The Blog of Roon

On the bus home yesterday I suddenly discovered why my Ars Magica character Annia is the way she is.

(Both bus brainstorms and sudden insights into the subconscious aspects of character creation happen to me with impressive frequency.)

Ars Magica is designed to create intense characters à la those I discussed yesterday. Magi are supposed to be dedicated to the pursuit of magic above almost all else save survival—and survival is iffy when stacked against a truly intriguing problem.

Annia ex Bjornaer isn’t like that. Annia likes magic, but Annia also likes talking and animals and dancing and sex and the outdoors (especially the ocean) and children and good food. She is living proof that the Gift doesn’t always fall on people prepared to dedicate themselves wholly to it.

Part of Annia is just me subverting the game system again, deliberately creating a character the game system doesn’t point at creating. It isn’t that I don’t create intense characters; I do. D&D priestess Afletana is so driven she freaks out some of the other players.

Still, of course, part of Annia is me reacting to all the intense people I know. I’m not sure I would have created Annia if the other mages in the campaign weren’t largely according to type: driven, moody, in one case thoroughly insane.

Annia will never be the world’s most powerful mage, but I’m betting she’ll be as valuable to her covenant as her powerful sodales. This notion that you have to be singlemindedly intense to contribute meaningfully to the world is one I dumped many years ago.

I have trouble playing Annia, to tell the truth. I designed her to be truly happy-go-lucky. No dark past, no clouds looming, no personality problems. A genuine heart of gold. Turns out to be wickedly hard to play, for this heart of brass.

I’m now wondering what I can do by way of Storytelling to push the other characters on the intensity question. Annia is laid up just now, poor thing, so I ought to take over a story next time we play Ars. (It’s back to DnD; our regular GM is back from Greece.)

Tell you what, I have got to stop trying to play bitchy characters. I’m no good at it. I get out-bitched in no time flat.

Which has its moments, admittedly. I wanted to laugh as hard as everyone else at some of the piercing one-liners aimed at Latiel—couldn’t if I wanted to stay in character, of course.

The curious thing, though, is the defense Latiel adopted once it became clear she was heavily outclassed in the bitch department. She started being nice. Wish that tactic worked in more situations, I do.