Character failings

[annwfyn]

So, last night, over dinner* a conversation started about characters. Specifically, in this case, about moustache twirling villains, and how they are, in some ways, oddly bad for the game. Because no one in real life actually walks into a room and says 'hey! I'm going to be evil'.

And then on the car on the way home**, Neill and I got talking about the converse problem, which is players who don't seem to think that their characters have any flaws. I'm not even talking the blatant Mary Sues. I'm talking about characters who are perfectly normal, don't have purple eyes and pet unicorns*** but who's players are maybe a leetle bit too prone to not seeing their flaws. You know what I mean, and I think we've all, at some point, found ourselves slipping into that place where we know, on some level, that maybe it wasn't reasonable to shiv up that eight year old, but if it comes up in conversation we just feel the urge to explain, over and over again, how in Billy the Brujah's mind he was right right right.

And so, as a kind of antidote to this, I have decided that everyone should share with me some of their character failings. As I should with you. It's a bit like AA for larpers. Character Apologists Anonymous.

So. Give me...

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

And I add that last one on because all good PCs should be both good and bad.

I'll add my characters in comments.

Now, let's hear it from all of you. I am also pondering trying to integrate this into my writing_shadows June challenge, actually, and writing a series of little snippets of prose in which my PCs are the villains, or at least, petty, misguided, unpleasant and generally obnoxious. God knows that I write enough prose explaining why everything they have done is for the best of reasons, really.





* which was, as a note, very nice. I went out for dinner at the Harvester near the Essex game with pierot, adze, andyrebranded, bringeroflight, akonken, [Bad username or unknown identity: slick_mink"] and bakela666, and it was lovely. There was even pimms which made both Allison and Jeremiah extremely happy.

**which was a long and horrible drive due to traffic. What is normally a 45 minute drive became 3 hours and nearly killed me.

*** Michael Stands Ready, I'm talking about you there.

Comments

[adze.livejournal.com]

I only ever had a pet unicorn because you forced it on me. And which of us played a character with purple eyes, again?

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but everyone knew that Tegan was a Mary Sue. I even introduced her at the start of games as such.*


*Although I think she had a lot of depth for a shape shifting fairy related kinfolk with a Fianna Legend for a huband, purple eyes and all the appearance traits in the world. If you could get past the purple eyes, at any rate.

[morinon.livejournal.com]

For a character I have played once, but wrote up a wonderful story in new Changeling:
1) He is obsessive and possessive with regards to the family he made before he was taken, and will stop at nothing if he thinks it ensures A: that they are safe, and B: that they are with him. (He is aware of this and is taking steps to try not to fuck them up more than his fetch already has, but... Just because you know you have a failing doesn't mean you can adequately see it.)
2) He arranged the death of his brother. In his mind, he saw it as justice for her killing his mother and getting away with it, but he still coldly arranged the death of his brother.
3) Haven't interacted much, can't do this.
4) He is obsessed with regaining his past, regardless of the long-term repercussions. He is a skilled social manipulator who will do whatever he considers 'necessary' to get what he wants, he sees no higher moral judge than himself. Everything he does is for personal gain, and if he was sure it would get what he wanted, he would probably sell out another Lost.
5) He genuinely doesn't want to hurt others, and will honor any arrangement he makes that is not under duress.

[lslaw.livejournal.com]

1) A tendency to trust in others beyond what they deserved, and to not trust in himself, to the point that he would allow bad things to happen because he convinced himself that people would act for the best in the teeth of all available evidence. Of course, this being a passive flaw it rarely showed, at least until the results drove him a little mad and he began speaking up a little too much.

2) Well, there was the creepy corpse fetish he used to carry everywhere. What he did to get that was... well, perhaps not outright wrong, but certainly more sinister than he seemed to think.

3) Allowing a terrible thing to be done; a thing which he knew to have potentially disastrous consequences, for lack of speaking up in time.

4) Sullen, given to preaching; angry at the world for hurting him and apparently determined therefore that no-one in it should ever have any fun. Aggressive and obsessive.

5) There was nothing on the earth that had a soul that he did not care about.

Come to think of it, a combination of 1 and 5 is probably what got him killed.

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Yes, three people yesterday said to Rosie, in tones of mild horror 'Mort left you his wife.'

[suave-steve.livejournal.com]

I don't play villains, I just have characters that operate in moral vacuums ;P

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Yes, we were talking about you and your shotgun carrying response to mortal dilemmas in Forsaken last night. :p

My IoD characters

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

Rosie - she's a spoilt little princess at times, and all that that entails. Basically, Rosie is a very pretty girl, who has always been treasured and valued and told she's special, even as an object in Arcadia. And it's had predictable results. She's quite bad at looking at things from anyone's point of view other than her own, she is sporadic in noticing other people's suffering and she genuinely doesn't understand, and therefore doesn't make allowances for, an awful lot of other people's vulnerabilities and frailties. They just none of them make sense to her, so she ignores them. And honestly, whilst she has a kind of quickness of mind, she's not necessarily that clever. She's quick, she's bright, but she's horribly ill educated, very scattershot in her mental processes and really has never displayed the focus or concentration to actually remedy any of this.

Venice – is a self destructive junkie, who is pretty much determined to waste her life. She is one of the brightest of my characters – she’s clever, well read, thoughtful, artistic, and she doesn’t want to do a damn thing with it. Instead she takes drugs to control and fake the emotions that she claims she wants to feel, she runs away from any kind of actual intimacy, she lashes out at anyone who wants to get close to her and she starts off every single encounter with anyone by being as much of a bitch as possible, and then when they react badly, she smiles to herself and tells herself that this is her being clever and proving that the world is a nasty place really. She is very bad at seeing the in people and goes looking for the worst, and really really has some very serious issues to do with being abused as a child which she completely refuses to seek help for. Along with the drug addiction, the eating disorder and the self harm masquerading as sexual decadence. For someone who is actually quite bright, she’s really amazingly stupid.

Rio – needs to let go of an awful lot of things and won’t. She also needs to actually admit to an awful lot of things (which she’s getting a bit better at), but won’t. And as a result she spends a lot of her life feeling angry and frustrated and not really knowing why and taking it out on other people. Realistically, she shouldn’t cling quite so hard to every single emotional tie she’s made since she was 12 and shouldn’t let them get in the way of making new ties and new friends. She shouldn’t create this totally false dichotomy between looking after her family and looking after herself. There’s no reason why she can’t help Rusty with his business, be there for Holly and, for example, start going to university part time. She’s 35/36 ish. That’s totally young enough to start a new career, to find some kind of fulfilment, but she doesn’t see it. She is also a vile cow when she loses her temper, and becomes utterly unreasonable when angry. As I think Jonah can probably testify, having been in the firing line twice.

Ruthie – needs to let go of things, even more than Venice. Really, it’s not good to live your life surrounded by the ghosts of 1940. Really, it isn’t. Having said that, she’s a vampire, so that’s a bit harder. I think she does make some dubious moral decisions as well. Chopping up people to make perfume doesn’t make you a very nice person.

Rae – needs to look at a dictionary and realize that denial is not just a river in Egypt. Plus, sex does mean something, magic is real, half the new age bollocks she likes isn’t, and she needs to acknowledge that she’s in a relationship, whether she calls it that or not. Right now, her obtuseness in this area is potentially very harmful to those around her, and she’s too wrapped up in her own fears and insecurities to notice. Plus, she’s not that pretty. She’s not got striking looks, and she’s probably a bit pudgy due to eating too much ice cream.

Re: My IoD characters

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Rosie – she dragged Malachi into the Hedge on a drunken adventure in which they managed to pick up some poor little hob girl, convince her she’d found a husband (without meaning to), and then messed up the engagement party and disrupted a bunch of rituals with epic disregard for the poor girl’s feelings, or any of the cultural values of said hob tribe. And all because Rosie was drunk and thought it would be a good idea, and had no idea of ‘consequences’.

Venice – she drugged up a teenage girl in a nightclub and dragged her off to Constantin for a threesome which was of dubious consensuality at best. Basically, she pretty much set up some girl to be date raped, because she was wallowing in her own crazy abuse issues and trying to prove a point to Constantin.

Rio – she is currently quite involved with the Hellfire Club in London, and is honestly betraying them as well as the Uratha. She is building up a relationship of trust with the woman in charge of the London Hellfire Club, who she kind of idealizes because Jessica has a lot in common with Rio, and has come through it – she came from a crappy council estate but got out, married the handsome and charming rich guy, got to live in this amazing and privileged world, and Rio can’t get past that. She can’t see that Jessica is also pretty much a psychotic thrill killer, and also can’t see that she can’t really be friends with Jessica whilst she’s not telling this woman that her entire family are actually werewolves.

Ruthie – you know, it’s not nice to ghoul someone, keep them with you, love them, embrace them, and then abandon them because you don’t know what to do with them. She was, really, a very very bad Sire.

Rae – she didn’t want to tell her then boyfriend that she could hear ghosts because she wanted to be thought of as normal, didn’t want him to think she was a freak. And so when his friends decided to hold a drunken séance in a haunted house on Halloween, she didn’t say anything until after one of them was dead. And that didn’t even teach her a very good life lesson – she just convinced herself she was bad luck and shouldn’t have relationships anymore, instead of the far sensible life lesson which was ‘tell people if there are nasty spectres around’.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Rosie – so far she’s been responsible for Malachi losing an eye (dragging him into the Hedge on an Adventure where he got picked up by Privateers), set the chain of events which killed Carin and Aria and Satrap Sam in motion and is about to set off on a new Adventure with Aidan, Kieran and (if she can persuade her) Deyanira. Heaven help them all.

Venice – I don’t think that convincing Constantin to give up on trying to be reformed was a very responsible thing to do. I don’t think half her casual and chaotic acts of button pressing (introducing Nyght and Moorcroft, persuading Mac that she could be a bitch too, sending Zenica into PSD related flashbacks) are really particularly nice either, even if she does have a whole complicated philosophical justification for it. And dear gods, Rex Black is a saint to even talk to Venice after the amount of shit she has put him through, starting off by overdosing on cocaine in his front room whilst he is still cut up and bleeding from her earlier escapades and continuing from there.

Rio – she’s not been fair on Jonah and Karei. At all. They were (and maybe are) both her friends, and she basically created a situation in which they were dating, then freaked out and has been punishing the pair of them for it ever since. And that’s not fair, and not good. I also don’t think that sleeping with Mal has ever been a good idea and has basically messed him in the head whilst she tries to use him to work through some of her bereavement issues.

Ruthie – asking her ex-ghoul to share his emotions with her so she can put them in a perfume was not a reasonable thing to do at all.

Rae – poor DataWraith. At the very least, she could acknowledge that they are in a relationship.

[(Anonymous)]

Ah, a fun game :)

Sulien, I think.

1) She was expedient as all hell. She lied, kept secrets and made promises she had no intention of keeping simply because that was quicker and easier. And she never seemed to learn that it always went wrong.

2) She treated Robin abominably, really. I know her reasoning, but there was no reason that she couldn't have told Robin why she was acting like she didn't give a shit about him. He was a Ragabash, for crying out loud, they're good at secrets. But she made his decisions for him. Still, to be fair to her, it would probably have worked out OK; if Caragh hadn't died...

3) I still agree wholeheartedly with Sulien that after she disobeyed Fergal's orders, told Tegan what he was trying to do, actually showed her his letter and generally risked getting in a whole world of pain for treating her as a person rather than property, Tegan owed her. (And I still personally think that Tegan shoulda got hit upsides the head by her geas for insisting that Sulien to pay her for having done something that had no good outcomes for Sulien whatsoever). However. The correct reaction to that was not to make a promise she had absolutely no intention of keeping, and had already worked out ways to stay within the words but outside the spirit of. Suli kinda deserved what she got for that one.

4) A, arrogant, tyrannical, lying, cheating, hypocritical bitch. (And if she'd heard anyone describing her like that, she'd've smiled)

5) She was never selfish. Almost everything she did was for other people - often a world full of other people - even if she did sometimes go about things in entirely the wrong way :)

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

Oh for flip's sake LJ, stop randomly logging me out!

Crystal

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

1) Spiteful - she bore grudges forever and never let an insult go. Instead she stored them all up inside herself and withdrew from the world because if you never forgive you can never care about anyone. And yet, she never believed Mark or Drago could do a thing wrong - they were gods to her.

2) Oh gosh, where do I start? So many situations! I guess the worst was she sold out Worthy... I won't say why or who to.

3) Blimey - can I have one where she behaved well, there's fewer to pick from! Trying to make Rosalba constantly lie to Domdaniel - the scene was funny, but orchestrated purely so Crystal could see what happened

4)Evil, vicious, spiteful and manipulative bitch - her one redeeming feature being she could be relied on to do what she said she would do and she was also often right about situations (not people). More a tragic figure than actively malevolent, however, too locked in her own world to destroy lives, thankfully.

5) When she loved she loved absolutely. People thought she sold her memories of Switch, Dominic and Rosalba, but they were actually stolen from her. She would have died for her family and friends, and in the end actually did more than that - she put herself into eternal imprisonment and torment for them.

Charlie

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

1) Hot tempered - and no that's not her vice. She ends up doing stupid stuff because of her temper and impulsiveness. (she has more, this is one)

2) Umm.. all the ones I can think of I am afraid I won't reveal

3) She gets so damned angry with Danny on a regular basis - and about half the time it's not justified. He does wind her up, but others wind her up about him too, and she takes it out on him. She is very tired of being the cobstant target of bitching about Danny, from so many corners, and she'll usually fight his corner to others then bitch him out to his face.

4) Mutton dressed as lamb - she's over 300 years old, it's time to stop playing the neonate.

5) I think she has a lot of them actually - loyalty, quite a lot of honesty, courage etc. She is the nicest of my characters now, genuinely one of the 'good' guys, but still a vampire so still innately 'not good'.

[lanfykins.livejournal.com]

And now, reaching back a looooong way:

Rhian Macintyre, called Wind Walks Lonely.

1) If any of my characters should have been on medication, it was Rhian. She was a depressive alcoholic who couldn't seem to tell the difference between 'private' and 'attention-seeking'. For ages she just kind of limped along, not quite managing to actually do anything useful but being all martyred about trying to. And when she eventually did realise that she needed to sort herself out, she did it by hiding in the Verbena chantry taking a lot of drugs; and giving the Garou so little information that several people set out to look for her. I mean, honestly!

2) She let one mistake - and it wasn't even a mistake - cast a shadow over her entire life. She kept feeling guilty and wishing that she'd died with her first pack, instead of accepting that she was alive and that this was a good thing.

3) She okayed Shadowshrub taking the cubs of Oxford on a non-stop tour of the spirit realms - including Malfeas - because, essentially, she was too drunk to care about anything other than that it made one of her responsibilities go away.

4) Whiny, self-righteous, self-indulgent alcoholic.

5) She was caring, ethical, and honest to the point of insanity (as far as I can tell, she had a physical inability to tell even the slightest lie!) Rhian probably had the strongest moral compass of any of my characters, and that's saying something.

[hardwired.livejournal.com]

T.S.
------------

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

His Rage. It get's in the way. He had a purpose. Now he doesn't. And it makes him angry. So angry. And his jaded emotions means its the big one he feels. And it comes like waves, and fucks up his efforts at trying to find out who he is.


2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.
He and his team did bad things for the Invictus. Purging Domains, stopping Democracy. Nasty stuff.


3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.
Zagreus was bloodhunted. They wanted him torpored. So i did the task, I grappled him..and torpored him. He hit me with some curse of the Crones, which triggered a latent memory. So, in a polite moment of calmness (The calm that an angry person has when they have chosen to act) He asked, over Zagreus's body, if he was still bloodhunted. The "Yes.." came. The "But..." came a little too late after he had punched his head off in a fit of Pique.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

He's nice, polite at times, friendly, easy going...until he gets angry. Then he changes. He isnt the dsame person. i think he could snap at a moment. He sems to want good things for people, but what if he loses it. He's the worst sort of animal.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

He is trying..real..hard...to change.

Ciara

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

Very new PC but I will try

1) Cruel. Not intentionally tortturously cruel, but simply incidentally so - she is a leechfinger and a cat, that is never likely to produce a fluffy PC. Short attention span - if you don't keep her interest she is likely to simply move away

2) All her background is Arcadia, but I will choose the background with lslaw's PC. She treated him terribly to begin with, feeding off him, insulting him, hurting him, helping to make him what he eventually became.

3) Too new to say really, except perhaps stalkign the mouse - but really, who waves a mouse around in front of a cat and doesn't expect trouble?

4) Possibly too early to say but "selfish, easily distracted and cruel"

5) She will do anything to find her stupid horse, so eventual loyalty. Also friendly, curious and clever

[hardwired.livejournal.com]

Mark Dourif
------------

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

He was a Sociopath. he didn't empathise with anyoen. He found himself not caring at all.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Live Viviesections of the Fetch Kid that Killed Witte. I would say that was quite nasty.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Where to begin.
Orpheus Bane. Giving the weapon to the Fetch that killed him.
Switchyard: Mind control on him.
Stitches: Pressing an agenda to get at him and make him "the bad guy".
Sam: Killing him for the Witte thing.
Worthy Black.: Deliberatly making the explosives volatile so that she might blow herself up.
Mark Dourif: What a cunt.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

He seems nice, warm,. pelasant and friendly. Self sacrificing and with a mrtyr complex.
It's a pity it is all a lie. He ends lives like people brush their teeth, and has the same emotional connection to it.


5) A redeeming feature about your character.

He really, truly did love Witte.. That being said, he had two people killed for her, and that small act of love (OMFG) brought her out of a fugue state.

Astraea

[faerierhona.livejournal.com]

She has just undergone a radical character change to to STs landing on her head, and PCs following suit. This is all about to change

1) She is/ was so wrapped up in being a "good" person that she forgot to be a complete one. She followed the bible, old forms of conduct, condensed her desires into other forms (so lust/ romance etc all came under 'want marriage') and it all blew up in her face. She did terribl things by trying to atone for terible things she did in Arcadia and find her way back into God's love. Oh, and she's homophobic (er, was more than is)

2) She has had little NPC interaction, but maybe if she had given Rowan back to her mother rather than refusing to accept it was the same child (she was cursed in her defence!) then Rowan's mother would not have killed herself. She is dealing with the consequences of that now.

3) Oh blimey the situation with Ywain is fucked up so there's that - but he's no better than her in this - if the Oath were any longer than the season they would destroy each other completely I think. Then there was the scene with JJS - actually trying to get forgiveness for the fact she killed and ate his mother. It's a little hard to do. She treated China pretty badly too, but I will excuse that as China did trigger a lot of things

4) pre-curse "Cold, stuck up and stuck in the 1940s", during the curse "Insane, self-pitying and dangerously obsessive" - now? It depends on the next few days. She may actually become unplayable or become a much deeper, darker characters.

5) She really does want to be a good person. She will do anything for anyone, her problem was she never did anything for herself! She stood there and with 2 agg and 5 lethal spending all her healing on someone else instead of herself.

[yodathedark.livejournal.com]

Much easier to do this than post it here... http://yodathedark.livejournal.com/265123.html

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

That works too. :)

[flamma-lupus.livejournal.com]

Face...
well... just.. all of him really! :)

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

A very cold kind of anger, combined with a complete disregard for human life. Sure, he cared about the city and "the people" in it, but he'd walk over any individual without a second thought.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Largely every time he met them, but I can't think of a specific example offhand.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Oh god, the list is huge...
Deliberately accepting someone as his adopted childer just because he could then diablorise them.
Arranging for a diablorie for someone else
Dominating Jade into diablorising (my proudest moment) :)
Selling out wholeheartedly over and over again
Killing random innocent newbies to cover his crimes


4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

Lying, scheming, vindictive, manipulating thug

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

He was bizarrely honorable underneath it all, the number of opportunities he had to kill certain people, which would have made his life considerably easier, but he chose not to because it wouldn't be "right" to do. The fact that, especially near the end, he really was TRYING to do the right thing, even if he was going about it in all the wrong ways.


I miss my poor lil evilbaby!

[badgersandjam.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

psychopathy and a dependent love of violence

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

In Arcadia, captured two PCs and gave them back to their Keeper, just so maybe her own Keeper would acknowledge she existed.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

It was funny, but "So why do you like to be tied up?" to Scarlet in an Autumn meeting was just one in a long line of inappriate questions.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

violent loony

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

loyalty

Shine

[badgersandjam.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

kleptomania. Which she views as the keeping of souvenirs. True names by preference.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Define badly. She killed 8-10 men in a few days once, but they were trying to sell her into slavery at the time. Other than that, possibly trying to keep Synergy a tumescent wreck to get info out of him--but then, she'd been asked to do that by her Consilium...

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Stole Judas' boyfriend (see 1--boyfriends are probably next on the list) to prove to Judas that she wasn't worth having as a friend.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

Blonde. (in its connotative sense rather than denotative, though both hold true)

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

A very definite sense of right and wrong.

Re: Shine

[kathminchin.livejournal.com]

3: and that so worked didn't it ... not

My ZG characters

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

Firinne – cold, driven, ruthless, petty, vengeful, cruel, shallow, judgemental and demanding. And that was just on a good day.

Sunshine – paranoid, controlling, ruthless, manipulative, deceitful to the point of it being a compulsion, utterly emotionally retarded, and used to operating within an honour code which didn’t require decency, compassion or morality at any point.

Tegan – unreliable, scatty, selfish, constantly changing, irresponsible, flighty, and very bad at coping with commitment.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Firinne – she pretty much hounded Bedlam to her death because Bedlam was rude to her. She did something similar with another couple of NPCs. They were all pretty hard Elders (she didn’t fear punching against her weight), and in every case they failed to follow proper courtly etiquette, and didn’t buy into the very static and structured idea of ‘court’ which she was pushing. And so she went for them. She went for them over and above the call of duty, like a rabid terrier, because she could not deal with the notion that The Rules did not apply to everyone.

Sunshine – she made a deal with a demon to save her adopted daughter from hell. She got to take her daughter out of the labyrinth. In return she removed the ability of ten women to have children. I can’t remember how she did it – I think she managed to release some kind of infection which caused sterility, via injection into ten random women whilst working as a locum GP. I know it sounds kind of sketchy, but my memories are now fuzzy. The thing I mostly remember is that she felt no guilt about it at all. She rarely did.

Tegan – she was a crappy wife and mother before she came into play. OK, so she got married at 17, but so did Rio (in IoD), and Rio managed to raise a kid and stay faithful to her husband. Tegan flirted with other people, ditched her kid for days at a time to run off to be a fish, or a bird, or paint every leaf on a tree, and then came back and refused to ever accept she had done anything wrong, whilst simultaneously having no real understanding of why anything Fergal was doing (as an Elder Garou) was actually important.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Firinne – she had her own childe executed, for breaches of the Masquerade. She plotted against her lover, the Prince of London, to depose him from praxis because she didn’t think he was strong enough. She was quite willing to kill her own brother for turning to the Sabbat. She used the status system ruthlessly and manipulatively and was quite willing to lie when calling Scandal.

Sunshine – she lied. To everyone. All the time. She was also a complete and unhelpful cow if you were not respecting her authoritah. It is notable that the huge number of garou PCs who got totally screwed over by Queen Ananasa would have got away scot free if Sunshine had been willing to be a little less obnoxious and actually approach them, say she knew how to get them out, and been a little more conciliatory in working with them to get them out of said situation, instead of demanding absolute trust and complete acquiescence to her particular way of doing things.

Tegan – she was a cow to anyone who ever gave her anything. She was under a geas which meant that she could accept nothing for free – she had to pay for everything she was given. As a result, she hated and resented unasked for gifts and viewed them as an attack, in some kind of peculiar way and so was a bitch when given them and tried to weasel out of it. When someone was actually being nice, this was a little unreasonable. And dear god, poor MSR. She did really lead him on a hell of a dance over the years.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

Firinne – a rabid terrier.

Sunshine – a buzzard in denial.

Tegan – a blatant Mary Sue.

Re: My ZG characters

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

Firinne – in an odd way, she is the most idealistic character I’ve ever played. She really believed in the Camarilla. She believed that vampires were monsters, and needed to be controlled, both to protect humanity from them, and them from themselves. And that was really what drove her. She was not prepared to let humanity be abused, or the vampiric race wipe itself out on her watch and decided, early on, that it was cowardice for her to let that happen just because acting to stop it might have stained her soul. She was also bizarrely fair minded, by her standards. She had a set of rules – the Traditions – and she applied them ruthlessly to everyone. Yes, she was a bully, but she’d go for a Methusulah just as willingly. The rules, she believed, had to be equally applied or they rapidly became worthless.

Sunshine – she was a great mother. She was a devoted daughter. She was a ruthlessly efficient minion. And dear gods, was she competent at what she did. I’ve never had another character who could manipulate, push, control, deceive and insinuate herself quite so well.

Tegan – she wasn’t a bad person. She was sweet as candyfloss and really did want to make the world a better and brighter place. And by the end of the game, she had grown up, and was prepared to sacrifice herself totally for her dream of a better and brighter place.

Aidan

[adze.livejournal.com]

Aidan

1) Over-protectiveness of Rosie. It’s a kind of fucked-up big brother attitude that refuses to see that she does anything wrong , and there’s part of his mind that refuses to accept that she’s grown up, even a little.

2) I don’t think there is one. Not chasing down his wife after hearing she might be out of Arcadia. He rationalises it by assuming that she’s happy with his Fetch, and doesn’t want to make her unhappy by having her find out all that was a lie, but in truth, he’s afraid of finding out if that’s true or not.

3) The whole Carin/Aria situation.

4) Too soft, and has too much faith in people.

5) His loyalty to his friends/Motley is pretty much unshakeable.

Duke Julian Twice-Dead, the Song of Silver, Falcon's Resolve, the Lord Kestrel

[twicedead.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

Insanity: Obsession is the first key one. He would become totally centred on one things, sometimes it was becoming alpha, sometimes on people using his correct name, sometimes it would be his mate and her safety.

Secondly the wonderful flaw overconfidence. He just couldn't imagine things going wrong or that he might be making the wrong decision. Even if he was proven wrong about something he'd soon forget it afterwards.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Well, he executed an entire sept of slightly rogue Garou at the head of an army of Ratkin.

ANd then there were the times when he was murdering women under the control of angry ghosts and he took a very long time to seek help because he was sure he could handle it.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Well, early on he obsessively stalked the guy who had taken the Alpha position in Melbourne in a stacked challenge - that character vanished soon after...

Then there was when he drove another character outr of the Melbourne sept to use as bait for the Black Spiral Dancer who was after him.

Then in Reading when he became obsessed with his name and rank so he would only respond to Duke Julian or Your Grace, even durig combat.

And um, sometimes he tried to lock his mate up in an ivory tower.

Oh, and he turned to the Wyrm because he was sure he could handle the Black Spiral Labyrinth.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

Inbred, royalist, traditionalist, egomaniac arsehole.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

He was actually a staunch enemy of the Wyrm and a loyal friend, packmate and mate. And he had quite progressive ideas on managing the interactions between the tribes, the fera and the kinfolk.

[blane-firewing.livejournal.com]

I have copied Yoda: http://blane-firewing.livejournal.com/107904.html

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Thank you! That totally and utterly works too. :)

Zeitgeist Characters

[adze.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

Kieran: A weakness for a pretty girl. In that he’d pretty much do anything for an attractive woman, and was so easily manipulated by specific ones. Also, incredible stubbornness to anyone who didn’t fit that description – the moment he thought someone was trying to manipulate him, he’d stop listening to them, and do the opposite of what they wanted, even if it was a good thing.

Michael Stands-Ready: He was breaking so many rules, and didn’t care. Trying to be an example to a Sept, while screwing an Elder’s wife, unrepentantly.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Kieran: The card game at the Midnight Circus, where he didn’t bat an eyelid at people putting their souls on the line in a game of poker.

MSR: Losing the Challenge to Fergal, then going back to screwing his wife just a few months later, and if anything making the relationship more serious. Going back to Brighton just after Meg came back into his life, for a sympathy fuck with a girl who actually cared for him, and generally treating her like shit when she deserved so much better, before she got eaten by rats. Making allies with the Black Spiral Dancers to try to save the world from the Weaver.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

Kieran: Making the deal with the Anarchs, that no-one else in the Court wanted, just to get taught a Discipline. Having a dubious Giovanni bodyguard that even his closest allies despised. Making Firinne prostitute herself for something she wanted.

MSR: Any of the times that he lied to Marcus Rolling-Thunder about something, and got annoyed at the insinuation that he’d been lying. Calling a retreat from a fight when he was close to death, because he didn’t think the Sept could win, and he really didn’t want to die – then a bunch of people died because of that.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

I’d ask flamma_lupus for either of these two, to be honest. He’d do it much better than I could, as he fits the bill perfectly.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

Kieran: When he finally understood what was going on with the end of the World, he picked a side, stuck to it, and fought as hard as he could for it, to the point of helping kill (with a lot of help) one of the Maeljin. He was constantly seeking to better himself, to become something more than what he was, and to find a way not to have to hurt people any more.

MSR: He really, truly loved Tegan. More than he could ever articulate, and everything he did was to try to make the world better for her. And he saved the world from the Weaver, and killed a Maeljin incarna in one-on-one combat.

Re: Zeitgeist Characters

[flamma-lupus.livejournal.com]

Hrm...
Kieran: A weak occasional puppet who resented the strings on him and thought that never changing his mind meant he was strong.

MSR.. gosh... so many things I could say. I guess the most concise description would be "cowardly hypocrite who couldn't even see that he was"

Rose

[akonken.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs.
I'm going to give you three very different ones:
1) She tries to take on too much, and it sometimes leads to either her feeling overwhelmed or forgetting about some of them. 2) She is actually kind of self-involved; if someone doesn't talk to her, she'll assume they're mad at her, for instance. 3) She feels obligated to the people who care for her, to her detriment.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.
Er...I can't actually think of one. How odd.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.
The situation with Goodenough (you know the one) could have gone very differently if, say, Rose had said 'no, I don't want to have sex with you, sorry,' or walked out, or defended herself in any way against his advances.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someoen who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.
Rhona as Crystal (who was a member of Rose's first motley/family) has called Rose highly manipulative.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.
A deep and sincere desire to help people.

Neve

[akonken.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs.
Neve isn't as clever as she thinks she is.

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.
Neve treated her family shamefully. She had an affair, abandoning her loving husband and small children.

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.
Neve has more than once been cruel or insulting to PCs - usually to flag up chinks in their armour. She's also treated more than one person as a notch in her bedpost.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.
Snaggle described her as a cold-hearted, meddling bitch, I believe.

5) A redeeming feature about your character.
Neve is a lot more well-meaning and principled than she will ever, ever admit.

[sl4irl.livejournal.com]

http://sl4irl.livejournal.com/21739.html

Q (the other characters were all just Q in disguise!)

[aardnebby.livejournal.com]

1) A proper character flaw for your PCs. And not job interview flaws! Real flaws, that makes them not-good people.

Hmm... He stole unrepentantly from people that appeared to be able to afford it without really checking. He dumped a lot of people in trouble because he made breaking the law look so easy that the poor security guards/whatever probably got the sack shortly after.

Oh, and he killed quite a lot of people. Apparently that's bad?

2) A situation in background, or with NPCs, in which your character has behaved badly.

Hmm, innocent sleeper lab assistants? Acceptable casualties. Now where is that halon gas fire suppression system...

3) A situation with other PCs in which your character has behaved badly.

I sent JTD a mages head. In a box. With ribbons.

4) An uncharitable, but entirely true description of your character - how they could be described by someone who knew them very well, but didn't like them at all.

A psychopath? Morally deficient?

5) A redeeming feature about your character.

He _did_ kinda believe everything he was doing would lead the human race into a golden age of enlightenment and prosperity. Not to mention free will above all else.

Oh, and he didn't kill loads of people that he probably should have because they were PCs (player character technocrats that turned up at the same game, I am looking at you here)