GM: They, as you should be used to by now, look at you quizzically.
Since it can't be my fault, I blame Carton on Nate Bruinooge and Barbara Cuthill. As Mike Jacobs' "Loose Ends" campaign wound down, I decided that I wanted my next character to be a Strength monster - it's typically the attribute given the shortest shrift by ADRPG players and GMs alike and I wanted to see what I could do with it.
Then Nate announced that he was eliminating the Strength attribute for his campaign.
In role-playing jargon, I tend toward develop-in-play (DIP) and gestalt visualization rather than rational design-in-advance, which is why this website doesn't go up until the campaign has been going for five months and why, with the closest thing I had to a plan in ruins, while the rest of the players designed everything from their coat of arms to the armies under their command, I sat around wondering what the hell I was going to do.
A disadvantage of the "inspiration, not perspiration" approach is that when ideas do come they can be impossible to shake. The name "Carton" lit on me like a deer tick the night of the attribute auction and just would not be brushed off. I'd been playing a lot of Everway and it has its hazards. Desperately, and with a head full of Nobilis, I tried to claim that "Khar-th'onn" meant The Vicar of Dreams in the language of his home shadow. One player spent two weeks of real time believing the Vicar of Dreams really was my new character's name.1
As the auction proceeded there were still two ways Carton could go: toward a benign absurdity - more sinned against than sinning - or a mad venality - craven pretension. Jacobi's Claudius or Atkinson's Blackadder.
Well now. In addition to the standard ADRPG attribute auction, Nate introduced "The Game," described on the official campaign website.2 My only real ambition for The Game was to win the coveted position of "Dierdre's Apprentice." After all, Claudius needs some wisdom to give him that gravitas.
Barbara's only real ambition for The Game was to win the coveted position of "Dierdre's Apprentice."
Hey, that's why we have competitive bidding, right? And as The Game went on it became clear that if I literally played my cards right, I could not lose. I put just enough down on birth order to be sure I could be the son of Martin's middle wife, Cassandra, commonly called Mad. Who else is going to name her kid Carton? Barbara was too invested in the "Mistress of the Sea" position to top my maximum bid for Dierdre's Apprentice.
So Barbara did what any self-respecting Amber player would do: she fought dirty. Sadly and sweetly, she worried aloud that the only character conception that made sense for Grace required her to be Dierdre's Apprentice. She furrowed her brow trying to think of an alternative. I do believe her chin quivered, albeit slightly.
So I let her win! Call me a pushover! Instead of capping the Dierdre's Apprentice slot with my three-card, I played my two-spot and spent the three - more than I needed - on a Golden Circle ambassadorship. (Nobody else wanted a stinking job like that.) That meant Barbara's and my bids tied and I let her take the tiebreaker.The point I am trying to get across here is that I am a saint. A saint, I tell you!
As opposed to Carton. Because now the Claudius path was barred for the foreseeable future. Since nothing need go to waste, we all decided that Carton had come this close to becoming Dierdre's Apprentice in the campaign world itself, and the nasty bastard had one more thing to be bitter about. It's probably where his issues with women come from too. I just wish I could explain that annoying voice.
Things are about to change significantly for the Vicar of Dreams.3 I of course have only the vaguest notion of how. But Nate, Barbara: I've had a blast. Thanks.