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What are your guys' go to when making a custom character in a videogame?
For me it's Ugly Kid, he's good at tech and punching people but not quite a charmer. In fact everyone is repulsed by him because he's so ugly, but he tries his best. I made an Ugly Kid for New Vegas, Wasteland 3, Death Trash, FOnline, and I plan to make more of him.
I don't have one. I make my characters based on the setting and mechanics of each game. That said, if the game is D&Dish and I happen to be making a character of the same class anyway, I'll recycle the name and appearance from one of my NWN characters. I had Revya the cleric, Lasciel the sorceress, and... a third I don't remember anymore. A rogue, I think.
What are your guys' go to when making a custom character in a videogame?
For me it's Ugly Kid, he's good at tech and punching people but not quite a charmer. In fact everyone is repulsed by him because he's so ugly, but he tries his best.
Unlike yourself, I tend not to do quite that much self inserting. I have a stable of characters I choose from that I have been playing for a good number of years. I choose whoever I think would provide the most interesting experience in whatever setting the game takes place in.
Weak. Recreating the same character across games is lame and belies a lack of imagination and unwillingness to experiment. Half the fun of character building is experiencing and exploring different possibilities.
I like making a tough, punch first, ask questions never type of character, deliberately avoiding social skills to see how games handle that. Most don't.
Depends on the game really but my goto archetypes for MC are usually one of 3 types:
Conan style Barbarian the original character from Howards books, not the hollywoodized version. So charming in an intimidating way rather than golden tongued. Competent warrior but with thief like abilities such a stealth/stealing/lockpicking. Not brilliant but not a moron either.
The Face, excelling in leadership charm and social skills but in combat is mainly there to make the team better rather than standing out himself as kickass.
The Nuker, pure magic but pure destructive style and usually nasty and unlikeable. This one is often for evil/bad guy playthroughs.
It can change depending on game and setting but those are the 3 that come to mind for me.
Unless I'm playing a party-based RPG, I tend to NEVER play mage characters. They just bore me. There's just something off-putting to me about flinging lightning, fire bolts and shit. Feels sterile and not properly involving. I also don't care for big bulky barbarian types. The whole barechested thing just doesn't connect with me, and I don't like focusing almost exlusively on offense.
I usually end up playing either a rogue/thief type who's good at lockpicking and utilizing stealth, or a sword & board type who excels at defense.
Heavy armored, melee focused human character of lawful alignment for fantasy settings. For futuristic/post-apocalyptic/SF settings, sniper (and heavily augmented if the game allows for it).
I like trying different characters, but I have soft spot for backstabbing little buggers.
In (older) party games I always have a "diversity squad" of different races and classes. In newer ones I guess there's only cosmetic differences now, which for me removes the point of a "diversity squad".
D&D Novels can be a great source of character material. For example a sample random good/neutral aligned party:
Barryn Warrox - human knight (young version) from Tales I Love and War
Chert - Human barbarian from Artifact of Evil
Tyorl - elven ranger from Stormblade
Deav Dyne - Human cleric from Quag Keep
San - human thief from Saga of Old City
Justarius - human mage from Legends Trilogy
Or you could just go for a more popular combination from a single novel set (ie. Icewind Dale Trilogy, Chronicles Trilogy etc...)
Summoning Jason Liang to explain, in great detail, his overly elaborate female character (I forgot her name) he tries to make fit every single game he ever plays.
Qinalo is inspired by Katherine Hart from Shadowrun and Shadow from the fighting game Eternal Champions.
Katherine Hart, aka Katherine Roe was a professional shadowrunner of considerable reputation in mid-2050s.
A beautiful elven woman with a taste for expensive fashion, Hart was an accomplished magician. Hart's partner was a feathered serpent dracoform named Tessien.
Yamoto was a corporate assassin working for the Black Orchid Corporation. Her job was to liquidate certain individuals whose activies were at odds with the group's international business 'objectives'. She continued in this line of work, never questioning the morals of her missions, until she discovered that failure to complete a task meant that another assassin would come looking for her, ready to eliminate her. Disillusioned, she resolved to expose the terrible corruption she saw all around her. Unfortunately, before she could do so, she was pushed from the 101st floor of a Tokyo[/URL] tower block.
She is also based on real life female cartel assassins, especially La China (Melissa Magarita Calderon) and Claudia Ochoa Felix. She is also based on Magdalena Solis[/URL], the High Priestess of Blood, who lead a cult that worshipped the Aztec serpent goddess Coatlicue.
So I want skills and feats that you this think character would have.
I also use these illustrations to help define Qinalo:
Gregz said I should describe what Qinalo does in combat. Hart was a 1/2 mage adept, 1/2 physical adept who used magic to enhance her combat senses and her accuracy with sniper rifles and other long range items (so in Dragonfall terms, she was a self-buffing mage). Qinalo should have some viper-like abilities, such as poisons. For example, in Dragonfall, she had the cyberware lung replacement where she could breathe poison gas. In WoD she is a Setite cartel assassin with Mask of 1000 Faces and Majesty vampiric powers. She is not a sniper specialist, nor is she a very stealthy character (although she could be a little stealthy. But she's an assassin, not a thief). She's a vicious melee fighter who does not wear combat armor. An article describes La China's tactics here -
La China reportedly[/URL] works with other women, specifically Gabriela Hulzar Lopez, or "La Gaby," to lure and kill their rivals, authorities told local news outlets.
In one documented case, which has been said to be their typical modus operandi, La Gaby pretended to be drunk outside of a bar, falling down, with her skirt nearly above her waist. When the intended target stopped to try to help the woman, La China emerged from the darkness, guns blazing.
So basically Qinalo uses disguise and distraction to get close and then uses guns or knives to quickly overpower and kill the target. She's probably not too different from Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, except her combat abilities are slightly enhanced by supernatural powers of religious or mythological nature (i.e. Santa Muerte or Coatlicue).
The Bony Lady has actually gained something of a reputation as a “narco-saint,” a patron for the drug lords who so often deal in death themselves. The men who make up some of the worst elements of Mexico’s criminal underworld are some of the saint’s strongest devotees. For narcos and thugs attempting to reconcile their lifestyles with their religion, Santa Muerte is the perfect object of their devotion.
Santa Muerte is popularly worshipped by those associated with the illegal drug trade, and the cult is popular within many prison systems. Drug houses have also been found with shrines to Santa Muerte. In 2012, eight people were arrested for performing human sacrifice in her honor. Many cartels paint themselves as messiahs for Santa Muerte, giving their foot soldiers religious reasons to follow them.
As Father Andres Gutierrez explained to one Catholic news organization, “If somebody is going to be doing something illegal, and they want to be protected from the law enforcement, they feel awkward asking God to protect them…So they promise something to Santa Muerte in exchange for being protected from the law.”
Magdalena Solis never stood much chance at leading a normal life. Born in the 1930s to an impoverished dysfunctional family in Monterrey, Mexico, Solis became an underage prostitute to make ends meet. Her brother E/leazar was her pimp. This was her situation until 1963. Though she didn’t know it yet, her life was about to take a wild and violent turn.
Meanwhile, brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, a pair of petty thugs, had struck up a scam in the nearby small town of Yerba Buena. It was a marginalised community of 50 poor, illiterate inhabitants. The Hernandez brothers had taken advantage of the local hicks’ naiveté and established a cult. The bumpkins worshipped them as High Priests of the powerful and exiled Inca gods, providing them with tribute in exchange for treasure supposedly hidden in the nearby mountain caves. For a while the Hernandez cult prospered. Santos and Cayetano kept the Yerba Buena people as sex slaves and held narcotic-fuelled orgies in the caves. Eventually though, the followers began to tire of the promised treasure failing to materialise and began to voice dissent. The High Priests had to do something.[/URL]
They went to Monterrey to find prostitutes to join in on the scam and keep the ruse going. It was here that Magdalena and Eleazar met the Hernandez brothers. They joined them and returned with them to the cult. At the next cave ritual Magdalena appeared to the stunned cultists through a smoke screen. She presented as the reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue. Eleazar became the third High Priest of the cult. The only problem was that the trick worked too well! Magdalena took her role too seriously and began to believe her own deceptions, developing a severe theological psychosis. She soon took over control of the cult and took it in an even darker direction, involving drinking blood and sadomasochism. She became known as the High Priestess of Blood.
Magdalena ruled the cult with an iron fist. When two cultists tried to leave the group, she summoned everyone else before her and the High Priests. She sentenced the two would-be deserters to death as punishment for their betrayal. The cultists, too afraid to defy Magdalena, obliged her by lynching the condemned pair. After that, any dissenting cultist became a human sacrifice in Magdalena’s honour. Her blood rituals involved the cultists beating, burning, cutting and maiming the sacrificed until they bled to death. Their blood was then collected in a chalice, mixed with chicken blood (animals were also sacrificed) and drank by all present to give them supernatural powers, eternal youth and immortality. All the while they smoked vast amounts of dope and consumed peyote. This continued for some time. Four more dissenters were butchered in this manner. By the end the bloodthirsty cult had perfected the art of dissecting the still-beating hearts of their victims before they bled out. One power-hungry cultist, Jesus Rubio, tried to join the inner sanctum of the High Priests, but was rebuffed.
Something happened in May 1963 that would turn out to be the beginning of the end for the cult. Attracted by the noises and lights coming from the caves, a local boy, 14-year-old Sebastian Guerrero stumbled upon the cult in the midst of a blood ritual. He fled to the closest police station and informed the cops that he had seen a group of murderous vampires preying on ecstasy and gluttonously drinking human blood. His claims were dismissed as that of a wild imagination. The next day officer Luis Martinez humoured Sebastian by returning to the cave with him before he was supposed to drive the boy home. The boy and the cop were never seen alive again.
Now police took the claims seriously. In conjunction with the army they descended on Yerba Buena on May 31. Magdalena and Eleazar were arrested at a farm in possession of a large amount of dope. Santos resisted arrest. The cops shot him for his efforts. Cayetano was assassinated by Jesus as retaliation for his earlier refusal to promote him to High Priest. The rest of the cult barricaded themselves in the caves and engaged in a shootout with the cops. Most of the cultists were shot in the fire fight. Those who were taken alive were eventually sentenced to 30 years for the murders. The Solis siblings were sentenced to 50 years each. Even now the cultists refused to testify against their leaders. The dismembered bodies of the 8 known victims were recovered, some missing their hearts (it is speculated that the actual number of victims is higher).
Qinalo is inspired by Katherine Hart from Shadowrun and Shadow from the fighting game Eternal Champions.
Katherine Hart, aka Katherine Roe was a professional shadowrunner of considerable reputation in mid-2050s.
A beautiful elven woman with a taste for expensive fashion, Hart was an accomplished magician. Hart's partner was a feathered serpent dracoform named Tessien.
Yamoto was a corporate assassin working for the Black Orchid Corporation. Her job was to liquidate certain individuals whose activies were at odds with the group's international business 'objectives'. She continued in this line of work, never questioning the morals of her missions, until she discovered that failure to complete a task meant that another assassin would come looking for her, ready to eliminate her. Disillusioned, she resolved to expose the terrible corruption she saw all around her. Unfortunately, before she could do so, she was pushed from the 101st floor of a Tokyo[/URL] tower block.
She is also based on real life female cartel assassins, especially La China (Melissa Magarita Calderon) and Claudia Ochoa Felix. She is also based on Magdalena Solis[/URL], the High Priestess of Blood, who lead a cult that worshipped the Aztec serpent goddess Coatlicue.
So I want skills and feats that you this think character would have.
I also use these illustrations to help define Qinalo:
Gregz said I should describe what Qinalo does in combat. Hart was a 1/2 mage adept, 1/2 physical adept who used magic to enhance her combat senses and her accuracy with sniper rifles and other long range items (so in Dragonfall terms, she was a self-buffing mage). Qinalo should have some viper-like abilities, such as poisons. For example, in Dragonfall, she had the cyberware lung replacement where she could breathe poison gas. In WoD she is a Setite cartel assassin with Mask of 1000 Faces and Majesty vampiric powers. She is not a sniper specialist, nor is she a very stealthy character (although she could be a little stealthy. But she's an assassin, not a thief). She's a vicious melee fighter who does not wear combat armor. An article describes La China's tactics here -
La China reportedly[/URL] works with other women, specifically Gabriela Hulzar Lopez, or "La Gaby," to lure and kill their rivals, authorities told local news outlets.
In one documented case, which has been said to be their typical modus operandi, La Gaby pretended to be drunk outside of a bar, falling down, with her skirt nearly above her waist. When the intended target stopped to try to help the woman, La China emerged from the darkness, guns blazing.
So basically Qinalo uses disguise and distraction to get close and then uses guns or knives to quickly overpower and kill the target. She's probably not too different from Chigurh in No Country for Old Men, except her combat abilities are slightly enhanced by supernatural powers of religious or mythological nature (i.e. Santa Muerte or Coatlicue).
The Bony Lady has actually gained something of a reputation as a “narco-saint,” a patron for the drug lords who so often deal in death themselves. The men who make up some of the worst elements of Mexico’s criminal underworld are some of the saint’s strongest devotees. For narcos and thugs attempting to reconcile their lifestyles with their religion, Santa Muerte is the perfect object of their devotion.
Santa Muerte is popularly worshipped by those associated with the illegal drug trade, and the cult is popular within many prison systems. Drug houses have also been found with shrines to Santa Muerte. In 2012, eight people were arrested for performing human sacrifice in her honor. Many cartels paint themselves as messiahs for Santa Muerte, giving their foot soldiers religious reasons to follow them.
As Father Andres Gutierrez explained to one Catholic news organization, “If somebody is going to be doing something illegal, and they want to be protected from the law enforcement, they feel awkward asking God to protect them…So they promise something to Santa Muerte in exchange for being protected from the law.”
Magdalena Solis never stood much chance at leading a normal life. Born in the 1930s to an impoverished dysfunctional family in Monterrey, Mexico, Solis became an underage prostitute to make ends meet. Her brother E/leazar was her pimp. This was her situation until 1963. Though she didn’t know it yet, her life was about to take a wild and violent turn.
Meanwhile, brothers Santos and Cayetano Hernandez, a pair of petty thugs, had struck up a scam in the nearby small town of Yerba Buena. It was a marginalised community of 50 poor, illiterate inhabitants. The Hernandez brothers had taken advantage of the local hicks’ naiveté and established a cult. The bumpkins worshipped them as High Priests of the powerful and exiled Inca gods, providing them with tribute in exchange for treasure supposedly hidden in the nearby mountain caves. For a while the Hernandez cult prospered. Santos and Cayetano kept the Yerba Buena people as sex slaves and held narcotic-fuelled orgies in the caves. Eventually though, the followers began to tire of the promised treasure failing to materialise and began to voice dissent. The High Priests had to do something.[/URL]
They went to Monterrey to find prostitutes to join in on the scam and keep the ruse going. It was here that Magdalena and Eleazar met the Hernandez brothers. They joined them and returned with them to the cult. At the next cave ritual Magdalena appeared to the stunned cultists through a smoke screen. She presented as the reincarnation of the Aztec goddess Coatlicue. Eleazar became the third High Priest of the cult. The only problem was that the trick worked too well! Magdalena took her role too seriously and began to believe her own deceptions, developing a severe theological psychosis. She soon took over control of the cult and took it in an even darker direction, involving drinking blood and sadomasochism. She became known as the High Priestess of Blood.
Magdalena ruled the cult with an iron fist. When two cultists tried to leave the group, she summoned everyone else before her and the High Priests. She sentenced the two would-be deserters to death as punishment for their betrayal. The cultists, too afraid to defy Magdalena, obliged her by lynching the condemned pair. After that, any dissenting cultist became a human sacrifice in Magdalena’s honour. Her blood rituals involved the cultists beating, burning, cutting and maiming the sacrificed until they bled to death. Their blood was then collected in a chalice, mixed with chicken blood (animals were also sacrificed) and drank by all present to give them supernatural powers, eternal youth and immortality. All the while they smoked vast amounts of dope and consumed peyote. This continued for some time. Four more dissenters were butchered in this manner. By the end the bloodthirsty cult had perfected the art of dissecting the still-beating hearts of their victims before they bled out. One power-hungry cultist, Jesus Rubio, tried to join the inner sanctum of the High Priests, but was rebuffed.
Something happened in May 1963 that would turn out to be the beginning of the end for the cult. Attracted by the noises and lights coming from the caves, a local boy, 14-year-old Sebastian Guerrero stumbled upon the cult in the midst of a blood ritual. He fled to the closest police station and informed the cops that he had seen a group of murderous vampires preying on ecstasy and gluttonously drinking human blood. His claims were dismissed as that of a wild imagination. The next day officer Luis Martinez humoured Sebastian by returning to the cave with him before he was supposed to drive the boy home. The boy and the cop were never seen alive again.
Now police took the claims seriously. In conjunction with the army they descended on Yerba Buena on May 31. Magdalena and Eleazar were arrested at a farm in possession of a large amount of dope. Santos resisted arrest. The cops shot him for his efforts. Cayetano was assassinated by Jesus as retaliation for his earlier refusal to promote him to High Priest. The rest of the cult barricaded themselves in the caves and engaged in a shootout with the cops. Most of the cultists were shot in the fire fight. Those who were taken alive were eventually sentenced to 30 years for the murders. The Solis siblings were sentenced to 50 years each. Even now the cultists refused to testify against their leaders. The dismembered bodies of the 8 known victims were recovered, some missing their hearts (it is speculated that the actual number of victims is higher).
Well actually it was pretty straightforward. I used to smuggle cars into Tijuana, and the prostitutes in Zona Norte would call me "Chino". When I played the first HBS Shadowrun game, the game asks you for a handle, and I wanted to make a cartel assassin character. I looked up some Mexican slang words and found out that "Qinalo" was Mexican slang for heroin. Then I remembered that one of my favorite characters from fantasy was Alesio, a pirate fate witch from 7th Sea, which sounds like a Spanish or Italian name. So I put the name with the handle and realized she should be Chinese/ Mexican mixed, so her name would obviously be Alesio "Qinalo" Qin, and she's a drug cartel assassin. The snake/ poison/ magic theme comes from Katherine Hart, since her partner Tessien was a Feathered Serpent. When I was trying to adapt her to Underrail, I had just watched the first season of Cobra Kai, so I adopted "Strike First. Strike Hard. NO MERCY" as her combat philosophy.
