#RPGaDay 8th - Favorite Character

That's a tough one. I'm going to cheat and list a couple:

• Nick Cross/ Microtech (Champions): My good friend Greg started a weekend Champions game and the premise was "you guys are going to be the first heroes of a new Heroic Age." I jumped out first and made Microtech, a cross between the Atom (in that he shrunk) and Blue Beetle (in that he had a lot of gadgets and owned a company). Because I was first, the other characters made characters that kind of stuck to me. One was an ex-girlfriend. Another was my bodyguard. Another was my sister. Another was the head of my security department (and a foreign spy). Another was a super-spy from a hidden heroic age. And the last was a time traveler from a dark future where Australia ruled the world and he was a cyborg gladiator / professional wrestler. The reason that campaign continues to stand out to all of the players and the GM is that the game was really more about character interaction than punching villains. (Which is pretty odd, which you consider Champions is so built around punching villains.) The team had a real Fantastic Four vibe to it, and we spent a lot of time exploring hidden cities, dealing with aliens, and unraveling conspiracies. The GM was really good about responding to player input. For instance, the heroic ages appeared to have a 30 year cycle, with a gap in the 60s. One of the players asked "what happened then" and we got months and months of tracking down the secret James Bond super powered spies of the 60s and the big bad they never managed to really defeat.
• Tesla Krayt (Pathfinder Sorcerer/Blue Dragon Disciple): I usually play goody-goody types. I always pick the heroic/Light Side/Paragon choices and more than a few times my characters have been the only good guys in the group. But every once and a while, a concept pops into my head that is more grey than good. After having a bad experience in the past, even my bad-ish guys are unflinchingly loyal to the group and never do anything to screw the party. So, we're playing the Rise of the Runelords Adventure Path, and I'd bought the Inner Sea World Guide and after a while, Tesla popped into my head. The idea is that, when the guys who took over Cheliax made deals with devils, some of the noble houses went other ways (and lost). So House Krayt (named after the Krayt dragon from Star Wars) made deals with dragons. They ended up losing. Enter Tesla, a Blue Draconic Sorcerer. He's not a bad guy, but he's been raised in Cheliax and that kind of skews the whole good/bad thing. While Londo from Babylon 5 is one of Tesla's inspirations, Tesla also has the benefit of seeing just how horrible things can go if you make the wrong deal with the wrong entity. So while some folks assumed he'd be all over checking out the Runelords' power for himself, it's so obviously tainted that he doesn't want anywhere near that. That said, as he's gotten more levels in Dragon Disciple, he's becoming a little darker (but still on the side of the the PCs) and I've got some serious plans for a guy in Sandpoint who's been messing with Tesla's business.

Honorable Mentions:

• Nightowl (1st Edition AD&D): In college, my best friend and roommate ran a group of us through the Hommlet -> Temple of Elemental Evil -> Giants -> Drow -> Demonweb run. I played a half-elf fighter-thief. This was the first time I'd played a D&D game so long (so long, in fact, that I hit the fighter level cap and was kind of screwed level wise from then up). The DM had a big secondary plot grafted onto the core plot involving, hmm, that part's hazy. Some extra artifacts we needed for some reason. I remember there was a Linear Guild group of anti-PCs that we hated a lot. Anyway, it was the longest game I'd played to date, and it was a ball. I think it lasted all the way up to senior year, in spite of folks coming and going.