Meet the players!: Yan

Last week I sent a questionnaires similar to the one here to my 5 players. I got 2 responses so far and I’m posting the 1st one today, along with editorial comments on my part.

What character do you play in our current D&D campaign? (Name, Race Class)?

Lillie, Female Pixie Shaper with a one and a half page long background story. 😉 (Chatty DM: I kid you not, that guy needs a serious creativity outlet)

What Quote would best summarize your Character?

“The trees are my frien… oh! Look at that! Shiny!”

What other Role Playing games have you played other than D&D 3.x?

I have been playing RPGs for as long as I can remember. As a kid I would always have a story in my games. Playing with Legos with my nephews (We’re about the same age) our characters had all kinds of weird stories. Later on, with the influence of those You-are-the-Hero books, we made our own systems of rules to create and play adventures.

Mostly because of these books, we found out about our first ‘official’ role playing system: The Dark Eye (the French Version). We played for a short while until we were introduced to GURPS. That game defined my role-playing experience for many years. Having one system that allows you to play from future setting to the past and enough rules to customize your character to reflect the exact personality you wanted was just so cool. I’ve GMed that game a lot more then I played. I even had the guts to try a twelve player game… It was hell from a GM point of view but incredibly they liked it and asked for more. (Chatty DM: with Gurps? I’m impressed! I ready my axe! Now how long for my next turn? ). I was applying the rule of cool in this story without knowing it… 😉

I did try some other systems during these years AD&D, Rolemaster and Paranoia but none took me away from GURPS long. Being a world-builder and improve-heavy GM, the flexibility provided the rules always made me come back to it. It’s only with the event of D&D 3.0 with its unified rules (and me not being a DM anymore 😉 that I made the shift…

What do you look for in a game session to make it a great session?

A moment of tension followed with success definitely makes fora great session. I’m intentionally vague because it can take all kind of forms. It could be an ultra cool fight with crazy maneuvers to attack a Big Bad or a brain-wracking session of roleplay to argue against a Modron diplomat.

What do you look in a multi-session adventure to make it a great adventure?

I think character and plot progressions are crucial in a campaign so the characters get immersed in it. As a player, you must feel that you’re part of this world, not just some bystander that could easily just walk away from it all. In other words, you must be in deep s… but not so much as to feel overwhelmed by it all. 😉

What tends to decrease your fun the most in a single session?

Falling everything you attempt. I think the felling of incompetence is about the worst thing a player can have in a session. I mean we’re playing heroes not some schmucks. We expect to have more successes then failures. (Chatty DM: Yan has bad days with dice, real bad ones and that can make him somewhat frustrated. But we know why that happens don’t we Yan?)

Tell me about your best RPG memory as a player?

Oh boy… Let’s see…

• Being used as a club by a Dracolich? nah… (Chatty DM: Good times)
  
• Being blasted to smithereens by a Demon Lord? Had better days… (Chatty DM: I can still see the charred boots)
  
• Being thrown like a cannonball from the back of a Dragon? humm… nope…
• Jumping through a Blade Barrier spell from a tree to attack a flying angel? Now where’ getting there… (Chatty DM: We watched The Matrix way too many times).
  
• Using an artifact to summon the Fallen Angel of Death to take care of an Elder White Dragon? That was a mighty session, but not quite my top… (Chatty DM: Talk about player-triggered Deux Ex Machina)
  
• Preparing and executing a break-in Pelor’s Cathedral’s to retrieve the church’s most sacred book. Complete with a round by round execution for the complete session without being detected? Well that was just the most awesome session ever… A trill like no other! I was shaking just by rolling the freaking dice. You could have cut the tension in the room with a knife. (Chatty DM: One of my top 5 adventures I DMed).

Chatty DM’s take on the player:
Yan is the other chatty player around the table. He’s that rare occurrence of Detail-Oriented Intuitive person. He over analyzes everything and then gets impatient. He goes from happy to frustrated to elated in the course on a few die rolls (or turns at Magic the Gathering). He’s the group’s main Brilliant Planner and Maverick. When he jumps from a cliff to land on the back of a Dragon, he knows he’ll probably kill off his character. However, he has a secret mastery of the Player’s version of the Rule of Cool that makes the DM go ‘Oh, so cool, it has to work!” Like all my other players (and friends), it’s an honor for me to have this guy around the table session after session.