Oddball character concepts.

Hey there. So, there are a lot of common character cliches out there that rather much got to me, that I generally have found it more fun to play oddball types. I'm not talking about the guy who brings a Kuei-Jin into a Kindred game, or the token Bastet into a Werewolf one. No, I mean creating something beyond the normal "All Brujah are anarchists/punks" or "All glass walkers are hackers/corporate suits/gangsters"

Unfortunately...there seems to be a certain degree of backlash as players claim orthodoxy ("WOLFS CANT USE GRENADES" was one player outcry against me), which makes me wonder if you as GMs disallow character ideas, or at least try to integrate them into something more normal?

Characters I have done:

1) Child of Gaia Lupus Theurge. Spends most time as a human actually, and is perpetually stoned. Doesn't hold any jobs, have any ties with human society other than occasionally drifting across Burning Man concerts, and happens to have an innate expertise with pharmacology (New age healing; I noticed Medicine was NOT ), occult ("Jim Morrison was blessed man"), and Leadership ("You monkeys may be stupid hipsters but Guevara's writings on asymmetrical warfare are brilliant"). Where people got upset was that he ultimately was more Yippie than Hippie, and more Weatherman than the Weathermen, and his willingness to chuck grenades and other explosives with carefree abandon got people saying "Wolves can't use grenades." I of course argue that Wolfborn!=wolf since you have full human cognition, and that Medicine/Athletics are not restricted to lupus. Ultimately, the game he was in dropped a bridge on him, leaving the Grand Klaive kinfolk, Hakken Elders, and sexualized dragon Mokole-Mbembe to do their bullshit.

2) Striking Mokole-Mbembe. Homid-born, hispanic, war-form and merits all directly ripped from Quetzalcoatl mythology. Ultimately the game dropped a bridge on him for being too combaty.

3) Gangster Tremere hitman. Carried a tommygun in violin-case, was fond of using Path of Conjuration to summon Cement Shoes. The game dropped a bridge on him, leaving room for the wereskunks and time-traveling Brujah to continue goofing off.

Characters I am interested in:

1) Glass Walker/Bone Gnawer Theurge: SCA member. Does scholarly research for either group, rebuilds/recreates old technology (gunpowder, blast furnaces, etc), and uses said research and teachings to help persuade humans how to live more virtuous lives.

NPC Character:
Dr. Shark: Same-bito ex-Beast Courts member, who has a slew of shark kin. He has claimed a volcano island, a knowledge in nuclear physics, and has put frickin laser beams on his kinfolk's heads. He is currently planning to hold the Technocracy hostage (And if you don't give...100 trillion dollars, I shall vaporize Autochton).

I'm not going to comment this much except that stereotypes are meant to be broken.

I *actually* cited that example, and then the GM's said "Well, that's just stupid some players shouldn't make up concepts like that." I mentioned it was canon. They refused to believe me, even after I said "Book of the Wyrm, 2nd edition." Then they just overruled it (Note, they had a houserule in place saying if a skill started Lupus-restricted, 3 was the max one could EVER bring it up).

Of course, I always argued that since they didn't start with full human cognition, they wouldn't take it as granted as homids would. Sort of like the "poor kid getting a full scholarship" affair if you will. They won't goof off with their learning because there was a time such a benefit was not available to them.

Tzimisce cat-ear wearing fangirl. Sprinkle in some skull and crossbones, a little punk/gothic style, overwhelming anime inspired cuteness, and stir vigorously with high levels of Vicissitude.

Cute idea nya~

I kid, I kid. Besides, isn't there a bloodline of Catgirl gangrel (the Ahrimanes) anyway? Nya~

What other oddballs are out there?

MagicJuggler:

Cute idea nya~

I kid, I kid. Besides, isn't there a bloodline of Catgirl gangrel (the Ahrimanes) anyway? Nya~

What other oddballs are out there?

In canon the Ahrimanes are missed presumed ash

In our game a couple of NPC's- Toreador martial artist- the other Toreador aren't sure it's an "art" but his argument is the movements are as graceful as anything in the ballet.  Four Brujah street punks decided to pick on him once for being a Toreador- within 3 minutes all of them crawled away on multipuly fractured limbs.

Ventrue embraced because he was the financial adviser who handled his sire's finances so very well.  Sire thought he would now have his investments taken care of for the rest of his unlife and merely had to sit back and spend the money.  The childe however had worked in finance simply because his father had been a bank clerk killed in WW1 so the bank offered him a job and he had a widowed mother and daughter to support so he took it but although he was good at the job he'd never really liked it and after WW2 where he made friends in the army with what his sire called "The Common Man" and started to read up on socialism his beliefs have led him to be allied with the anarchs where he's far more comfortable than at the Ventrue board meetings

I've used a couple mis-embraced Ventrue. Mostly as NPCs.

Ventrue, Tscimizie and Lasombra can all work with a similar hook- embraced because their sire admired the leadership capabilities of the mortal they had been watching (generally a bit more subtle for the lasombra). The newly embraced vampire retains enough of their previous personality to reject anything other than a position of decision and control. Rejection of the sire is accompanied by a rejection of the sire's ideological positions... And you have an individual member of the clan who is given an excuse to subscribe to any sect, code, ethos or pattern of behavior fits the personality.

It seems like a pretty logical possibility. Take this great and talented leader, this person who shapes the world around them according to their own plans... turn them into a being that has, in some ways, greater potential for power and self determination (or at least more time for long term planning and the loss of a lot of mortal concerns that previously interfered)... and stick them into the equivalent of the undead mail-room.

Once in awhile, some few rare cases won't stand for it and that ambition and competence they had when they were alive will reappear. The only thing keeping it from being more common is the probability of successful rebellion against one's sire and the tendency for terminal repercussions associated with failed attempts.

There's one concept I'm interested in doing: A Shadow Lord Theurge. Occupation: Mad Scientist. People would probably go "BUT GLASS WALKERS ARE THE TECH WOLVES" but then I would go "Dude...they originate from Transylvania!" So one of those types of Theurges who dreams of having a castle on a mountaintop, storms roaring in the night as he has his hunchbacked kinfolk assistant strap in the captive Black Spiral Dancer, and the buxom blonde maiden, before flipping the switch to the brain-swapping ray.

Would also have an electroraygun fetish, and derangement: Delusions of Grandeur ("They call me mad! Well, I'll show them!").

Hows this for an Oddball concept: Johnny Thurman, the malkavian

Picture this, before his embrace he was a successful horror and mystery fiction novelist. He even wrote vampire stories. Then he was embraced by a malkavian. Now he believes, everything he is living through since the night his sire put his fangs in his throat is actually just what his character in the next novel he is writting is living. In other words, he thinks the real Johnny Thurman is currently sitting in his den writting the adventures of the fictional vampire Thurman. So he narrates every thing he does, says or thinks in the third person out loud, blissfully unaware that everything is actually happening to him.

Oh and he has auspex 5, because of course, the author knows everything that's going to happen in his own story...

I wouldn't say this is a stereotype-breaker or anything, but I have an idea for a V:tM character that I'd kinda like to play.  The idea is that one of the Sabat clans sent an experiences 13th-gen vamp with high levels of Obfuscation to sneak around some of the Camarilla cities and make and abandon a whole bunch of hungry 14th-gen Thin-Blood caitiffs as an irregular warfare tactic, the idea being that a sudden surge of starving, weak vampires with no idea of what's happened to them or how to go about feeding subtly will force the Camarilla to spend some serious effort to stamp them out and maintain the Masquerade.  My character would be one of these turned-and-released guys, just a young office-worker in the wrong place at the wrong time.  After convincing the Camarilla not to squish him like a bug, he goes about trying to find a way to reverse/escape hims vampire, considering himself to be a victim but refusing to take it lying down.

I never played this, but always thought about using it. Its a Malkavian based on the movie 'The Ugly'.

A man is embraced Malkavian. The first night he accidentally kills the first person he feeds from. A few nights later, he is haunted by the ghost of his first victim. It tells him its lonely, and it blames him for its current state. If he'll kill again, then the ghost wouldn't be lonely. He tries to fight it, but after sometime, he finally gives in a kills again. The ghost is silent, for a night. Then it returns, with the ghost of the new victim. They urge him to kill again...if he'll just kill one more time. He fights, but gives in. Then he's haunted by three...then four...and so on.

Are the ghosts real, or do they exist only in his head?

MagicJuggler:

Characters I have done:

1) Child of Gaia Lupus Theurge. Spends most time as a human actually, and is perpetually stoned. Doesn't hold any jobs, have any ties with human society other than occasionally drifting across Burning Man concerts, and happens to have an innate expertise with pharmacology (New age healing; I noticed Medicine was NOT ), occult ("Jim Morrison was blessed man"), and Leadership ("You monkeys may be stupid hipsters but Guevara's writings on asymmetrical warfare are brilliant"). Where people got upset was that he ultimately was more Yippie than Hippie, and more Weatherman than the Weathermen, and his willingness to chuck grenades and other explosives with carefree abandon got people saying "Wolves can't use grenades." I of course argue that Wolfborn!=wolf since you have full human cognition, and that Medicine/Athletics are not restricted to lupus. Ultimately, the game he was in dropped a bridge on him, leaving the Grand Klaive kinfolk, Hakken Elders, and sexualized dragon Mokole-Mbembe to do their bullshit.

2) Striking Mokole-Mbembe. Homid-born, hispanic, war-form and merits all directly ripped from Quetzalcoatl mythology. Ultimately the game dropped a bridge on him for being too combaty.

3) Gangster Tremere hitman. Carried a tommygun in violin-case, was fond of using Path of Conjuration to summon Cement Shoes. The game dropped a bridge on him, leaving room for the wereskunks and time-traveling Brujah to continue goofing off.

Characters I am interested in:

1) Glass Walker/Bone Gnawer Theurge: SCA member. Does scholarly research for either group, rebuilds/recreates old technology (gunpowder, blast furnaces, etc), and uses said research and teachings to help persuade humans how to live more virtuous lives.

NPC Character:
Dr. Shark: Same-bito ex-Beast Courts member, who has a slew of shark kin. He has claimed a volcano island, a knowledge in nuclear physics, and has put frickin laser beams on his kinfolk's heads. He is currently planning to hold the Technocracy hostage (And if you don't give...100 trillion dollars, I shall vaporize Autochton).

Any concept can be good or bad, depending on how it's executed, but taking you at face value I'd say all the above sound great.  Also, in regards to the house rule about lupus being limited to (3) in the restricted abilites/backgrounds, I would have turned and said "Oh, so that means that the Homid-born are limited to how high their Gnosis can be raised? And Survival, Cosmology, and..."

Bet that woulda' shut a fucker down...

Mr Gone:

I never played this, but always thought about using it. Its a Malkavian based on the movie 'The Ugly'.

A man is embraced Malkavian. The first night he accidentally kills the first person he feeds from. A few nights later, he is haunted by the ghost of his first victim. It tells him its lonely, and it blames him for its current state. If he'll kill again, then the ghost wouldn't be lonely. He tries to fight it, but after sometime, he finally gives in a kills again. The ghost is silent, for a night. Then it returns, with the ghost of the new victim. They urge him to kill again...if he'll just kill one more time. He fights, but gives in. Then he's haunted by three...then four...and so on.

Are the ghosts real, or do they exist only in his head?

Great concept...

*****

Did you post this before? Like in the last forum? Or the first one?

Just asking, 'cus seeing that idea, and knowing it's you posting, just really rang a bell in my mind... seriously...

Awesome concept, Gone! Play it, and then please chronicle your experiences with the character!

JustJohn...again:

Mr Gone:

I never played this, but always thought about using it. Its a Malkavian based on the movie 'The Ugly'.

A man is embraced Malkavian. The first night he accidentally kills the first person he feeds from. A few nights later, he is haunted by the ghost of his first victim. It tells him its lonely, and it blames him for its current state. If he'll kill again, then the ghost wouldn't be lonely. He tries to fight it, but after sometime, he finally gives in a kills again. The ghost is silent, for a night. Then it returns, with the ghost of the new victim. They urge him to kill again...if he'll just kill one more time. He fights, but gives in. Then he's haunted by three...then four...and so on.

Are the ghosts real, or do they exist only in his head?

Great concept...

*****

Did you post this before? Like in the last forum? Or the first one?

Just asking, 'cus seeing that idea, and knowing it's you posting, just really rang a bell in my mind... seriously...

Yup...I've posted about it before...

Glad you liked it..