Luke Plissken and Snake Skywalker - 1/16/2014

So tonight I want to talk about two of my favorite characters. Both were ones I ran in two different Champions campaigns that my friend Matt ran. Total opposites, and yet tremendous amounts of fun, in different ways.

The second was Lance Goodson, also known as Really Really Good Guy. Dumb as a box of rocks and harder to destroy. I built him around a disadvantage I chose to call 'Impervious to Reality'. He lived in his own world of Golden or Silver Age comics as a true superhero. That the world around him did not conform to the rules of these comic books completely eluded him. Something like the Tick, but not quite as aware of his real surroundings.

The first, much more complex character, was Nemo. Nemo was intelligent, paranoid, only partly human and utterly amoral. Not immoral, not evil, but incapable of considering the ramifications of his actions except in terms of his own survival. The concept I built him around was as a person who literally had no face to call his own. He was a shapeshifter, but had no 'base' form around which he was built. This separated him from humanity in a thousand ways that I explored in my own conversations with him in my head.

How can so much enjoyment in a role-playing game come from such absolutely different characters? How can we find so much to identify with in Luke Skywalker and Snake Plissken at the same time. Both are iconic characters in their own way. The idealistic boy-hero and the infinitely cynical anti-hero. But both Star Wars and Escape From New York hold our attention, and tell stories that are engaging, enjoyable and (wait for it) immersive.

The answer to that question, I think, is Jungian in nature. We are not a single voice, a single pure individual. We each walk with our own demons and angels (or whatever your culture might call them), and they all speak to us all of the time. What we call the self, the ego, the soul, the personality, is the balance point between them.

Really Really Good Guy is my idea of the pure, noble hero. Ignoring the worst aspects of reality and fighting on regardless. Nemo is the ultimate pragmatist, concerning himself only with the immediate needs of himself and his situation. Both are here in all of us. We are all Luke (or wish to be) and we are all Snake (or wish we could become).

So here's to the demons and angels in all of us. They make us what we are.

431