My Characters

Inspired by a post on Throne of Salt, here are (most of) the characters I've played as over the last eight years in RPGs.

• 3.5
• Hildegrin the Human Fighter - absolutely vanilla bastard sword and shield guy for a 3.5 game I guested in for one session.

• ECLIPSE PHASE 1E
• Esme Parkreiner, the Async Janissary - My first Eclipse Phase character. An indentured mercenary, kept obedient with psychosurgery and drug addiction. Straightforward combat monster with psychic buffs. Esme later became the "test character" I would make in other systems to learn character creation.
• Piter Ataturk, the Psychic Psychosurgeon - An often forked Lost Generation psychic who loved editing people's minds. Different versions of him worked for Cognite, Nine Lives, Firewall, and probably every other faction in the Solar System. Focus on social engineering and hacking via spoofing identities and editing memories.
• Josef "Hairy Jo" McCoy, the Uplift Weaponsmith - A sentient orangutan who shot people with dual wielded pistols, and was obsessed with weapons of mass destruction.
• Pelagius Rawlin Brueghel, the Swashbuckling Merchant - Son of an ultrawealthy Lunar banking family. Left home to start his own shipping company aboard the Summer of George, his high speed courier ship. Fought with a laser rapier, which was cool but not very effective in the Eclipse Phase rules.

Eclipse Phase was the first RPG I really sank deep into. I even got to run and play it a few times!

• PATHFINDER 1E
• Edmund Skinner, Cleric of Abadar - my first Pathfinder Society character. Built entirely using the corebook. Poorly optimized but lots of fun, and occasionally even helpful at a table of min/maxed badasses. Law and Travel domains gave him good movement options and some helpful buffs.
• Broca, Dwarven Barbarian of Cayden Cailean - my second Pathfinder Society character. More straightforward than Skinner.

I didn't love the Pathfinder system, but I had a great time with Pathfinder Society anyways. The guys at the store where I played were super patient and helpful, and always a joy to play with.

• DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 5E
• Typhon, Dwarven Cleric of Umberlee - evil aligned pirate in a Temple of Elemental Evil campaign for 5E. Knew how to play nice with all the other factions, and take what he wanted when nobody was looking. Storm domain let him cast cool lightning spells in addition to healing.

Our 5E Campaign fell apart when the couple whose house we played at got divorced.

• DELTA GREEN
• Special Agent Esme Parkreiner, ATF - Recycled Eclipse Phase character in Delta Green. Dirty cop with pre-existing cultist killing, gun planting experience. Fun, but one dimensional. Retired and converted to an NPC.
• Bo "Robert" Bextiyar, RAND Corporation - Turkic-Chinese computer scientist. The reason I don't play computer scientists (or any other "defenseless characters") in Delta Green. Absorbed by an Azathoth blob after falling asleep due to low WP.
• Special Agent Douglas Thurmond, DEA - Hotshot pilot with an itty bitty DEA prop plane. Saw too much during an operation and had to be inducted as an Agent. Eventually killed by teleportation into another dimension.
• Henry Columbus, Self Employed - A criminal. Killed by another player misusing explosives.
• Reagan the Raider - A gun shooting guy with the Marine Raider Regiment. Retired after he was instantly reduced to 4 SAN by looking at a fucked up statue.
• Erebus the Firefighter - A bomb throwing, axe wielding beefcake. Built to explore options for "combat characters" who had useful investigative skills and fought with something other than guns. Found a magic ritual to make his axe ignore supernatural forms of damage resistance, spent most of his SAN to cast it, then hacked through many supernatural beings he wasn't supposed to kill.
• Special Agent Matt Gomez, FBI - Undercover expert. Backstory vaguely inspired by what happened to the private investigator from An Evil Guest. Retired after he accumulated so many disorders that he became unplayable.
• Dr James Geller, Private Practice - Doctor with a high Psychotherapy score. Not a very interesting character, only played a couple sessions. Recycled as an NPC later.
• Josef McCoy - Recycled Eclipse Phase character. Scientist with RAND corporation during the Vietnam War. Joined MAJESTIC after Delta Green was dismantled, became an NPC working on secret bioweapons.
• Francis Derosier - Former RCMP officer, now M EPIC, Canada's anti mythos agency. Got stuck in a parallel universe after a trip to the Magdalene Islands
• Major Sin - Intelligence Case Officer with Office 44, a secret North Korean operation to harness and weaponize mythos magic. The most evil character I ever created for Delta Green, and also the most fun.
• Corporal Jung-hak - A North Korean special forces guy from an alternate dimension where North Korea was invaded by the United States. Rescued from certain death by Major Sin during a whirlwind tour of several parallel earths. Kind of a boring character to actually play, though.
• Moses Micombero - A Burundian police officer. Part of Ikigongwe, a secret conspiracy dedicated to combating satanism, demons and witches. Partners with a Hutu officer. Together they solved mysteries.
• Moses Landsmen - Jewish Gangster from the 1940s. Operation Underworld collaborator during WW2, inducted into wartime Delta Green organization to combat Karotechia sabotage.
• Lem Landsmen, RN - Moses' grandson. Gunslinging registered nurse with assorted medical and social skills. The Nurse/Paramedic background provides a more interesting skill base than the Physician.
• Steven - Created for 1990s era Delta Green games. A violent shootman who became so disruptive I had to stop playing him.
• Special Agent Archimedes "Arch" Brabrand, JD, DOJ OIG - A Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General Special Agent. The Federal Agents who police the Federal Agents. A lawyer with a gun, skilled at getting away with things. Later became an NPC at the center of a web of conspiracies.
• Sellers, Self Employed - A mob doctor. Built using the the Criminal profession with some medical skills slapped on. Another attempt to make a more interesting version of the Physician.

I've played a lot of Delta Green, but I like running the game more.

• STAR WARS FANTASY FLIGHT 
• Loy Olrenshaw - Twilek con artist. Sold into slavery by his spice-addict parents, grew up to be a lowlife, and even do a little spice trading (and slave trading) of his own. Overall piece of garbage, lots of fun to play. Except that I built him using the Diplomat package because it had the best spread of social skills, when I really should have rolled scoundrel. I wanted to challenge myself to play something besides a killing machine by making a guy without combat skills, and boy does that not pay off in FFG Star Wars.
• Arlo Shive - Muun doctor, son of an insurance adjustor and a Confederate artillery fire coordinator. Went into medicine instead of choosing a good mathematical profession. Ended up having the same problems as Loy.

Despite the issues, I enjoyed both Edge of Empire campaigns I played in. The books are worth checking out, though you should definitely pirate them. No reason to give Disney your money, now that all the FFG RPG staff got laid off.

• WARHAMMER FANTASY
• Douglas the Herbalist - Randomly rolled character for a couple Warhammer Fantasy games. Surprisingly fun, despite lacking almost any useful skills for the situations he typically got into.

• WARHAMMER 40K
• Esme Parkreiner, AKA Woman From Volta - Recycled Eclipse Phase character in Rogue Trader. Enslaved when the Imperium conquered the feral world Volta (based on the Brigador planet of the same name). An uncomplicated Archmilitant (the firearms-rolling character class) who worshipped the Emperor as "The God of the Guns".

The 40K game is actually a lot of fun. Rogue Trader had the best concept of all the FFG Warhammer games, but some of the worst rules. The system is pretty janky but we've got several experts in the group who have made life much easier for the rest of us. And the setting is a lot more fun when you're a badass space pirate exploring the galaxy, rather than a peasant groveling before an idol of the Space Pope.

I like Clerics, even though they're not super effective (multi-ability score dependent, healing fails to keep up with damage once you get past the lowest levels).

But I also like characters that deal damage. In a heavily combat based game, dealing damage is a much easier way to judge whether I'm contributing than things like buffs, battlefield control, etc. Even if the classes that do that tend to be much more powerful in the long run. And in a gritty realism based game like Delta Green, being a combat character means I'm never defenseless if the other players turn on me. This is a very real concern in Delta Green, though I probably exaggerate how often it actually happens.

I don't like classes which require planning out synergies ahead of time. Any class in Pathfinder where you have to get prerequisites for Feats, Sorcerers in 5E, I don't like 'em.

I like evil aligned characters. Being a bastard is one of the reasons RPGs are fun.

I run a lot more games than I play. Running games is usually more fun. I get to share something I created and be constantly engaged, instead of spending 4/5 of the time listening to other people talk. It's hard to find people running the stuff I want to try, like Base Raiders or Unknown Armies.