The strangest character I ever played...

I think I've mentioned before how I have a few recurring themes that crop up in a lot of my games, across a variety of genres.  And this is body-swapping, or indeed, mind/soul absorption (which is essentially body swapping turned on its head).  Body swapping is the idea that you can transfer your consciousness between bodies.  Thus you can radically change your appearance, but retain your mental (and depending on the genre), spiritual, magickal and/or psionic capabilities.  This theme has cropped up in numerous of my games, in a variety of ways.

I have even convinced other GMs to incorporate this notion into their games, to let me player a character with that kind of ability.  Perhaps the strangest of these characters was a relatively small blob of psionic jelly.  This was an example of a strange kind of alien that existed in one of my brother's sci-fi games.  Arguably the best game he ever ran (to date, I'm still hopeful he'll run another, but its been several years now).

In his game, my character, as said, was this blob of jelly.  I communicated telepathically (with limited range, a few metres).  I could change colour a bit, a kind of chameleonic ability.  And I could sludge around slowly.  I could seep through small cracks, and in fact through most porous materials...stick on walls and ceilings, but I was prone to all sorts of physical attacks.  Especially fire and acid, extreme cold and a variety of other chemicals.  Slashing, crushing and puncturing damage didn't effect me an awful lot, as I could kind of divide around the blow and then join up again.  Unless the weapon used to inflict the damage was so large it cut me in two and then swept one half of me away so I couldn't readily join up again.  I was slow moving and could form rough shapes, produce pseudopodia, little jellied tentacles with which to grasp and ensnare things.  O, and if I formed a sphere I was a little larger than a grapefruit... or a little smaller than a football.  I could also change my density a little, sink or swim.  And adjust my adhesive qualities, so I could roll like a ball if needed, or spread myself really thin over a fairly large surface area, and elastically 'ping' myself short distances.  Useful if I ever needed to jump off a tall building, as I could kind of turn myself into a sort of parachute by stretching myself into a thin sheet of jelly with dense corners which I could then tuck under and join up beneath me.  Technically, I should have also been able to make myself into a bubble, and then filter out any heavier-than-air gases, and retain any lighter-than-air gases so that I could effectively fly, or at least be blown along by the wind.  Though this I never tried.

Anyway, so that was pretty much the extent to my physical makeup.  However, I had a really neat trick.  I could 'merge' with organic, carbon-based lifeforms and spread myself throughout their bodies and inside their cells, effectively 'blending' with another creature.  In this state I could mimic organs in the host that had failed.  I could improve cellular and organ action to slightly improve the capabilities of the host.  And most importantly I can act like an internal medic repairing damaged cells, detoxifying the body and generally protecting it.  I could communicate with the host via telepathy.  And I could perform all sorts of intricate functions within the brain so I could supress the host consciousness - effectively putting the host into a trance, or a deep sleep or a coma.  In this state I could begin to slowly repair errant brain functions.

And this was my character.  Actually, this was more like my race.  My character was a psychiatrist, which used its unusual biological makeup to cure mental patients of their various illnesses.

As far as all the other players and player-characters were concerned, my character was a human pilot.  Nothing too out of the ordinary.  In actual fact, the human pilot they saw was a mass murderer and my patient, undergoing extensive 'therapy'.  I had blended with the pilot several months ago and had supressed the consciousness whilst I carried out my 'therapy' - curing him of his homicidal tendencies.

This act of consciousness supression worked well on a patient given a particular cocktail of drugs designed for the task, but in most cases, against an unwilling host, the process of attempting to dominate the host and supress the host consciousness and effectively take over the body was a difficult procedure. Virtually impossible if they were conscious at the time, as the process of osmosis took a couple of minutes during which time an active target could just run away.

So the other players thought I was a human pilot, where in fact what they saw as my character was my patient, and I was a blob of jelly within the pilot, attempting to cure him.

The game was excellent.  All the characters had intricate backstories, hidden agendas, belonged to secret societies and no one was quite who they seemed.  My blob was a pacifist - a common trait among the jelly race, and my special task was to prevent the research, design and construction of an organic weapon which could fire a psionic beam at enemy ships and kills all the organic crew within, whilst bypassing all metal, mineral or non-psionic energy structures.  So the threat was high.  A single fast fighter equipped with such a weapon could effectively take down a massive dreadnaught.  As the dreadnaught's shields would be ignored by the psion-beam.

Many of the other PCs had agendas to steal the weapon once it had been developed.  As far as I recall, I was the only character there who wanted to destroy the weapon.  One night I supressed the consciousness of my host, and ensured he was in a deep coma.  I then sludged out of his body, risking exposure and death if caught.  Lots of PCs had laser weapons which caused me a lot of damage.  I then sludged down into the soil and painfully slowly crept through the earth until I was beneath the scientist's (one of the PCs) hut.  I then seeped up through the soil and into the scientist's hut... this was all in the middle of the night by the way.  Once in the hut I sludged slowly over to the bunk where the scientist was sleeping.  And then I risked an unwilling merge.  I warmed myself up to body temperature first, so as not to wake up my target when I first touched him.  I then slowly blended with him and began the battle of wills to take over his mind.  It was a difficult task requiring many checks but I eventually succeeded.  Once within the body of the scientist I spent the next few hours (whilst most of the PCs slept and some were guarding the camp) smashing up the laboratory.  Destroying all computer equipment, and generally wrecking everything, making sure it was irrevocably ruined.
I then set fire to the place, just to be sure and left the scientist asleep whilst I exited his body and seeped once more into the earth - making my way back to where I'd left my patient, the human pilot, in a coma.  Pretty soon the scientist awoke to the smell of burning and saw his lab had been wrecked.  Needless to say he wasn't happy.

Great game.

Schizo...

Not sure quite how to entitle this post.

A feature of many of my P&P games, and also a number of computer game proposals I have produced revolves around the concept of either switching forms, acquiring new forms, or absorbing abilities.

The longest running P&P game I GMed revolved around the concept of an ancient race, and an ancient, once lost form of magick that involved summoning daemons, slaying said daemons and absorbing their souls in order to take on their powers. This blend of original race, stocked full of daemon souls forever changed the player and turned them into a new being, a creature I called Shafaerinhai. Which - roughly translated from their ancient tongue - meant 'daemons in the blood'.

In a much later game set in the same world a couple of Ages on, I reworked this theme. In this game I had a cult of sorcerers attempt to resurrect Shafaerinhai magick, but fundamentally misunderstanding it. They used spells to summon daemons, and then excommunicate their spirits so that the daemon's corporeal form (which the daemon grew to journey within the material plane) was left an empty shell. The sorcerer was then free to excommunicate his own spirit, ripping it from his body and binding it to the daemon's empty shape.

In this way, sorcerers were able to acquire powerful, monsterous forms. And it made for a great game, even if I do say so myself.

This body-swapping concept I translated into a couple of computer game proposals. In one, the players played a sentient blob of jelly genetically engineered from an organic sample taken from a meteorite. The blob of jelly had the unique ability to blend with carbon-based lifeforms via osmosis and take over the brain functions of the entity, thus controlling it.

In this way the player had free reign to blend with guards, scientists, dogs, rats, birds and even some mutations from the labs as they sought and fought for their freedom.

I used another version of the sentient blob of jelly idea, in a game I called Evolver (later finding a game of the same name already existed - although significantly different) I changed the name to Wild World. Wild World was designed as an MMO with a difference. A vast perpetual world consisting of all manner of flora and fauna. Players start as the blob of jelly and slither around until they come across a creature with powers they want to incorporate.

In this idea, the blog can absorb the DNA of creatures it consumes and then mutate, taking upon some of the characteristics of its victim. In this way, somewhat like the Homunculus Jar, a player can end up with a creature sporting a complex array of different features... bat wings, toxic spines, acid spit, retractable claws, gills and so forth.

The basic principle was to evolve your creature and do battle with other creatures in the environment, attempting to acquire new abilities. There was a secondary thread about evolving an opposable thumb which would enable players to use ancient artefacts from a long lost, technologically advanced civilization, whose ruins adorned the world.

I'm not sure why exactly this theme of changing or utilisng alternative forms fascinates me. But whenever I have used it in games it has gone down very well with players. It breaks the mold to some extent in terms of established genres, but for me it extends still further the concept of acquiring news skills and equipment, and opens up a realm of new possibilities.