Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Idea for a Magnificent Bastard character

Note: I'm copy and pasting this from a post I made here in the TV Tropes fora.

Said character is the main general for a deliberately small anarchist military colony that frequently collaborates with similar colonies. There's really no structure, everything's based on trust and and IOUs are pretty much the local currency- you do someone a favor and they owe you a favor.

Anyway, he's trying to prevent World War III from getting too bad, and he has about 150 ex-fratboy soldiers in Powered Armor at his disposal. As I said, he's a Magnificent Bastard, though he's a good guy. Actually, he's half Magnificent Bastard and half Crazy Prepared- he manipulates people and politicians like puppets, but his plans don't always work out. Thus, he has contingencies. Lots of contingencies.

The origin for all of this is pretty simple- he's a DM. His players (who are also main characters) would constantly go Off The Rails and he would therefore develop these contingencies in advance. Later he started to try to convince his players to not want to go off the rails, thus his Magnificent Bastardom. Another favorite tactic of his that carries over into his war strategies is the Red Herring- convince the players that they've gone off the rails when they were leaping on them, possibly from another plotline he'd set up.

Anyways, I'd like some feedback and a possible name for this character, as Ross Cortney dosen't fit him at all.