How to Be: Kaede
Time to talk about a character I’ve already spent thousands of words describing in terms of the negative space created by fighting games that enable a lot of fun interpretation and also selling us the vast and valuable currency that is nothing.
How to Be: Mystique
Let’s look at the first* transgender* X-Men*!
How to Be: Altair Ibn La-Ahad
What can we say about Altair? Well, being as he’s from the Assassins Creed franchise before it got really bloated and included dozens of nested sub-systems, he’s certainly the purest and simplest of the Assassins you get to play. We’re really lucky about Altair as a character because we get to see a lot about him and how he expresses himself, and we know for a fact that the ways he expresses himself in the game are the things he thought of as possible and doable.
How to Be: Amaya from Dragon Prince
She’s power, she’s grace, she’ll punch you in the face, she’s a queen, she’s a knight, she’s here to have a fight, she’s Amaya from The Dragon Prince!
How To Be: Amity Blight
I like this character a lot, and I like particularly the ways that she fits with some ideas like a D&D game, without necessarily already being a D&D game. There’s enough of a gap between what she does and how she does it, and how D&D would assume a character would do that to create an interesting creative space.
How to Be: Samus Aran
The list of Samus Aran traits we have is a little bit like one of those ‘pick two’ triangles. Heavy armour works against mobility. Mobility tends to be paired with melee damage, not ranged damage. Ranged damage tends to not work with heavy armour. We’re kinda screwed on this one.
How to Be: Link
With Frame Fatales running, I wanted to talk about a character who has a strong presence in speedrunning, and a character that owns a special place in the heart of the community, and a character who helps people feel connected to something. I figured what better to do, than look at a Link.
How to Be: Inu-Yasha
Smooch month has rolled around and that means it’s time to, once again, break out the rulebooks and try to find a way to make another Ranma 1/2 character in 4th edition D&D. You know, considering that the guy’s a dog half-demon, there’d be all sorts of powers or complicated special abilities to cover. Funny thing is, not really! Inu-Yasha is a character whose powers can almost all be summarised as ‘stuff a human can do, but way better.’
How to Be: Cyclops
A long time ago, when I first started playing RPGs, a friend (hi BigAngry) said to me, the thing with RPGs is that once you play in them you’ll notice the way that literally every single piece of fan media presents you a list of toys, things you can always look at, then point to and say ‘I want that.’ And I thought about another friend who doesn’t care about RPGs, and I thought: Yeah. Let’s do Cyclops.
How to Be: The Very Best, Like No-one Ever Was (Dun Dun D-Dun)
You know, it might just be because I’ve been thinking about pets and subordinate characters, what if the inspiration for your character in a 4e campaign is being someone who has for some reason, a monster that works at their side? What kind of character can produce monsters out of nowhere – like they can just pull them out of their pocket?