Favourite character is an interesting one, and the answer very different to the one in 2014. I did consider Strahd, as I had a lot of fun playing him during our recent campaign, but in truth the player’s resistance to my shades of grey approach to him meant that quite a lot of opportunity to mess around with him was lost. In truth, I had more fun playing one of his brides, Anastrasya, who was a manipulative, dangerous minx (and didn’t get made as a vampire by the characters at first) but I was never really emotionally invested in her survival.
If you’d asked me this last year, it would have been Náli the Mason, my dwarf from the Lonely Mountains who played through the entire Darkening of Mirkwood campaign run by Dr Mitch, facing off giant spiders and Nazgûl and ending up respected through the local societies around the forest. We do plan to return to that campaign at some point for a coda; there’s a dragon and a ring of power, and probably Náli’s eventual fall to his dragon-sickness. However, it’s been quite some time since we played that campaign, so there’s been time for a new candidate.
My favourite character at the moment is Lotte Rädler-Jones, my 1930s German science student turned journalist from our Eternal Lies campaign run by Rich Lock. Lotte has some dark secrets in her past and fled Germany as the Nazi’s took power, finding love and a new opportunity for life in America. However, she’s drawn a thread that she can’t help but pull on. However, the real reason that she’s my favourite at the moment is the relationship that she’s built up with Benjamin, her fellow investigator (played by Dr Mitch). For most of the campaign, we’ve played as a duo, which has made it really intense and had this spotlight coming closer together. Lotte and Ben have become close friends, which things shared that they wouldn’t show or tell others. Their more recent ally, Gonchi, remains on the outside because of this bond (something that I’m glad Nigel - who plays him - doesn’t mind). Lotte is facing her marriage collapsing because her editor-husband doesn’t understand why she’s off travelling with that man, and society is pressing in on her. However, her sense of duty won’t let it go. Perhaps her husband is right to be jealous and fearful of her relationship with Benjamin, but at this point I don’t know. We’ll find out the best way, through play.
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| Lotte, generated by artflow.ai from my description of her. |
Coda.
After I initially posted this, I remembered George Esterhase. I only played George for two days and one night, but I have great memories of him. George was a pretty failed spook who got drawn into the Dracula Dossier and ended up killing Dracula with a rocket launcher. And then having to kill his friend who had been turned. He also had a very memorable discussion with a fellow character who had betrayed the party, looking out over the water at Staithes and managed to bring them back on board. It was a really satisfying character arc; from failure to a self-confidence and success that he can never talk of. Hat tip to Steve for running a great mini-campaign that LongCon. Not my favourite overall, but close.
8 August 2023
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