Tell me stories of when your characters had major character development. I mean like the major stuff that your character had to sit down and deal with or think about when he or she realized how much he or she had changed.
Pic related, it's my favorite kind of character development.Her recent fall into feeling bad about how many people she has killed really makes me love the 3 point character development they've put her character through.
>>46026460
I one built a character with the intent of such development occurring. I ended up hand-waving the part I assumed would be explored, but another one came up.
This game took place like, 6 years ago, and it was set in the world of Avatar the Last Airbender, 80 years after the events of the core series.
The thrust of the story was two-fold: first, that non-benders had developed guns, and this was changing the dynamic power between benders and non-benders, with non-bender resistance groups believing the Benders unfairly dominated the lands. (when Korra was announced the next year, we had a laugh. When it started airing, we were even more amused)
The other core conflict was the second avatar. My DM decided that, in the few minutes that Aang was "dead" in Ba Sing Se, the Avatar spirit moved on to another child, and was then pulled roughly back when Aang came back. So there was a young boy who had been host to the avatar spirit, and as he grew, found he could bend multiple elements. His family forsook him, and he was left in the spirit world, where he learned spiritbending, and turned it into an absorptive power: not only could he remove your bending, he could take it for his own.
My character was the young cousin of the Firelord, who was also a young man in our continuity. And he was a racist, angry seething pit of emotions. He was secretly the son of Azula, and had been raised by a Firebender Supremacist faction, having been brought up to be "strong" and "pure", and frequently abused by his family to be ready at any moment to defend the honor of his people. This turned him into a cynical and vicious teen. I wrote it a couple points of light for the character: He had a girlfriend who was more cheerful and kind, who had given him a Flying Fox for a pet for his birthday a few years before. He genuinely enjoyed teaching and helping other young firebenders, as it pleased his family's teachings and gave him a sense of control. And he liked Cooking.
(cont)
>>46026460
>First time playing DnD. Choose Warlord cause we needed a leader/martial class
>Group members take ages to make any decisions so out of boredom I always rush into situations and improvise
>Use great Warlord charisma to make friends with everyone. Basically become a shonen hero, fighting people then making friends with them, being irresponsible and being reckless
>Campaign moves on, become king of Neverwinter due to being some lost heir or whatever
>Campaign skips ahead 2 years
>Kingdoms doing okay, mostly because my character let all his advisors do the actual leading (advisors are the psrty members)
>New massive Netherese army arrives to rape the Sword Coast
>Character loves the idea of a fight after years of boring beauracracy
>Army gets wiped due to my recklessness
>Character learns why great adventurers arent necessarily great kings
>Vows to smarten up to ensure such a massacre doesnt happen again and to save the kingdom
>>46027411
So of course, I assume the arc will be him learning that other benders aren't evil subjugators of Firebenders' strength, and growing to understand other races. And the other firebender in the party tries to make that a thing, but there was never a real arc to it.
Instead, two big points happened: First, the anti-bender rebels used several critical phrases in their complaints about the benders. Just turns of phrase the DM used. They were the same kind of points the character (Ta, so I can write it shorter) had heard his parents use about the other benders keeping his people down. And mixed into it, there were the secret things he thought about his family's treatment of him. The rebels basically rolled a 20 on their diplomacy.
Suddenly, these weren't lowborn idiots forsaken by the Great Spirits, these were victims. People who needed help, like his parents had claimed the Firebenders needed, like he felt HE needed.
He took a purely martial Paragon path (yes, it was a 4e knock off system. We used it because it was simple), to prove he DIDN'T need Bending to succeed. That his bending didn't make him arrogant, or aloof.
In the final battle, with the armies of the Lion-Man (the second avatar wore a Lion's head headdress, so people called him that) the Da Li came and revealed a secret to my character: there was a site of great spiritual power in the heart of Ba Sing Se, the font of bending ability. And they trusted my character, a man of flame, but also a man of steel, to make the following call: A man could, with the proper reagents, destroy the font. With a brief ritual, the world could be cut off from bending. This would certainly break the Lion-man's strength, as he had slain many of the master benders. But was the reward worth the cost?
My character, raised and trained that being a Firebender made him better than anyone else, was presented the option to end bending, to FORCE equality.
(cont)
>>46027550
He didn't take it. His cynical anger had been doused over the adventure. He was certain his side would prevail. Not because they were better benders, but because they were better people. He had met the childhood friends of the Lion-Man, and learned of his abadonment by his own family. He knew the lieutenants of the Lion Man were war veterans mistreated by their country, or people who had lost loved ones to bending accidents.
Everyone was already equal. For everyone had lost, had suffered, and what made you better wasn't your ability, or your nation, it was whether you tried to build something better after someone broke what you had. Whether you healed wounds, instead of making more.
We won, though, in the final battle, the Lion Man drained some of my character's power. He was never quite as strong a bender as he had been, before that grab. But he didn't mind. You don't need to be very strong to teach, or to cook. He was happy, in the end, with the world he had helped make.
The other major point of character development was, after a particularly rough bit of story, my character found himself about to be executed by firing squad. The rest of the party was trying to get there in time, to free him, but some bad rolls stopped them.
And his Flying Fox took the bullet for him. The only creature he had shown real attention and compassion over the course of the adventure. The only one he didn't snidely tear down, or demean. The physical embodiment of his relationship with his girlfriend, struck low before him. That was a moment of high character drama. The rage, the screaming, the furious hail of fireballs. And then, later, the worst part: the explanation. He had to take his girlfriend aside, and explain what had happened to Zai Zai. It wasn't an arc, or anything, but it was a shifting point from anger to a sort of sorrowful acceptance, that lead to his emotional connection to the rebels, to the Lion-man. It was the spark that lit the fire, as it were.
>>46027671
>>46027550
>>46027411
Damn nigga that's sad.
>>46027422
I've always wanted to play a warlord as a shonen mcsuperhero. It sounds so fun.
>>46026460
I'm getting there with a character I'm currently playing. But first a little backstory.
Long story short, I was playing an elf wizard, Farryn Renni, whom had basically abandoned traditional elven society (which in this society was rather primitive and isolated, instead of some shining beacon of progress and advancement) to go apprentice under a human wizard, Vorian Renni (they're not related, but sharing names is a things the elves in this setting do when they pledge themselves to someone).
Anyway, Vorian was a genius of sorts, responsible for a number of magical breakthroughs, and in the progress of working on things once thought of as impossible. Cheap world-wide teleportation, lifespan extension, airships, ect.
Unfortunately, Vorian was also becoming very old (for a human) and started to become unhinged at the end... wanting to finish as many of these life's passions as he could before his time was up (especially the lifespan extension thing). From this, came desperation... and from that desperation, came extreme measures. Most damning of these, was a willingness to work with... less than good people in order to get funding and research materials. To shorten the story again, this fail-cascaded into his workshop being attacked, him going missing, and all his research being stolen.
Skip ahead to the RP actually starting, and my character has joined the rest of the players in a bounty-hunter group, as the magic item factory/support specialist, in the hopes of tracking down her former master (or recovering his research so she can at least finish some of his life's works herself) through information obtained from criminals and interacting with that part of society in general...
(cont)
>>46028105
You can probably see where this is going. In the course of this pursuit, my character has started to make the same mistakes that have damned her master. Making compromises with the worst kinds of people and doing morally questionable things herself. Anything, absolutely anything, in the hopes of finding her master. It's not even that the character is intentionally evil or without morals... in fact, I'd say something close to "love" is even the prime motivator here... but there's no denying that it's extremely selfish love, and extremely short-sighted. I mean... right now I'm in the middle of planning a prison break for a crime-lords right-hand man (who's probably a serial murderer) because said crime-lord promised my character a good lead to follow. I'm doing this behind the party's back too... because we're a bounty hunter group. We're supposed to be the GOOD GUYS.
I haven;t hit the moment where everything has fail-cascaded into the big moment of character development yet... but it's coming quickly.
I've told this story before here but what the hell
This took place after a long campaign of my in a 4e eberron game.
My human assassin born in the slums and only joining the party to delay his execution by the government of Breland, learned about fighting for a nobler cause than just money. He was eventually able to change his alignment from unaligned to good.
then one of our friendly NPC's, a tavern keeper named Lia, started selling secrets about our mission to the enemy. in this case the enemy was the Inspired and the forces of Sarlona (as well as most of the realm of Dal Quor).
another problem with this was that the Lia was a good friend of the party and the love interest of our PCs an elf named Galdor.
So after confronting her and dispatching her contacts within the Inspired she begged us to forgive her. Galdor was all too happy to do so since she told us she was more or less threatened by the Inspired to give them information about our movements and plans.
My character as well as another character, a kalashtar, were agents of the Dark Lanterns (basically Breland's CIA). and our boss informed us that Lia knew too much about our missions and posed too great a risk to be allowed to live. we were told to kill her and should we not go through with this we'd be seen as traitors to Breland.
My character and the Kalashtar brought this up to the group and it was decided to try to sneak Lia out of Sharn and set her up with a new life and new identity. I didn't think this would work. the Dark Lanterns were watching us not to mention several agencies of nearby governments were at least aware of Lia's existence and her knowledge of Breland's agents and ongoing missions so even if we got her out she'd probably be on the run for the rest of her life.
(cont)
>>46028240
So under the excuse that using my underground contacts i could get her city safely and set up with a new life I was able to leave the city alone with Lia. Galdor obviously wanted to come with but i told him that I couldn't sneak 2 people out without us being noticed.
Once out of the city and far away from civilization I killed Lia. stabbed her in the lung and buried her in the King's forest. I was able to do this with the help of the DM while the rest of the group was leaving for dinner one session.
Since then my character has been bumped back down to unaligned. and on a character level he is deeply conflicted over his actions. He feels terrible about it but on the other hand his superiors in the Dark Lanterns are very happy with him and tell him that he helped make Breland and it's citizens safe which was his goal when first beginning his transition from unaligned to good. but now he's lying to his party about Lia's fate. ( i have to roll bluff against a passive insight every time Galdor asks about her and i tell him that i'm rolling streetwise to "check with my contacts")
plus telling the truth about her would surely destroy the group and we need to stay together if we are to stop the forces of the Inspired from gaining a permanent foothold on Khorvare.
So that's been my character's growth. from doing terrible things for coin to doing good things to terrible things for a greater good. somehow the 2nd thing seems worse.
even more so now that Galdor is beginning to suspect my character isn't telling the truth and Lia has been resurected by a Vampire lord from Karrnath and she's really not happy with him.
>>46028262
I'm happy you've had a fun time with your group, and dealing the emotional complexities of your character."Resurrected by a Vampire Lord from Karrnath?" That's some bullshit right there. What Karrnathi Vampires have the magical power necessary for a Resurrection? And what the fuck were they doing in the King's Forest, practically across the goddamn continent from Karrnath? And why are they using it on a contact for the Inspired?! THIS DOESN'T MAKE ANY GODDAMN SENSE.
Now, a member of the TRUST, on the other hand, those sneaky bastards would do it out of SPITE. Gnomish cunts.
My current Shadowrun game starts with all the party members being hobos, and I'm not talking "you somehow have 100k in cyber crammed into you, but you live on the streets." We put pretty heavy restrictions on char creation cause we wanted to start from nothing and pull ourselves up from the literal streets. Everyone else makes pretty homeless, homeless people. I make a Face named Lobo and put a fair bit of points into resources, which means I start out with things like a shopping cart with some stuff in it, and I rent a nook from the local gang. Lobo also manages to get some contacts who are actually mean something. A few guys within the local gang, nobody huge, but around our district (two or three square blocks) Lobo's actually pretty well known by everyone who lives there, he's kind of a "mover and shaker" compared to everyone else. I play him as a "guy guy". Anything you want, he knowns who to talk too, to get it. The other members gravitate towards Lobo because he manages to pull things out of thin air, they figure he's their ticket to a hot meal and a warm bed, and for the most part, they're right.
The problem is, Lobo is hungry. He wants out of this lifestyle, and his ambition is larger then his capabilities. It starts with the other power figure within the district. A troll named Girk. He's got his own goons, but for the most part the Gang controls the turf, but they still have to worry about Girk and his boys. They don't have the fire power to take on Girk and his majority of Ork/Troll goons. The leader asks Lobo to do something about him. Girk is feared because in his possession is the Boom Stick, a shotgun of legendary proportions. Known to have obliterated a group of five guys in one volley. The gang feared this gun. So Lobo stole it. He incited a gang war between the two factions and before the street brawl erupted, he stole Girks gun and handed it over to the Leader. It wasn't much of a fight after that, and Girks crew was cleaned out.
>>46028393
I honestly don't know. the DM just said i recognized the accent as Karrnathi.
and as for the whys and wherefores of her being resurrected I'm pretty sure the DM just wanted some conflict as i was getting pretty good at rolling my bluff.
>>46028480
You'd think this would be the end of it, but Lobo is always hungry. The Leader approaches him and, with Girk out of the picture, he wants to expand his enterprises. He asks Lobo to steal him some guns. Guns located on a truck that is being dropped off in the territory of another gang not too far from "home" and Lobo is given a date when the guns will arrive. Lobo accepts without hesitation, even though he's well aware that he doesn't have the capability or the resources to acquire said firearms. So the party sets out to the new district.
Now, the place they all came from was known as "Cheese Town" because of the horrible smell, and everyone in Cheese Town was as dirt poor as Lobo and the Gang. Cigarette butts were the main form of currency, and there was a hap hazard barter system that developed. You got a pair of shoes that are still more or less in one piece? You get a minute on the water hose. Food and clean water were scarce, and in the beginning the first few jobs Lobo and the gang took on was to smuggle Bottled Water out of the Arcology construction site not too far from their district. So you could imagine the parties surprise when they arrive at this new district, and they can manage fairly easily to find half eaten food in the trash cans and dumpsters that are sprinkled in this district. The place is heaven.
So they begin to set up, they find the drop location, and they wait, using their cheese town hoboness to pass off and avoid suspicion. Until the plan goes sideways. One of the party members gets snagged while spying and finds himself in the back of said weapons truck. The party has a six shooter between the three of them, and no way of catching up to the truck if it drives off. It doesn't even get that far. The plan goes out the window, and the party member ends up trying to hijack the truck by himself and winds up getting killed. Or close too it at least. The rival gang the Red Snappers, swarm the truck and check out the situation.
>>46028620
To his credit, he did manage to wound someone pretty badly with his homemade zip gun. But he's in a pretty bad state. He's in the streets dying. The truck guard is wounded pretty bad, and everyone's wondering what the fuck. Lobo, in his usual way, makes himself useful. He wasn't all talk. I did make sure he had useful skills, automotive repair, first aid, things like that. So he rushes over to help while everyone stands around and waits for the "doc wagon". He manages to stabilize his friend, but without actual medical treatment, he's dead to rights, and it's not like the gangers are going to help the dude that just tried to rob him. Lieutenants start showing up and Lobo considers how to play this to his advantage. And he does.
His associate dying at his feet, he tells the guy that Lobo and his friend are from Cheese Town, and they had heard some interesting rumors. The guy tells them to hang out at this alley for the night, and that his boss will probably want to talk to us. Lobo and his remaining friend are now sponsored within the district, so they don't get hassled or have to pay gate fees any more. The next morning they meet the Red Snappers leader Prez and the God of War.
Now, first meeting the guy, from their perspective, they assumed he was the President. And his right hand guy was a walking death machine. He actually had multiple large guns after all, why wouldn't he be the God of War made manifest? So Lobo fills him in. They're from Cheese Town, and they had heard a rumor that the local gang (The Blue Bands) were wanted to their truck full of guns stolen. And with some good Con and Negotiation rolls, he convinces Prez that the guy they offed in the streets probably tried to claim the job, but to his knowledge it was still open. He could go back to cheese town, take the job, bring them boxes of rocks, and the Red Snappers could come rolling in and gun down the whole gang in one go to prove not to be messed with. And it goes off without a hitch.
>>46028745
Now, Cheese Town isn't exactly the family oriented bunch. But watching people you've known for a few years get gunned down in the street in front of you, and you're the sole responsible person for it happening tends to leave a bad taste in your mouth. After the smoke settles, the group loot the dead and dying, and pick up their things and move out of Cheese Town for the high life in a nice easy district. It almost doesn't matter to Lobo that everyone in Cheese Town figured out what happened. Lobo gets his long time friend and mentor, along with his daughter out of the district where he can ply his mechanics skill in a place where he can actually make some money, and Lobo and the Gang can start living on easy street. Still pretty homeless, but a lot better off to say the least. Until Prez starts asking things of Lobo.
He should have seen the writing on the wall, the signs that it was too good to be true, but I guess he just wanted out so badly he didn't see it. Prez always had a tendency to put Lobo in awkward situations. Whenever they would interact, he found himself at a disadvantage. Prez always had something of his that wouldn't allow Lobo from just outright picking up and leaving. And Lobo started to see it. It became abundantly clear to Lobo, that after some pretty honest and unfortunate circumstances, Lobo was unable to fulfill one of Prez requests. And Prez sent back one of his companions with acid burns to his face. Lobo had to come up with a plan to get away from Prez.
>>46028821
Being in a newer, and frankly better district, gave Lobo access to newer and better things. Namely contacts. And one of these contacts gave Lobo a job to find a specific person (the reason Prez's request went unfulfilled). He kind of ended up finding the guy. And the guy happened to be an ACTUAL shadowrunner. And Lobo had brought him into the district. Obviously Rufus the Shadowrunner, didn't exactly hide his appearance in Prez's neighborhood, something that made Prez really jumpy. Enough to send a couple dozen guys over to go check him out. As you can imagine, they didn't exactly talk it out and a firefight erupted in the middle of Prez neighborhood. In the resulting confusion, Lobo managed to get his friends and companions out of that hotbed, and safely out of Prez's grasp... Only to wind up back in Cheese Town. Where everyone basically hated him. It didn't last long, and Lobo and the gang managed to come into contact with yet another gang. A much larger gang. Large enough, that most of the other gangs, including Prez's had to pay tribute too. Needless to say Lobo liked them more then Prez. So it get better after getting worse. Lobo and Co were away from Prez, his mentor and daughter were safe with their new friend Rufus, and the group and some new digs. They live in a boiler room in an apartment complex. Lobo keeps the boiler going, and they get to live there rent free. Until Lobo started getting hungry again that is.
>>46028910
One of Lobo's companions managed to sneak a peek at quite the lucrative drug deal that was going down, by their estimates a few thousand nuyen worth. And you know what you can buy with a few thousand nuyen? Basically anything I'm sure. And Lobo was getting tired having to constantly fix the boiler. So they do some recon. Now, the groups mage, ends up finding out that these drugs transports the persons "spirit" into the astral plane, so it basically has a 100% OD rate for all the none magical junkies taking it. At this point a few new faces join the crew, and out a robbing they'a go. The fight was only slightly one sided. Finally putting their heads together, they manage to find out the location of the drugs, distract some gangers with some manifested spirits, and pretty quickly finish off the guys guarding the crate of drugs, steal a truck and rip out of their. When they finally get the stash back to the "safehouse", Lobo, not exactly wanting to start pedaling drugs on someone's turf, and not knowning anyone who could buy this much drugs without someone finding out about it... He asks Rufus. Lobo asks if he's heard of drugs that send people to the astral plane, Rufus says yes. Lobo asks how much a crate of those drugs would be worth, Rufus estimates it at about four grand. Lobo asks if he KNOWS anyone who wants to buy a crate full of astral projecting drugs...Rufus says he'll arrive within the hour. And there he is, with ten minutes to spare in fact...Decked out in full body army, carrying a riot shield, and an auto shotgun. Rufus is surprised to find us still alive when he arrives.
Now, after some questions Rufus informs us that he had heard some rumors that Tier Tenog was conducting some social experiments by dropping these crates off in urban zones and seeing what happens. Not exactly wanting to get in the way of government experiments...Lobo decides to burn the crate of drugs. He's sad. Everyone's sad. Then they find out there were three crates.
>>46029059
Now, after orchestrating the death of a bunch of people both intentionally and unintentionally, Lobo has kind of lost his stomach for climbing over the bodies of others to get ahead, and feels the need to try to somehow get these drugs away from the gang. So he does what he does best, and he talks. Spends a day or two spreading rumors that the new drugs that this gang got were bunk, with basically a 100% OD rate. Nobodies going to buy a death sentence, right? And just so he can stay in the good graces of this new gang him and his crew have been interacting with, he lets them know. Full disclosure, minus the name of the Shadowrunner that gave him the information. Lobo wasn't sure if he could exactly be name dropping THAT big. The gang (The Red Skulls) were very happy we brought this to their attention, and even PAID us for the information. A whole hundred bucks!..And then sent a few hit squads into that gangs turf to wipe them out and take the drugs. Which put the count up to three?...Four technically if you wanna count Girks crew? At this point, Lobo has almost entirely lost his ambition to gain status and power. He kind of just wants to survive at this point.
And that's more or less where the story is with my current group. Our characters are almost 70 karma, and we've just now taken on our first actual shadowrun. All of the other jobs we've done has just been to get food and water to survive. Now we're actually getting paid! Of course... The job involves sneaking into the Arcology construction site in order to get some information from the 40th floor. Something magical, I don't know. Lobo was just happy to be getting paid for the work.
>>46026460
I've never played with a GM talented enough to put me in that kind of situation. The most dramatic character development I've undergone has been trying to justify why characters have to undergo massive alignment, personality, and motivation shifts halfway through the first game, when it turns out everything the GM told me about his campaign was a lie.
>>46026460
I once set out to play an optimist, happy go lucky character in 40k.
Stage one:
>young navigator grill, thinks all will be peachy, dad found her a nice ship, I can totally win people over by being super nice despite being a mutant, the warp is horrible but the Emperor is my beacon and my Light, oh the poor exploited serfs I'm going to stand up for them
Stage 2
>meet slaaneshi cult, horrible things, mind snapped, mental breakdown, every one and everything she ever loved torn apart, reduced to a drug snorting semi-conscious thing just to deal with the horror of what she had seen and endured
Stage 3
>meets an inquisitor and a sororitas in his retinue, confides to them, sororitas gets her in an Emperor-loving, heretic-purging sort of rage, goes cold turkey, anti-heresy baleful gaze war machine, considering it a must to execute the worst heretics with her eye so that none of the dark gods can even claim their souls. Even kills psykers every now and then (part of a navigator sect). Mutated beyond recognition by now.
In a 3.5e game I played in, I played a half-elf rogue who was the positive and naive, happy-go-lucky type that was always so sure that things would work out because that's just "the way the world works". He always dragged his friends into things and did whatever he wanted without really being concerned with the consequences. He was reckless, but always wanted to do the right thing because he strived to be a paragon of virtue much like his father, or at least, how he came to think of his father. He was the type to always try to befriend evryone, even enemies, and wouldn't resort to fighting unless his life was in absolute danger.
Anyway, the beginning of the game was pretty much the rogue convincing all his friends to be adventurers with him to see the world beyond the city they lived in.
This changed though after their adventure began.
He wanted to be an adventurer after finding out his father was a famous adventurer. He wanted to follow in his foot steps, find out why his dad left on the first place (he believed at the time it was because of some big secret adventure, which he of course wanted to be a part of), and find out who his real mother was. He knew he couldn't do it alone, so he convinced his lifelong friends to join him. we got off to a good start, exploring the areas around our city and finding out the kind of creatures that lived there.
The party, consisting of the rogue, a human warlord, a dragonborn paladin and a dwarf fighter, eventually met a pack of wolves that attacks the party, but the rogue managed to talk them down with his ability to speak to animals.
Turns out the wolves were just starving and angry after a small army of goblins set up inside some nearby cave and took over their hunting grounds. The rogue sees this as his moment to shine and become a true adventurer, so he offers to help the wolves get their territory back.
cont.
>>46026460
>TWD
>good
>>46031876
The rogue scouts the area, sneaking inside a cave to see just how many goblins they'll be dealing with. He gets caught though, but manages to smooth talk his way into a meeting with the goblin king. He talks his way out, promising to sabotage their home city which the overly ambitious goblin king wanted to take over, but the goblin king keeps the dwarf in their cave as leverage (turns out they got caught while waiting around) to ensure the party's loyalty.
They go back to town and warn the captain of the guards, who begins making preparations to strike first. The preparations were going to take a while, so in the meantime the rogue thought it would be a good idea to find a group of mages that he heard were staying near the outskirts of the city, thinking they could use the help of mages to boost their numbers since the goblins still outnumbered them and the city guards.
Around this point a bowman or something joins the group. Anyway, after meeting them, he finds out that they weren't actually a group of friendly mages, but a cult of necromancers. Rogue tries to lie his way out of the place because he knew dealing with necromancer would be a bad idea, until a necromancer saw through his bluff. Before the rogue could speak another word to diffuse the situation, the bowman just kills the necromancer, which started combat. The entire battle was pretty much everyone but the rogue massacring the cult while the rogue ran around screaming for everyone to stop fighting (which they didn't).
The rogue was shook up by how badly that turned out and all the death he saw, but still tried to see things the way he did before, although now with doubts.
They make their way back to the guard captain with a pitifully small assault force assembled. Turns out most of the Knights were MIA after the king took them to some expedition.
The party joins the Knights in the battle against the goblins which went perfectly well at first until they reached the goblin king.
Cont.
>>46032118
The goblin king was much too strong for the party, who got separated from the Knights, and end up retreating after rescuing the dwarf. The party and the Knights retreat, with most of the Knights being killed by the time it was all over.
To make matters worse, they see numerous towers of smoke rising from the city. After getting away from the goblins, the return to town to see that it was taken over by a huge group of bandits, who saw all the Knights leaving for battle and took advantage of the city's weakened defenses.
Soon after the bandit king declares himself the new king of the city to replace the missing actual kings, the angry army of goblins from before come marching into town as well proclaiming that the goblin king was the TRUE new king. The two forces end up fighting, with a big group of angry owl bears also entering the city and joining the fight/massacring the civilians while looking for the rogue, who totally forgot he made some type of deal with them (I kept forgetting about them, even forgot to briefly mention them now).
So the rogue is just standing there absolutely horrified, watching the city be destroyed and the people slaughtered by the clusterfuck of enemies, all of which were there now due to the rogue and his "adventuring".
He knew all this was his fault, and that light in him just started fading out fast and he started becoming more cynical and negative after realizing that adventuring and the real world was nothing like he thought it would be. He ends up doing most of the work with evacuating the citizens, finding the crown prince, and killing the army of goblins in a desperate attempt to redeem himself. The bandits and owl bears killed each other off, with the party members killing whoever survived, while the rogue enters the castle to find the prince and kill the bandit king.
When he gets there, he finds the bandit king's wife with a bloody knife and the king's bleeding carcass on the floor.
cont
>>46032352
The woman was a pc that had just entered the game, to this day I don't understand why she randomly killed her husband but whatever I guess. The rogue convinces her, a bard, to help him in exchange for power and wealth, which he bullshitted about but he figured that's what she would want since she's a bandit and he didn't want to fight. The two end up finding the prince, and she takes him to safety while the rogue lures the goblins into the castle before setting the place on fire to kill them all. He thought that this was now the time when everything would work out and he began to feel better about himself, until the fire grew out of control until the entire city was on fire. He returned with the party to the surviving citizens who, instead of thanking them for rescuing them and killing all bandits, owl bears and goblins, threw rocks at them (mainly the rogue though who gets most of the blame), and are chased away by an angry mob of what used to be their friends and neighbors.
The rogue at this point is pretty much destroyed inside, with the only light remaining in him being the hope of finding his parents which would somehow make everything okay again.
He finally feels guilt about dragging his friends around, convincing the warlord to stay home to help rebuild and abandoning the dwarf in the woods expecting him to just wander back home after he refused to leave the rogue.
He kept the dragonborn with him, but only because his body was possessed by an owlbear spirit and he wanted to cure it.
The party now was a depressed, cynical rogue, some chaotic bandit bard that could stab the rogue in the back at any moment, and his dragonborn friend who was struggling to keep control of his body. (It was two players controlling one character constantly fighting over who does an action, it was.. Interesting i guess.)
So plot happens, and eventually the rogue meets his father.
Cont.
>>46032536
Turns out his father wasn't just an adventurer who went around saving the world, he was a space aventurer who explored the stars saving other worlds too.
The rogue was absolutely ecstatic at finding out his father was even more amazing than he always imagined, until his father casually said he didn't really love him and would have killed him if he failed this one "test" that his father put him through (can't remember what if was exactly).
The father ends up leaving as quickly as he came to continue his adventures while leaving his son to "do whatever, I don't really care."
The rogue is crushed, but eventually just bottles up his emotions and sucks it up to find his missing mother hoping that maybe she can be the one to bring some kind of stability and goodness back into his life.
On the way to find her, they come into a city of mages, only to find it crawling with undead. We end up defeating the BEG controlling the area, which turned out to be the former king and head knight of their city, which horrified the rogue after finding out since he looked up to those two, especially the head knight who was a sort of uncle to him.
They find out that a dark energy messed them up or something when the king was experimenting with some type of evil magic in order to gain power to fight some enemy force, which killed his entire army or something.
The prince, who joined the party to find out what happened to his missing father, betrays the party at this point, aiming to succeed where his father failed and leaving with half the party who he convinced to join him.
The rogue feels utterly betrayed, stops trusting people and stops trying to talk things out before resorting to violence.
He started as this pure, naive boy who always preferred peace and making friends to this angry, violent, bitter soul who saw everything with a negative view.
Cont.
>>46026460
Punished Carol is definitely the best thing about that show.
I had one character the gm threatened to do that do-have the revelation "you're working for the/are bad guys, etc," but because of the way the campaign unfolded she became more convinced that a strong leader was necessary to reign in chaos and that current leaders were either too self interested or too ineffective to do the job correctly. Most of her character development came from realizing that despite vastly different personalities and values she had feelings for a another party member.
>>46032779
I feel like this whole campaign was just a chronicle of my thief's slow descent to madness..
Anyway, he finds out his mother might live in some magic forest and enters it, finding it being corrupted by some ominous most. He ends up fighting the elf queen who was corrupt by the evil mist. The rogue ends up raping her (it was an out of character joke about "purging the evil out of her with a good dicking" that wasn't serious at all, but the DM makes my character do it anyway. Whatever I guess.)
So that happens, and more plot things happen and it's very heavily suggested that the elf queen was the rogue's mother. That fact, and the fact that the traitor prince interrupts the boss battle with the elf queen to kidnap her and force her to be his bride, just shut off any light of goodness left in the rogue.
He spent most of the campaign hoping beyond hope that he could somehow talk the prince out of doing whatever crazy evil thing he was doing and bringing peace back into the land, but now his plans changed.
He went straight back to his home city which was being rebuilt, and used violence to force himself into the position of the new king. He pretty much reforms the whole city and its citizens into a sort of military state, using his high charisma to inspire love and fear into the citizens to convince them to rally under him, fully intending to go to war and take over neighboring areas to build up a force strong enough to completely overtake the traitor prince and whatever evil force was being constantly foreshadowed by the GM.
So the rogue goes from this kind hearted, farm boy thief who only wanted to do good in the world into this cold, merciless soon to be warlord who's close to becoming the next BEG himself.
We haven't played in a while because the players are too busy with college and the DM got a new job, I'm really looking forward to seeing how being a dictator goes.
>>46026460
We use a homebrew system that includes stuff nicked from some horror rpgs and indie stuff like Poison'd! and our DM's imagination, and I feel like it really has promoted character development that you actually feel has a mechanical impact, rather than just being in your head.
Example: There's a stat for your capacity to do heinous shit or show mercy.
And it has lead to stuff like one of the PC's being unable to kill his antagonist when he defeated him (as in, you failed the roll, you're unable to bring yourself to do it, act it out) when he was young and idealistic. Later on when showing mercy had ended up biting the PC in the ass a lot a, he finished his nemesis off without blinking, but has a hard time controlling himself in situations where mercy might be the right thing. Lots of shit like that.
It's pretty cool when your adventures and experiences change your character traits in other ways than just getting stronger or better at fighting.
Nearly every character concept our group comes up with our DM invents a rule that fits that characters role in the story in other ways than just combat role.
He once explained it with a LotR example; Sam. There's nothing cool or exceptional about Sam's "class" or anything of the sort. He's a gardener. But he's important to the story because of how he's always able to be brave for someone else, even when he's scared. And that's the sort of thing that's cool to him to turn into a core aspect of a character, and a lot more interesting to their adventures and lives than if they have 19 or 18 in sword skill.
Nearly all of our campaigns are about fairly "normal" people and we play a lot of down to earth type fantasy and we really like it. Obviously it's not ideal for someone who wants to do dungeoncrawling though.
