Emo Samurai's dedicated character page. Options

[Dranem]

[Kremlin KOA]

wow
A female shoots Dranem down and he turns into a whipped puppy,

Dude, stop hitting on fangirl

[Dranem]

I'm not hitting on FanGirl, unlike some of the sexually repressed gamers on this board that crave female attention, I'm a happily married man.

Though I do appreciate FanGirls oppinion, as she strikes me to be a decent person, so yes, I felt I owed her an appology.

[emo samurai]

[Piecemeal]

wow... all that negative emo-shen :D was put to rest rather quick. i am duely impressed.

i have to give props to Emo just for sheer interest in giving a character a thorough background. it's a shamefully overlooked facet; i am far too accustomed to being surrounded with cookie cutters.

the background is a bit grand for my tastes, but that really doesnt matter, does it. what i'd like to say is 'thank you' for being an individual that wants to bring more to a game than just a huge bag of dice.

[Glyph]

I like the latest revision, because it gets rid of a lot of the cliched elements, making him a more naive and likeable character instead of the old "I'm cynical and everyone else around me is a sheep."

GMPC's are still rife with potential pitfalls, though. It can be hard not to use OOC knowledge, or fudge things to help out that character, or have other NPCs who are there just for the GMPC to out-argue or otherwise get the better of, or make the GMPC's story part of the central plot.

[emo samurai]

I won't be GMing the games I play in, so there's that out of the way. If he appears in any of the games I GM, the rolls will be made in plain sight, and that's if he appears in person. Most of the time, he'll just show up over their comlinks, if at all. The only appearance that I plan for him to have while I GM is when they extract the hellhounds and need somewhere to dump them.

And even if his parents come back to get him, this is no different from the way I'll play the backstories of the other characters. I also hope that someone will GM the Little Trouble in Big China game.

He'll have traveled the world on his laundered money before deciding to "settle" in the Salish; he won't even live in his house most of the time maybe until he gets the hellhounds.

Also, one of the things that will come from his past will be his role as the village storyteller; when he gets the hellhounds, he'll tell them lots of stories.

As for the creepy pet mage, he'll be responsible for maybe 80% of the breakups, with his surreptitious mind control and everything. I think my character would REALLY love to kill him.

My character will spend a lot of time making a force 10 power focus, the formula of which will be given to his magical group in order to basically pay off his dues FOREVER. The power focus will be a nondescript ring of pure orihalcum; it'll be eggshell blue or whatever color orihalcum is, and it'll be smooth, sort of like the One Ring, except without the fire writing or indestructibility. It'll also be a mood ring of real ultimate power, shining when he's happy and being crisscrossed with crimson when he's mega-super pissed.

He'll also have anchored Combat Sense, Anti-Bullet Barrier, and Improved Reflexes spells that he'll have bought off of a koradji with a spell formula for Detect Magical Components that he made and lots of orihalcum.

How do spell anchors work in SR3, anyway? Same for Anti-Bullet Barrier.

[emo samurai]

Dude, has anyone seen this Something Awful parody of cyberpunk as a whole? So much of it rings true; Yakuza clone assassins, mega samurai, Japan buying up the entire west coast. Then again, Shadowrun was always careful to weave in some amount of plausibility to the setting; they don't buy up the west coast, they conquer it when asked for military aid, which, given the current situation in Iraq, seems completely plausible.

[emo samurai]

He'll basically be the opposite of what you would think a shadowrunner should be. If he exposes a corp executive's cheating on his wife, he'll invis himself and talk to the corper in public, asking him details about his life and trying to understand the man. This will also basically be how he gains the trust of his fixer, sitting him down on a couch and asking him about his past. He'll have a spell just for this purpose; I'll call it "Tell me how you feel." It'll be Line of Sight.

[James McMurray]

Magically forcing someone to tell you their secrets isn't a very good way to earn trust.

[emo samurai]

It doesn't really force people to tell you their secrets; it just dredges up what's eating you. It's more of a "know how you feel" spell. He'll focus on the more human aspects of the Shadowrun world.

I think I'll also give him psychometry when Street Magic comes out. He'll be useful both to the group and to his patients; he'll be a street shrink!!! I think that's a great concept; the shadows already provide guns, sex, and information; I don't think this is too big of a jump. I imagine a lot of corporate shrinks are very sterile, methodical, and unengaged; and if the employees go to the corporate shrink, they'll look unfit for work.

[Moon-Hawk]

[emo samurai]

It doesn't make you say anything; it just makes you remember everything that bothers you; what you really mean when you laugh at somebody, why you work, what made you who you are. What happens to the person's more like a shamanic vision quest than anything else.

[Moon-Hawk]

Ah, I see the distinction, now. Yeah, that seems considerably more moral/therapudic and less of a brain-rape-for-your-own-good mentality.

[emo samurai]

Yeah, he doesn't do that. He's much more human than, like, 95% of the people in the world and about 50% of the animals. He doesn't focus on making you "okay," he focuses on making you true to yourself, and possibly others.

[James McMurray]

But is he more human than Lieutenant Data?

[emo samurai]

Even with the chip, yes.

[Dranem]

There's a reason why most people bury the feelings of what bothers them...
What's this spell suppose to do to someone if those 'bad feelings' you dredge up lead them to anger? Distaste? Insanity?

Or they could just bottle up and walk away, you can't walk everywhere they go invisible without eventually meeting up with a magical threat/security of some kind.

[Glyph]

A "know the inner truth about yourself" spell could be therapeutic, but for a lot of people, it could be traumatic. And if the inner truth about themselves isn't pleasant, then they might not really be too kindly disposed towards the person who "enlightened" them. I mean, people use all kinds of faulty logic and rationalizations to maintain their security beliefs and/or keep themselves from facing certain truths. Messing with that is something that could be extremely unpredicatable.

Not that that's bad at all! I think such a spell could be used to create all kinds of plot hooks and NPC reactions, based on things being dredged up from people's unconsciousness, for good or for bad.

[emo samurai]

Hmm... I won't do the "walk into corporate enclave" thing until I've mastered masking; and eventually, if I help them with their inner feelings, even if they're bad, it will eventually turn good. And who can really say it's really them that's living their lives if they constantly live as somebody who doesn't have those feelings?

[emo samurai]

Shen will basically have his fixer spread the word on his personal "street therapy" business. They will meet him in random places in the city with low security but low crime, have his bound spirit of man lead them to their meeting place, which will be different every session, and speak to them while a summoned spirit of man sustains a Physical Mask spell on him. He'll talk to them in random places; sometimes a Barrens dive, sometimes in a bar's back room that he rents, sometimes in the park. With their permission, he'll cast the "tell me how you feel" spell on them, or have his spirit of man do it. He'll look different every time, sometimes, young, sometimes old, all of it depending on what would fit the patient.

[emo samurai]

What do you think about his side business? Think he'll get caught?

[James McMurray]

How does he get them to meet him? And why does he care if he's caught If he's doing it with their permission?

[emo samurai]

So that no one ever knows his face; he's very paranoid. But I think he does good work, and along with his Shadowlands blog, I think I'll post his conversations with damaged goods on the IC forums.

[James McMurray]

Why would someone follow a spirit to meet a total stranger and then say "sure, you can mess with my mind magically?"