Post by Bannanachair on May 5, 2017 11:39:38 GMT -4
First, this is for discussing characters that were memorable in systematic games like D&D or Pathfinder as opposed to just general roleplaying. This can be for characters that you played or that someone else played as well. Death probably knows all but a few of these characters, and the rest of you may or may not know some of them. So, starting with characters that I played and in roughly chronological-ish order, though I might get a handful of them muddled up. I know that it feels like I'm dwelling on the negative of some characters but I've had a lot of bad experiences over the years; I'm trying to balance it out as much as possible with great characters who I remember fondly, though.
Hardek Emeralddagger
Hardek Emeralddagger was my first ever D&D character. I imagine that a number of you have heard the stereotype of the guy who gets D&D, realizes that it's a multiplayer game and then forces his younger brothers to play with him because he has no friends? Well, Hardek Emeralddagger was my Dwarf Paladin of Moradin in a Keep on the Shadowfell game DMed by my dad that fell apart not because of party infighting (though there was plenty of that) but because my brothers wouldn't play and my dad, the DM, wouldn't let me force them to. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time and, in fairness, I did play a number of sessions as Hardek, managing to level up to level 2 and rescuing that goblin fella Splurg or whatever his name is before the campaign ended.
I didn't have any roleplay ideas in mind for him, nor do I remember a bloody thing about his stats aside from race and class, but I've always wanted to revisit a Dwarf Paladin with more experience in how to play D&D and roleplay.
Gnyrn
in a campaign DMed by Hwen, Heroes against Evil or something like that was the name of the campaign, I played as Gnyrn, a gnoll ranger with a hyena animal companion. Gnyrn's tribe turned away from the worship of Yeenoghu and instead revered Melora as their patron deity, though they were later slaughtered by adherents of Yeenoghu. Gnyrn and his hyena companion Braylon survived and he grew up savage, using just his flail and his pet hyena to survive. He eventually joined the party somehow and befriended some members of the party, including a female archer ranger elf and Tip, Tails's character who will be discussed in more detail later. When Gnyrn was level three Hwen put the party up against a paragon-tier solo and you can imagine how that went for the character. That was one of multiple reasons I had a falling out with Hwen.
I doubt I'll ever play Gnyrn again. It's not that he wasn't a fun character to play; he was an awesome character. It's just that Gnyrn is a curveball and I'm not 100% sure about whether he'll ever fit properly into any campaign I'll play in the future. That said, if anyone wants to do a one-shot with me and explicitly requests that I play a character like this I might dust off Gnyrn's CS, though I'm more likely to write up a new character entirely. That said, Tails, if you're up for a Gnyrn/Tip reunion in a game run by someone else I'd be up for that.
Orryn Mankur
Every character I'm describing seems to be a disaster story instead of a fun story and Orryn is no exception. Orryn Mankur was originally written up as a secondary character for Hwen's campaign, but we fell out and I never got to play him. He was then a gnome bard in one of Tails's campaigns (Khyber's Harvest or The Oneshot Chronicles, I think) and honestly he was a bad fit for both the campaign and the party. I originally envisioned Orryn as just being the traveling bard that the party travels with and something of a mischievous trickster, thought of as entertainment by the rest of the party and supposedly there to chronicle the stories of the heroes of that party while secretly being just as crucial to their success as anyone else. What eventually ended up happening was that LNG's character, Ansis Raham, kept deciding to put Orryn in the middle of the combat and kept screwing up basically all attempts I had made to strategize, so everything that I wanted to do with Orryn I was unable to do. It was later revealed that Ansis Raham was lying to the party the whole time and actually was a changeling with a different name and by that stage I just lost it - this guy kept basically nearly killing me and using me as a human shield and now he's not even who he says he is? He's clearly the enemy, I thought, and thus tried to kill him. Therefore the entire party turned against me.
In my defense it sucks having an idea for a character in mind and then not even halfway through the first adventure having that entire concept shattered by another character who turned out to be lying all along. In LNG's defense I overreacted way too goddam much and should have been more open with the rest of the party about the type of character I wanted to play. I really like the concept of the character and will likely try a similar characterization to my original intention sometime eventually, though I doubt I'll call him Orryn Mankur - that name is tainted in my mind by tragedy and I doubt anyone in that game would want to play with a character named Orryn Mankur again due to similar associations. Additionally, I may reuse the roleplay concept using a different set of stats.
Sergeant Donaar Patrin
Finally a character who didn't end in tragedy (mostly)! Sergeant Donaar Patrin was a character in Tails's Oneshot Chronicles, I think, and he was a Dragonborn Warlord who I remember because he used a halberd. He was an intelligent, educated warrior well-versed in military strategy and history. Aside from that he was basically just a stat block with a name due to the fact that it was a one shot game. He was mechanically a fun character to play, though. Now, there are two main caveats with this character: One was that even though it's a one shot I feel as if his story was left unresolved. He was kidnapped by a beholder or something at the very end and left a hastily scrawled letter of warning behind - that bothered me because I had hoped for a happy ending for him and he didn't even get to fight to try to survive. The second thing relates to a specific use of his fire breath that stuck with me. I remember arguing with Tails about using it around a corner - Tails said I couldn't because it's basically the equivalent of firing at a brick wall and I said that it got three enemies and that Donaar should know that. Retrospectively we were both too stupid to acknowledge the actual solution - that is, give the enemies superior cover in that situation.
Given that I only played Donaar for one session and that he was such a fun character to play I feel as if I would definitely play him again in a full campaign. Given his personal statistics and weapon preferences and the options available for higher levels I can think of a million interesting ways to roleplay this particular character - he'd be perfect for leading large-scale military campaigns, court intrigue, he'd almost certainly have an avid interest in the secrets of ancient Arkhosia, etc.. If there's any character who I played in the past who I would want to reboot and play again it is Donaar Patrin.
Hwen's Wererat
The first character played by another player who I remember vividly is a wererat played by Hwen in my Winterpond campaign which I played way back in 2014 or something. Lego and/or Perry (if Perry still goes here) may remember this guy, and I think I mentioned him once or twice to Tails in conversation, but this guy was basically 100% a homebrew creation of Hwen. The wererat race was created by Hwen, and most importantly, he homebrewed the class as well, creating a new martial striker class called the Sellsword whose class feature was basically "enemy defenses don't apply to me ever" and who had at-wills that included up to 2|W| of damage. Needless to say he was ridiculously overpowered and this was long before I learned to say "no" as a DM (something which I still have trouble with to this day). The entire party could be struggling against a group of enemies without Hwen's wererat breaking a sweat and so I asked him, at the end of the adventure, to play a different character who wasn't homebrewed. This is why I limit player choices so much, by the way, just in case anyone finds me a bit restrictive - I want to avoid getting such an overpowered character once again.
Hwen's next character
Hwen's next character was a piece of shit. I wanted to DM a heroic campaign; Hwen wanted to play a character that was at least neutral, very nearly evil, and who had no drive at all to be an adventurer. Basically Hwen's next character joined the party immediately after the Kobold Town adventure and they were hired to deal with some bandit who was also a deserter of the Winterpond royal guard or something like that. The bandit was stopping people on the highway between Winterpond and somewhere else (I honestly forget where) and stealing their money. The logical course of action would be to arrest them and present them for trial, right? No, of course not - Hwen proposed a plan that involved property damage, theft, arson and murder, and somehow got the rest of the party convinced to go along with it. My memories are almost certainly inaccurate this far back but this is at least what I remember happening. I didn't want to DM that kind of game and so the game fell apart. Did I mention that I had a falling out with Hwen?
Tip
It's late 2014, maybe early 2015, and I was playing as Gnyrn in Hwen's Heroes Against Evil campaign. Hwen wanted more people for his game and so I contacted a friend of mine who I knew through the forums and asked if he wanted to play D&D. This individual is Tails and that's how I introduced him to this great game, and now he's one of the closest friends I've ever had (though I honestly don't remember if he was or wasn't before Hwen's game). Like most people who are new to the game, Tails at the time needed some assistance writing his CS, of which the level 1 version still exists on my myth-weavers account. This character was Tip, a warforged fighter with a spear built into his arm, and he was named after the tip of the spear. Despite this fond memory of the character I have one memory even fonder of him - the regular banter between him and Gnyrn and the friendship that was building between the feral Gnoll who grew up isolated from society and the warforged, a creation designed not for friendship and metaphor but simply to do the commands of it's master (likewise, Tails, I bet that your memories of Gnyrn are similar to these). Then Gnyrn was brutally slaughtered by a solo monster ten levels higher than he was and I left Hwen's game angrily and haven't really spoken with Hwen since then - not because I've been avoiding him (though for a few months I initially was) but rather because our paths have simply never crossed since then.
Tails, because I know you're reading this and wondering why, if I have such fond memories of Tip from Hwen's campaign I wouldn't allow him in my own game, the answers are twofold: First, warforged simply don't make sense in my campaign setting. They can work well in some settings but I can never find ways to write them into my games without completely breaking the logic of the world or changing their story to such an extent that they become unrecognizable. The second reason is that I remember Tip as Gnyrn's friend and I feel it would disrespect the gnoll's memory to separate such a memorable Batman and Robin duo.
Alana Undolond
Another character from Hwen's game I mostly remember this character for having an interesting relationship with Gnyrn. She was another ranger, though more civilized than Gnyrn, and used a bow and arrow and also worshipped Melora and also had a close friendship with Gnyrn. I unfortunately can't remember who played her. Maybe it was Mikeyman12ash? I don't really remember off the top of my head, but I remember her wry, cutting comments on some of Gnyrn's more bestial behaviours (and that I accidentally broke into her bedchamber once but that it wasn't sexual).
Ansis Raham
Honestly you can just reread what I said about Orryn Mankur to get a general picture of this guy; I wrote thousands of words already and don't want to waste more on this argument that has long since finished.
Hardek Emeralddagger
Hardek Emeralddagger was my first ever D&D character. I imagine that a number of you have heard the stereotype of the guy who gets D&D, realizes that it's a multiplayer game and then forces his younger brothers to play with him because he has no friends? Well, Hardek Emeralddagger was my Dwarf Paladin of Moradin in a Keep on the Shadowfell game DMed by my dad that fell apart not because of party infighting (though there was plenty of that) but because my brothers wouldn't play and my dad, the DM, wouldn't let me force them to. I would have been 12 or 13 at the time and, in fairness, I did play a number of sessions as Hardek, managing to level up to level 2 and rescuing that goblin fella Splurg or whatever his name is before the campaign ended.
I didn't have any roleplay ideas in mind for him, nor do I remember a bloody thing about his stats aside from race and class, but I've always wanted to revisit a Dwarf Paladin with more experience in how to play D&D and roleplay.
Gnyrn
in a campaign DMed by Hwen, Heroes against Evil or something like that was the name of the campaign, I played as Gnyrn, a gnoll ranger with a hyena animal companion. Gnyrn's tribe turned away from the worship of Yeenoghu and instead revered Melora as their patron deity, though they were later slaughtered by adherents of Yeenoghu. Gnyrn and his hyena companion Braylon survived and he grew up savage, using just his flail and his pet hyena to survive. He eventually joined the party somehow and befriended some members of the party, including a female archer ranger elf and Tip, Tails's character who will be discussed in more detail later. When Gnyrn was level three Hwen put the party up against a paragon-tier solo and you can imagine how that went for the character. That was one of multiple reasons I had a falling out with Hwen.
I doubt I'll ever play Gnyrn again. It's not that he wasn't a fun character to play; he was an awesome character. It's just that Gnyrn is a curveball and I'm not 100% sure about whether he'll ever fit properly into any campaign I'll play in the future. That said, if anyone wants to do a one-shot with me and explicitly requests that I play a character like this I might dust off Gnyrn's CS, though I'm more likely to write up a new character entirely. That said, Tails, if you're up for a Gnyrn/Tip reunion in a game run by someone else I'd be up for that.
Orryn Mankur
Every character I'm describing seems to be a disaster story instead of a fun story and Orryn is no exception. Orryn Mankur was originally written up as a secondary character for Hwen's campaign, but we fell out and I never got to play him. He was then a gnome bard in one of Tails's campaigns (Khyber's Harvest or The Oneshot Chronicles, I think) and honestly he was a bad fit for both the campaign and the party. I originally envisioned Orryn as just being the traveling bard that the party travels with and something of a mischievous trickster, thought of as entertainment by the rest of the party and supposedly there to chronicle the stories of the heroes of that party while secretly being just as crucial to their success as anyone else. What eventually ended up happening was that LNG's character, Ansis Raham, kept deciding to put Orryn in the middle of the combat and kept screwing up basically all attempts I had made to strategize, so everything that I wanted to do with Orryn I was unable to do. It was later revealed that Ansis Raham was lying to the party the whole time and actually was a changeling with a different name and by that stage I just lost it - this guy kept basically nearly killing me and using me as a human shield and now he's not even who he says he is? He's clearly the enemy, I thought, and thus tried to kill him. Therefore the entire party turned against me.
In my defense it sucks having an idea for a character in mind and then not even halfway through the first adventure having that entire concept shattered by another character who turned out to be lying all along. In LNG's defense I overreacted way too goddam much and should have been more open with the rest of the party about the type of character I wanted to play. I really like the concept of the character and will likely try a similar characterization to my original intention sometime eventually, though I doubt I'll call him Orryn Mankur - that name is tainted in my mind by tragedy and I doubt anyone in that game would want to play with a character named Orryn Mankur again due to similar associations. Additionally, I may reuse the roleplay concept using a different set of stats.
Sergeant Donaar Patrin
Finally a character who didn't end in tragedy (mostly)! Sergeant Donaar Patrin was a character in Tails's Oneshot Chronicles, I think, and he was a Dragonborn Warlord who I remember because he used a halberd. He was an intelligent, educated warrior well-versed in military strategy and history. Aside from that he was basically just a stat block with a name due to the fact that it was a one shot game. He was mechanically a fun character to play, though. Now, there are two main caveats with this character: One was that even though it's a one shot I feel as if his story was left unresolved. He was kidnapped by a beholder or something at the very end and left a hastily scrawled letter of warning behind - that bothered me because I had hoped for a happy ending for him and he didn't even get to fight to try to survive. The second thing relates to a specific use of his fire breath that stuck with me. I remember arguing with Tails about using it around a corner - Tails said I couldn't because it's basically the equivalent of firing at a brick wall and I said that it got three enemies and that Donaar should know that. Retrospectively we were both too stupid to acknowledge the actual solution - that is, give the enemies superior cover in that situation.
Given that I only played Donaar for one session and that he was such a fun character to play I feel as if I would definitely play him again in a full campaign. Given his personal statistics and weapon preferences and the options available for higher levels I can think of a million interesting ways to roleplay this particular character - he'd be perfect for leading large-scale military campaigns, court intrigue, he'd almost certainly have an avid interest in the secrets of ancient Arkhosia, etc.. If there's any character who I played in the past who I would want to reboot and play again it is Donaar Patrin.
Hwen's Wererat
The first character played by another player who I remember vividly is a wererat played by Hwen in my Winterpond campaign which I played way back in 2014 or something. Lego and/or Perry (if Perry still goes here) may remember this guy, and I think I mentioned him once or twice to Tails in conversation, but this guy was basically 100% a homebrew creation of Hwen. The wererat race was created by Hwen, and most importantly, he homebrewed the class as well, creating a new martial striker class called the Sellsword whose class feature was basically "enemy defenses don't apply to me ever" and who had at-wills that included up to 2|W| of damage. Needless to say he was ridiculously overpowered and this was long before I learned to say "no" as a DM (something which I still have trouble with to this day). The entire party could be struggling against a group of enemies without Hwen's wererat breaking a sweat and so I asked him, at the end of the adventure, to play a different character who wasn't homebrewed. This is why I limit player choices so much, by the way, just in case anyone finds me a bit restrictive - I want to avoid getting such an overpowered character once again.
Hwen's next character
Hwen's next character was a piece of shit. I wanted to DM a heroic campaign; Hwen wanted to play a character that was at least neutral, very nearly evil, and who had no drive at all to be an adventurer. Basically Hwen's next character joined the party immediately after the Kobold Town adventure and they were hired to deal with some bandit who was also a deserter of the Winterpond royal guard or something like that. The bandit was stopping people on the highway between Winterpond and somewhere else (I honestly forget where) and stealing their money. The logical course of action would be to arrest them and present them for trial, right? No, of course not - Hwen proposed a plan that involved property damage, theft, arson and murder, and somehow got the rest of the party convinced to go along with it. My memories are almost certainly inaccurate this far back but this is at least what I remember happening. I didn't want to DM that kind of game and so the game fell apart. Did I mention that I had a falling out with Hwen?
Tip
It's late 2014, maybe early 2015, and I was playing as Gnyrn in Hwen's Heroes Against Evil campaign. Hwen wanted more people for his game and so I contacted a friend of mine who I knew through the forums and asked if he wanted to play D&D. This individual is Tails and that's how I introduced him to this great game, and now he's one of the closest friends I've ever had (though I honestly don't remember if he was or wasn't before Hwen's game). Like most people who are new to the game, Tails at the time needed some assistance writing his CS, of which the level 1 version still exists on my myth-weavers account. This character was Tip, a warforged fighter with a spear built into his arm, and he was named after the tip of the spear. Despite this fond memory of the character I have one memory even fonder of him - the regular banter between him and Gnyrn and the friendship that was building between the feral Gnoll who grew up isolated from society and the warforged, a creation designed not for friendship and metaphor but simply to do the commands of it's master (likewise, Tails, I bet that your memories of Gnyrn are similar to these). Then Gnyrn was brutally slaughtered by a solo monster ten levels higher than he was and I left Hwen's game angrily and haven't really spoken with Hwen since then - not because I've been avoiding him (though for a few months I initially was) but rather because our paths have simply never crossed since then.
Tails, because I know you're reading this and wondering why, if I have such fond memories of Tip from Hwen's campaign I wouldn't allow him in my own game, the answers are twofold: First, warforged simply don't make sense in my campaign setting. They can work well in some settings but I can never find ways to write them into my games without completely breaking the logic of the world or changing their story to such an extent that they become unrecognizable. The second reason is that I remember Tip as Gnyrn's friend and I feel it would disrespect the gnoll's memory to separate such a memorable Batman and Robin duo.
Alana Undolond
Another character from Hwen's game I mostly remember this character for having an interesting relationship with Gnyrn. She was another ranger, though more civilized than Gnyrn, and used a bow and arrow and also worshipped Melora and also had a close friendship with Gnyrn. I unfortunately can't remember who played her. Maybe it was Mikeyman12ash? I don't really remember off the top of my head, but I remember her wry, cutting comments on some of Gnyrn's more bestial behaviours (and that I accidentally broke into her bedchamber once but that it wasn't sexual).
Ansis Raham
Honestly you can just reread what I said about Orryn Mankur to get a general picture of this guy; I wrote thousands of words already and don't want to waste more on this argument that has long since finished.
