11 - Chiune Sugihara - ScholarYou May Have Noticed By Now, But I Have A Special Place In My Heart For

11 - Chiune Sugihara - Scholar You may have noticed by now, but I have a special place in my heart for people in history who do what they think is right as opposed to what is expected of them. Well, Chiune Sugihara is pretty much the grand poobah founding member of that class, and I love him to pieces. A relatively minor bureaucrat in the Japanese Empire during World War II, Mr. Sugihara was assigned to be Vice-Counsul for his country in Lithuania. When Jews came to him seeking travel visas in order to get out of Lithuania and escape the Holocaust, Chiune blatantly disregarded orders and started handing out visas to as many people as he could. By the time the Empire pulled him out of Lithuania for his gross disobedience, Mr. Sugihara was spending upwards of 20 hours *per day* writing visas, and witnesses report he was *throwing visas out of the train windows as it pulled away.* Bad. Ass. In RPGs, the Scholar is a class that revolves around planning, tactics, and learning. It tends to focus rather strongly on rules and regulations, though the Scholar’s actual role in combat tends to swing between defense and support without any real consistency. Given that Mr. Sugihara was basically manipulating the rules to defend the defenseless, it seemed an appropriate fit.

So the next character on my list is actually three characters, which means a lot of extra design work. It also means it's not due until Thursday, which is kind of a big gap. So in the meantime, have some cute to tide you over. ^^b

Now that it's November, we can start the 30 Characters challenge properly. Our first contestant is Andrew Jackson, seventh President of the United States, pretty much the grand high llama of the inflexible position. He started out as a soldier and worked his way up to commander, gaining the nickname, “Old Hickory.” In the War of 1812, he led a group of militiamen - really, a group of pirates and slaves and anybody else that could be grabbed off the streets - to victory in the Battle of New Orleans. Really what I am trying to say is that Andy Jackson was kind of a badass, and I’d have nothing but respect for the man if he only hadn’t treated native americans like crap. Aaaand that’s where we get to Old Hickory’s character class. There are some Paladins whose only interest is in serving the greater good. And there are some Paladins who only fight in service of their god. Andrew Jackson would not have been one of those Paladins. Andrew Jackson would have been the kind of Paladin who runs screaming into a group of Goblins, foaming at the mouth. Possibly the phrase, “Inhuman monsters” would be used. Because for all that I love Andy, he really did love holding a grudge.

Intro to Historical Character Classes 101

You may be familiar with National Novel Writing Month, the challenge to writers to produce an entire novel in thirty days. With NaNoWriMo's growing popularity, a number of similar challenges have popped up that cater to every stripe of artist. This Tumblr is an archive for a challenge that I'll be taking part in this November, the 30 Characters Challenge (http://www.30characters.com/).

As you may have guessed, the point of this particular challenge is to create 30 characters in 30 days. I've always loved history, and RPGs have been a huge influence in my work, so I've decided to design 30 historical figures as members of RPG classes: Teddy Roosevelt as a Berzerker, for example, or Charles Darwin as a Druid.

I don't have a huge number of restrictions on people I'll be pulling out of history for this thing. I'll be trying to keep to relatively modern history - 1600s and on, mostly - because once you get pre-Renaissance, historical figures start to actually be Knights and Paladins and Mages and so on, which kind of defeats the purpose. I'm also going to try to be respectful to the people I'm using, so you won't see, for example, Gandhi as a bare-knuckle Monk, or Giles Corey as a Warlock.

Anyway, those're the basics. I'll post some practice characters over the next couple of days to illustrate the basic idea I'm going for. Hopefully it'll help be get back into the swing of character design, too. Also, I'm still in the process of finalizing the list of people I'll be using for the actual challenge, so feel free to poke me if you have a history crush to suggest. ^^b

15, 16 and 17 - The Marx Brothers - Mime Something big and fancy for the midpoint of the challenge, ladies and gentlemen! The Marx Brothers are, without reservation, my favorite comedians of all time. They use a brilliant mixture of slapstick, wordplay, and atrocious, paint-curling puns to create some of the most hilarious movies known to man. Their influence on comedy can hardly be overstated; I find it hard to believe that there is a comedian on the face of the planet who has not been influenced in some way by the Marx Brothers. Though mostly seen as slightly creepy, silent clowns in real life, Mimes in role-playing games tend to be massively powerful, very sought-after classes. The root of their strength lies in their ability to copy the moves of other characters, often without paying the costs associated with those moves. In fact, a popular tactic with the Mime is to have all of the characters in a party become Mimes, then have one of them cast a huge, costly, powerful spell, and then have the whole party mimic the attack turn after turn, dealing huge amounts of damage. This is the main reason I felt the Mime class was so appropriate for these three: given their huge influence, there are a vast number of comedians that could be said to be Miming the Mime. Incidentally, I based their designs on the three games which use Mimes most prominently. Groucho is based on the FFV Mime (probably the most boring Mime - they just stuck shoulderpads and a cape on the Freelancer and called it a day!), Harpo is a FFT Mime, and Chico is a FFVI Mime (aka, Gogo).

Julie d'Aubigny - Fencer Class

Julie d'Aubigny's life would have worked wonderfully as a trashy bisexual romance novel. She was a wild young noblewoman who went to bars, got into swordfights, and kissed whichever dude she felt like, even if they were ladies. When one of Julie's lovers was sent away to a convent because of their relationship, our young noblewoman snuck in, picked her ladyfriend up, and set fire to the room to cover their escape. She would've made a wonderful Dread Pirate Roberts.

In the world of RPGs, Fencers are usually defined by their well-balanced stats, with a tendency towards focusing on finesse and speed over brute force and strength. Fencers are a little uncommon in games that have actual job class systems, as the Warrior is usually the go-to standard for basic physical fighters, so the Fencer class tends to be rather strongly tied to a specific character. Good examples of Fencers in RPGs are Mitsuru Kirijo of Persona 3, Eclair of La Pucelle Tactics, and Leon Magnus of Tales of Destiny.