knowledge of every Star Trek episode ever produced, and is majoring in accounting, hoping for a career in the Intergalactic Revenue Service. - Robin Fellowes/Robin Goodfellow
- Setting: Elizabethan England / GURPS
Robin Fellowes was an orphaned boy actor who bore sufficient resemblance to Elizabeth to occasionally act as her decoy. He adored Queen Elizabeth and performed several errands for her, culminating in a diplomatic mission to Faerie where she gave him to Queen Titania as a gift. But nobody knew that Robin was actually half-Faerie himself. Now, under the name of Robin Goodfellow, he is Titania's ambassador to the English court, keeping his human past a closely guarded secret.
Tall and slender, with long red hair and stunning good looks, Goodfellow appears to be in his early-twenties, but is actually unfathomably old. He's an accomplished musician and extremely talented in the arts of seduction and other erotic skills. Unfortunately, he's trapped in a precarious position, owing allegiance to both Elizabeth and Titania. As long as the two queens get along he's fine, but he dreads the time when they might disagree and he's forced to choose sides.
This is my other all-time-favorite campaign. Goodfellow is a major reason why so much of my recent reading has been Elizabethan. I am currently working on a longer story/biography of this character, which I hope to post soon.
You can read descriptions of other characters in this campaign, along with an in-character journal describing some of our adventures at the Western Avenue Irregulars website. - Dorothy Beatrice "Dot" Chase
- Setting: the Doctor Who universe / TimeClaw (Ironclaw, modified)
In the early 1920s, teenager Dottie Chase left her family's home in the midwest for vaudeville, becoming the escape artist Daring Dorothea. After touring around the country for a few years, she came to New York City to live, sharing an apartment with several other girls in the theater (mostly chorus girls). When she's not performing on-stage, Dottie lives it up as a flapper in the Roaring Twenties, drinking at speakeasies and partying like there's no tomorrow.
One day, having a little time to kill before an audition, Dottie went browsing through a cluttered junk shop looking for funky clothes or new props for her act. She found a lacquered cabinet she thought would be the perfect centerpiece for a new routine. But when she walked inside, she discovered it was far larger than she thought. It was, in fact, a TARDIS, about to take her on greater adventures than she had imagined...
Dot has blonde hair and blue eyes, resembling a flapper-version of a young Goldie Hawn or Twiggy. - Vestele "Eve" Eveningfall
- Setting: Forgotten Realms / AD&D 2nd Edition
Eve is the youngest daughter of a family of noble elves living on the island of Evermeet. As a youth, she was trained in all the proper lady-like pursuits, including magick. Her family had pretentions and betrothed her to the son of an even higher-ranking family. But Eve rebelled, and when she was the equivalent of a fourteen-year-old-human, ran away from the family estates. She's made her way across the sea to the city of Waterdeep, where she's heard rumors of a possible half-breed cousin (her family never talks about that branch, but she's picked up a few things). She's still practicing magic, but has also taken up thievery to make ends meet. Her adventures are just beginning.
This character is a bit of a throwback to the very first D&D character I ever created, back when I was in high school.
Although Eve may seem outwardly similar to other characters that I've played, one important factor sets her apart. My other characters were born of lower-status, and have been working their way up the social ladder. Eve was born noble, and has fallen. [No, I hadn't thought of that when I named her.] She has to break a lot of old habits and assumptions that come from being wealthy, and get used to the simple life. Should be fun.
Walter:
