Day 22 of #RPGaDay2024 and we're finishing up a week of "Let Me Tell You About My Character" -styled prompts: "Notable Non-Player Characters"
There have been a lot of memorable characters the PCs have interacted with, and the votes from my players came in.
Whitey got all the love...
Twenty years later, Whitey holds a prominent space on my project board. |
Whitey was the first and only Hackmaster character I forbid at the table. Created by my friend Hoyce, Whitey was such a sad combination of physical flaws and societal miscues that he would probably only make a session or two in the campaign.
A one-eyed, lispy, truthful, accident prone, narcoleptic/sound sleeper, sleep chattering, trick knee, migraine suffering, albino, stuttering halfling with male pattern baldness (and facial scars from probably falling asleep next to the fire and not waking up a few times too many), Whitey was not hero material.
But when Hoyce's next character concept, Gnome Titan fighter Zorin Redrock, hit a certain level, his ability to gain a sidekick was immediately filled with Brendlar "Whitey" Smallfoot.
Whitey, before the facial scars and male pattern baldness.... using some old Fraim Brothers art |
Whitey was a beloved sidekick. Besides being some comic relief, and the party literally pulling his ass out the fire time and time again (narcoleptic, sound sleeper, and he was cooking meals, a "recipe" for disaster. He proved to be a very effective cleric and healer (although the verbal component of the spells took fore-ever to complete.)
How beloved was Whitey? One of the players saw the "Whitey" pin at a flea market and immediately bought it for me. When a player tried to put together a burned CD (a playlist for you younger kids), we all discovered that Whitey had a theme song, and it oddly fit the character:
That group, The Burning Trogs,.... did, in fact, rule!
Whitey somehow survived the entire campaign, mixing some actual battle campaigns with some well-earned respites, and at last glance, runs Zorin's Demurli estate in Trebeizond while the gnome titan finances a revenge-fueled hunt for the Slavers of Roark... but that last part is for another #RPGaDay post.
My original listing for Whitey, which was Day 5 of #RPGaDay2018, also covered two other Hackmaster NPCs, and the bad boy of my Call of Cthulhu NYC games, Ambrose Mogens.
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