Feels like every would-be Double Vergil Sephiroth player fails to land step one drafting the “loner with a dark past”. There still has to be a reason to gaf about the party. Now, what’s fun is ‘naturally thawing the ice prince’ over the course of the first arc of his interaction with the party.
I call it the Law of Zuko: it shouldn’t take more than like five sessions for an ice prince/lone wolf/edgemancer archetype to either start visibly, but plausibly-deniably caring for the party they’re in; or to start accidentally leaving blatant hooks to the tune of trust for other players to grab onto as far as inter-personal stories are concerned. Ten if the ice prince you’re running is especially crotchety; but it’s hard for me to keep that kind of energy going that long. The only thing better than an edgy badass action hero is when the hero stops feeling the need to project edgy badassery.
One of my recent characters was your classic racist greedy dwarf. But it was her greed that knew no bounds so the racism part rarely came up because why would they be an asshole to a bunch of adventurers helping them get rich beyond imagining? Why would they be an asshole to the people giving them a ton of money for running around to save the world? It mostly manifested when we’d get minor encounters and I’d suggest we have better things to do than help out these elf randos, or during combat I’d be on top of healing any dwarves but drag my feet just a little for other people. It’s important that your character flaws still function within a group and that you’re not using them as an excuse to force solo play or excuse being a dick irl
Feels like every would-be Double Vergil Sephiroth player fails to land step one drafting the “loner with a dark past”. There still has to be a reason to gaf about the party. Now, what’s fun is ‘naturally thawing the ice prince’ over the course of the first arc of his interaction with the party.
I call it the Law of Zuko: it shouldn’t take more than like five sessions for an ice prince/lone wolf/edgemancer archetype to either start visibly, but plausibly-deniably caring for the party they’re in; or to start accidentally leaving blatant hooks to the tune of trust for other players to grab onto as far as inter-personal stories are concerned. Ten if the ice prince you’re running is especially crotchety; but it’s hard for me to keep that kind of energy going that long. The only thing better than an edgy badass action hero is when the hero stops feeling the need to project edgy badassery.
One of my recent characters was your classic racist greedy dwarf. But it was her greed that knew no bounds so the racism part rarely came up because why would they be an asshole to a bunch of adventurers helping them get rich beyond imagining? Why would they be an asshole to the people giving them a ton of money for running around to save the world? It mostly manifested when we’d get minor encounters and I’d suggest we have better things to do than help out these elf randos, or during combat I’d be on top of healing any dwarves but drag my feet just a little for other people. It’s important that your character flaws still function within a group and that you’re not using them as an excuse to force solo play or excuse being a dick irl