Ok so, this is the story of how I got back into roleplaying games after changing cities. To catch up, check out Chapter 1 and Chapter 2.
Introductions
So I have my character ready to go, I have my tactical battle doctrine in mind, and I have a loose idea of how to play my character. I am beyond excited to play. So I get to the game night venue and have an aside with Dan (The GM) about how we are going to introduce William Tracey VIII. He explains that I will be in an antechamber in the Black Heart of Death™ mini dungeon near the beginning. Ok, so I have some time be the party finds me and this is actually when I start writing my backstory.
Dan explained that they got the Black Heart of Death™ from the lair of a vampire lord. I come up with a bit of backstory about my family and the vampire. I also decided that my character had a deep-seated hated for the unnatural creatures of the shadow. That was the family legacy, safe guarding humanity. He was a teen coming into his own. So I mostly just played him confused by everything. He was in the Black Heart of Death™ for nearly 35 years.
So that night there was what I call the "Core Group":
- Squirrel is playing Eugene, a mute telepath.
- Seth is playing Maurice, the party face and loot fiend.
- Tony is playing John "Dynamite Lockpick" Jones.
- Richard is playing "Doc" Ron, the Sniper/Medic.
- Nate is playing A.J., The Axe Man, had a magical sentient Axe.
- Toast is playing Derek, a stealthy Gunslinger.
So the party enters the first room and fight a group of living shadows. They get pretty beat up. Toast had managed to be the least beat up, so he is checking out the room. He finds the antechamber that is holding me and NPC. So they free me and I introduce myself as William Tracey VIII and describe my character.
Now if figured that since I was a teen in the 80s, I gave him a mullet. You know, business upfront, party in the back. For some reason, this is the only detail the group can hang on to. So for the rest of the dungeon they refer to me as "Mullet". I just roll with it, its fun and the first night so I didn't expect them to learn the name right away. They will know it by next week.
Nope! Wrong! Incorrect!
Not only was that the characters name for the entire year I played, they forgot my name. My group nickname was now Mullet. That is how well I role-played the character. The two of us were one and the same in the mind of the group.
The Black Heart of Death™ Mini Dungeon
So we fight our way out of the dungeon. The puzzles and traps were mostly based around how a human heart actually functions with chambers opening and closing and filling with Death Mist and Living Shadows. We eventually figure out how to get out and find the final boss, a Huge creature of living shadow blocking our way out.
Huge creature, this is my jam. I get into position on the creatures right flank, A.J. and his axe on the left. I make the Shadow Giant my Dodge target and wait for it to make the mistake of attacking me. Everyone else just pulls out guns and starts blasting it. The Shadow Giant's turn comes up, Dan rolls odds and evens to see if Mullet or A.J. gets attacked. It comes up Mullet! Oh baby here we go. Dan rolls the attack and gets... a NAT 20! So he bashes me, hard. I have like 28 hit points, hits me for 26.
OOF, that's not good. So I gotta make a Massive Damage Check. You see, in d20 Modern if you take damage that is higher than your Constitution score, you have to make a DC 15 Fort Save or fall to -1 HP. So I make the check, cough up some blood and power attack this thing my next turn.
I would like to say the fight was an epic tactical battle, but we got our asses kicked. Dan had this way of making the boss fights feel truly epic by making every boss fight a near Total Party Kill (More on this later). Out the seven of us, only 3 were conscious at the end of that fight. I was one of them.
After defeating the Shadow Giant, the mist evaporates. The obsidian walls begin to clear as light begins to fill the Black Heart of Death™. We gather up the unconscious party members and move toward the aortic valve exit. Eugene and Mullet have a brief conversation after exit the new made Diamond Heart of Life™ about why everyone was so interested in my hair.
Now Squirrel was a great role player. Since his character was mute, he and his character had a small white board that he would use for conversations. So he wrote down that Mullet weren't cool anymore. So Mullet, being an awkward teen who wants to fit in with this group of cool guys, bunches up his hair and with one swift slice cuts off the mullet. Eugene then rubber bands it and puts it in his backpack for no other reason than, "Its funny."
And that's how that session ended and how I got my group nickname. I had that mullet for one session, and it became part of the mythos of the game world. So how about you? Has a group ever given one of your characters a nickname. Let me know in the comments below. Until next time, happy gaming.