Day 10 of #RPGaDay and we're provided "Origin."
So, where the origin of all my insanity?
Steve. Or by his codename: Archipelago. Or just plain Archi
Steve was one of, and my final college roommate, I've known him for 27+ years. He's been an essential, if eccentric cog in our gaming group's machinery. I was the D&D guy, he was the fellow that moved into college with a copy of Axis & Allies (Milton Bradley!)
Steve always keeps a steady flow of stable, perhaps over cautious characters, with some wildly eccentric idiosyncrasies.
Therefore, an Ode to Steve:
Echellon (AD&D 2nd Edition)
The concept presented started weird for a Euro-centric campaign in college.
- Causcasian
- Cleric
- Deity is Tshang Kai Ching, Chinese God of the Ocean
- Raised Pigeons
Then the character backstory, kidnapped by pirates, befriend by a guy named Mohammed, who worship the peculiar god. Trained to be his acolyte. When they both fled the ship, Mohammed was eating by a shark while swimming away.
It took a few adventures to get Echelon into the group, albeit with a menagerie of animals.
Ultimately, the group set up a base in a nice farmhouse. Echelon ended up a Baron, one of the Chosen Ones, and by the end of the campaign, filled in by slot as a new God of the Sea (and Pigeons).
Ozark (AD&D 1st/2nd Edition)
At some point in the campaign, Echelon died at the hands of mind flayers in a dream dimension. No body to recover, no spirit to contact.
It was time for Steve to create his second character.
What could go wrong?
- Half-Orc
- Cleric of a Minor but normal deity
- Freaky Old "Venerable"
 |
| Ozark via Nightcafe |
Ozark was going to be a 75 year old Half-Orc old-man cleric. Referencing what I had, half-orcs in 1st Edition cap at
4th level, already two levels below the group.
He was the spoiler, slowing down the group, criticizing the food, rapping the amorous bard on the head for loose morals with the ladies. He hurt his fellow adventurers for loose morals than damaging monsters.
He played it so well, everyone hated Ozark so much, that I killed him off in White Plume Mountain and made a dramatic return of Echelon in the fight with the gargantuan crab.
Fonzie Schlepprock (Hackmaster 4th Edition)
Steve was taking night classes, then teaching night classes during the first half of our Hackmaster campaign. He'd make his appearance in the middle of the initial invasion of The Master's forces a la X10: Red Arrow, Black Shield.
Enter General Fonzie Schlepprock
Hackmaster character creation can be random and unforgiving, but Steve walked into the campaign with a Gnome-Titan Fighter with one eye, who was a chronic yet very skilled liar.
At 1st level, joining a group between 7th and 10th level.
In the midst of of the chaos, Fonzie made his persona up, rallied the troops and tagged along with the group. He survived the war, survived some devastating battles with giants, dragons, and worse. He retired to Treibezond, constantly added to his honors as
Ambassador-General Fonzie Schlepprock.
Ne'vets Aharo (Star Wars d6)
Within the last decade, as our online 5e game ended, I started up an online Star Wars d6 game during COVID.
Steve's concept?
Ne'vets Aharo, part bureaucrat, part Tiger King ended up being the center of the group, which mixed random adventures with legitimate, Imperial-regulated Animal Broker work, as well as black market dealings and illegal safaris.
The game was very Traveller mercantile, very gray morally. One of my best.
RISUS IOU
Steve's had two characters during my 20-year old sporadic Illuminati University game.
Erica - a very mundane Freshthing, whose only point of interest was that she was deluded into thinking she was college-aged Rachel Green from Friends. Not Jennifer Anniston, the actual character from the show. Not one of Steve's finest hours, as this game was regularly how we ended my Labor Day cookouts with the IOU game around the fire, with a days full of alcohol.
This Rachel Green didn't get off the plane, she crashed a baggage truck into the landing gear of one, causing a giant fireball.
Keith Stone - Perhaps the greatest Risus character set-up with cliches, he's second (and still active) character was a college version of the Keystone Light spokesperson. He's got to be at least a sophomore by now....
Dr Steven O'Hara - Professor of Physics, Columbia University (Call of Cthulhu)
This one starts as all my fault and just turns awesome. For my Call of Cthulhu 1920's game, I simply constructed avatars of the players and set them in the 20's. He started as a math and science teacher at a prep school outside Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania for session 2 and finished the campaign divorced (in-game), and finishing up his PhD, with a job at Columbia. The 90+% in Mechanical Repair and Physics a testament to his survival and luck. He's still fairly sane, but he's seen technology not of this world that he might fancy recreating, to protect the Earth from those entities set to destroy it, but also to possibly traverse time and space to rescue a dear friend banished by Nylarathotep himself.
Benverho (AD&D 2nd Edition)
His magic-user played in a game running parallel to my game. Wildly competent and selfishly motivated, the closest thing to a true leader, although, in hindsight, I knew the players and characters in that game... it may have been a survival tactic.
Hugo Swam'pas and Beulah Cragmuffin (BECMI D&D)
His cowardly hedge mage and apathetic halfling were his two characters for would Basic D&D game.
Ulthar the Dragonborn (D&D 5e)
Steve's character when I joined the online 5e game. Possibly the most strait-laced character I've ever seen him run.
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