Dark Age Of Camelot: Mixing Mythos

As the time for my friends to arrive in Dark Age of Camelot draws nearer (everyone is using up the final weeks in their billing contracts in the other game, since they already paid for them), our discussions have turned towards what characters we will be making. Old hands at the roleplaying game, we know what makes characters seem like real people. Now, we have to make a different set of choices.

We have each played the other game for a good three years. We have characters that we are attached to. Should we start new ones, or bring the old ones to the new game? If we bring the old ones, what will be the best way to go about it?

Simple characters make for simple transitions. A fighter who lives and dies by the blade and only pays cursory homage to crown and church will feel comfortable anywhere. Even some more complex characters can easily walk from one world to the next. A shady rogue whose mother, a woman of questionable repute, found herself with child by the local noble's son has a fairly universal theme.

Things become more complex when the races do not match from system to system. What about the half elf, tormented by his half-breed blood, moving to a game without half elves? That's a bit of a kink in the works. If you have a character whose personality comes in large part from being the largest Barbarian on the block, only to come to a game where the closest equivalents are moderately-sized humans or big, stony trolls, you have some adapting to do.

Devotion to an in-game organization tosses in another monkey wrench. A monk devoted to the Order of the Pink Daisy may suddenly have no purpose And it only gets worse when religion edges into the picture. The devout Cleric of Bob, God of Blue Toilet Water finds himself without a compatible god. The reason for his zealotry and therefore, his personality, has completely evaporated.

In my mind, the key is to first define the essence of the character. If you had one word, or one sentence, to explain the character, what would you say? Once you know this, you can find the analog for that one trait that exists in the system you are moving to. Let's look at a couple examples.

An Elven Cleric of Nature, devout in her faith, lived in a beautiful and nigh-perfect society as the daughter of a nobleman until tragedy struck. Her entire family was killed, but she survived by the grace of the deity which called her to service in the moment of that horrible event. Grateful to the deity, she took up the mace and mantle of faith and has served loyally since that day, forsaking her noble heritage, although she still seeks to find the one responsible for the death of her family.

At first glance, the key to this character may seem like her faith. If you look deeper, however, you will see that the key was the tragedy that took a naïve girl accustomed to the life of a noble. Her race and upbringing are her keys. The best analog to the blue-blooded Elven attitude may well be the Avalonians, and the added mystical quality they have may make her tragedy all the worse. The tragic event can easily change to suit the game, and any god or goddess of light could serve as the one she worships. In her case, race is everything.

A Northman Shaman, larger than many of the races in her world, grew up wanting to be a warrior. Another calling waited for her, however, as she was chosen by the Gods of Justice. She embraced her newfound religion with the fervor of the most rabid zealot, traveling about and seeing to it that the will of her gods was done. In the process, she became very wise, as many Shamans before her, eventually gaining the powers of an Oracle.

The key to this character is her religion. A religious zealot, she needs the will of a deity to drive her and sometimes blind her. But Dark Age of Camelot hasn't got Gods of Justice. We need to find something close. After searching about a bit, I ran across Bogdar, the Valkyn God of the Dead. His job, as is stated on the Shrouded Isles website, is evaluating each dead soul and determining its next life. Especially if you believe in karma, and the process of the next life being a reflection on the last, this makes good sense. With the deity settled, the race and profession (not Shaman, and remind me to beg Mythic to make Valkyn able to be Shamans) fall into line.

Every so often, you run into a character that depends so heavily on the story of his original game that he cannot be without a certain element. The character simply would not feel the same without it, and certainly would not act the same. What do you do then?

The first thing I advise is looking harder. Give some real thought to the elements of the game. Certainly reincarnation and justice are two different things, but taken in the right light and played the right way, they can certainly feel close. Using some clever workarounds and a little creative elbow grease, you can work wonders.

If it truly will not fit, evaluate the thing you feel you need. If it is an NPC organization, can you fit it into the new game's mythos and simply pretend it exists? Can you make it yourself, as a player organization or guild? Perhaps the character worked for/despised/whatnot that organization in his past, and now it is gone.

Your final option, really, is to bring the element along. I advise great caution in this. Bringing along a favorite deity from another system, or a race that does not belong in the world you've moved to, can not only sound funny, but can undermine the credibility of your roleplay. I rolled my eyes each time someone in the other game called himself a Drow, because the world had a perfectly good Dark Elven race on its own. When someone told me they worshipped some other deity from another system I winced, because the world already had enough gods and goddesses without adding more.

I will not say that this idea has no chance. Some people do successfully bring over elements from another system without sounding cheesy or overdone. An entire guild on one of the Dred servers follows one of the TSR gods, and does so with flair. Use your good judgement when attempting this. Sometimes, it's better to just let the character stay where he belongs and make someone new.

Within a couple weeks, my friends and I will be happily playing again in Dark Age of Camelot. Some of us will have old favorites transitioned over to new surroundings. Others of us will have made new characters to play. We'll look forward to seeing those of you on Gaheris, Nimue (Albion and Midgard) and perhaps Percival (in Midgard), and roleplaying with you.

The servers will never be the same.

Have a question or a comment? Write me at blackbird@warcry.com. I promise to stop staring at my beautiful video card through the window of my new case long enough to answer.