So I was planning on getting more work done on the video adaptation of my review of Changeling, and was in the process of getting my web development tasks out of the way when my muse snuck up behind me, sat on my lap and lathered me with inspiration. It wasn’t really appropriate for the work place, but the inspiration lingers.
It’s for a pen-and-paper RPG, using thesestories as background material. I’m going to ‘jot’ down some notes here, just to get them out of my head and continue working on what I’m actually getting paid for.
System
With appropriate credit to Bethesda, I think I’d like to use a version the SPECIAL system for character stats. The skill set will probably be slightly different from Fallout, as I’ll need to include things like Piloting, Astrogation and so on. Perks will also be different, and based on character origin & profession. As far as ship-to-ship combat is concerned, I’m thinking of developing a separate system called MARS that first considers the Munitions being used, factors in the Armor of the target, then the Range and finally takes into account anything Special about the weapon – if it’s made to pierce armor, if it’s radioactive, etc. – before making the rolls.
Characters
Characters will have 2 factions to choose from, Terran and Jovian. Terrans tend to be more intellectual and procedural while Jovians are more inclined towards altercations. The faction choice affects the final outcome of the character’s SPECIAL stats. Further customization comes from planet/moon of origin, with 4 for each faction. Terrans can come from Terra, Luna, Mars or Ceres, while Jovians hail from Callisto, Io, Ganymede or Europa. Planetary origin affects starting skill bonuses and makes some Perks available before a Profession is selected – some people are just naturally inclined towards certain things. I’m going to discuss Professions in the next section to try and keep my thoughts organized – things keep coming to me as I type this.
Professions
So there are four basic class types: Brawler, Shooter, Thinker & Speaker. Brawlers want to get into fights up close; Shooters want to stand back and… well, shoot; Thinkers use their brains both in combat and out; and Speakers talk a lot. But the Profession selection doesn’t stop there. There are also four types of employers: Government, Military, Corporate & Freelance. The type of class and employer the player chooses will determine their Profession, and thus their skill set & perk trees. For example, a Speaker working for the Government will be a Politician, while one employed by the Military is an Officer. Talking for a Corp makes you a Salesman, while working Freelance makes you a Con Artist. All Speakers have some basic traits they share, but the Officer is going to have some training with shooting things while the Salesman has better negotiating power.
Engagements
Both Combat and Non-Combat Engagements will be handled with Skill checks, determined by the roll of percentile dice and affected by Luck & Perks. Space combat will start with a character’s Skill check which factors into the MARS system. Both person-to-person and ship-to-ship combat will have location hit percentages not unlike the V.A.T.S. in Fallout 3. Critical hits will likely have spectacular results, using the tables from Dark Heresy as inspiration.
Imitation, after all, is the most sincere form of flattery.
Ship-to-ship combat will also be interesting to develop. Smaller craft, such as fighters and small transports, will engage each other in “knife-fight” ranges, while capital ships hurl projectiles at each other at much longer ranges provided they don’t rely upon interceptors for protection.
Mood & Theme
The mood of the game will be somewhere between Firefly and the re-imagined Battlestar Galactica. There’s some space to explore within the solar system and beyond, but most of the drama happens in a relatively small arena, i.e. the space between Terra and Jupiter. There’s politics to hash out, credits to be made, battles to fight and technology to develop. Everybody has an angle and nothing is what it seems. The lack of stable FTL propulsion and any sort of alien species limits the scope of the action but allows for more personal storytelling potential, as well as keeping the mood more in the scope of a personal drama than a space opera.
That’s all I can think of at this point, and there’s going to be more to come as I let this stew.
Eating vegetables is supposed to build one’s character, as is mowing the lawn. When we get older, we understand that when parents discuss building character, it’s short hand for long explanations of why it’s a good idea for us to eat something that’s nutritious but not as appealing as an ice cream sundae. Trying to establish a work ethic by doing chores before playing is a concept that might be lost on a child, hence the use of the phrase “it builds character.”
But when it comes to writing, how does one build a character that’s not going to fail?
I don’t mean failing in terms of succeeding in goal achievement within the story. Authors often set up their characters to fail in the course of the story, in order to generate drama or keep the plot interesting. What I mean, here, is making the character a success in terms of audience appeal and the ability of the reader to relate to the character.
I think in the past I have adequately coveredwhat not to do when it comes to putting a character together. But just in case you’re unsure, here’s a couple resources that might help.
If after giving your character a name, appearance, occupation and motivation, you begin fleshing them out but start to wonder if you’re hitting too close to home or might be to derivative or overpowered, run them through thesetests.
On a less flippant note, Orson Scott Card has a few things to say about characters that aren’t exclusive to science fiction. D.A. Houdek has written an essay on Heinlein’s Women and Jacqueline Carey talks a little about the characters in her Kushiel series in this interview. In fact, a few minutes’ searching on your favorite author in Google will probably find an article or interview discussing their characters and what makes them either believable or laughable.
What works best for me is starting with a character’s role. Are they a protagonist, the protagonist’s love interest, an antagonizing force or someone minor provided for background purposes? From there I think on motivations. What do they want to achieve and why? What do they care about? What makes them angry and what can’t they live without?
Having these things well established and working from there as a foundation is, I believe, far more important than how pretty a character is, the abilities they have or the trials they’re going to face. Anybody can put someone pretty in a story, give them cool powers or run them through a series of explosions. Making an audience care about them is something else again, and therein lies the true challenge for a storyteller.
In the midst of my day-to-day workflow, the aftermath of my nuptials, and trying & failing to keep several financial chainsaws in the air while ducking for cover to avoid losing limbs, the news coming from my various writing prospects has taken a rather positive turn. I need to push forward on writing my fantasy novel, but some of my other writing has been getting attention or might earn me some scratch and, more importantly, notoriety.
Since my first article was published there I’ve been keeping my eye on their upcoming issues. I have one query in to Tom Endo, the acquisitions editor, and hope to brew up a couple more in the next few weeks. People actually seem a bit surprised when they realize I write non-fiction as well as my usual flights of fancy.
About a year ago I wrapped up working with Fritz Sprandel, a man who found himself on quite a few journeys in his life. I helped him chronicle one of his many sojourns, a solo canoe trip down the east coast that landed him in Castro’s Cuba. It’s a good tale and I hope he gets it to print soon. I heard last night my name will be prominently featured on the book’s front cover. More on this as it develops.
I was made aware of this by a dear friend of mine. This anthology of horror stories will have a second volume produced soon, and they were looking for submissions before September. I pointed them towards Akuma, which was quickly accepted. It’s a free contribution on my part, but it’s another way of getting my name out, this time in the realm of fiction.
For now, however, I have bills that need to be paid and a bank account waving its arms at me after getting tossed overboard by a wave of life events, so I’d best get back to work.
I really couldn’t think of an appropriate image for this little literary trip down memory lane, so here’s a picture of a mountain lion. It’s semi-appropriate, I suppose, since the first iteration of the first novel I ever wrote was entitled “Project: Lion,” and if that doesn’t betray the fact I wrote the thing in junior high, wait until I get into the particulars of what I’d at this point laughingly call the plot.
The premise of “Project: Lion” was that I basically wanted to create an American James Bond. This involved a personable and professional spy by the name of Morgan Radcliffe flying all over the world, shooting up bad guys and chatting up women. The charming, exotic female he encounters turns out to be a double agent, his school chum is killed and the friend’s hot sister leans on Morgan for support. Morgan shoots up dudes, drives really fast, shoots up more dudes, gets yelled at by a superior and manages to save the day anyway with nary a scratch or reprimand for being so flagrantly awesome.
Given the state of American reading audiences it might have been able to find a market and possibly even make some money, but neither of those notions detract from the fact that it was rubbish. Morgan was a Gary Stu of the highest order, and while he was capable of emotions other than smug self-assuredness, I realized after finishing the work that I was way too close to the character and projected too much of my own unattainable dreams onto him. I knew there were things about the character I liked, and others would as well, but the character needed to develop differently which meant I had to rethink the character from the ground up.
So I gave Morgan a sex change.
College did wonders for my social skills as well as my writing ability. I realized that having Morgan be female instead of male added an element of separation between us, allowing for more interesting plot points and deeper characterization. How different would it be for a woman instead of a man to stand out in the male-dominated genre of espionage fiction? Rather than having her be just a pretty face, or a cookie-cutter badass action grrrl, I added elements such as her expertise in cryptography, a relationship with her father who preceded her in the intelligence community, and an element of mystery concerning the evil mastermind against whom I pitted her. It made for a more interesting and involving narrative that got some very good feedback from people, and due to the fact I broke it up into a series of days rather than chapters, I renamed the endeavor Fortnight.
Unfortunately, of the two to three dozen queries I sent regarding the work, not a single one even requested sample chapters. Even talking to an agent in person at last year’s Philadelphia Writer’s Conference yielded only silence after what I felt was a positive experience in speaking with her. It could be that I came across as overly eager, but I’ll never know for sure. So Fortnight lingered, and given the decline of the genre in recent years, I began to feel that it was time for me to move on. I started working in earnest on my fantasy novel, and while that is still a positive experience, I’m struggling through some of the newer chapters.
When I established this blog, I knew I’d need consistent and interesting content to keep up interest. I turned to Fortnight and examined both the plot and the state of fiction at large. With the surge of supernatural fiction such as Twilight, the Anita Blake novels and the Southern Vampire Mysteries from which True Blood was born, two things occurred to me: There’s a thriving market for supernatural stories featuring female protagonists, and I have a female protagonist and a solid idea of how I’d want supernatural beings to be depicted.
This lead me to Shattered Code, but even after posting the first day of it I knew there were problems. The story starts to slowly, and I hadn’t developed the premise enough. With help from my fiancée, and more research as to what’s out there (a good excuse to watch the first season of True Blood if nothing else), I built a stronger foundation and began writing the story from scratch once again.
Day 1 of Lighthouse should be up tomorrow, provided I can polish things off tonight. I look forward to feedback from those of you still reading this stuff.
Inspired by a quick rant I did over on GeekTyrant, I thought I’d get some of my thoughts on how I’d like to portray vampires “jotted down”. I’m doing it in this way to get some feedback, so please, feel free to comment. Also, in case I need to mention this for the casual passer-by, this is all fictional information.
Differences between vampires and humans.
The human body is operated by the nervous system, which uses neurons to transmit and receive various kinds of bioelectric energy, which travels through the body on a certain wavelength. The difference between vampires and humans can be explained (though grossly over-simplified) in saying that humans operate on an AM frequency, and vampires on the FM band. Human blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the various systems of the body, maintain bodily temperature and removes wastes. Vampiric blood does none of these things on its own, as the vampiric body is dead and no longer requires oxygen or produces wastes. However, both human and vampiric blood perform hydraulic & repair operations. Vampires heal very quickly in comparison to humans and are capable of feats of strength and agility beyond human scales due to the specialized nature of their blood. The higher frequency of the vampire’s nervous system also means a typical vampire has enhanced senses and higher intelligence than a comparable human – that is, provided the new vampire isn’t a corpse that’s been lingering in a grave for decades.
Vampires, blood, and reproduction.
In order to maintain function, fresh blood is required on a regular basis, as the dead organs of the vampire’s body can no longer produce living cells. The heart of a vampire still beats, though typically at a higher rate than a human’s, but other organs, such as the pancreas, liver and kidneys, begin to atrophy due to disuse. Vampires do not reproduce sexually, but sexual behavior can be emulated through the use of blood in order to attract and ensnare prey. A new vampire is created when a body drained of blood, preferably one recently dead, is fed a small quantity of blood from a vampire, then has its lungs filled from the lungs of its vampire ‘parent,’ jump-starting the technically dead systems. The ‘offspring’ must feed from a fresh source soon after this in order to maintain function. Recently dead ‘offspring’ are more capable of discerning their predicament and coping with it in various ways, while corpses dead for a lengthy period of time have typically experienced such decay of their brains that they are little more than zombies (though they crave blood instead of brains, head wounds just bleed more).
Vampires, cold iron, garlic and sunlight.
Cold iron, that is to say iron in a pure form with a minimum of refinement, is seen as a ward against evil spirits. In the case of vampires, this is more than superstition. The ferrous nature of the metal causes disruption of the hyper-active nervous system of a vampire. An iron stake stabbed or hammered into the heart of a vampire will immobilize it. Wooden stakes suffice if the vampire is at rest, as the stake will make it difficult for the vampire to rise, allowing hunters to behead it and thus destroy it – you can’t kill a vampire, as they are already technically dead. Stab a vampire who’s up and about with a wooden stake, however, and all you’ll get is a bloody shank of wood and a very angry vampire. Clever vampires being hunted will often pretend to fall when staked with wood, only to devour their would-be slayers and remove the stake, more dangerous than before. Also, refined iron and iron alloys like steel do not have the same disruptive effect. This is a fact that leads more modern vampire hunters to shoot a vampire in the heart and then stand motionless and shocked when the vampire doesn’t fall down ‘dead’. Finally, a large enough amount of iron will utterly repulse a vampire, which is why graveyards often have wrought iron fences. Despite a vampire’s ability to vault such obstacles, the nature of the wrought iron keeps the vampire out and thus deprives them of possible ‘shock troops’ or a safe haven from hunters.
Also, garlic repels vampires because their sensitive senses are especially vulnerable to the smell. Very loud noises, such as explosions or jet engines, are also irritants. Finally, vampires tend to get sunburnt more easily than humans, since their skin lacks some of the proteins living humans produce on a daily basis, but are otherwise not instantly reduced to ash by the rays of the sun. Sunlight, however, carries a great deal of power and tends to disrupt a vampire’s nervous system, though to a much lesser extent than cold iron. Walking around during the day for a vampire is not unlike a human walking around at 4 am after a full day of work starting at 6 am the previous morning; entirely possible, but the vampire will eventually grow drained, lethargic, and may begin to hallucinate. Fresh blood can maintain a vampire in the same way cans of Red Bull or lines of cocaine can sustain a human during this time, but eventually, they both need to just take a break and get some sleep.
It should be noted that vampires, in sunlight, do NOT sparkle.
Vampires are subtle.
Vampires are predators. They move through the sea of humanity the way a lion moves through the long grass of the savanna stalking its prey. Just like the ill-fated herbivores of that grassland, mortals shouldn’t know the smiling, funny and intelligent person buying them drinks and chatting them up is a blood-sucking fiend from beyond the grave until it’s far too late. This means you don’t flash your fangs at the earliest opportunity. Wearing nothing but black leather and matching longcoats is a good way to get spotted, and while the look is very badass, it’s not very subtle. Neither is an open war with lycanthropes, but the big fuzzies are a subject for another notes session. My thinking is that vampires would try to maintain their habits, dress sense and mannerisms from when they were technically alive. This would become more difficult as time goes on, of course, with ancient vampires acting in anachronistic ways and possibly being kept from humanity at large by their subordinates for the good of their society.
Vampires are a selective minority.
There was a time when vampirism was more rampant, when countrysides and villages were terrorized by these creatures of the night. But power corrupts, and having absolute control over an area leads to a vampire growing decadent and unrestrained. Just because you can rip a peasant’s head from their shoulders with a minimum amount of effort doesn’t mean you necessarily should. The Inquisition and witch-hunts of the centuries in the middle of the last millennium showed that humanity will not stand for too much that is outside of what they consider ‘normal.’ They fear what they do not understand, and how someone can remain not only mobile after death but maintain their complexion, charm and holdings is certainly difficult to understand.
This means that vampires need to be careful who they choose to bring into their fold. A potential ‘offspring’ has to have potential that is otherwise going to waste in their daily life. Most vampire ‘parents’ look for like minds who are frustrated by the restraints of mortal life, be they restrained by their job, circumstances or family situation. Some present the alternative of vampirism in a private and frank manner, while others become intimately involved with their future ‘offspring’ and bestow vampirism as a gift, which may or may not be received kindly. The minority among this selective minority are the ‘accidents’, humans who are drained to death and given vampiric breath and blood in order to save their life. This is often seen as an act by someone inexperienced or immature, as not everybody can handle the reality of vampirism and becoming emotionally attached to humans is seen by some of the older vampires as an utterly idiotic act. How attached, they reason, did you become to your steak or salad when you were alive?
Vampires are dangerous and societal.
The high frequency of the vampire’s nervous system coupled with a highly specialized circulatory system makes them powerful creatures. On instinct, the circulatory system can lengthen the incisors of the vampire into the distinctive fangs used for feeding as well as defense. With training, a vampire can use their blood to lengthen their nails as well, which make for sharp but brittle defensive weapons. The most dangerous vampires have trained themselves to strengthen these weapons to the point that they can perform truly superhuman feats when their superior strength and agility is taken into account, such as climbing walls without visible support, tearing the door from a car and hurling it away, and surviving leaps from tall buildings without breaking a single bone. While such displays are frowned upon by vampire society at large, there are times when a vampire has no other choice but to reveal the full extent of their powers. It has been argued that these powers are part and parcel of being predators of the human race, but that the most dangerous power a vampire possesses is time.
Given enough time to research and train, vampires can use their unique nature to explore powers, theories and abilities hitherto unknown amongst humanity. Use of blood in the brain’s largely dormant areas can spark even higher levels of intelligence, reportedly unlocking the potential for telepathy or telekinesis. It has been theorized that the vampiric body is something more than its dead tissues and is capable of changing shape, density and even state, leading to the myth of vampires becoming “as mist” – if there is truth to this myth, vampires aren’t confirming it. In order to remain capable and unpredictable predators, vampire society cultivates an atmosphere of secrets and mystery, maintained by a codex of laws governing how vampires interact with humanity, the ‘legal’ scope and nature of research into the vampiric condition, and punishment for infractions, ranging from dismemberment of varying degrees (severed limbs can be reattached) to incineration while conscious, the most severe and final of penalties.
Vampires are territorial.
Also governed by laws are the territories of vampires and the ways in which one vampire may enter, contest or even seize the territory of another. After the Inquisition, it was decided by the oldest surviving vampires that such interactions needed to happen under certain guidelines, that would allow vampires to hunt without worrying about confrontations that might lead to the use of overt superhuman abilities and thus draw undue attention to the society as a whole. However, like any species of predators, hunting grounds will be contested and fought over. It’s become less common for these contests to be physical altercations, more often resolved in more civilized formats such as chess matches, poker games, or elaborate high-stakes gambits involving sports venues, politics or banking ventures.
Vampires are monsters.
Being formerly dead, vampires are no longer human. This can be difficult to cope with in the case of the victim turned vampire. Those who do learn to adapt, however, grow comfortable with their new state and even revel in it. Just like a wine connoisseur enjoying the perfect merlot, or a steak fanatic sampling a cut of top sirloin, vampires become selective of their prey and truly enjoy the act of feeding from a particular kind of human, with the act of feeding releasing endorphins not unlike the act of sex for humans. And with the hyper-sensitive systems of the vampire, this feeling is all the more potent. Feeding from animals does not have quite the same effect, and drinking blood from bags is the vampiric equivalent of eating cold pizza. While feeding from humans is inherently monstrous, it’s also the best and most enjoyable way to gain sustenance. It behooves individual vampires, then, to grow accustomed to the act.
