Otto changed dramatically by the end of the campaign. As a writer I’ve always been told that readers want to see characters change over the course of the story, so I knew I wanted to allow Otto to change but I didn’t know how. I was thinking that maybe he’d turn into Mad Max Rockatansky and just not give a damn about anyone but himself, or maybe that he’d wander out of the city and into the wastes at the end but, when I got there, neither of those made any sense for this character I had envisioned.
Because I mean, how is going to be a badass like Mad Max? He has no combat skills at all, can’t shoot a gun, doesn’t even own a gun. I wanted him to be a nice guy in this really rotten world but I couldn’t figure out how else to make him change.
That’s what led me to thinking more about his past. I knew I wanted to make him old enough to remember the days before the apocalypse (which I think we agreed would mean he’d be in his 40s) and I got to thinking what that would be like to live through. No one wanted to play as his wife or kid when I asked so I started thinking, okay he’s all alone. But because I asked other people if they wanted to be his family, I started thinking that he must have had a family, and then I decided it was going to be a good family, with a wife and a couple kids. (That’s why I made him meet with a family with a couple kids at the end)
So a girl in my research writing class was writing on post-traumatic stress disorder and as I was reading through her draft I was like maybe that’s what’s Otto’s got. He had to lose his whole family and he just keeps chugging along. Some of the main symptoms of PTSD are bad nightmares and even referring to yourself in the third person, so that’s why he does that. He’s been alone for many years and is a little afraid of forming new relationships.
Jackal turned out to be a really rich partner for him, especially because the way Emily made her. As a youngish teenager she would have been around the age of Otto’s daughter, but I thought maybe she’d also be around the age of when he met his wife. It would be this weird situation where she’s a female and attractive but also too young for him for a romantic relationship. For someone who hasn’t been around many people, that made it interesting to think about what he would want from that relationship.
At the swap when Delia and Erik were talking all their political stuff, I didn’t know what Otto would think about that. He’s a smart guy but I don’t think he went to college, and definitely wasn’t interested in politics like that. But the quotes you used were really cool and it got me thinking about living in chains. When Otto got KO’d by the MPD and tied up coming out of the swap. I just thought that was a great metaphor for himself being freed by reintegrating into society. I don’t know if you planned that or what, but it helped me draw his story to a close and I think he’s going to be alright, especially if people can start working together in Rivertown.
--Juan
(BB note – nope, I just thought the MPD would handcuff their prisoners, and the family was random too. Had I rolled differently Otto could have found a couple of rundown-heads and his story would have ended very differently!)
Emily dropped off the planet for the last session so I just made up her ending based on the discussions we had about her character. She was pretty mad about what happened to Emilee, her original character, so she wanted to create a vengeful version that she thought would fit more naturally into this violent, post-apocalyptic world.
We actually role-played through the scenario described in the final scene, the one where Otto finds her shaking and covered in blood. We rolled to see if her excuse would pull the wool over old Otto’s eyes, and she killed the roll—like all successes and two perfects, so he didn’t have a chance. I rolled just in case but it wasn’t even close.
Anyway, I wish she would have written these episodes up because I think the Jekyll and Hyde personalities of Emilee and Jackal, who were similar in a lot of ways, would have been interesting to see come out in the fiction. Emilee was the kind of person who everyone just liked and would always have your back; Jackal was the kind of person who attached herself to different people and would always be willing to stab you in the back. Kinda crazy and pretty depressing that Jackal was more suited to survival in Rivertown, but I think that says something about how the game rules help determine the stories characters can tell.
--BB
