AToW Pickup Characters

[Korsar]

Hej!
So, here is the scenario: Imagine some kind of Fury Team, collected from all parts of the sphere. Except it's not a Fury Team, it's a SpecOps unit in Stones coalition. Starting with their escape from a WoB Reeducation camp they have to work together and over the course of their actions become a team.

That is the general background. Now for some specifics and my questions. I'm planning on doing a Con-campaign, meaning that if I go to a con and host a game of A Time of War, the same characters (as far as they survive  ;) ) are used. They are working their way slowly to Terra.
The point is, that I normally can't interest enough people in my home town into playing AToW, which actually is okay. I rather play with people who want to play, than with people who don't. So whenever I go to a Con (or if I'm meeting a few friends and we spontanously decide to play a round) I would like to take a stack of premade characters with me.

So now here is my question: What type of character would you like to play? Pitch me some crazy ideas, oh Forum!  [notworthy] ;D

thanks,
Korsar

[Darthvegeta800]

- A captured Falcon Clanner turned bondsman and than turned prisoner. Cynic, bitter and frustrated.

- A Draconis Combine 'Ronin', falsely accused, dishonored and forced to flee. His quest to redeem his name has merely brought him to an all-time low as an imprisoned mercenary.

[rim_pirate]

Are you going to be at the Galahad? I could bring a couple of characters from the games I hosted.

[Korsar]

Sorry, no Galahad this year for me. But if you come to Kittery, we might get a game together  ;)

[rim_pirate]

Probably no Kittery for me this year, but you could come to Toblerone ;)

[Korsar]

Would like to, but alas, too expensive for a lowly student  ;) One day though I'm going to make it, I swear!   :D

Back on topic: I think I have the character you played back when I hosted the game on the swiss forums stored on my hard drive. Wasn't he the low-life scum with the big gun from the Marian Hegemony?  ;D

[rim_pirate]

You may have me confounded with one of my fellow Swiss BT players - this character very much sounds like Tiischa (checking the forums, it turns out to be Viper).

I hosted a game at the last Toblerone where a bunch of IE dig members had to fight off a horde of Amaris zombie clones  :D

[Maelwys]

- A Draconis Combine 'Ronin', falsely accused, dishonored and forced to flee. His quest to redeem his name has merely brought him to an all-time low as an imprisoned mercenary.

Go with a ronin truthfully accused. Give him a real reason to have a Dark Secret. Let the PCs trouble over the idea of having to deal with him if they want to hurt the Wobblies.

As for other characters, I think it really depends on how you're going to be building the campaign. Are players going to feel bad that their character spent 1000 points on being a `MechWarrior during chargen, but they never see a `Mech during the game?

Its tougher to build characters for ATOW if you don't have a game plan, IMO.

[Korsar]

I'm actually a fan of 'cinematic' games, where bullets, lasers and parts of Manei Domini are flying everywhere  ;)
So, if the character has sunk 1000XP in being a MechWarrior he is surely seeing a Mech from the inside pretty soon.
Actually one of my ideas for the escape from the camp was getting the players to capture a mech.

@DarthVegeta & Maelwys: I like the ideas! Small question aside: Is there a lifepath for the bondsman warrior, or do I just define him as a bondsman?

[Maelwys]

Well, that's good, so just about whatever you come up with will work. Its just something to keep in mind when creating characters usually. A tech genius could be interesting i suppose. "Oh sure, hold on, just let me fix that over there..."

As for Bondsmen, there doesn't seem to be a specific lifepath in place, though I do have a few suggestions. Firs,t use the "Changing Affiliations" on page 53 (Basically cut in half all rewards and costs for the two affiliations and apply both). Second, you could use the "Clan Warrior Washout" Lifepath (pg. 75) to simulate that period of time when the character is a bondsman, and not yet a warrior, then tack on Tour of Duty after that (to show that the character was accepted as a Warrior in the new Clan).

[Korsar]

The lifepaths sound good, especially the warrior washout. I already considered that, but wasn't really sure about it.
The Techie sounds good also.

At the moment I'm inclined to use some kind of A-Team approach, as in: A MechWarrior, an Elemental, a Pilot, a Tech and a Lyran Social general (as Face  :D). Point is: I was looking for some interesting backgrounds. And I already got two. I'm thinking of using the Ronin for the MechWarrior and the Falcon for the Elemental.
Thoughts?

[rim_pirate]

From personal experience, I suggest a vain and utterly self-absorbed noble (heir to some rather important title preferred), graced with oodles of protocol and other societal skills, but utterly lacking in anything else - tends to make life interesting for everyone if you not only have to get out, but also prevent the future Count Whatever from getting hurt.

[Darthvegeta800]

Well the ronin could be yakuza. The Clanner i'd make an elite pilot.

[Talz]

Former ComGuard 50th Division, veteran of Tukayyid, comrades slaughtered by the Smoke Jaguars.  Mustered out in the 3050s returning home to settle into a calm life in the St Ives Compact far from the clan front, joining the Blackwind Lancers as the new Star League ushered in a new era of peace and prosperity.  Of course the Lancers are reduced to a shell of their former selves by Sun Tzu's SLDF peacekeepers a few years later.  Moving on to greener pastures once again our hapless warrior decides to try the merc's life and signs up with Wolverton's Highlanders shortly before they ship off to Odessa where of course things go quite badly once again.  At this point our hero decides it's time to retire to civilian life and joins the Solaris City Police Department, which isn't a bad gig until the Wobbies kick off their little Jihad.   }:)

I'm thinking a veteran infantryman or tanker.
Unlucky [-1]  (it would be higher but this guy has the luck to live through all of that!)

[Trenchknife]

One of the better illustrations of randomly thrown together but skilled characters I've seen was the TV Series Firefly.  The ATeam wasn't that disparately trained.  They were ALL SF operators to some degree, and each had their specialty.  The characters in Firefly seemed to be thrown together b/c of where they were, and a willingness to work together (albeit with much grumbling and personality clashing). 

If yer interested, I am running a ATOW campaign with my local group.  They are all new to ATOW and so I decided that I would prebuild the entire company of PCs.  Printed them up all pretty so that they looked like the sample character sheets in the rule book and let them pick what they wanted out of that.  PM me if you'd like to see my work.

[E. Icaza]

From personal experience, I suggest a vain and utterly self-absorbed noble (heir to some rather important title preferred), graced with oodles of protocol and other societal skills, but utterly lacking in anything else - tends to make life interesting for everyone if you not only have to get out, but also prevent the future Count Whatever from getting hurt.

I had a player come up with pretty much that same concept for a DA/AoD game.  High Wealth, Contacts, Extra Income and a few choice skills like "Career/Media Whore" at high levels.  The one-sentence concept was "Paris Hilton in the 32nd century, but from the Combine."

[bytedruid]

An Outworlds Alliance jet jock who's home city was brought to ruin by a pirate attack he couldn't stop.

[JamesPryde]

How about a Fed Sun who was stranded due to the civil war and was trying to return when he got caught up in this mess lol?

[Techmonster22]

A captured assassin or terrorist responsible for the deaths of several well know/high class nobles that the WoB captured to turn to their own cause would be neat IMO.

[Atlas3060]

A Mechwarrior who believes in the Unifinished Book movement captured by Blakists and resisted brainwashing.
Now because of the torture he/she is slightly off kilter and becomes a freelance warrior willing to kill Blakists because "the Devil exists and they are the messengers".