Heroica RPG General Discussion

[Tamamono]

Well, everyone else seems to be sharing the story behind why they picked the character they did, so I might as well chime in! I picked Tomas to be a cleric because there was a distinct lack of clerics early on in the game. Plus, I knew I'd always get a spot in a quest because we clerics are so rare!

[CMP]

I picked Ranger because of Legolas and Aragorn.

Aragorn used his bow exactly once. What kind of Ranger is that?

[Darth Nihilus]

I guess their popularity stems from rogues being the only "badass" job class by default (which isn't to say that there couldn't be badass characters in other classes as well). People who want to test out their "naughty side" are probably most drawn to the rogue class. But what do I know, I'm playing a "sissy" cleric.

I might as well chime in. The reason I wanted Dak to be a Rogue was because there were no other classes that seemed to fit his character. I considered both Knight and Ranger, but both didn't seem to fit him, so I ended up picking Rogue. I also wanted to have badass lockpicking skills.

In other news, as soon as I get back from Quest #20, Dak's dagger will once again get upgraded, this time aiming for a total stat of WP:10! By my calculations, that will cost 270 G, so hopefully I start getting better dice rolls and Mug more people. By the way, I just moved into an apartment with my girlfriend, Katie, and since I work from 7 PM to 3 AM, I won't be on from 7 onward on weekdays, so Katie will be taking over posting. She's actually standing right behind me as I type, so she's correcting my spelling and grammar, as well as making sure I don't say anything I'll regret later.

[Professor Flitwick]

Well, seeing as we're sharing character creation stories, I'll share mine. I had the idea to use the Gorilla figure from an early developmental stage, but was originally going to call the species 'Orang Pendek', after the cryptic creature in Sumatra, but Sandy posted the Library - and Byblos - giving me the idea to change it for Heroica continuity. I've since gone on to use the name Orang Pendek as a Metasimian deity. As for the name of Thothwick, it derives from 'Thoth', an Egyptian deity whom often appears with the head of a Baboon (keeping in with the ape theme), and 'wick', obviously from 'Flitwick'. As for choosing to be a Rogue, I wanted Thothwick to defy stereotype of the faeces-throwing apes, and be a gentleman (hence why he calls people Mr/Ms surname, and wears a suit). None of the classes seemed to really fit the role of a gentleman, and thus Rogue was the chosen class, and the gentleman moulded into a gentleman-thief. The original idea for a gentlemanly ape comes from this comedy sketch:

Edited January 22, 2012 by Professor Flitwick

[K-Nut]

Alright, now gather 'round the campfire lil' kiddies so daddy K-nut can tell you the story of Althior-Finnegan's creation...

When I was in my lurking stage, I had stumbled upon a thread of a contest from 2007, hosted by TheBrickster, the "Create your own Wizard and Workshop!" contest. I decided that would be fun, so I created a mage and workshop with all of the parts of Althior, except his head. I used a different one that I had planned to use for this. When I went to look for the head, it was gone, so I decided to use the Series 1 Forestman head instead. Then during Quest #5, Finnegan was born when cralegoboy said that Althior's "mage senses" had told him there was a diamond in his dagger. I had been trying to create something to hold Althior's gems that he could carry, but decided that another character could work too. Thus Althior put his mage senses in a bottle, which is now Finnegan's head.

So, is that it? Or do I need to cover something else?

[Fred Daniel Yam]

I chose Ranger because of their animal talk skill and I had a S1 Forestmen. When could Ranger's revive without a Pheonix Essence?

[Kenghis Ghan]

I picked Barbarian because it seemed to just fit with my character better than the others.

Oh, and so I didn't have to spend 5 gold on a bedroll.

[Sisco]

Then during Quest #5, Finnegan was born when cralegoboy said that Althior's "mage senses" had told him there was a diamond in his dagger. I had been trying to create something to hold Althior's gems that he could carry, but decided that another character could work too. Thus Althior put his mage senses in a bottle, which is now Finnegan's head.

It's interesting to think that Finnigan was born from a lame excuse on my part. I noticed that my questers were having a very hard time with all the undead, so I made the dagger a diamond-imbued dagger mid-battle. It was too late to edit the drops, so I waited until one of you got the dagger. Luckily, it was K-nut.

[K-Nut]

It's interesting to think that Finnigan was born from a lame excuse on my part. I noticed that my questers were having a very hard time with all the undead, so I made the dagger a diamond-imbued dagger mid-battle. It was too late to edit the drops, so I waited until one of you got the dagger. Luckily, it was K-nut.

Really? I thought that was part of a big plan that, since we couldn't inspect the dagger in battle, that it would just be a big surprise! I mean, we would've been able to tell Hoke's first sword, Csygodian, and Ignius Faitus were gem imbued because they weren't in battle.

[Sisco]

Excellent. You bought the story that I wanted you to believe.

But no, the secret's out.

[Brickdoctor]

I chose Ranger because of their animal talk skill and I had a S1 Forestmen. When could Ranger's revive without a Pheonix Essence?

I meant they had that option in Advanced Classes. The Druid can.

[Flipz]

Awesome list, Sandy! Hmm...does anyone feel like going through the list of mages and highlighting their "starter" and "signature" elements? It would definitely be interesting to see which elements get used a lot and which are overlooked.

Ooh! We're sharing the meta-backstory of our characters! *cracks knuckles* OK, prepare for the Wall of Text!

Arthur's creation story intersects with the origin of my Lego.com username (which is the same as the one I use here; Flipz), so I'll condense that down to the bare minimum. When I was little, the only "real" (i.e. non-Jump Start and the like) video games I had were Lego games, like LEGO Island, LEGO Rock Raiders, and LEGO Alpha Team. The last one is the game I credit with getting me hooked on current, official LEGO themes, as opposed to old, second-hand sets from garage sales. Alpha Team hooked my interest like no other theme had, and, along with a friend of mine, I started building my own backstory and sequels to the official storyline, most of which revolved around our Author Avatars, Agent Flipz and Agent Roller.

Fast-forward several years, and our Alpha Team story had stagnated and died. Not only were we separated by distance, but my friend was moving away from LEGO and we hadn't written very much of our story down. I figured that the Flipz of that story had come to an end, and figured my internet username would become just another anecdote like so many other peoples'. That's when I discovered the LEGO Universe Creation Lab (this was in summer 2008). I was inspired by a story I saw there to write a LU story of my own, but I didn't have anything ready (aside from a single character in a disastrous RPG that I'd sworn to erase from my memory--ironically, several elements of that character later ended up in the new one when I needed to come up with a backstory). That's when I decided to reboot Flipz for the LU world. I wrote a short, low-quality, 3-part story called Dr. Destructo's Doomsday Device.

LONG story short, the story was a huge hit, and overnight I became one of the most famous users on the Creation Lab. My stories and creations were featured regularly, and a search of my username on the Lab yielded several dozen pages. The fame is really what kept me tied to LEGO while a lot of other childhood obsessions faded. It also kept me interested in LU, and so when I went to look at the LU development news one morning, I discovered the Bradford Rant ARG.

The ARG involved seven "Pods" appearing all over the world, supposedly having crossed the dimensional border between our world and LEGO Universe. Each Pod has a number of unique bricks that (at least at the time) had never existed in actual sets; for example, one of my fellow Pod winners has a number of 2x4 tiles in Agents dark blue. Each Pod also came with a few unique printed pieces, a unique chrome piece (mine is a camera/bazooka piece) and, most importantly, a pilot with unique face, torso, and helmet printing. My Pod pilot is a member of the Paradox faction, Tactical Wing Commander AJR7.

Of course, as one of the leading storytellers on the LU Creation Lab, AJR7 had to make it into my creations. I released a few creations with him in them, but most of the story remains as untold backstory because I haven't finished a different story that sets up a lot of the plotlines (as well as telling the backstory of the rebooted Flipz). Then the apocalyptic LU closing announcement came, and I gave up hope on that story ever seeing the light of day.

Around this time, I found Eurobricks. I had lurked on and off for quite a while, but the LDD set index and this RPG are what finally pulled me in. I wanted to get started in the RPG right away, but, like with LU, I didn't have any character concepts lying around (aside from a few for my Star Trek RPG, which I didn't want to use for obvious reasons). I also didn't want to do another iteration of Flipz, even though by this time I had explicitly spelled out in backstory that he has a counterpart in every dimension and pocket-dimension in existence, save for a select few. Aside from the fact that I wasn't interested in re-treading the same ground, I knew that a character named directly after myself would make me look like a total n00b. So, I set out to make a new character.

I knew I wanted a class that dealt with Ether, because I was (and am) more comfortable writing characters with access to the supernatural elements of the realm than I am writing "muggles" and the like, at least as far as main characters. (One day, maybe! ) I originally wanted to go with Ranger, because my original concept involved a very nature-oriented figure, but Rangers had no access to magic (and I wasn't aware of the Advanced Classes at the time). That meant I needed to go with either cleric or mage. I leaned toward Cleric for the longest time, but ultimately I went with Mage because I felt that the Cleric's magic was just a bit too subtle for my taste, plus I wanted a character that could hold his own in battle.

I was digging around in my minifigs drawer and bins, but I just couldn't find anything I liked. I originally wanted to do a character themed around sand blue and earth green, but I was too impatient to get started to wait for a BrickLink order, so I went with the regular blue legs from the Kingdoms Advent Calendar wizard to start with. Since I knew I wanted a magical character anyway, so I went with the hat from the same minifig. I almost took the wand as well, but decided it wasn't "cool" enough, so I turned my attention to the Ninjago Venomari Shrine I had just purchased. I had known from the start that Zane ZX's torso would be useful in many different contexts, so I borrowed it for my mage. The last part I needed was a face; I considered using the face I had always used for Flipz after the reboot (it's the face of the Indiana Jones "Enemy Soldier" in the motorcycle chase set, along with several other sets) so I could later on use him as Flipz' counterpart in Heroica, but when I read about the Mopag race I decided it would just be too difficult to write, and I didn't want to go the route of having my character be a half-elf or something like a few others had already done. That's when it hit me: I should use the one face that I knew would set my character apart from all the rest, the face that no one else on the planet had: AJR7. From there, the rest fell into place; the winner of Pod 4 once told me how he had interpreted his pilot's cipher-esque name to be initials, so I decided to go the same way with AJR7, also setting up that he is the counterpart to the character in the LU universe. As for his backstory, originally I was setting up for him to be from the world of a video game rather popular with FOLs, but since then I've tweaked it a bit so that, while it retains a lot of elements from that world, also has a lot of other, more unique elements that tie it in more directly to the wonderful world Sandy has envisioned for us.

...wow.

Flipz cast Wall of Text! It's super effective! :laugh:

So, if you've stuck with me through all of that madness, thanks for reading! Now, I have a new question for you all: Can you give us a teaser of what you have planned for your character this year? I'll wait a bit before posting my own answer; one Wall of Text is enough for one poat. :laugh:

[Dwellington]

I have a general tendency towards wizards. In any kind of fantasy game with character creation, I highly doubt I'm ever not going to be the wizard.

"Aberforth Swindle" is a name I came up with for a throwaway character in a side project I'm working on. As a character, he's still evolving, so I'm not sure where he'll wind up next...

[Chromeknight]

Well, everyone else seems to be sharing the story behind why they picked the character they did, so I might as well chime in! I picked Tomas to be a cleric because there was a distinct lack of clerics early on in the game. Plus, I knew I'd always get a spot in a quest because we clerics are so rare!

Same for me. The more interesting choices were race(species?) and gender. I knew females were underrepresented and there were few elves about so, that was my pick. To answer the follow up question, I don't have either backstory or character progression planned. In some ways I'm also still meeting Nerwen. The parts of RPGs that I like are the interactions and reactions to situations. I don't want to be too tied down by preconcieved ideas.

I do know so far that she's travelled a bit, speaks orcish and has worked in an Orc refuge camp. And from the stint as party leader can be a bit bossy and arrogant (perhaps it's an elvish thing)

[The Legonater]

As for Dyric, I merely chose Rogue because, well, it was the most interesting class to me. That and the throwing knives

For his name, I really just the first cool name that came to mind. It was only until after I had written it that I realised the connection with LaRone, a stormtrooper in Timothy Zahn's Allegiance.

And his backstory... I'm not entirley sure how that came to me. I know the idea of him being Duplovian came from the quest I'm finishing up with Masked Builder's help, but everything else was just a really good idea that popped in my head.

So, yeah. The creation of Dyric has one of the more boring histories

[Brickdoctor]

And from the stint as party leader can be a bit bossy and arrogant (perhaps it's an elvish thing)

It's definitely a Brobric Elven thing.

[Chromeknight]

It's definitely a Brobric Elven thing.

Ah, but as far as I know, she's not a Brobric elf...

[Quarryman]

I picked Ranger, by the way, because of the Forestmen. That's reason enough, right?

Absolutely reason enough, the Forestmen were the best faction back in the day (and 6066 Camouflaged Outpost was one of my favourite sets when I was a kid).

Awesome list, Sandy! Hmm...does anyone feel like going through the list of mages and highlighting their "starter" and "signature" elements? It would definitely be interesting to see which elements get used a lot and which are overlooked.

Not going to check all mages' introductory posts, but at least Namyrra's "starter" element, and closest she has to a "signature" element would be Darkness, chosen because I followed the first test quest Sandy ran and saw that humanoid enemies were most common. (obviously Sandy had to mess that up in my first quest though..)

As for why my character became a mage it was mainly because of the damage potential, was for a short while considering to play a cleric because there were very few clerics in Heroica at the time, but then it was mages who were under-represented so I went with my original plan instead. (quite a bit influenced by seeing how effective Nyx was in the Test Quest actually, and later on when I was creating Namyrra she became a bit too Nyx-like actually. Been planning to give Namyrra some new attire, but still haven't been able to find the right skirt due to my collection being far from properly sorted..)

And obviously Namyrra's name is simply Quarryman written backwards, I have this bad habit of writing words backwards to create names, it's extremely evident in various character names in my Infection mafia game. The names Fenario / Fenarian are an exception to this though, as I borrowed those from Steve Brust's Dragaera novels, also got a lot of inspiration for Namyrra from various characters in those novels, in particular Sethra Lavode.

So, if you've stuck with me through all of that madness, thanks for reading! Now, I have a new question for you all: Can you give us a teaser of what you have planned for your character this year? I'll wait a bit before posting my own answer; one Wall of Text is enough for one poat. :laugh:

Not exactly something I've planned for my character, but I do want to put all my notes and ideas for Fenario and the Fenarian race into a coherent text for the library. Also want to make Namyrra's attitude towards the younger races more prominent, but nothing fancy, yet.

[Tanma]

I don't really have active plans for De'kra. Oh I have a backstory (I have plans) but I can't really do anything unless it is a good opportunity. Certain words can lead to a reaction, and seeing some scenarios can remind him of his past.. Most of these plans require actions of other PCs, how they interact with him. People he trusts (Cinna and Hybros) he will be willing to talk to more, and as their social links improve he might share with them some of the things he remembers but doesn't talk about. And as he quests with others he may find other players to trust, based on what they do. It all depends.

That said, I am tossing around the idea of him using Earth song lyrics as battle cries, though in his distorted speech. Like if he ever helps a rebellion against one of the houses or Wren, I plan to have him use lines from uprising. For instance;

They time about to end. We have to unify and watch we flag ascend.

Of course that would also be a character development point, since De'kra can't say we. Partly because his original language doesn't really have plurals.

Edited January 22, 2012 by Tanma

[Khorne]

As I've said before, I chose the Barbarian class because my Rogue character would be too alike to Atramor. Plus, Atramor just looked way to cool to top him . I decided to settle with a Barbarian character because at the time I thought it would be an underrepresented class. I figured if people wanted a fighty character, most would go with the Knight class, because of the more 'heroic' aura that surrounds knightly tales.

I didn't want some dumb, cliché, brute type of Barbarian with all burl and no brains. I made Eric a Northman, because I find the actual Viking culture very interesting and I really liked the Lego Viking sets. Plus, they also fitted the image I had of the "noble savages". Brute and ferocious, but having a distinct culture on par with the so-called "civilized" nations. When normal Eubricians look at Eric, they'll find him brutal and barbaric, suiting his class. However, this stems from their ignorance surrounding Norse land, traditions and culture.

I have a really rough backstory for Eric, which I'm revealling in bits. Other than that, I don't really have any set future plans for him. I'm probably going to be able to pick an Advanced Class after the current Quest. I was going to go with Berserker, since the mixture Knight/Barbarian gives something more "noble" to the Barbarian class in my eyes. It would fit Eric's background. However, recent events during the Quest (aka really bad luck) made me think about changing that choice to reflect his misfortune in the Quest.

[Peppermint_M]

I have a more... Agressive strategy when playing games. Hit the enemy quick and hard. I wanted to create a less refined warrior, a young one in terms of experience and such. I was also considering knight, but I wanted a more exuberant and forceful character than a well dressed and graceful knight could have. Thus Tesni was born. The name is (and those of her swords) Welsh, when I was making backstory I always imagined her living in Snowdonia which then fed in to the character. When she first arrived she was much more shy and also not as confident in herself. After some good quests with experience and a new sword, I just sort of slipped her along to more forceful and surefooted. The purple text started in my third quest, to allow a noticable change in the timbre of her voice. I know popular opinion has it that this is an evil possession but I do have a resolution to all that soon...

[Zepher]

Oh well, while we're telling our creation stories.

I want a cowboy-like character, because I wanted to create an unlikable likable person. There seemed to be too many hot-headed/happy-go-lucky/genuinely good people in the hall when I first joined. I stand by the idea, I think there's still too many of them. Boomingham hates mages and Orcs, is rather creepy with gals, doesn't believe in gods, and is a political and social climber. That being said he is a genuinely happy person, and while he thinks everyone likes him even if it's not the case, he does truly like everyone (minus most mages and all orcs). I have him being sealed away because I think it's important that he's rather out of the loop, but still young, and it's a concept that intrigues me.

I know his back story (though most of the specific war stories are on the spot), and I have only one idea of what his future will hold. I don't need future plans, those come from the quests. He still has a lot of back story to be told, especially if you read over the stuff he's said, you'll notice Boomingham is a liar, and that you don't know that much IMPORTANT information about him. He was a king and general and was frozen in time, but that's all we've got so far. The circumstances of both going into freezing and coming out of freezing are unknown.

Class came from me thinking Knights would be useful. I went Paladin because it fit, and we need healers, and I want Boomingham to be lively, and with that Health boost plus the ability to heal himself, plus the shield, plus the ability to heal himself, he will never be KO'd. The name is self-explaining, I think.

[JimBee]

I wanted Hybros to be a mysterious character. To me, Rogue meant mystery and a disturbed past, not the pillage and plunder, drunken badass type (though I like the contrast between these two types, namely with Atramor). Really, I just can't pull off a "happy" or outgoing character, an honorable one or even an angry one. I admire the people who do, such as Zepher with Boomingham or CM with Cronk, but I can't write a character like that. Actually, Hybros and his background was inspired by the demon species in the Artemis Fowl books, who were a fairy species banished to limbo in these sci-fi/fantasy books. Even the name Hybros comes from the name of the island floating in space-time freeze limbo in the books.

I'm hoping for an epiphany in Hybros sooner or later, but the opportunity hasn't presented itself (besides the one in Quest 7). Otherwise, Hybros might not be ready for an advanced class besides Assassin, which arguably is the most similar to Rogue.

[CMP]

I wanted Hybros to be a mysterious character. To me, Rogue meant mystery and a disturbed past, not the pillage and plunder, drunken badass type (though I like the contrast between these two types, namely with Atramor).

There's actually a reason past his slightly rocky background that makes Atramor that sort of person. The reason will probably become apparent by the time he becomes a Black Knight. I've hinted at it once already.

[K-Nut]

There's actually a reason past his slightly rocky background that makes Atramor that sort of person. The reason will probably become apparent by the time he becomes a Black Knight. I've hinted at it once already.

Does it have anything to do with his talking chicken?