<< Favorite Games XIII | Main | Favorite Games XIV >>

June 27, 2003

WISH 53: Hamming It Up

What are three examples of physical or verbal schtick that you’ve used to develop your characters? Schtick means trademark gestures or phrases that identify your character uniquely. It’s about showing, not telling.

Well, I was part of that Roll The Bones Forum discussion, but I'll gladly run through a longer list, because I'm a big fan of character schtick in play. There's nothing else I know of that provides such a quick hook to the character, both for myself and for other players in the game.

The Mighty Leo, in Teenagers from Outer Space had the vocal stylings of the Cowardly Lion blended messily with the attitude of a pro wrestler. Lots of corny Brooklyn tough-guy posturing, complete with the occasional "I'll moidilize 'im, dat's what I'll do." Leo was played both face-to-face (mostly at GenCon and Origins, back when I attended both regularly) and on the CIS:RPGames forum, so I even had to learn to phonetically reproduce the silly voice as text. Leo was developed initially as someone to play at Mike Pondsmith's own TFOS games at GenCon, and was made as broad as he is to make sure sure he captured attention right off.

Gevrok is my most extreme current example, with a ridiculously thick lower-class British accent (more in the style of a Games Workshop Ork than a D&D half-orc). The most fun we have with that is when Julia and I swap accents to represent speaking in Orcish rather than Common. Gevrok is quite well spoken in Orkish (I try to mimic BBC newsreaders as Julia does the football hooligan bit).

Ezhno inherited one schtick from an earlier character (Emlyn), which is using short grunts as a primary communication tool. For Emlyn (who was played on CIS:RPgames), those were written as "...", based on a bit in the Gogol 13 manga. Emlyn had the additional quirk of not quite understanding the grammatical rules of the group's common language, and stated most questions as gruff orders ("You will assist me in this." rather than "Will you assist me in this?"), which caused a good bit of misinterpretation of his personality.

I'm still developing Nikolao's style in James's Passions of the Tide game, but it's quickly growing into something akin to a stump politician mixed with a slightly less menacing version of John Malkovich's take on Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons. His schtick is forming as an unusually casual style couched in courtly florishes. So he calls his rather strict and formal cousin-in-law Tamasi "cuz" and flirts outrageously with members of the household staff (including Isleen, another PC). He's failing to bite his tongue enough in a fairly private Imperial audience right now...

Oh, that's four (or perhaps five) already... I should stop now.

Posted by ghoul at June 27, 2003 09:38 AM

Trackback Pings

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://noneuclidianstaircase.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/36

Comments

The "cuz" thing drives Tamasi bats, though it's too petty for her to complain about.

Thought you'd appreciate knowing that. :)

Posted by: Dorothea Salo at June 27, 2003 09:50 AM

I miss "towlkin' Orky." We need to find some more time to play out the RGE saga. :)

Posted by: Julia at June 27, 2003 11:09 AM

"The most fun we have with that is when Julia and I swap accents to represent speaking in Orcish rather than Common. Gevrok is quite well spoken in Orkish (I try to mimic BBC newsreaders as Julia does the football hooligan bit)."


That is a marvelous idea, which I'm sure adds a lot to the mood of the game. I'll have to remember this for some of my F2F games.

Thanks!

Eliz

Posted by: elizabeth at June 27, 2003 03:11 PM

Post a comment

Thanks for signing in, . Now you can comment. (sign out)

(If you haven't left a comment here before, you may need to be approved by the site owner before your comment will appear. Until then, it won't appear on the entry. Thanks for waiting.)


Remember me?