31 Days / 31 Characters - SHADE

I really love when I am playing in a campaign and my favorite character isn't necessarily mine. 

This makes the campaign, if good, even more fun and enjoyable. It stands to reason that you'll like the character you're playing (at least I'd hope so...more on that in a post next month) and will be invested and excited when you and your PC get to do something. When you like one or more of the other players' PCs, you can enjoy the game even when it isn't your turn. If the story and action is just as engaging when the spotlight isn't on you, then that makes for a great campaign in my mind.

Shade, the paranormal private detective played by my dear friend Carl in our long term Kapow! Superhero campaign is one such character. 

Most of this entry was written by Carl himself, indicated by text in pale green. I will periodically throw in my two cents. 

Character: Shade

AKA: Sol Sable

Player: Carl Eastlund

System: Kapow!

 

Campaign: The Wardens

Gamemaster: Keith Jacobson

Circa: 2008-2014 for the original campaign.

Character still exists and has appeared periodically since.

Origins: Shade began as a series of City Of Heroes characters I played, all named Sleuth Sable; variants on a private eye, sometimes with mystic abilities. To adapt the concept for a modern Kapow! campaign, I made Shade a ghost since 'private eye' heroes are generally from almost a century in the past. I first tried making the character when Joshua Macy, the author of Kapow!, was our GM. He was skeptical that I could even make the character work, it being a ghost unable to touch or be touched by physical objects. I find it amusingly ironic that Joshua didn't have enough faith in his own system, as Shade was eventually my longest-played character in the game. 

Shade wasn't Carl's first character as I recall, though I can't remember if he had only one or a few PCs before the ghostly gumshoe. Both Carl and I had a tendency to create characters, play them for a bit, and then want to make new characters. Eventually we each landed on a character we really loved and played them for a long stretch. For me it was Equinox and for Carl it was Shade. 

Backstory: Shade was born Sol Sable around the turn of the century. Here's my original bio blurb for him: Sol was a hard-boiled gumshoe from the era when talkies were coming in, vaudeville was going out, and all men wore hats.  Now he’s dead and a ghost. He doesn’t know why but not for lack of candidates. He was murdered and never got revenge…

He was cursed by a gypsy, but never got it lifted…He investigated Nazi experiments into psychic powers…He was a subject of government experiments into mind-altering drugs…He owes his existence to a time travel paradox…The only thing for sure is that he isn’t going away anytime soon.

Shade died an indeterminate death around the late '30s or early '40s, then came back as a ghost in Freedom City - our Kapow! game was set in the city from Mutants and Masterminds, for reasons. For about 80 years he fought crime in various ways with various partners before our campaign started. He amassed a great deal of magical artifacts and wards in his unassuming brownstone home. He hired a series of wizard assistants, both to maintain the brownstone and to try to undo the curse keeping him from the afterlife.

 

Overview:  In our campaign, Shade's magic Brownstone became the base of operations for our group of heroes, who we named the Wardens. The Brownstone - known only as such - was magically guarded, so only those who belonged there could even find it. The inside worked much like the Room of Requirement at Hogwarts: the house would reorganize itself to contain whatever rooms it needed, or to keep intruders confused and trapped, should any somehow find their way in. Shade also contributed a vehicle: a magically enhanced dirigible simply called ‘The Airship’, armed with a transmutation ray. At one point we broke into an enemy HQ by turning its wall into tapioca. The Airship wasn't very fast but it stretched space to get where it's going as if it were a supersonic jet.

Shade initially didn't know why he was a ghost, where his powers came from, or why they were so inherently terrifying no matter how he used them. This changed when we were sent back in time to the start of an alien invasion. Shade discovered that his body was used as the first host for the invasion, causing his death. The wizard who caused the invasion, hoping to achieve immortality by it, cursed Shade for intercepting the alien parasite, causing his undeath. After this incident, Shade knew how he had died and that his body lived on as 'GoodLife Sable', reanimated by alien technology. Other heroes eventually defeated GoodLife Sable by punching him through the moon, though. Like ya do.

Like you do.

The Highlights:

Playing Shade is really fun for world-weary sardonic quips. Shade is the epitome of "been there, done that". His death and seemingly eternal curse weigh on him, so while he wants to do right he has trouble seeing the brighter side of things.

The most fun arc I had was when Keith, the GM for most of Shade's run, replaced him with a villain. The Void, a reality-destroying being from beyond reality, replaced Shade after one campaign. I spent months leaving Shade in the background, declining to do hero work for ever more spurious reasons, tinkering with nebulous plans in the background.

Eventually our friend Lloyd came back for a session and since he had not seen the gradual change, it was a stark difference for him. He called out that something was wrong with Shade. That's when Keith and I sprung our trap. The Void kicked everyone out of the Brownstone and took it over. I ran the next few sessions in which the Void collided every alternate reality we'd ever visited with our own Earth and the heroes had to reconquer their own impregnable base. At the end, they saved reality, rewriting a few things along the way, so everyone's character got a little change to further their character arc in some way.

That was indeed an excellent arc and it, like the one that revealed Shade's true origins (mentioned above), show the variety and versatility of Shade as a character as well as Carl as both a player and a GM.

Game Info:

To be updated.

Legacy: 

This is less about the legacy of Shade as it is the player but when Carl nails down his vision for a PC - its story, personality, and objectives - he absolutely shines, even among an ensemble cast full of excellent players. 

Carl is currently on well-deserved hiatus from RPGing but we all hope to have him back as soon as the desire strikes him. Gaming with him is such a treat and gaming without him just isn't the same. Love ya man!

As for Shade, I am certain we haven't seen the last of Sol Sable.

Next, no character challenge is complete without a visit to the Final Frontier. Lay in coordinates and ahead Warp Factor 5 as meet the Chief Science Officer of the USS Midway - Lt. Commander XERET XEET. 

Wait...does that mean this character completes the challenge? Tune it and find out...

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Barking Alien

Thorough Thursdays : CITY OF HEROES

Prior to this post I have only mentioned City of Heroes, the Massive Multi-player Computer Role Playing Game launched by NCSOFT in 2004, a mere handful of times. It seems only a single entry with that title as a tag has ever been posted and after reading the entry, I really have not idea why that is the one place I decided to place said tag. 

That's just wrong. 

It's difficult to know exactly where to begin in describing what City of Heroes meant and means to me. 

At the time City of Heroes was released I was living with my then girlfriend, now ex-wife, and it was one of the many things we enjoyed doing together. It was very much an 'us' activity. Sure we'd both go on and play solo (by ourselves) every now and then but we generally preferred to operate as a team. 

The Midnight Hour and Lady Touche'

Illustration for a City of Heroes based

Mutants and Masterminds campaign

The Midnight Hour Returns!

One day, fairly early in our progress in the game, our dynamic duo ended up biting off more than we could chew, accidentally drawing in two huge gangs of street thugs. Just when all seemed lost, a machine gun-toting Iron Man look alike fellow showed up and helped us clean the streets of those dirty crooks. 

The player of this character who eventually become a real life friend who remains so to this day. 

When my ex-wife and I separated and divorced, I couldn't bring myself to play the game again for a very long time. Even when I did eventually go back to it, I would never stay long. I had lost my love of the game as it reminded me too much of her and better times that were now over.

Eventually some friends who had also left and gone back for various reasons got me to return from time to time and we had a blast. Sadly, the game itself had changed so much and so many other MMOs had come out to steal its thunder (namely World of Warcraft) that while fun to return to periodically, it just wasn't the same. 

Recently the operators of a private server released the Source Code for City of Heroes, allowing any individual to host their own servers and start the game up again and indeed people have. I jumped at the chance to tussle with Hellions on the mean streets of Paragon City and try to rebuild (or even improve on) some of my favorite old characters. 

This looks like a job for...

Captain Superpower!

City of Heroes was always different from other MMOs in my experience because it was a game for Superhero fans by people who clearly understood Superheroes. While you definitely ran into the typical MMORPG players, you more often than not ran into people like yourself; players who made fun characters in cool costumes with names like Mister Patriot, Neutrino Woman, and Tachyon Flare, who were stoked to fly over the world presented, swooping down to save a citizen from a horde of zombies or do battle with clockwork robots.

That same feeling remains. While I am not the die hard MMO fan I was when City of Heroes was at its height, it was City of Heroes that got me into MMOs and made me a fan, so I can't help but smile as I sprint through Atlas Park, run along the elevated train tracks, and leap around staring at all the great costume designs my fellow heroes are sporting. 

If you were a fan of this awesome game back in the day, come on back and feel the rush of nostalgia. If you've never tried it but you are a fan of Superheroes and Computer Games, what are you waiting for? It's free to download and play and crime isn't going to fight itself!

Tell them Starguard sent you!

Verily!

Up, up, and away!

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Barking Alien

No Endgame In Sight

There has been some talk on various blogs lately about the 'Endgame' in Role Playing Games. Generally speaking, by 'RPGs', what they are primarily referring to is Dungeons & Dragons or one of its brethern. As such, it should come to no one's surprise that I don't share quite the same view point as others do.

Go figure.

I've been playing table top RPGs since the Summer of 77' and the first time I ever heard the term 'Endgame' was very likely the Fall of 2004. This was when I tried my first Massive Multiplayer Online RPG (which was City of Heroes by the way).

See, I was always under the impression, naive as it may seem today, that there was no 'Endgame' for table top, pencil-paper-dice RPGs. That was partly the point of them actually. Sure, some games have and even need an 'Endgame', like Chess or World of Warcraft, where you have essentially won or achieved sufficient success to the point where there is nothing else to do. How could that possibly happen in an true RPG?

Additionally, even MMORPGs have Endgame Content. That is, once you reach the maximum level achievable in a game, there is still stuff to occupy your time without making up a new character. We don't have that automatically in traditional RPGs by their very nature? Isn't there still stuff for a high level PC to do in your campaigns?

First, let's truly define 'Endgame' shall we?

According to Wikipedia:

End game is the ending scenario of a particular game; when and how it will end, most prominently used in chess. Derived from that Endgame, Endgames, or End Game may refer to:

1. The final stage of an extended process or course of events.
2. (chess) The part of a chess game in which there are few pieces left.

OK, so now that we know what an Endgame is, do traditional RPGs have them?

While it is true that Class and Level based games often define a top or maximum level, many also have an experience point system pattern that is easily extrapolated to raise PC levels 'beyond the maximum'.

Putting levels aside, assuming you are playing a game with a maximum listed level of 11 (original edition of Advanced D&D) or 20 (D&D 3.0) and you and your fellow players have all reached that level with your PCs, does that mean you're done. Is there no 'Endgame Content'?

Check this out from the World of Warcraft Wiki regarding Endgame Content:

In most MMORPGs, this occurs when the players hit the maximum level or skill and look for new ways to keep themselves busy now that they're off the levelling treadmill.

In EverQuest and Dark Age of Camelot for instance, the part of the end-game consists of hours of raiding extremely challenging locations in an attempt to earn prestige, alternate advancement points, and "phat lewt". Meridian 59, Ultima Online, Dark Age of Camelot, Shadowbane, and World of Warcraft all attempt to provide an end-game consisting of PvP activities: you have nothing to lose, no real risk, and can gain prestige by killing other challenging players.

Historically, a game company without a solid plan for an end-game risks alienating its player base. The end-game should grow and change over time, to keep things interesting for the players who still enjoy participating after "winning the game."

The term "End-game" is not entirely accurate considering that World of Warcraft is a multiplayer world and does not "end" in the same sense as a traditional video game. It merely refers to the most challenging content.

Endgame Content has been notably expanded with the release of the latest expansion as of this writing, The Mists of Pandaria.

Now then, what I am really getting at is this...

At one point in D&D's history it was not uncommon for a high level PC to set up a castle, attract followers and before long he or she would be ruler of their own little domain. Two questions pop into my mind. The first is, "What happened to that?", which I'm sure has been answered at some point by James Mal at GROGNARDIA or Jeff Rients. The second and more important question to me is, "And then what happened?".

A story can certainly end (and many of the best ones do) but there is no reason a game should ever have to end. Post castle and land development your D&D campaign isn't over but rather just beginning in a different format. It is now a political and economic game with resource management and military strategy elements. Sadly, I don't think the makers of D&D ever really developed that game but should have as a continuation of the game they had.

While I intend to go into this in further detail next month (Barking Alien is turning traitor in December and focusing on his D&D campaign universe for the entire month!), I will say that this not only happened in one of my D&D-But-Not campaigns, it has happened repeatedly.

Also, numerous players have retired PCs in order to play their offspring, proteges or simply heroes in their employ. Many times players will switch between playing their original PC, now a high level, powerful and prestigous patron and their much less experienced character, newly employed by the aforementioned mover and shaker.

In this way, characters played as far back as 30 years ago are still active in some fashion. They're not gone, their story isn't over. They command armies, lead nations and assemble new adventurers for various quests. My world of Aerth has continued with roughly the same continuity (though we do sometimes jump around the timeline a bit) since 1983. If my ex-wife or any of my old friends showed up at my game table this Saturday that could play their old characters, their characters' kids or any number of other characters in an ever continuing saga of this world and it's people.

To me, there simply is no end game.

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Barking Alien