Edgy
Poor Gunslinger. It looks like he bought into the hype. While there’s no denying that warlocks have something of a 3edgy5me reputation, they aren’t necessarily all Hot Topic rejects. They don’t necessarily line up in a brooding queue every night. They might not even know who Elric of Melniboné is! For example, I’ve always pictured our own Warlock as a whoa-dude surfer bro. (It fits his persona as Archfey’s boy toy, which you might be familiar with from our Handbook of Erotic Fantasy comics.) But if you do decide to roll up a non-angsty warlock, I will say this: It pays to remember that you are playing against type.
Some tropes come with extra baggage. Just look at all those wonderfully tormented monsters over in the World of Darkness. The name of the game there is personal horror, with PCs coming to terms with their loss of humanity being a primary theme of the game. It’s possible to go manic-pixie-dream-Malkavian in Vampire, and those characters can be a lot of fun to play. However, chances are that you’re going to be in conflict with at least one serious-face edgelord on the squad.
Can you fit a quirky character into the same story as a Byronic hero? Absolutely. Any Critters out there might point to Percy + Scanlan or Jester + anybody. But if you do want to go full-on The Crow with your characterization, it can be awfully hard to sustain. That has to do with some of the same issues we discussed way back in “Creepy Ghost.” Maintaining a somber tone is freaking hard! Your partymates will crack wise, laugh with nervous tension, or otherwise break the mood. The same holds true of self-serious heroes, as exemplified by Fighter’s unwelcome battle cry way back in “Dignity.” In other words, it’s awfully hard to be Darth Vader when the world seems to think you’re Dark Helmet.
So how about it guys? When you want a serious character, how do you go about toeing line between compelling and parody? Is it possible to run an edgy character without falling into the 2edgy4you trap? Or is it better to leave humorless Batman PCs behind in favor of ones that aren’t afraid to look a little silly when the dice go against them? Let’s figure out how to run an ideal edgelord down in the comments!
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To paraphrase a line I’ve heard attributed to Stan Lee: “Make it dark, make it serious, but for god’s sake crack a joke very once in a while.”
Some well-timed humor to crack the ice can really help an edgy game by giving that moment of respite. But, have to be careful not to overuse it.
I’m pretty sure that’s a Joss Whedon quote
Comic relief is a spice, not a main dish. 🙂
What if you start off with a spice and turn it into a feast?
https://i.redd.it/ksg1p768kjt11.png
Damn I wish my comics were ever that funny. Frickin love Slappy.
I’m gonna borrow a metaphor from Overly Sarcastic Productions* and compare it to sugar. Some things taste better without it, most taste better when a bit is mixed in properly with more complex ingredients, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a pure sweet treat every so often.
*referring to the power of friendship, not comic relief, but meh
I’ve played a ton of otherwise silly characters dead serious. A Halfling Ninja, a Vanara Steel Hound Investigator, a Kobold Gunslinger, a crazy eye-collecting Ratfolk Wizard, a parody of Hassan from Looney Tunes via a Suli Skald…
Pathfinder makes it easy, as the AP plots tend to be gritty and dark enough that a silly and non-badass character can’t persist long when the stakes get high and the consequences are dire and horrible and the world needs saving. The monsters are exactly that and there’s no shyness in hiding atrocities they commit. Being serious or having a serious development is practically mandatory if you play it as the lore implies, or your silly or innocent character will be a traumatized mess by the end. And yet things can also be silly.
Take Goblins for example, they’re the settings mascots and silly/hyper/idiot characters that are hard to take seriously… And then you find a pantry of body parts, or they set fire to your entire village…
If your silly character can’t provide comic relief to contrast the darkness of the adventure path, what’s even the point?
I still remember Laurel’s shock and horror at the face eating gobbo in a certain AP.
I think I know the AP you’re talking about:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goblin_Slayer
Yes? Or Yes?
Sandpoint is a scary place.
That AP is so much grimdark. Stalkers, cults with creepy masks, and then they pull all the stops with the showing off how hideously awful Ogres and their half-spawn are.
I remember running the ogres. Due to scheduling issues, I’d prepared that segment of the adventure weeks before we actually got there. Boy, did I get the tone wrong at first! Took a few boxed texts before I re-calibrated my expectations.
You know, might as well clarify the tone thing.
I don’t like the idea of theoretically heroic adventurers rolling up to a bunch of farmers in the middle of the woods and just stabbing and burninating them until they progress the adventure just ‘cuz they’re ogres. Diplomatic options are, um, somewhat more limited when the farmers are also shameless mass-murdering cannibals.
The next campaign were going to be playing is a party of arcane spellcasters (and a rogue) in a world where arcane magic is persecuted. Its understood to be much heavier in tone than the one that im wrapping up, which is very traditional heroic fantasy with a dash of “the PCs are absolute madlads and i just roll with it” thrown in. To that end, my character is going to be a Dwarf Bard of Whispers (ie the kind that pretends to be a rogue) and most of us have a tragic backstory or ongoing crisis of some kind. But at heart were all a bunch of goofballs, so were only likely going to get about as edgy as safety scissors most days.
Dark Sun?
Nah, homebrew.
I believe I mentioned one unfortunate soul in a LANCER campaign here before, who tried to bill himself as this grizzled veteran with countless unspeakable deeds behind him. None of the rest of us were having it, since we were all level 0, wet-behind-the-ears mech jockies. I tried to explain the issues to him, both the flavor disconnect and the sheer mockability of his character, but he insisted on embracing the edge. As such, he got sliced by everyone else’s cutting wit.
Meanwhile, I was basically playing as a hacker who’d missed his true calling as a Call of Cthulhu Mythos scholar, equal parts fascinated and horrified by the transcendent AI that looms over the setting like an unknowable Elder God. But I seasoned him with enough humor to keep the tone from getting oppressive or absurd.
Moral of the story: Know your audience. The other guy’s pilot probably would’ve worked better in a group less likely to snark on sight.
I think I might know where you told that story before:
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/starting-level
Gunslinger seems to attract such recollections.
Yeah, some character concepts really only work in a higher level game… either starting out that way, or adding a new character to an existing one.
I mean, 5e lets me play as a Githyanki… but unless you’re playing something like Planescape, it’s kind of hard to fit one into a game. There aren’t a lot of first-level Gith fighters hanging out in taverns on the Material plane (in Waterdeep, say), just waiting for a group to join.
Well, they could be a runaway from a crèche or a refugee from a destroyed one…?
For a Christmas one-shot last year, I played a gnome warlock whose patron was St. Nicholas himself. I was basically playing a Christmas elf. It was fun.
I hope there were arguments about species.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/elves-of-the-world-unite
I think it is fine to have an edge lord, but to expect a long form campaign to sustain one is against the basic physics of the universe.
The group I am in now has a dour barbarian that is a literal edge lord (she has a dark sentient sword, and axes all over… also she is the humorless type), but her player knows when to joke around or not take things too serious and loves the times when things break down into the silly.
my own character is a brooding monk who was a former warrior on battlefields uncounted and has the many scars to prove it… but sometimes, you just have to let go.
for a one shot or a short form (few weeks) game, being captain edge lord of the edges is fine (I suppose), but I think on a long enough timeline, you just let it all go. Like in the Star Trek episode The Cage, you can’t stay angry all the time.
I think this is key. So often the edgelord is that first character: The one we really want to identify with and power-fantasy-project upon. Case in point:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OBmNThMZJ1U
Learning to put a little distance between yourself and your PC is important. It lets you roll setbacks and get ego out of the story.
It’s easier to write an over-serious character when the author can ensure the character doesn’t botch a check at a dramatically-critical point or get mocked by a character they can’t retaliate against. If Batman might trip over his own feet while sneaking into the supervillain’s lair or has to team up with Spider-Man, he needs more dramatic/comedic range than Snyder’s version.
Makes ya wonder what role model characters we should be aiming for other than Batman. That might be its own comic now I think of it….
Adam West Batman?
(Batman’s had a lot of range over the decades.)
What are you on about? Batman is Batman!
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/c0/f6/4f/c0f64f3e2da52883d30f57dbf30ec697.jpg
😛
You know, a one-shot where everyone’s character was primarily built with components from the same long-lived character (like Batman or Robin Hood or something) might be interesting, just to see what people built.
The guys on Happy Jacks RPG Podcast told a story about a one-shot at a con. Pregn character options included Indiana Jones, Han Solo, President James Marshall, Dr. Richard Kimble, and Rick Deckard.
I had a small fight with my dm when I described my ranger he had a brown cloak to blend in with the ships. The dm thought I dressed all in black because I was trying to be “medieval batman” my grim serious character just wasn’t good at talking to people and when he was around people he was comfortable with he was practically a goofball. He wasn’t mean he was shy.
Introvert Batman just wants to chill in the Bat Cave, but Commissioner Gordon keeps calling him up with the Bat signal like, “You have to do stuff.”
I see the wedding comic was insufficient to sate Laurel’s drive to put characters in poofy/frilly outfits. Does she need an intervention?
Maybe she needs a Nightwish concert.
Most of the players in my game have at least one character who’s fairly dark and serious, but, thank goodness, in a logically-coherent way. In my experience, full-blown edginess ends up looking just as parodic as someone like Abserd. The trick to it, to my mind, is balancing out the character. Even the most nihilistic, depressed character has to have something that gives them joy sometimes. Otherwise, they wouldn’t be adventuring.That thing might even be their edgy, dramatic persona which makes them feel powerful and safe! Certainly, have them be unhappy, solitary (within reason), cynical and amoral – but know what will still draw a laugh from them. Know why they think the way they do, and how their mind might be changed. Understand the character, in other words.
With that in mind, three of my favourite “edgy” characters from various stories, and the how and why of their effective edginess:
Raven, from the Chronicles of the Black Company. Dour. Tough. Vengeful. Desperately in love with the chosen one of the setting, Darling, for whom he can’t even start to express his emotions because he’s too tough/repressed to do so. Possessed of two children who he refuses to speak to because they remind him that he’s a failure as a parent. Raven is superficially the archetypal edgelord, but attention is paid to examining how his relationships (which, notably, exist) are affected by his behaviour and how it is ultimately more a weakness than a strength. His emotions aren’t absent, just extremely repressed – much like those who fetishize edginess in real life often wish theirs could be, in my experience.
X, in LA by Night. Xander Jeanneret does an excellent job of portraying X as an edgy character… sometimes. Deeply traumatized, vengeful again, averse to human contact and fond of telling others that they just don’t understand, X can also be goofy and fun to be around – exactly the type of Malkavian you mentioned above. The edginess is itself a repressed trait, one that comes out when the chance arises to deal with his sire for good and turns him into an anguished, deranged murderer high on dark prophecy.
Ferro from the First Law series. Vengeance is definitely a biggie here. Ferro wants to kill the Emperor of Gurkhul, and she’ll kill anyone who gets in her way. She’s willing to work with others, though, even if she spends the whole time spitting insults at them. She even finds time to have sex with one of the other main characters, because brooding and plotting revenge cannot take up all of your day. Most importantly, although she’s pretty much constantly edgy, she’s not even close to always cool or silent. She actively engages in the social elements of the narrative, even if only by spitting vitriol, and because humans do actually need and want some degree of interaction, this heightens verisimilitude. Besides, a stream of spite and bile can be far more fun than brooding silence.
If I had to sum up the traits that make these three good-edgy, I’d say emotional depth, moderation and humanity – the motivations of the edge lord, times when they stop being edgy and ways in which their edginess declines from its platonic aspect to something more normally bitter. A character with two of these, I think, can generally make it in a fairly typical D&D game, though the player may have to practice keeping a straight face since they will INEVITABLY become the straight man for any party with even a hint of good in it.
Raven is an interesting touchpoint. I’d argue that the dude is interesting almost exclusively because of his relationship to Darling. And in that sense, caring about something beyond “ma vengeance” may be the real key. I suppose that covers “emotional depth” and “humanity” in your formulation.
I think that Darling’s definitely a critical element of Raven’s characterization, but he could function as a somewhat interesting character without her, because his humanity is provided at least in part by the two viewpoints we get to see him from: the general mass of people who buy into the edgy hype, and Croaker/Case, both of whom can see him at least somewhat as he is and aren’t having any of his shit. Their view of him provides a perspective which makes him somewhat sympathetic, because we can see just how damaged he looks once you strip away the facade.
F*k, it’s hard to get out of bed if you’re like that. Forget saving the world. Brooding isolation and emotional trauma don’t make you cool and confident, they make you a wreck desperate to prove to yourself that your life has value.
Which could be an interesting character if properly explored, but I don’t know how easy it would be to do so.
Yep. I mean, depression has produced a few great artists inspired by their own misery, which I could see working as a concept for, say, a sorcerer or barbarian, but it’s produced far more ruined or lost lives. The insensitivity of the edgy stereotype to that is actually something that I wish I’d mentioned in my original post, because when done unironically (especially if there are people in the group who’ve dealt with that sort of thing, which in my experience there always are) it can feel like, to use a somewhat graphic image, the emotional equivalent of child-abuse pornography.
What species is Warlock?
I’d figure him for a Half-Elf, but the yellow eyes make me wonder…
Dude’s a Half-Elf. He’s also a warlock. You get cool eyes when you write “warlock” on your character sheet.
It’s true. I heard a paladin one village over multiclassed to warlock and was burned at the stake the next day when someone noticed his funky new eyes. The ranger thought he’d been replaced by a doppelganger or something.
D&D urban legends should be a thing.
The times when Batman is most interesting is when he is most human. Where he shows compassion and empathy. Any dark, edgy character needs to have a human touch, something that makes others sympathize or relate to them. A moment when their tough guy facade cracks, when they crack a smile, when they show who they truly are, under all the barriers they put up around themselves to protect themselves. That is how you do edgy and dark well.
Also when he gets slugged in the jaw by Nightwing and realizes he made mistakes.
I may have recently watched “The Killing Joke” for the first time. Man o man was Batman flat in that one.
If everyone is fine with it being a grimdark circlejerk, then by all means let it happen. Either people will have a good time invoking dread in all those 1st level commoners and enemy cannon fodder, or someone will call for a change of tone. Not necessarily in words, but they might instigate the shift indirectly. While it might be tempting to test one’s edgyness by scoffing at any attempt at humor, bear in mind that any edge that cuts constantly, grows dull soon enough. Being labeled as “the brooding dark one” in the party actually makes you more of a joke.
I’ve found that the secret sauce to maintaining one’s grimdarkness is being chill when there is no immediate danger. Having some contrast makes the darker shades stand out more.
That said, don’t let the dice dictate when you end up looking silly. Do it on your own terms. It’s the thin line between others laughing with you and laughing at you.
That’s actually a really sold rule of thumb. Well played.
One of my favourite characters is a Goblin Abjurer.
I did silly things in character, and people will always look down on a Goblin – at first.
The beauty of advancing Anklebiter the Insane (so named by his tribe’s shaman when he was kicked out for learning to read and write) was that he eacked up some accomplishments and got to save his teammates. They came to appreciate and respect him, and he returned the favor.
And he got a taste for respect – and positive responses. In the end, he was a real little hero and faced off against a drow matron not by fireballing her, but flying over to her doomsday device, casting antimagic area and refusing to get off the horrible thing while his teammates cut her down.
In the campaign epilogue, he’d set up a school for orphaned goblin youngsters from wrecked tribes. He called it a “People School”, to teach the youngsters to be people, rather than insane bumps in the night. ^_^
“People School for CN Weirdos.” I know some players that could stand to take a night class or two. 😛
One of my fellow players saifd the nicest thing about Anklebiter after the game ended. In his headcanon, Anklebiter was the reason for a Goblin heritage in PF 2E. ^_^
Damn. That is a hell of a compliment.
Our characters were a regular odd couple of friends: an exiled Goblin wizard and an exiled Dwarf ranger/rogue, who started out with the usual fear and dislike, but gradually grew to appreciate each other’s contributions to the group.
Anklebiter upgraded Bruendor’s rapier into an Elfbane weapon (we were having Drow trouble) as a gift.
We had this cool cinematic scene in a fallen, rolling tower where Bruendor pulled Anklebiter away from certain doom. It took a touch attack to grab hold of my Goblin. Quote Bruendor:
“This is probably the oddest use of the Hatred racial ability ever.”
Following careful consideration, I’ve decided that I love this a lot.
This is for a Werewolf the Apocalypse LARP, but the idea behind it started as a sort of batman thing; a normal guy fighting alongside the super powered monsters of the apocalypse. However, after playing him, I moved away from Batman to The Black Knight from A Practical Guide to Evil. Ambitious as hell and I’m trying to play him as coldly logical as possible even when its Spite that is ultimately guiding his actions.
To compensate for the potential lack of humor, I decided to steel the Black Knight’s dry humor and find others to play off of. Add in a small bit of caring for some people (all part of the plan, of course) and the character has so far been mildly funny but designed as hyper-competent. We’ll see how long it lasts.
If you’re gonna be obscure you gotta link that mess. Never heard of this one. Is there a good TLDR somewhere?
https://practicalguidetoevil.wordpress.com/
Spoiler-free elevator pitch for the plot: The evil empire won, and our spunky heroine decides to work with the Empire to fix things.
Elevator pitch for the setting: Good and Evil are cosmic forces, and this concept is actually godsdamn explored.
More details and spoilers at TV Tropes, of course. (And to a lesser extent the wiki, which I’m linking.)
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/APracticalGuideToEvil
Huh. I can see the connection to Handbook. Dudes named things like Dark Knight after all.
He’s named Amadeus. He’s Named Black Knight. But yeah, now that you point it out, I can definitely see an affinity between PGtE’s Names and the character class/names in HoH.
Serious characters make great comic foils to jokey characters anyway. The odd-couple is one of the most classic comedic dynamics.
I once made an intentional overly-edgy character for a one-shot. He was “The Lord of Edges”. (Birth name: Melvin) Doing his gravely voice was really uncomfortable and I could never play him in a campaign. He was a Tiefling Noble Hexblade who was every single mall-ninja sterotype at once. He is also my only 5E character to die.
Honestly the only edgy-looking aspects of your Warlock are the chest-straps that seem to do literally nothing, and the multiple belts. (Fun fact: Belts are actually a vital component of making armor usable. Mail for example hangs so it’d put all its weight into your shoulders. A belt can put some of that weight into your hips instead, making it much easier to move in) He just looks like a much hotter version of the comic’s Sorcerer in a way I want acknowledged.
I’m sure you remember Darkshadow Nightbriner.
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/special-snowflake
My favorite VTM character was a Gangrel that was absolutely not serious and brooding. More like the wisecracking cool guy, but with some bits of country bumpkin mixed in, while being an absolute goody-two-shoes. Kept a very high humanity score, only drank animal blood.
There weren’t that many edgy characters around, though, the group was mostly powergamers.
But… but… How could you possibly play VTM without brooding or obscure multisyllabic words!?
I played a good ol’ boy from the bayou who made a living as an exterminator/vet/wildlife relocator with a not-exactly-pet gator.
His biggest moment was doing some emergency battlefield surgery to dig a silver bullet out of a werewolf elder in the middle of a fight between two different werewolf clans. New Orleans is weird.
Being emo is the perhaps the greatest weakness of a creature of the night, and all serious exorcists and monster hunters should familiarize themselves with it
Just gotta stock up on tiny music boxes: https://bloodborne.wiki.fextralife.com/Tiny+Music+Box
Symphony. You don’t make a symphony out of a single note, out of a single instrument. The same mood all the time is boring, and energy consuming. You need to keep things in a certain way and not get too far away from that mood. You don’t ruin a tragedy for making a joke, if the overall mood is the one from a tragedy. Being edgy all the time is tiresome. It’s with mood, like if Wizard would give a whole hour speech while the rest of the party just want to kill the boss 🙂
By the way there are many ways to play the malkavians, they are my favorite clan. But fishmalks just ruin the game 🙁
I’m afraid that I am unfamiliar with the term “fishmalk.”
…
But after a quick Google, I now want that art out of my head.
Nice 😀
See that is dementation and one of my favorite disciplines 🙂
When it was still a discipline 🙁
By the way, i think Warlock do is goth 🙂
I’m curious where PEACEBLADE HAVILAR fits into this discussion of ‘edgy characters’. Does she fit into the category of edgy, humorous, or is she a whole other category, that of the memetic badass and/or legend?
https://external-preview.redd.it/rsA3TU9r_NfQwQGXjCuvH5PFzX0xMC7om_2PiI4Gjds.png?auto=webp&s=6e67b188e2061704121851d5ed86b52a815b3afd
I’d consider her more “memetic badass” than edgy. She’s not grim, broody, or deliberately trying to be cool hard enough to be edgy — she’s just cool without particularly having to try.
I’d put her in the Johnny Goldmane category: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=I7gynRDa-1E
I’d like to think that the best version of a “serious” character is the type of character that can do anything with a straight face. Negotiate the release of a captured prince at gunpoint while standing in the enemy emperor’s main hall? No sweat. Down to four HP with a broken melee weapon and the dragon’s breath weapon is recharged? Been here before.
But, he won’t crack the other way either. Your bard has negotiated the situation into a dance-off, and needs backup? Hit the music, let’s do it. Your wild magic sorcerer surges and accidentally turns herself into a frog? Give her a ride on your shoulder while continuing on the path. He’ll live through a plane made of balloons and populated by stand-up comedians without breaking a sweat, and be found center-stage delivering some TNG dialogue in true Patrick Stewart fashion.
Eternally serious characters can be funny in their own way when they’re not averse to getting involved in the party’s sillier shenanigans. We call the guy who only wants to work on the quest a murderhobo, but a guy who’ll dance and prance in his underwear in front of the princess just hasn’t found his sense of humor, and is a goldmine of “let’s try and get him to crack” sessions. It’s nice to have someone that stable in the party, especially if it’s full of goofballs that won’t focus on any kind of quest, or full of edgelords too afraid to approach anything without rolling for initiative.
Do sighs and eye-rolls count as cracking? If not, I think I’ve played some characters like that.
Someone’s got to herd the cats, and I’m usually the only player interested. Or at least, the one who gets bothered by the wild cats first.
I’m having trouble picturing this character archetype. Is there a pop culture figure you could point at? Are you perhaps thinking this version of Batman?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5bEeeKsxOQ
Pretty much.
I did once play Deathblade Soulstyyl (real name Carl), a tiefling Antipaladin of Rovagug with a katana and armor spikes, but that was very much as a joke in keeping with the tone of the campaign (basically a short “Suicide Squad” scenario while our regular GM was out for a few weeks). Poor Carl was actually not very good at his god’s theology – he mostly shouted phrases from his Antipaladin Code like “THE TOOLS OF DESTRUCTION SHALL BE DESTROYED LAST!” and smashed pottery while screaming so he could roll around in the shards (as his god’s Deific Obedience demands). The other PCs stuck a trench coat and a top hat onto his armor spikes.
One of the campaigns I am currently running features two “edgy” PCs, both played somewhat for laughs. Cain Smallhammer is an actual goth dwarf and a member of an underground hedonist punk necromancy-dabbling group called the Pallid Society. He is characterized by his greed, his laziness, his poor decision-making and the way that his schemes always backfire for seemingly obvious reasons. (For example, the fact that he treated the first quest as a get-rich-quick scheme and started it off by quitting his job and flipping off all his coworkers has come back to haunt him several times.) His brother, Bodir, despite being a literal ghost dragged back from Heaven by Cain’s schemes, is much more chill.
The other PC is Algernon, a demon-fighting crusader who will stop at nothing to crush all fiendish forces with his fists. This campaign is not remotely about fighting demons (which the player was well aware of when he made the character). Fortunately, Algernon is completely delusional and can rationalize anyone and anything into being “demonic” if the campaign needs him to fight it. The fact that he is also a glass cannon who gets downed fairly frequently also adds to the humor.
In terms of played-straight edgy characters, my Cavalier Edam the Invincible Swordsman comes a little close – he’s very serious, straight-faced and mission-focused, but I always thought of him as more “professional” than edgy. Unfortunately, any campaign I break him out for tends to fall apart for unrelated reasons, so I haven’t gotten to see him used much. In the main one he was in, he did serve as a useful straight man and “let’s go in the direction of the plot, team!” guy.
I wrote this post with those “played-straight edgy characters” in mind. It’s just that I think they turn to tend into the other kind. So to that end, help me put my theory to the test! Di Edam the Invincible ever have to deal with a silly moment?
Edam did fail a saving throw and get blinded when none of the rest of the party did. However, his Tactician ability still worked, so he was able to give the party instructions about how to flank better (Precise Strike teamwork feat). Actually I think that inconvenient poor roll might have INCREASED his reputation among the party by more firmly establishing him as the party leader (also in keeping with his backstory giving him more experience/training than the other Level 1s).
If faced with something more ridiculous like an attack of zombie sharks or whatever, I think he’d probably handle it with either some dry wit or, more likely, just a completely straight face, sort of like a Yakuza game protagonist. (“Well, that’s new.” “That’s inconvenient.” “sigh I’ll deal with it.”) That’s sort of the approach of his spiritual successor, the grumbling medic Dr. Esrom Noryan, who handles nonsense from his party of half-goblin wackjobs through a combination of ignoring them and muttering “I hate all of you.” (That was also the catchphrase of Decla the rogue teenage super-soldier, whose self-seriousness was flavored by also being arrogant, petty, impulsive and childish. Her traumatic backstory and mommy issues did cause her to occasionally show legitimate weakness or fear, though.)
Now that I think about it, maybe the key thread here is that they all take their MISSION seriously, but not necessarily themSELVES super-seriously, oar at least don’t seem themselves as the most important people in the world (except Decla, who absolutely does).
The blindness is an interesting point. It spawned a minor argument on The Glass Cannon Podcast a few months back. Dude got blinded, and wanted to play it straight as a terrible, dangerous thing. The other guys laid into him immediately, ruining the dramatic moment he had in his head.
Did the other players treat the blindness as a serious thing in a dangerous situation, or was it all, “Let’s just keep calm, make a few perception checks, and… Oh. Sorry,” ?
The other players were pretty new to Pathfinder, so none of them were in a position to argue too strongly about optimal tactics. I might have been more willing to stay in the fight and just deal with the 50/50 miss chance, but because Edam was a Dex-based Level 1 melee fighter, it was the complete destruction of my Armor Class (combined with my low total HP) that really made me want to stay back. So I feel that mechanics and characterization fit together well then.
I think the best serious characters are the ones that are like Halt from [i]The Ranger’s Apprentice[/i]. He’s a shadowy, brooding sort of man who takes his work seriously and is the best at what he does. However, he’s also surprisingly jokey with his friends in the sort of dry, sarcastic way that’s still funny but also fits his character. I think what most people tend to miss when they make serious or even edgy characters is that they can still make jokes and enjoy themselves, you just have to fit the style of humor to the nature of the character.
haven’t heard of these books. Are they worth looking at?
And perhaps more to the point: Can you give me an example of Halt’s humor? I’m not familiar with the character, but the approach sounds intriguing.
I think they’re pretty good. They’re YA fiction, so they’re aimed a bit more at teenagers and kids than adults, but IMO they’re just solid books in general and I think you’d enjoy them. My main criticisms are that the author basically copy-pastes real-world cultures into his story without even trying to hide it (which isn’t necessarily a failing because it started as a bedtime story for his son and I think he wanted to keep things recognizable, although I would prefer some more original material) and that the earlier books include some mystical/magical elements that basically disappear from the third book onward and make the beginning feel a bit disconnected from the rest. The character writing is absolutely the highlight of the series, though, and the author writes battles fantastically in a way where you know exactly how everyone stands on both the micro and the macro scale without ever taking you out of the action.
It’s been a few years since I read the series and I don’t have my books with me in my apartment, so I honestly can’t give you any specific dialogue at this moment. From what I remember, a lot of it was sarcasm and subtle ribbing.
Hmm, I’m not sure I’ve ever tried that particular brand of “this can easily jump the shark” character trope. I’ve had stoics and fashionably or gleefully evil, or bright cheerful undead/necromancer and stuff, but I’ve not really aimed for edgy characters very much. I guess the closest was a somewhat recent character of mine that was an undead servant of drow who was just at piece with their lot in life as property but also occasionally thought their service to their deity would be a lot easier to do if she ever found the opportunity to just poison the entire city’s water supply so she could accurately note down who, when, and how everyone died without having to deal with all the troublesome drow secrecy and interference in her divinely appointed task.
My most recent warlock was pacted to a Marid and she herself was a pipe organist tiefling socialite. Her main adventuring priority was to stock the wet-bar in her genie bottle. About as far from an edgelord as you can get.
I’ve recently run into the idea that the “Faustian contract” version of the warlock I talked about back here…
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/patronizing
…Is somewhat unpopular among actual warlock players. I guess that folks tend to run into GMs who get super hand-on and bossy as patrons. Does that go into your calculus when you invent warlock / patron relationships like you describe?
I actually very rarely make Warlocks. It was only more recently they got enough options that doing things other than “Hex + Eldritch Blast” were reasonable options and I found that particular playstyle very dull.
I don’t think I really factor the GM into the choice of how to portray the patron too much. But the fact that I don’t make many edgelords probably has a lot to do with the fact that I don’t tend to make warlocks with Faustian bargains since there’s a lot of overlap with those two concepts.
I think the real reason is players can’t always count on a GM following through with that kind of thing in a decent way. You’re far too likely to get the too hands on and bossy and too likely to get “oh right, I forgot that was a thing you were expecting of me”. Either way, that’s a higher than normal chance you’re setting yourself up for disappointment.
I also think the fact that that’s not super common is plenty of us out there like to not do the 100% in alignment with the most common tropey thing possible. By the time you’re playing a fiend pacted warlock in D&D you’ve probably seen a million or so TV episodes of characters making Faustian bargains with devil-like entities, so you’re probably more inclined to just…. do something that feels a bit more fresh.
It’s funny. The D&D Beyond page on warlock character creation advises players to work with GMs to figure out a relationship with their patron. All the fluff in the book assumes the relationship implies by the term “patron.” But there’s a broad sense that defining a class on those terms is too restrictive.
Just goes to show how much influence designers actually have at the table.
One problem that strikes me about Faustian bargains is that you can’t really write one of those into your backstory without making it central to your character’s arc, because they’re that character-defining. Once you’ve got an arc set up like that, it feels weird to have it just sit in one place; your character can work towards escaping it, or slip deeper into Faustian debt, or whatever, but they can’t just sit there.
This is good in most narrative media, but it causes problems in most TRPGs. TRPGs are collaborative in the most inconvenient way; the GM makes plans for the campaign they want to run, the players write backstories and personalities for the characters they want to play, and (broadly speaking) nobody communicates enough to coordinate anything.
By way of contrast: Look at My Hero Academia. If we pick out Midoriya, Bakugo, Todoroki, Iida, and Uraraka as the main characters, it’s easy to see how each of them has arcs that only work because of the presence and arcs of the other characters and how they bounce off the main plot. To simplify one example (and strip it of all spoilers), Iida can only grow in the Stain arc because of how Todoroki grew in the Sports Festival arc, which was only possible because of Midoriya’s growth earlier in the story. Uraraka’s growth is partly inspired by Midoriya’s, and Bakugo has a whole complex tied up in Midoriya not being the worthless, Quirkless nobody he started as.
That took more words than I expected.
Anyways. My point is that if all the players tried to write their own personal journeys into their backstories, it would not play out like that. Iida wouldn’t wait to start his quest for revenge until Todoroki and Midoriya were ready to save him from his anger, Todoroki would probably be dragging the party into his daddy issues before the others had time to think of a better solution, Uraraka would be annoyed that her backstory never had a chance to come up in the plot, etc.
In practice, the simplest way to prevent that kind of five-character-arc pileup is to write a static character that can fit comfortably into any plot…which has the downside of removing most available options for interesting character-based storytelling, unless the game goes on long enough that they start getting written back in.
In theory, better communication during Session 0 could fix this problem, but it requires a lot more than most Sessions 0 do. At minimum, you need to get the group thinking about lit class stuff, and it’s quite likely that someone (or everyone) will need to compromise their original character concept to fit the overall plot and/or each others’ character arcs better…and there’s no guarantee that it’ll work out in practice. Maybe someone gets bored with their character, maybe a new player joins the group, maybe someone moves away before their character arc wraps up.
I wish there was a solution to this conundrum, a way to get people to coordinate without needing to compromise, to write cohesive stories together while still letting everyone write the story they want to. But I don’t think there is.
Weirdly, I think there may be one way to do this: Start an actual play podcast. When people are trying to entertain an outside audience rather than themselves, the lit class stuff is suddenly important enough to talk about.
My Hexblade certainly looks the part – he’s half Shadar Kai, and tends to favour a palette of grey and black. He’s not actually a dark and brooding personality, though… at worst, you’d describe him as “mission focused”.
How would he fare in a silly, pie-in-the-face sort of situation?
Let me put it this way… he’s not the kind of person to start a tavern brawl. But if someone else does (and given some of his party members, it’s good odds), he’s the one staying quietly out of the way at the bar… watching for the most entertaining moment to cast Darkness.
Poor Gunslinger. Every time he actually manages to find a party, he probably puts them off by trying too hard to fit in.
If my current self identifies with Wizard for the drama, young Colin identifies with Gunslinger for the trying-too-hard.
Young Gunslinger just needs their soulmate (probably a Musket Mistress or Bolt Ace) to show up then whilst they’re cleaning/crafting their pistol at the local gunpowder store.
My personal life has been mythologized. I am uncertain how to feel about this.
Honestly, who doesn’t take some of what they write from personal experience? I feel that half my time staring at a blank page comes from not having enough self to channel into something to put on paper.
Most of my Warlocks are mixed with some Bard, Swashbuckler, or at least some Paladin, and wind up fairly flamboyant, or at least sociable. It’s just my Necromancer/Undying Warlock that exploited Ceremony creepily, but even that one I have a non-creepy version going pact of chain instead, and is actually quite focused on being a productive member of society, even if that does mean raising the ancestors of some farmers to help them plow their fields.
Some people just can’t appreciate practical solutions to difficult problems.
Given that I recently started a campaign where one of the other players is playing a “fluffy sweater” lawful good Warlock this cracks me up.
The character would rather make friends than fight, would’ve been an amusing group concept.
Was the character literally a sweater?