My friend and gaming buddy Justin has been in town the past 2 weeks, and he, Mike, and I got together for some gaming to take home. Basically, we did character/setting creation for an online Fate game.
Setting is “New London,” a fictionalized steampunk London, England. We went pretty generic, here, with automatons and that’s about it. In many ways, the flavor is very similar to the setting for The Strange Case of Finley Jayne, which I read this week– after we made our characters and setting for this game. The central conflict in our setting is that the Martians are coming… eventually.
Mike is playing a former military man turned baker, Capt Winfield, who tends to attract “the weird.” Mike wanted something kind of light and fluffy, down to being a pie-throwing baker (for the record: this is a concept Mike has played before, so I kind of knew where he was going with it).
Despite wanting something light and fluffy myself, I also want us to not die when shit hits the fan. So I’m playing an awakened automaton named Abigail. Her high concept is “Automaton with a heart of gold.” Her trouble is “built for battle.” In essence: she was created as an assassin-bot, but after her traumatic awakening, she abhors violence and now works as a shop girl and laborer for one of Winfield’s neighbors (I actually want her to work for him, but don’t know if that’ll change our dynamic too much).
When we did character creation, the 3-phase story creation got dark pretty quickly. I decided that Abigail had awakened shortly after killing a man. She doesn’t know who he is or why she did it, only that the deed was done. In the original phase, we decided that she had been acquitted during the trial, but not found innocent. However, when I took Abigail’s character sheet home, I decided that the trial and proceedings resulted in too much notoriety for my automaton. I want her to be a very nice, friendly robot girl who happens to have these terrifying skills which she almost never uses. As a result, her history has been rewritten– although Abigail knows how she awoke, nobody else does. Except Winfield, who saw her leave the alley, walked into the alley, and saw the dead man– he can deduce it was her, but lacks solid proof. And he doesn’t think she’s a bad person.
For Abigail’s part, she has a defective memory cell which results in her not remembering what happened just before she awakened (in fact, she may not remember any of her kills). This memory cell has also locked away the location of the Martian vault she and Winfield found in Greenland (Winfield’s trouble is “magnet for Weird”).
I’m not sure what Justin will do with our strange pair of characters. Abigail is an awakening creature who has only recently started to experience emotions, and who at some level has an ongoing existential crisis about the nature of being a “thing.” Stealing a bit from Steam Powered Giraffe for that one, actually– does this oil that is leaking mean this is a cry?
Abigail’s aspect relating to Winfield is that he makes her laugh. It’s a positive emotional response, and one of the first she’s ever had. The world, and her reactions to it, is a confusing place so being able to laugh is oddly soothing.
I’ll update as the campaign unfolds. We’re not sure where the game is going to go or how often we’ll play yet. But it’s nice to have something to do when the three of us get together for gaming.