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Message: <blockquote data-quote="RangerWickett" data-source="post: 5624676" data-attributes="member: 63">Scroll up and read the Setting post above if you caught it when it was half-finished earlier. CharactersOnce people decided which characters they wanted, I gathered YouTube videos of everyone's pertinent flashbacks. Thankfully no one played Jack, because there's like 3 hours of them. Then I made quick stats for them with a few reminder notes of their background and motivation. Why are some folks unavailable as PCs?The core conceit of my game is that (aside from the few backgrounds I tweaked), everything that happened on the show will happen the same in the game, unless the actions of the PCs change things. For that reason, I wanted a few of the characters to stay NPCs because they motivate action. Like sure, Jack and Sawyer always go off to kick butt, but that’s because people are doing stuff to Claire, or because Locke thinks the island is God, or because Walt ran off and got himself surrounded by bears.Locke's an NPC because I liked him as an enigma. If he was a PC, he'd immediately say, "Hey guys, I can walk! This island is magic!" Also if possible I want to keep the antagonistic relationship between the two sides of the castaways, as some are motivated to get off the island, while Locke (and some people he sways to his side) want to stay on the island. Boone's an NPC because I still want Locke to get Boone killed, unless the PCs intervene.Kate's an NPC so I could keep some of the drama and mystery around the air marshal. It's a useful early plot hook. Plus most of my friends who watched the show hated Kate by the end, so they didn't want anyone to play her. *shrug*Claire and Walt were because I didn't want to put kids and babies in harm's way. Rose was because she's old and fragile. And Jin and Sun are because they don't speak English, or at least aren't supposed to.So who did the players pick to play? Sayid. Easy, solid, good character. Very useful. And gives a justification for this group of geeky players to actually use their combined knowledge of technology and science. When one player suggests something technically complex with gadgetry, we pretend Sayid had the idea.Charlie. Solid enough. I gave him an 18 Constitution, so he's hard to kill, even if he's not the strongest guy in a fight.Hurley. Surprising choice, but he helps provide some moderation to the player group. If they were all bad-asses, it would be easy for the players to forget that they've got 'normal' people to take care of back at camp. Plus Hurley gets to talk to ghosts; I need to figure out when that should come up.(Amusingly, the guy playing Hurley told me that visual hallucinations in schizophrenia are very rare, so it's unlikely Hurley would actually have seen Dave in the mental institute. Of course, Dave wasn't a hallucination, but the ghost of Libby's dead husband.)Paulo. "Who?" Yes, it's our favorite 6-episode Brazilian chef. Now, I have a soft spot for Nikki and Paulo, so I wanted to give them the fair shake the audience never did. Also, since Paulo's skill set is kinda weak, and he has practically no flashbacks, I decided it was a great opportunity to add some useful talents.In the show, the audience could go online and research stuff like all the weird Latin and Egyptian background elements. To give the players the same opportunity, I've decided that before becoming a chef, Paulo went to Egypt to study classical languages -- Latin, Egyptian, Avestan, even a little Arabic so he and Sayid can converse secretly. Paulo's still not a fighter, but he at least is useful for something other than cooking polar bear steaks. Oh, and I decided his dead boss, Zukerman, was being flown on Oceanic 815 to his funeral. So since Jack isn't a PC, I get to have the ghost of Zukerman show up and freak the party out. Not quite as mythologically significant as 'your dead father,' but I wanted to present some of the same narrative cues. So yeah, no Jack, no Sawyer. It's interesting how this all plays out, because once the PCs start showing initiative, the random castaways won't look to Jack for leadership.We've had two sessions so far. Details on those when I get more time to write.</blockquote>

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