[Sorta 2WS] Stats for RL celebrities

[Psion]

For my innagural Second World Sourcebook game, I am planning on running the free download adventure Small Worlds and Exiles (see 2WS's download page for more information.) In it, the players get tied together by a fight in a coffee shop. The adventure recommends just for entertainment purposes putting a celebrity incognito in the coffee shop and having them play along when it gets raided by creatures from other dimensions.

Now here is part two: this will be the last session with one of my players, as he will be moving soon. He says he didn't want to make a new character for this game and he is just going to come and observe. I thought I might try to make the character an interesting person to play for one session just to entice him to join the festivities and have him play as the celebrity.

So, my question is:

1) Which celebrities do you think would be fun to play as a one shot, and
2) What classes/levels do you think they would have in d20 modern terms? Try to keep the levels low, 4-6 total levels maximum. This is a low level adventure and I don't want the character to outclass the party by too much.

I was thinking of Jackie Chan or Michelle Yeoh, but I am having trouble fitting them into 6 levels to my satisfaction. Jackie is obviously agile, but does his own stuff and gets banged up alot, so that suggests fast and tough hero to me. But I also feel like I should throw a level of charismatic and/or a level of martial artist or martial arts master in there. (Edit: Looking over Jackie Chan's real biography, it looks like his training in acting is actually much more notable than his training in martial arts. Perhaps I'll skip the martial arts classes altogether and just go wiht feat and add charismatic levels.)

I was also thinking Bruce Campbell would be interesting to play along.

Arnie is an obvious choice (even suggested by the adventure) but due to current events, I am leaning away from him.

Who else might be an interesting star who might join in a brawl with otherworldly creatures?

 

[iwatt]

Brawler:
Vin Diesel?

Gunslinger:
Id have to say Charlton Heston or Clint Eastwood.

They also say Jennifer Garner does her own stunts.

 

[Psion]

Brawler:
Vin Diesel?[/b]

Does he actually have any combat skills?

Edit: From his mini-biography on imdb: "At 17 and already sporting a well-honed physique, he became a bouncer at some of New York's hippest clubs to earn himself some extra cash."

So I guess so...

Looking like what? A strong 3/Charismatic 3?

Of course it'd be funny to have him say "this is like D&D!" And I happen to know the player in question likes Vin Diesel.


I ended up writing up Jackie Chan as a Charismatic Hero 2 / Fast Hero 4, though part of me wants to throw tough levels in there. I mean the guy ain't big, but he has taken a lot of punishment.

 

[2WS-Steve]

In one of the early versions of the setting I had Arnie and Julia Roberts in the first scenario. The players really enjoyed the chance to roleplay fighting alongside Arnie and it was much easier to have Julia Roberts drag them around by their noses than the GM do so. In that case JR wound up a continuing NPC in the game; what the point in playing a fantasy game if your characters can't date starlets and supermodels?

Vin would have the "he plays D&D too" advantage but probably the best thing is to try to remember which actors your players like best and go with that, perhaps by thinking about what movies everyone agrees on and that have an acotr they can identify with. Patrick Stewart might work well now for a lot of groups as a kind of mentor figure given ST:TNG and X-Men. He also hangs out around a lot of coffee shops and poetry readings from what I understand.

 

[Psion]

Hey Steve... fancy seeing you here.

Heh... Julia Roberts in one of my games might as well be wearing a red shirt... If I didn't kill her by making her the preferred target of villains, the PCs would probably kill her when I play her as stuck up as I perceive her.

Partrick Stewart certainly has possibilities, as you suggest. Perhaps I'll write him up. Cha 4? Cha4/Smart2?

Dating starlets sounds like an interesting diversion, but not too likely with the current characters that are rolled up. The current PCs are female human dedicated hero, a Ved Qayat male Psychic Warrior, and a Raptor Barbarian ("Some eyewitnesses swear they saw a man in a realistic rubber velociraptor suit...")

At any rate, through the miracle of PCGen, I already have Jackie Chan written up as a Cha2/Fast4 and Vin Diesel as a Cha3/Strong3. (But maybe Cha2/Strong2/Tough2 would be better... shrug.)

 

[Psion]

Well, I didn't have time to go for any extra statistics, but he ended up picking Vin Diesel. He was going for Jackie Chan first, until I mentioned the fact that Vin would know D&D things.

We didn't get finished last night (two players arrived without characters done. ). They ended up wasting a lot of time trying to research the scars and we ended about the time they hear the news reports of slaying of the shop owner and NYU student.

But overall, the players appreciated the change of place, and there was a lot of fun to be had in roleplaying the shocked locals and displaced 2nd world chars. In addition to the characters mentioned above (and the fact that the dedicated hero got shifted to a smart hero), the other players made a janitor tough hero (works in inner NYC schools) and a unitarian halfling cleric. The janitor showed the 2nd worlders footage of dinosaur bones from the Smithsonian, and the unitarian went on a tirade about how it was a blasphemy to raid the burial sites of the raptor's anscestors.

Half the party won't be here next time; I am debating whether to have the people that will be there shunt early or have the people that are gone shunt early. I am leaning towards the former, because the group's best investigator is gone next week.

 

[2WS-Steve]

That sounds like a lot of fun. I always enjoy starting a new campaign and watching the players explore the setting. Something else that works well in a multi-world game is when they pop back into the modern world after they've gone up a few levels and have some potent magic.

In an old version my group chased some Spluggorth (from Rifts) into the First World and ran around hacking up monsters while police helicopters shined spotlights down on them.

I've got some notes for a Halloween adventure in the Second World so I'll see if I can get those posted to the site.

 

[Werther von G]

Celebrity RPG Deathmatch

A few local DMs have taken a shine to XCrawl, the D&D-meets-the-Running-Man game from Panda Head. In this setting, dungeoncrawlers are supposed to be viewed like modern-day media stars. What better way to get the appropriate feel, then, than to use celebrities as the models for the pre-gens?

The first Crawl featured Christina Aguilera (she's a Fighter, after all), Vin Diesel (as the Cleric of Apollo), Pamela Anderson (Rogue/Sorceress... don't ask) and Chow Yun-Fat as a Fighter Monk. The next one promises Christina Ricci as a priestess of Pluto, Kid Rock (avenging the fallen Pamela) as a Bard/Barbarian with a halfling follower and L.L. Cool J as a cleric of Juno (his Mama said to knock you out, see).