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[emo samurai]

The people coming to him are afraid of going to the company psychiatrist. There's a huge conflict of interest thing going on with most of the paternalistic corps. If they go to the shrink, they're clearly unfit for work, since the company has access to his records, and they're taking time off. Plus, they're taking up resources, since he's paid by the hour. On top of that, they can bribe him to give dig up dirt on them; this is really their only outlet for their emotions.

[Kanada Ten]

[emo samurai]

"Therapy... is that some new teen slang for LSD that I haven't heard about?"

[James McMurray]

I used to be, way back in the day. But even then you couldn't have talked me into following someone to meet a total stranger so he could muck around in my brain.

There have to be thousands of qualified psychiatrists in Seattle that aren't associated with a corporation and don't require you to jump through hoops just to talk with them. Someone paranoid enough to not talk to their own company about things is probably not very likely to run all around town spilling their secrets to different people every week.

I'm not saying it's a horrible idea, just that it's too unnecessarily intricate. If all you're trying to do is hide your face get yourself an office somewhere and always show up to work with a latex skinmask or disguise spell up.

If someone wants to catch him doing it they'll just follow a patient anyway.

[emo samurai]

Nah... the other players will allow it... or PERISH!!!

Plus, this way, it makes it easy for there to be an aura of mystique, as if they're stepping into a world that only they really have access to... which is mostly true. Ironically, this makes it more comfortable in a way. If they were in an office, they'd feel as if they were under a microscope; if they were in a park sitting across a person who may or may not be a precociously understanding magically active elven girl or wizened old man with a wooden cane, they feel special.

[James McMurray]

Ummm... Ok. :)

[emo samurai]

It WORKS!!! He's very much a fairy godfather; he hasn't really given up the role despite his leaving China with a complete lack of faith in his ability to help people be happy.

[James McMurray]

Ummm... Ok. :)

I'm not doubting his ability to help people, especially if he's got some skills in psychiatry. I just don't understand the methodology involved.

[emo samurai]

It just seems more personal, not just in the way that he tailors his sessions to his patients, but also that they're hiding in plain sight; although people can see and hear them, they are shown that they are free and that the world isn't as mundane and evil as they fear it is.

Ever see Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman? It's sort of like that, except without the vampires, the man-eating bridges, and people who knife you in the subways.

[James McMurray]

[emo samurai]

Hear of Neil Gaiman? He had a lot of stuff where the fantastical was forced into the mundane and grungy; that's where my character's psychiatric style is drawn from.

[James McMurray]

I'll take your word for it. :)

[emo samurai]

He is the BEST. I'm surprised you haven't heard of him. He's written a lot of other stuff, like The Sandman, perhaps the greatest comic story ever written.

[James McMurray]

The Sandman as in group of gods that bickered worse then my family? I read a few of those. They were good, but I wouldn't classify them as the best. Luckily for us "best" is a completely subjective term. :)

[emo samurai]

The thing is, though, if it was an objective term, then you'd be forced to admit that it IS the best. And it IS.

[James McMurray]

Oddly enough one of my roommates rented a movie from Neil Gaimen shortly after you metnioned him: Mirrormask. Luckily for me I had other things to do or I might have gotten bored after I walked out on that crap.

[Glyph]

I've been through a few of the trade paperbacks at the library. He's okay, but too much nastiness solely for shock value, and sometimes he seems a wee bit too impressed with himself. Nothing he's done comes close to knocking Watchmen or any of the other biggies off their pedastals, in my opinion.


Now, back to your character. You seem to be falling into one of the traps of running a PC and GMing at the same time. What your PC does will work, because you have decided ahead of time that it will. You need to allow the possibility of failure for this guy, or he really will be a Mary Sue. Especially something like this, which can go wrong or have complications in so many ways. Maybe a corporate exec has second thoughts about blabbing his dark secrets to this stranger, and hires runners to eliminate him (that could even be how the group meets him). Maybe someone he was advising goes on a sudden killing spree, and he has to find out whether it was his fault (maybe the killer actually got possessed by a bug spirit, to tie in to your initial adventure, and the group can clear his name). Don't be afraid to have this guy screw up, or even to have bad things happen to him undeservedly. You can get all kinds of plot hooks that way.

[emo samurai]

Of COURSE that'll happen. I never thought of that; that's fucking awesome.

And I've never seen MirrorMask.

[emo samurai]

He'll be really distant and spotty at first; the first time I reveal anything about my character's past to my players (not their characters) is when he talks to his hellhounds. They'll sit around a fire he has them start and he'll talk about himself in the third person in a very fairy-tale sounding story. He'll constantly refer to himself as the "young man" until he learns of how those people he helped elope ended up; then, he'll say "Though his face was still young, and his mind as quick as it had ever been, he had, in a way that one could not quite see but could feel in one's bones, grown old." It'll get very sad from there and he'll fall asleep outside surrounded by the dogs.

I don't know how I'll reveal his past to the characters.

[James McMurray]

Maybe, I don't know, have someone see him talking to the dogs? Why introduce the past to the players at all until it appears in game? Especially in a monologue story form (unless they go for that).

[emo samurai]

Hmm... it depends on how chummy everyone gets with my character. Maybe not until his parents find him and try to kidnap him. I think I'll end it with "He ran away with a broken heart never to be seen again... except, you know, by you guys." I'm not sure what looking at his obviously emotional backstory with such irony would accomplish, though, and I'm not sure he'd feel comfortable talking about it in those terms to anybody but his dogs, unless he became really good friends with a few of the characters.

Shen is not a happy man.

[emo samurai]

How would I segue into a bunch of campfire stories told by my character, anyway?

[James McMurray]

Get him really drunk right before a meet and have him just start spouting them out? Or invite everyone on a camping trip. :)

[emo samurai]

Maybe for a wilderness excursion; I'll wait for one that takes us into the forest.

[emo samurai]

I played a little of Awakened Worlds; it says Focus Addiction happens when you use more than twice your magic in foci. Does this mean have them activated or simply bonded? This is important to my character.