Over_the_Edge_Players'_Survival_Guide

Players’ Survival Guide
CHARACTER CREATION
if it was important to him in any way. If it involves a
political issue, how did he stand on that issue? Was
he involved in any way directly? Did it change the
way he lives or thinks about the world?
Sample events: major relief efforts in Somalia
(1992), “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia-Herzegovina
(1992), dissolution of Soviet Union (1992), the Gulf
War (1990 to 1991), the rise of democracy in Eastern
Europe (1989 to present), the stock market crash of
October 1987, Chernobyl disaster (1986), Iranian
Hostage Crisis (1979 to 1981), Watergate (1972-1974),
The Vietnam War (Sixties to early Seventies), years
of activism (late Sixties & early Seventies), the hippie
generation (mid-sixties to early seventies), manned
flights to the moon and further space exploration
(starting in 1969), the Civil Rights movement (especially
1950’s to late 1960’s), assassination of JFK
(1963), the Bay of Pigs (1961), the Korean War (1950
to 1953), World War II (1939 to 1945).
Personal Philosophy
How do you answer the big questions? Where
did the universe come from? What does it mean to
be human? What is human destiny?
What are human beings? Children of God who
have fallen from grace? Meaningless results of random
evolution? Slaves of deterministic karma? Thoughts
in the mind of God? Divine beings spending a fraction
of eternity as human bodies in order to learn or
grow or amuse themselves? Creatures of God that
are capable of becoming God’s equal? Figments of
your omnipotent imagination? Self-created beings,
properly the center of the universe?
What is the universe? A thoughtless mechanism
slavishly following patterns of energy? A physical
creation set in motion by Divine Will and left to follow
its own course? A figment of the collective imagination
created by a host of independent minds? A perfect,
divine world that most people misunderstand? A
game played out by unimaginably superior beings?
The calculations of a mighty computer? A divine
creation heading to a specific destiny? A divine creation
that charts its own course, arriving at whatever
destiny its inhabitants create for it?
Consider your character’s ethics. First, what do you
believe is right, and what is wrong? What do you do
that others might find morally objectionable, and what
would you yourself find morally objectionable? How
well does your personal morality coincide with that of
the majority? Then consider the source of your ethics.
Do you consider morals to be traditions that it’s best
not to question? The Law of God? High-sounding
justification for personal taste? Tools of the powerful
to manipulate and control the masses? Instinctual
tendencies resulting from the process of human evolution?
The path of developing and strengthening
one’s own humanity? A social contract?
Your personal vision of reality may be very different
from the vision that society usually teaches people
to have. After all, “reality” is merely an hypothesis
that we dread to question.
Alternate
Approaches
The PC Group
If the players wish, they may decide to give their
adventures some focus by making the PCs part of a
group of some sort. This option gives the PCs a good
reason to know each other and work together. The
GM may assign a focus to the group to fit with her
evil schemes, or the players may form a group out of
consensus. If you choose to have some sort of focus,
do so carefully, as this focus limits the possibilities
for PC concepts. Be sure to choose a focus that can
get the PCs involved in many different sorts of plots.
A rock band may be a limiting concept, but a rock
band heavily into social or political change may find
lots of adventure on Al Amarja. Also be careful to
design PCs with interests and motivations outside the
group; otherwise the PCs may not be readily suitable
for many different types of plots.
Group-oriented play provides possibilities for play
that are not available to an incoherent assemblage of
individuals. A group allows PCs to pursue unusual
interests without leaving out other PCs that are not
involved in those pursuits. For instance, a party
composed of rapper, a fringe scientist, a Zoroastrian
evangelist, and a were-coyote would find little to do
together. Each PC could pursue his individual goals,
but that produces essentially four parallel series, rather
than a single, integrated one.
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