Local Color: Danny Sharp - Torg Character

I think it's time I take advantage of some downtime and talk about something more fun and lighthearted. Here's a brief run down on another character of mine that's near and dear to my heart. I think I'm going to call these character treatise "Local Color," after the literary term describing works that conform to a particular geographic location. They are local to me. There is also another play on words, as among some of my gaming circles, a Player Character is thought to be in "technicolor" when the player is present, or local, and in "black and white" when the character is around, but the player is not.

Danny was supposed to be a one shot, throw away character. He was written as comic relief at the start of a campaign with no real thought towards survival or any real potential. He ended up being one of my longest running characters next to Alex and Balent. I'll have to pen a few words on those guys one of these days.

Torg is a multiversal cross genre game where magic, reality, technology, religion and all genres overlap and compete for dominance. It's common to have a mage fighting side by side with a Secret Service Agent against a technocratic cyberpriest with dinosaurian minions in a realm where technology more advanced than the stone age will not function due to the warping of the rules of reality. Events called Reality Storms can hit, evolving, devolving, and rewriting reality on the spot. Really crazy shit. Danny, introduced into this world of wild fantasy had the most mundane of origins. He was a homeless Vietnam vet (living on the underbelly of Raleigh of all places) always on the lookout for his next bottle of hooch.

Danny's skill set was based around some combat skills, some really snazzy healing, and not much else. I had the idea that he was a combat medic in the Nam, and I didn't expect him to have a long life expectancy, so I dumped most of his points into healing because it was easier than balancing out his stats and build for serious, long term play. Based on that, how in the hell did he end up with Gen. George S. Patton's dress uniform as depicted above? Well, I'll get to that in a minute.

The Torg game started with each of the players rolling up two characters. To emphasize the "no-holds-barred" style we were going for, lethality was set pretty high at the outset. We were supposed to have a spare character or two on the hook. In fact, we were all playing two characters at a time so as to keep things flowing if one of them gets knocked off, the player would still have one character in the adventure without having to take the trouble to introduce another one on the spot. Well, my other character was a park ranger. He was supposed to be a serious and half-way balanced character to survive in this crazy world gone wrong. And he was taken out on his very first roll in the very first time we dropped into rounds. Really.

When the adventure opened, a Reality Storm hit and all of the PCs had to make a Reality Check. No big deal, and everyone passed except for my Park Ranger. Dude rolled a 1. On his first roll. Ever. So, thanks to the effects of the Storm, he devolved into a caveman, clubbed on the other characters for a while, and ran off into the chaos to live a happy, violent cave man life. Just like that I was down to one character, and the expendable joke at that. Rather than create a new one, I thought it would be fun to run with it. Play for the comic relief and absurdity of an alcoholic bum making his way across the reality torn land. But still looking for his next bottle of hooch.

Over the course of the adventures, I stuck with just Danny, while everyone else ran two characters. I was having too much fun playing this hell-bent come-what-may bum who turned out to be one hell of a healer. He developed special character moves, such as "You Can Hack It!!!!" where he would smack a character around, but instead of doing damage, it would heal them. The adventures eventually took the party to Washington D.C., where they were able to loot the Smithsonian. And loot they did.

In Torg, Reality can be influenced and grounded by powerful objects native to that reality. Things like George Washington's Sword would have a certain amount of reality-gravitas against competing realities. Well, in the ruins of the Smithsonian, Danny found Patton's uniform, and like any good bum, traded up for some new threads. Now powered by Reality! It was quite something to imagine this Jerry Garcia-looking old guy running around with a machine gun in one hand, a 5th of whiskey in the other, and wearing Patton's dress uniform laying down the lead against evil government agents, ninjas, and plant-people. All while kicking his teammates in the ass like a burly squad leader to get them back on their feet, which is what passed for "healing" under his build by the rules of the system.

But looking back, part of the fun of it was playing a character with no expectations to live, taking wild chances, and doing the best he can to survive through the end of the world, one bottle of alcohol at a time. For him, the end of the world was the best thing that could have happened. Reality as he knew it was a fate to probably freeze to death in the woods one winter night. With the world thrown topsy turvy he was someone who mattered again. In the regular social order he had no way to make his skills worthwhile. He was, essentially, worthless. He was one of the many forgotten souls who just fade away.

But as it turned out, it took the end of the world, but he had a life again. He mattered again, as he had not mattered since those jungles a world away in his youth. He had a team to fight alongside, and his medical training made him useful, and often necessary. As an archetype he was an underdog that everyone had given up on, but he still had real value. He was fun, he was funny, and in retrospect, he was a much deeper character than I appreciated at the time.

What the Hell is a Rosh Vagari?

It's a natural question that I've answered in the past, but it bears repeating in the early days of my blog, as Rosh Vagari is an apt avatar for my blog as he is, effectively, my alter ego.

Rosh was a character for a D&D game back in 2005 ran by Enrique, a very old friend of mine. The concept behind Rosh was simple enough; a vagrant carpenter, healer, preacher, and survivalist. He did not start out as a Christ analogy, but it became quickly apparent that my subconscious was, divinely inspired, so to speak. So, I took willing inspiration from two versions of Christ. The first was the Christ of the Cleansing the Temple story. He walked in, kicked ass, and took names in the name of the faith. The other was of Christ the wandering healer and teacher, always one step ahead of the evil empire that ruled the land.

Rosh was the last favored of Vagar, the God of Travel in a land where the gods had long been defeated and their influence was all but cut off from the land. So, Rosh traveled the roads, using his skills as a carpenter and healer to better the lives of the people in the lands, preaching the wisdom of harmony and interconnection via the roads of life. He also got involved in a few adventures here and there, and lived up to the concept of the survivalist, as he was one tough SOB to put down. He dealt some serious damage with his quarterstaff and the various enchantments he could lay down. He was the epitome of "don't mess with the old man with the stick."

Furthering the Christ analogy, he could enchant his quarterstaff to grow wicked thorns that made that staff just LETHAL. (We're talking a 3rd level character with a two-attack magical weapon doing something like +8 to strike and damage when all bonuses are accounted for.) Crown of Thorns to Staff of Thorns; that was a nice piece of serendipity. Between the natural class abilities (Favored Soul) and the Feats and Spells in his arsenal, I think he was the toughest character I've ever built.

However, the Christ analogy was really a side effect of the original concept. Rosh was to be a traveler, ranging far and wide, learning, teaching, and adventuring where ever the path took him. The older I get, the more I fit that description. I took great care in developing his name, which says much about him, and helped shaped his development. Which came first, the destiny or the name? Good question.

Rosh Vagari has the unique etymology of being taken from two languages, half a world apart and about as far distant linguistically as they are geographically: Japanese and Latin.

Rosh is a clipping of the Japanese word "horosha," meaning "wanderer." Vagari is more intuitive for us English speakers, as it is where we get the words "vagrant, vagrancy, vagabond," and others. It is taken directly from the Latin word "vagari," meaning "to wander." So, his very name means "a wanderer who wanders." It also shows my insane, nerd-love for words and how we use them.

So, Rosh is the avatar of Polymathic Dromomania, and my alter ego. I have taken this character and concept to heart in my wanderings from my front door, to (literally) the other side of the world:


Souvenir coin from Enoshima Island in Japan: 2009

That the hell is a Rosh Vagari. Perhaps one day I'll get another opportunity to roll dice on his behalf. Until then, I'll be content to walk in his shoes for real for a while.