:3 "Why you do that?"-Questions for RPers.

The one toon I have that's a millionaire is ALSO a god. MidGaard was my answer to the age old question, "What if Bruce Wayne had found the hammer of Thor?" When I started him at level 1, I assumed he had just been in a terrible battle destroying his insane arch-enemy Utgaard, and as a result was suffering dimentia and a serious decline in power. So no all-powerfulness and no uber-richness until he could sort things out... at level 50. Was it all just a lesson in humility? If so, it worked; now he's haunted by the things he did (started him as a villain).

My main toon Kavik the Wolf Boy is kind of a god, but it's not a good thing. During the Coming Storm he was lost in the Shadow Shard while one of Rularuu's aspects was slain. As a werewolf with the potential for immortality Rularuu began slowly transforming Kavik into a replacement aspect. After years of this, realizing what he was becoming and the danger he now posed, he traveled back in time and merged with his 'present' self. Of course, every time he uses the powers of his future self, he is also helping Rularuu build a gateway back to the real world. The toon has a 'battle-worn' costume demonstrating the partial transformation, and I only RP him to be at Incarnate level when sporting this look, which is also when he tends to go into berserker rages and act very arrogant.

Dr Herbert is quite poor but quite arrogant, believing that as a healer he has the power to grant life (as opposed to combat powers which merely grant death), so he considers himself to be godlike. Of course he isn't, but as his life's ambition to 'cure' death has taken him from Arkham to Sharkhead to Paragon City, he has learned the potential value of science, technology, and magic in restoring life to the dead. His zombies are the result of alchemy (science), his Rise of the Phoenix was a magick learned from an eldritch god he now tries to avoid, and as for technology, he has tapped into the mediport systems used by both heroes and villains so he can teleport his allies to himself so he can heal their wounds on the spot. For a non-powered human to achieve all that, why wouldn't he consider himself godlike?

Why do you play a god?

Minor backtrack, I have one character, rarely played, who might be a goddess.

Her name is Glory. She's about level 12. When she does come out, people constantly ask me how I managed to get the name, to which the answer is simply that she was created the day after launch and never levelled.

Glory might have been a gooddess who was somehow destroyed. You can't destroy energy, so the energy went somewhere else, and made a cute little girl with wings who sometimes just knows who people she's never met are. An empath, she hates it when people are sad or angry, and does her best to cheer everyone up. She's basically a comedy character, though she had her little bits of pathos back when GG was a young RP meet.

I never really decided whether she really was a goddess, or something else. She thinks she might be, but she doesn't let it go to her head.


Oh, she was created as a dichotemy, an Emp/Dark Defender, she was the archetypal mother goddess figure, healing with one hand, destroying with the other. An angel with its wings dipped in blood.

Ravenswing brings up a good reminder for me with that!

Soaring Horizon might be classified as a god. She absorbs the powers of long forgotten and malevolent gods and redifines them into her own expanding Pantheon.

Though they're hardly all powerful. Heck you beat up a god in CoV and that one was fairly powerful, these are mainly the chump change.

Hmm...this thread has actually given me an idea now...

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zwillinger GG, I would tell you that "I am killing you with my mind", but I couldn't find an emoticon to properly express my sentiment.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Captain_Photon NOTE: The Incarnate System is basically farming for IOs on a larger scale, and with more obtrusive lore.

"Why do you play a demon/devil?"

I don't play as any of the other archetypes asked, except one millionaire who is a Vegas card shark, making his confidence fun to play with.

I DO have one character that fits this role, however, that of a "devil." And, no, I don't mean a "minion of Hell" or some other religious trapping. I take this question to mean "Supreme Evil Being."

Most of my characters are neither heroes nor villains, just people trying to get by in this bizarre, ludicrous world. This is because I have a belief that nobody really believes themselves to be the bad guy. A few, however, fit into the tropes.

And in this case, my demon is the Fear Engine.

Originally, it followed a character pattern like my other secondary characters and I'd intended it to just be a thug. Over time, however, I altered it to be a reflection of a concept that recurred in some of my worst nightmares.

Now, as to WHY I play the character, it's so I can really and truly determine what the term "Evil" means to me. What the Fear Engine proves to me is that I feel Evil is unrelenting malevolence, for no truly understandable reason, as well as an all-consuming destruction of everything around it. The Fear Engine feeds on the lives it destroys and the torment it spreads. It is a monster, and is completely unconcerned with that fact.

So, then how does one justify a character like this? We're past the days where Saturday Morning cartoons define our concepts of morality. A character doesn't make sense anymore when they're trying to destroy the world, not unless they've completely gone bonkers. The Fear Engine isn't some madcap lunatic, though. It has purpose. Destroying the world is its purpose, so why does it feel this act, that should destroy it, too, is a proper course of action?

I won't delve further into its backstory, but I've figured these concepts out for myself through this character. It allows me to play the character and understand him, despite my belief that nobody truly believes they are the bad guy. Everybody has their reason and their logic; their way the things they do, no matter who they hurt, make sense to them and feel like the right thing to do.

Trying to understand that mentality is why I play this monster.

Sounds to me more like F) Able to rip the soul from anyone who's player is willing to let that happen to their character.

Thanks for the clarification, Shat, and yep, it does sound like F)

For my own "Why play a God?"

I have two "God" characters, one of whom is so disconnected from the source of his power while on Primal Earth that he's really nothing more than a powerful mortal, so he's very much a guy who remembers being a god, but isn't one in-game - this affects his behaviour and attitudes, and sometimes gets him in sticky situations because he can't do all of the godlike things he's used to being able to do.

The other is far more fun, for me, and has an extremely convoluted and confusing backstory (and seriously needs a character rename, actually), as s/he is an ascended being who really isn't used to being a god. (And since her ability to affect reality is so new and unknown to her, she really can't do very much.) Her story is all about exploring the confusion and disconnection caused by suddenly gaining a certain type of cosmic power (if severely restricted in her current incarnation). Her most common complaint is "why would anyone want this job?"

Ultimately, it all boils down to stories. Interesting characters to explore certain aspects of the human condition.

As for Demons/Devils/Angels, I have one toon who is a 'reformed' succubus. She was forcibly reformed by "God Number One" mentioned above, and cares deeply for him, but a few years as a "good guy" hasn't managed to erase over a thousand years of demonic activity. She's a lot of fun because she's very much about redemption and how it's hard to learn to be a good person when your entire existence has been about evil.

It all comes back to story, every single time: Do I have something interesting to explore with this character? If not, I won't play them much, or they'll be a bit-character who hardly ever sees the light of day (and since I play my main far more than any other toon, that means secondary characters hardly ever get a look in).

Because Ozymandias is just as interesting as Batman and Iron Man, that's why.

Millionaire, yes I have one of those. Velvet Phantom, the money in her background is simply a means to an end. Allowed her to undergo the training needed to become the martial arts expert she is, and her few gadgets she uses in her war against crime. She is motivated by following a tradition, living up to a legend from the past, the Original Velvet Phantom. It is also an RP tool, as her alter ego of Tiffany Gates is a very public figure, on regular on the society page, so it makes it interested to juggle that with her costumed exploits.


I sometimes feel that level reflects experience, as every game I have played in, either PnP or MMO there is experience to gain and power to increase. Every hero, from Superman, Batman, Spiderman and Captain America they all started somewhere. They were all, that inexperienced hero at one point, trying to define who they were and who they would become. And I will admit I smirk behind the keyboard when I see a level 2 in Pocket D acting all tough as nails, like they are the most dangerous person you will ever meet.


Not a god, but the daughter of one and a mortal. Zeus, in his roman guise of Jupiter seduced Mighty Maiden's mother and she had a daughter. Mighty Maiden is a blast to play, she is electric melee/invulnerability scrapper and feels she is indestructible. She is kind of a super powered mall rat. Yes, she is somewhat influenced by the old Hercules/Xena series where the gods really didn't seem all powerful, she fits in as her mother is a Midnighter and of course there is Cimarora. She is honestly, not really very god/goddess like.


At the beginning of CoH, I managed to get the name Demoness, so yeah I got one of these as well. She, recently got re-rolled as a, yes you guessed it, a Demon Summoning Mastermind. I think I just have her because I have the name as I play her infrequently and she has almost no personality beyond being a demon.