When the new folks over at #RPGaDay thought up today's question, "My Proudest Character Moment," I reckon they felt proud of themselves. It would be an easy question that most people could tell a short story about, rather than a quick phrase or one word answer.
My problem? I'm essentially a full-time GM. Outside of some Delta Green, CoC, or Toon one shot characters over the last decade, I'm creating opportunities for characters to have their moment.
So I will go back to my youth, where, if I can mangle a popular movie quote, "Mr ViscounEric, you were born to 'Get it'."
It was the early 90's and one of our earliest forays into Rifts, well before the game's library required industrial-strength shelves. The group created the normal assemblage of gratuitous explosion machines, while I built a Cyber-Knight. Mind you, a cyber-knight can rip apart a traditional armor battalion without blinking an eye, and given that we were playing with the new Mechanoids book, once the the Glitter Boy's Boom Gun went off, I might as well have been a Rogue Scholar... or the Fry Cook OCC.
While the GM and four other players swapping out artillery barrages, I scoped around the abandoned farm the fight was taking place at, only to discover that it wasn't as abandoned as anticipated. The entire family that had lived on the farm was huddled in a half-basement under the barn.
And the trouble was heading in that direction.
With two other PCs knocked out of fight for a few rounds, the Mechanoids began searching for the little cyber-knight that had run away. One machine ripped off the roof to the barn, and soon it was only me between these poor civilians and instant death.
I shielded them from explosions and fought tooth and nail with the Mechanoids until the reinforcements could recover and get over there. Farm buildings we could rebuild in a matter of hourse using our technology. No one had the power to bring back civilians from a Mega-Damage attack.
In the end, we won the day, the Mechanoids were driven back and the farmers suffered a broken bone or two, plus a lot of cuts, scrapes,and bruises from debris, but they all survived. My cyber-knight was an exhausted mess of blood and shredded MDC armor, but everybody lived!
After the game, I was told upfront by a rules-dominant GM that I did exactly what I should have done, and I was the only PC to follow their alignment, especially since every other PC had the same alignment!
Nowadays I normally run games where all doing the right thing and risking your life does is delay the inevitable destruction of man. However, this does remind me that if we do get the chance to play Savage Rifts, it's not all about all about the armor, guns, and explosions, like I've seen for most groups. If it was, humans would have become bipedal cockroaches to the other creatures coming through the Rifts. You have to fight for something, even if it's selfish, you have to fight for something to make it worthwhile.
My problem? I'm essentially a full-time GM. Outside of some Delta Green, CoC, or Toon one shot characters over the last decade, I'm creating opportunities for characters to have their moment.
So I will go back to my youth, where, if I can mangle a popular movie quote, "Mr ViscounEric, you were born to 'Get it'."
It was the early 90's and one of our earliest forays into Rifts, well before the game's library required industrial-strength shelves. The group created the normal assemblage of gratuitous explosion machines, while I built a Cyber-Knight. Mind you, a cyber-knight can rip apart a traditional armor battalion without blinking an eye, and given that we were playing with the new Mechanoids book, once the the Glitter Boy's Boom Gun went off, I might as well have been a Rogue Scholar... or the Fry Cook OCC.
While the GM and four other players swapping out artillery barrages, I scoped around the abandoned farm the fight was taking place at, only to discover that it wasn't as abandoned as anticipated. The entire family that had lived on the farm was huddled in a half-basement under the barn.
And the trouble was heading in that direction.
With two other PCs knocked out of fight for a few rounds, the Mechanoids began searching for the little cyber-knight that had run away. One machine ripped off the roof to the barn, and soon it was only me between these poor civilians and instant death.
I shielded them from explosions and fought tooth and nail with the Mechanoids until the reinforcements could recover and get over there. Farm buildings we could rebuild in a matter of hourse using our technology. No one had the power to bring back civilians from a Mega-Damage attack.
In the end, we won the day, the Mechanoids were driven back and the farmers suffered a broken bone or two, plus a lot of cuts, scrapes,and bruises from debris, but they all survived. My cyber-knight was an exhausted mess of blood and shredded MDC armor, but everybody lived!
After the game, I was told upfront by a rules-dominant GM that I did exactly what I should have done, and I was the only PC to follow their alignment, especially since every other PC had the same alignment!
Nowadays I normally run games where all doing the right thing and risking your life does is delay the inevitable destruction of man. However, this does remind me that if we do get the chance to play Savage Rifts, it's not all about all about the armor, guns, and explosions, like I've seen for most groups. If it was, humans would have become bipedal cockroaches to the other creatures coming through the Rifts. You have to fight for something, even if it's selfish, you have to fight for something to make it worthwhile.
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