My career keeps me trapped in rural USA, so I haven't been a part of a RPG group in over 15 years and find myself pining for the old days often. I keep my gaming-self sane by making up homebrew rules systems; recently I ironed out the kinks in a comic book superhero RPG. In order to test out character generation and basic resolution rules, I wanted to make up a sample PC. Since it's been over a decade and a half since I've made up a character, I naturally had a little creative block. I've heard of creative writing workshops where folk try to write stories around a word or phrase suggested at random by another person. I decided to try a similar idea with the dictionary. Using my trusty polyhedral dice I randomly selected first a page, and then a word from that page. Four words would probably be enough I figured, and I was determined to use the words the dice gave me, regardless of how weird it turned out.
My first word was "millihenry". Well, I guess since it has to do with electricity, that could indicate electrical or magnetic powers for my superhero. My second word was "Mother's Day". Ah, OK, this was a good one. His mother plays a key role in his origin, or perhaps something tragic happened on Mother's Day? Lots of possibilities there. Third word: "Seneca (the Younger)". What? OK, so an ancient Roman playwright and philosopher. Well, I had no idea what to do with that, but I decided I'd look Seneca up on Wikipedia and perhaps I could find something useful. Final word: "Haplont". Perfect! An organism like a fungus or algae... I could easily make the leap to some sort of pseudo-science mumbo-jumbo that makes comic books so fun. It started out slow, but with that last word the ideas flowed into my head.
Using this initial inspiration I filled up two pages of notes and had a complete origin story, and a clear enough idea of my character's powers, flaws, and motivations to make up game stats. The story was detailed enough that one could use it as a campaign starter, a way to draw all the PCs in a game group together. I'll spare you the scene-by-scene breakdown of my character's origin story, but here's a quick summary that demonstrates the use of the four random words.
Henry Prisock thought he was a normal college kid, but he was actually created 21 years ago in a lab. Unfortunately for Henry, every eight years or so he buds(!), splitting off a clone of himself with the mental development of an infant. [Inspired by the word Haplont]. The budding leaves Henry in a state of panicked confusion, causing him to forget both his escape from the lab during the first incident, and fleeing from his foster family after the second. With only vague recollections of his past, he drifts, eventually spending a short stint in the Army then ending up in college. Everything comes to a head while he's at a multi-school thespian workshop. While trying out for a part in the play Phaedra [written by Seneca the Younger], he meets a girl whose familiarity he can't explain. Unknown to him, Millicent is his forgotten foster sister [Milli-Henry; I used this word to generate their names]. Her odd behavior makes him wonder about recent strange events, like the man he saw driving the get-away car at a bank robbery, the man who looks identical to him. Tracking the man and his bank robber associates down, he's shot in the arm for his effort, but makes off in his doppelganger's car. Bloodied and in shock, his latent memories lead him to Milli's house, the house of his foster parents. Large sums of money hidden in the car guarantee that the violent gang won't stop until they find him, which they do. To Henry's surprise, another identical version of himself is there, living with Milli's family. When the gang arrives, the three identical "brothers" by instinct defend each other and, touching, eerily melt together. Forming a man three times the size of a normal person, with three times the strength, they defeat the robbers. Thus begins the career of Henry and his "brothers". As time goes on, he will find as a fused being they are capable of other abilities, such as growing two extra pairs of eyes around the head, giving 360 degree vision. He/they will also discover that having three fused but separate minds provides great protection from psychic probing and attacks. Of course, he will also have to deal with explaining his own existence, to himself and to his foster family. He will have to deal with two brothers, one raised by a vicious gang and another with the mind of a 5 year old. And who is the mother always in his dreams [Use of the word Mother's Day]?
I cut that entirely from the whole cloth of my imagination. It's weird, yeah, but that's why I like it. Its not the standard "I'm a laconic, ninja mercenary who's bent on avenging my significant others'/parents' deaths" PC origin. And I could never have made it this strange without a little random nudging from the dictionary. Try it out.
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| Front of Character Sheet for my homebrew super-hero RPG |
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| Back of Character Sheet |