The Character of the Year Award Ceremony

#1

Here is my

CHARACTER OF THE YEAR AWARD CEREMONY.
The people who are responsible for all the fun we had - our characters are in the center now. Let’s celebrate them together.

Which character of yours would get which award?

These are my categories:

  1. Most epic characters of the year

  2. Best antagonists of the year

  3. Most bad-ass characters of the year

  4. Most bleedy characters of the year

  5. Most touching characters of the year

  6. Coolest characters of the year

  7. Most competent characters of the year

  8. Best friend character of the year

  9. The purest characters of the year

  10. The most miserable characters of the year

  11. The most eloquent characters of the year

Any important awards I missed? Most stereotypical? Most politically relevant? So many important categories!

How would you celebrate your favourite characters? Do you see any sense in it? What would it do for you, if going in this seriously: imagining the most impressive moment relevant for the award, the big thank you speech?

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#2

I don’t know if i have characters that would fill all these categories, but I’d certainly consider Mr Monet from Tylers recent World Wide Wrestling: the road game to fill both “The most touching character” and “the purest character” i’ve played in a long time.

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#3

For my Best Friend character of 2018, I’d go with Humerus Pete, my Beast character from last year’s Gauntlet Quaterly game of Lowell Francis’ Changeling the Lost PbtA hack, run by Tyler Lominack. Pete was the Man With The Van for the group, and his Lair was the motley’s crash pad of choice. And Pete almost never complained about it. Much.

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#4

The most miserable character of the year might be Max Thurston, a biologist on a damaged space station that was dropping down from orbit. He had just one hour to live and spent it talking to an emerging sentient AI. (We played Connection Lost). I learned some things about the five stages of grief playing him.

The most epic character would be Morgon the fire mage who vanquished the Unconquerable Legion (or a part of it) and impressed a Demon Arc. Sometimes I just like to kick ass in fiction.

My best friend, most competent and coolest character was Quake, the clone soldier, who stood fast by his jedi friend even though he didn’t believe they could bring peace to a war-torn system (… but they did!) Another potential ass-kicker, though he mostly just did gruff support of others.

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#5

Hmm, let’s see who I can remember…I don’t think I have a ton of characters, but…

Hmm. If it’s this past year, that sadly cuts out a few characters… until next year!

  1. Most epic characters of the year: Lucian the Vampire from a musical hack of Monsterhearts, whose dramatic brooding was only intensified by the musical element.
  2. Best antagonists of the year: KILLA KING my World Wide Wrestling heel who legit drew blood and just generally pissed people off.
  3. Most bad-ass characters of the year: has to be Red Ranger, the tuktukero who won a race asleep at the wheel!
  4. Most bleedy characters of the year: definitely MigMan3, the eSports Mascot from the End Game LAOG, who let me vent some of my old frustration at a former teammate from IRL.
  5. Most touching characters of the year: I can’t remember her name, but the cold mecha girl from the one shot HILT//BLADE playtest I did, who made origami to reconcile with a fellow pilot, but the otherworldly beings attacked before she could give it.
  6. Coolest characters of the year: Mara, from Hope and Despair, @Luiz’s magical girl hack of Cthulhu Dark; character design on point, and amazing playing card motif and powers!
  7. Most competent characters of the year: Mokola my Whitehack assassin, who had an invisibility cloak and the helpful ghost of his rival. He also bluffed a necromancer in the land of the dead, so.
  8. Best friend character of the year: Ifield, who unfortunately met her end in a Funnel World horror story in the West Marches.
  9. The purest characters of the year: Poor Ela Qalina from Swords Without Master! A literal sunshine sorceress who through the course of play succumbed to the kiss of a vampiress and hid that secret from her lover.
  10. The most miserable characters of the year: Jackie Kim, the Monsterhearts Queen who kept getting in worse and worse situations and violently escalated as her life fell further and further out of her grasp. She eventually joined up with a dark forest cult.
  11. The most eloquent characters of the year: Spar the dwarf huckster from a 1-on-1 Burning Wheel campaign, spinning off audacious lies at the drop of a hat and getting away with it!
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#6

  1. Best antagonists of the year - @walter’s Lillholli Fookpaw in @RichRogers’ Hutt Cartel game … Psychotic and driven … just too psychotic to be allowed to reach the hospital in time …

  2. Most bad-ass characters of the year - @SabineV5’s assassins in our Hutt Cartel games: he burned bright but burned swiftly in support of his sister’s Fookpaw criminal empire (see above), while wielding a machete with merciless ferocity …

  3. Most touching characters of the year - ‘Freak’ my Transformed from @LeandroP’s Masks series of series. The trials and tribulations of Michael Manners as he grew up and tried to be human before accepting his yet to be concluded doom.

  4. Most competent characters of the year - Gran Atkitos retired commander in the Old Republican Navy drawn back by the needs of the Rebellion in @RichRogers Void Vultures (SWS).

5 Likes
#7

God, looking back in the past year, in terms of roleplaying, was so much fun! I miss so many of these ridiculous people already…

  1. Most epic characters of the year - Silence, the Divine from Monster of the Week: Fetid Waters of Marais Loup, who always wore a suit, wielded a flaming sword that was literally just fire shaped into a sword and whose job was to usher in the Apocalypse, which is probably really epic. Thankfully the Apocalypse got averted due to True Love.

  2. Best antagonists of the year - Eleanor Smythe, the Mother from The Between, a completely arrogant, condescending scientist that thankfully never got to the session wherein she would have tried to sell out her colleagues to a vampire matriarch.

  3. Most bad-ass characters of the year - Violet Murmur, the Thief from Gaunt Marches: Dungeon World who never let being a lowly thief get in the way of fighting frog gods and legendary alligators.

  4. Most bleedy characters of the year - Xion, the Memory from an Interstitial one-shot, mainly because I’m a sucker for artificial human stories, I’m complete Kingdom Hearts trash, she was my favorite character to play in forum rp years ago and she’s also the very first character I ever played in a tabletop RPG so it was rather special.

  5. Most touching characters of the year - Crystal Wind, the Dying from The Veil: Mirror one-shot at Gauntletcon 2018, who never stopped trying to reach out to others and always faced death with nothing short of dignity.

  6. Best friend character of the year - SM-55 Never, a Shadow/Memory-Type from Ascendancy, a shapeshifter with no memories of their past whose abilities let them lie constantly but doesn’t let those nascent insecurities stop them from unquestioningly helping their friends.

  7. The purest characters of the year - Frantic Darling, the Thief of Space and Time from Space Wurm vs. Moonicorn, a destitute runaway with no family left, no place to stay and the lowly desire for a bed of her own.

  8. The most miserable characters of the year - Aphra More, the Ghost from Monsterhearts 2: Kingsport 1692 who wanted better out of life, lost hers instead, decided to take out her rage on the town that abandoned her, with apparently some rather dramatic results!

  9. The most eloquent characters of the year - Iris Calabash, a charismatic duck girl from a Follow game about establishing a colony in a swamp. Soft but well-spoken, with good intentions and the conviction to get them across. Shame about what happened…

Categories 6 (Coolest character) and 7 (Most competent character) were taken out because honestly, anyone who’s not already mentioned here weren’t the coolest or most competent people in the world.

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#8

Purest character of the year for me is @Michael_G_Barford’s Joe, sentient coffee vending machine from the game of Rockerboys and Vending Machines ran by the late Paul Edison.

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#9

This is great. I gotta play too.

  • Most epic characters of the year
    Danny Moloka’i, the lava shark-surfing elemental son of Pele who accidentally killed a teammate with an eruption in Demigods.

  • Best antagonists of the year
    Mr. Hunt, manipulative outrider of the Rime Court responsible for much of the plot of a year-and-a-third long Masks campaign.

  • Most bad-ass characters of the year
    Xanthea, the demigod daughter of Meta-Zeus from Hyper-Olympus in Masks.

  • Most bleedy characters of the year
    Sergeant Richard Henslowe, the hardened squad leader carrying a copy of Shakespeare’s Henry V to trenches of WWI in Ross Rifles.

  • Most touching characters of the year
    Leopard’s Precious Child, the love-lorn aspiring warrior of the Iron Prosperity Delegates, torn between her heart and her family in Hearts of Wulin.

  • Coolest characters of the year
    Sam Seraph, the violet-winged streaming sensation from Masks.

  • Most competent characters of the year
    Sarta Morningstar, the winningest lobbyist on Mars, from Icarus on the Bored Ghost podcast.

  • Best friend character of the year
    Liberty Gal, the plucky Beacon at the heart of the Allied Angels in Masks.

  • The purest characters of the year
    Gabby the Hollow, an angel statue brought to life and navigating college in Monsterhearts.
    And Arden the Unicorn, trying idealistically to revive a faded carnival in Monsterhearts.
    (Do I only play precious cinnamon rolls in Monsterhearts? Signs point to “Yes.”)

  • The most miserable characters of the year
    Timothy Thistleton Jr., the cynical off-Broadway Shakespeare director caught up in a botched heist Fiasco on the Bored Ghost podcast.

  • The most eloquent characters of the year
    Inspector Spectre, the ghost of a fast-talking noir detective from Urban Shadows.

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#10

Wow, your character art is amazing.

And I’m truly flashed to read about all your characters and feel how diverse character-wise the games are we are in.

This is not just ‘Urban Shadows’ here, ‘Ross Rifles’ there, these are deeply moving stories created in these games- thanks to the designer and the players.

Thank you all for sharing.

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