Sheet Graveyard

**Tobias** · December 8th, 2018, 01:56 PM

My female characters (and even templates) have always been straight except for one that nearly made the cut in onigokko

**Spinach** · December 14th, 2018, 04:06 PM

Hello desolate thread. Shower thoughts and a need to masturbate over my characters has brought me here to post an old sheet of mine. A fit of "guys, I miss Moon White" overcame me as I was shampooing, and I spent the better half of a 30 minute shower reminiscing on how much fun I had just making my sheet for Moon White's 'Redux.' In the midst of my thoughts it came to me that even though MWR is officially a dead project I sort of didn't post my MWR sheet itself anywhere other than discord. So here I would like to do more than post the sheet itself and say "look at my thing" and instead write about some of the early drafts of the sheet (which do not exist, they were actively deleted or rewritten in the same doc as the final version of the sheet, thus causing some mistakes in some sentences and other issues).

I usually don't share my sheets because I find them quite embarrassing

I'll save my thoughts on the final version for the end. For now, my initial motivations, goals, and ideas with the character that mostly exist in the sheet as-is.

Despite being a Grail War, MWR was from the start going to be an RP that I suspected, at least on the GM side, would lean more towards Tsukihime's atmosphere. Don't quote me on that, or this, but I've always suspected Verg liked Tsukihime more than Fate. He's never said it, it was just a gut feeling, and still is, so I wanted to make a character that felt 'Tsukihime.' As the setting of MWR would have our characters freshly arrive on the island of Tengetsu, the first version of Kirame was closer to a normal human than the final product. Kirame would be a shunned son of an old, wealthy family that owned a western-style mansion on Tengetsu. Upon the death of his family's patriarch, his grandfather, his excommunication would be rendered null and he would move back to the mansion to live in his family home that existed primarily in hazy childhood memories. There he would become reacquainted with a red-haired maid that worked in the mansion and find himself haunted by worrying, fractured memories that felt oddly personal yet certainly not to belong to he himself.

This would escalate as the RP progressed. Initially, he would be the kind of character who wouldn't want to be involved in something like a Grail War, and wouldn't have the sort of attachment to the island to participate just to preserve peace. Kirame would reluctantly become a Master just to preserve his life, and also in the hopes that he might understand more about the memories that aren't his.

The final piece of the character was that his family was, obviously, a part of the Ryougi clan, perhaps a branch. Whatever was necessary to simply allow this sort of situation to exist. Kirame himself had a split personality, as the others in his family do, except that due to an accident with a cursed memento in the family's possession, his second personality had been heavily damaged beyond repair. It would only surface in extreme near-death scenarios, and wouldn't be much more than a killing machine that operates on instinct. The swords that survived to the final draft were the key here, as they would be locked away in the mansion and the broken personality would use ESP to grab them from whatever possibly distance he might be from them upon awakening, as they were the cause of its destruction, and exist in the subconscious of each Kirame as all powerful life-destroying tools.

Why scrap this? Well, because it went beyond paying homage, it was just a watered down Tohno Shiki. It felt uninspired once I reached the end of drafting it, and I quickly began writing something else with some key elements in place. A mono-personality Ryougi, a fondness for a cursed sword that is especially deadly to man itself, and the hunt for the meaning of his "other self's memories" became "a search for purpose."

That second draft materialized as something even MORE lacking originality! I remembered the old anecdote that the Nanaya and Ryougi as families were quite close with one another, and went from there. I re-envisioned him as an adopted Nanaya that had lucked out and survived the purge ordered by Makihisa by having the good fortune of being in the middle of a rare visit to the Ryougi family at the time that it occurred. Being a very young age at the time, this new iteration of Kirame would have been raised as a Ryougi, always feeling a bit out of place in his family, and having an enigmatic bloodlust that surfaced in response to certain stimuli. This particular Kirame had a lot less written about him, and very little was solidified at any point. It didn't take long for me to find myself feeling something close to shame, as making Kirame a surviving member of the Nanaya clan and splitting his identity in this way robbed from Tsukihime in a way I felt was even more offensive than cloning its opening scenario. Taking what made the protagonist of a canon work unique within the world (other than the MEoDP, which aren't unique to Shiki[which one omegalul] anyway) shocked me into a sort of self awareness, that what I was doing was quite shallow. Not only that, but the character was largely failing to come together as a 'character' like the previous iteration had. Funny enough, it was the Nanaya rendition of Kirame that had two fully functional 'personalities,' even if they were ultimately the same person in the same vein as Tohno/Nanaya Shiki in Tsukihime proper, rather than the Melty Blood splitting of Nanaya and Tohno.

Despite it all, the first Kirame I felt was something that would have truly been interesting to play, though in another sense he would have provided a considerable challenge. However, one thing from the second rendition of the character had one thing that made him quite compelling, and that was his violent impulses, giving a stronger impetus to participate in the Grail War, and would make for something I thought might be more fun to play, if easier.

The final Kirame is a combination of these characters, with new additions here and there. His maid was re-imagined as Nozomi. In the very first draft I sent to Verg, Nozomi was actually an old man, and her FC was Roshi from Dragonball drawn in an alternate artstyle. Verg demanded that my sheet have a loli, and so I simply changed perverted old man to perverted little girl. He'll insist that it was a joke, but I know you're a lolicon, Verg. I smell it on you.

My final goal was to try and accomplish a balancing act of a character who would have a motivation that the Grail War would align with, yet the Grail itself would not. In that sense Kirame came out in a way resembling Cu Chulainn. Though he wished to participate and fight in the Grail War, he had little interest in the Grail. His wish was for his violent impulses and desire to fight to have a purpose. A war with meaning, something more than the shallow killing he had done before to sate himself, pretending that it was done for a more noble purpose. This version scrapped both personalities, splitting the burden of characterization between the one-note warrior Kirame and Nozomi, who would try to understand him.

For some reason Verg ended up taking this sheet over my other, far better sheet, which was Conductor of the Sistine Chapel Choir and had strung the hairs of Saint Lucille onto a scythe, turning it into a guitar that exploded Servants when he played it.

**Spinach** · December 14th, 2018, 04:31 PM

I hit reply too hastily. And by that I mean after putting this up I realized that somewhere in typing I forgot to make my point and instead just ran down the chronology of my sheet creation. I guess that's a post that could be worth writing, but it wasn't the original point.

Initially, this post was to be about the motivations in creating the character. What I aimed for, and how that process was structured, and ultimately how the character molded the mechanical aspect of the sheet.

In the beginning there was a rough idea, "Tsukihime in Fate," and upon trying to give that idea form I stumbled upon one of the chief characteristics of Kirame, the swords. At first they were to be something that existed more in Kirame's mind as an object of fear. Possibly something that ONLY existed in his head. I even entertained the idea of the swords truly not existing, and the broken personality's ESP would create swords that matched its mental image of death. Mechanically, they had nothing to them. The final version was an anti-human set of seven perfectly duplicated swords that caused humans to experience Inversion Impulse akin to Kishu hybrids. But at one point they were just a cursed memory with no real ability, other than being cursed in some way. That trauma eventually evolved mechanically into the Nanae in the final sheet, and the broken personality's ability to grasp the swords from any distance became his telekinesis.

Naturally, the ESP became fitted to match the need to wield multiple swords at once, as stealing the INFINITE ONE-SWORD STYLE from Soul Eater would have been a tad lame. That said, plenty of animeshit characters fight with multiple swords levitating around them and swinging independently of their arms, so it isn't like I preserved any strong originality there. The maid's transformation into a blacksmith companion was admittedly quite mechanic driven. I knew that when it came to a Verg RP, the possibility of my swords being damaged or outright shattered was very real. Especially when I had set my heart on attempting a Servant-fighting Master. I took advantage of her existence to try and put a bandaid over that concern, though taking Artificer as my Servant made that a completely needless exercise.

But doing so produced some of the most fun player/player posting I've ever done. Scenes between Nozomi and Artificer were incredibly fun to write, and still remain dear to me as some genuinely satisfying posts to put up along with another player. Despite all the shit I'll always give him for his taste in certain fields, Bloble is one heckin player who can really work with another player without compromising his character OR their's.

Funnily enough, despite taking quite some power-grabby parts of the character creation section, I had some AP leftover in the end, and rather than letting it go to waste I grabbed Beauty Untold.

I'm not sure where the moral of this story is, honestly. I guess it's something like, TRPG character sheets suck and usually look like someone rolled dice, wrote their character mechanics out according to what the dice permit them to do, and then put together a handful of character traits that enabled whatever they had for their kit, and I think it's more fun to run the character creation process in reverse, so I wanted to provide an example of one such sheet of mine that went through more than one revision before getting to its final stage, and how the character influenced the kit, rather than the kit influenced the character.

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Guys, I miss Moon White

**Tobias** · December 14th, 2018, 05:19 PM

huh. Well, im not as verbose as you, but if we are talking about char creation evolution, what comes to mind I guess is "murderer" and "Manny Slayne"

with onigokko and regalia gone the way of the dodo I guess it doesnt matter and I can talk about this

My servant for regalia was "Learner." The weakest and yet strongest servant. I guess I am a naturally contrary person. When I saw the ridiculous amount of classes my first thought was "hell no, I want something that nobody has seen, in RP or out!" so I wanted to create something completely different from anything we had ever seen.

Because verg's RPs usually have mysteries involved, I immediately hot on the idea of an investigator servant, with Holmes as an obvious first choice. someone who could provide information about the inner workings of the RP.

However, relatively quickly, I grew bored of the idea. I wanted someone new, and unpredictable. Someone who would grow and challenge me. It was about then that I hit on the idea of a servant who would evolve in ways that I would be unable to predict until it actually happened. Originally I considered making this a Noble Phantasm, but because the entire premise of the servant was "Chaos." I wanted a class that reflected this. It was then that I hit on the idea of a servant who had no powers but observation, one who learned and grew based on what he was presented with. As I have said before, originally this was "Atlas" Mikuru, someone who was a candidate for the role of Atlasia, a rank which symbolizes the alchemist association, would use himself as a candidate to summon the concept of the alchemists as a servant. The premise of victory through acquisition of information.

Verg would later say he needed a taima mage, so I built one who could still summon a Learner

Interestingly, Zero had by far and away the most developed backstory I ever created. Normally I just create a premise and sort of let it evolve, but in this case creating a mage who had the right (absence of) self along with the particulars to leave a fragment of his soul around to craft into a learner servant required considerable work.

I have talked about all that before though, so I wont go more into detail.

But a learner servant is by nature vulnerable. with zero power but unlimited potential if someone were to discover the secret, all of Olympus would have joined together to crush him So I needed away to conceal him until it was time.

Thats when I came up with "murderer" both on the IC and to develop in game, Murderer would have had a mix of comedic value to lower his threat, while just presenting enough danger that people would be nervous about challenging him Likeable but scary, the servant of death, Murderer.

What I hadnt exoected was to fall so hard for him. Murderer was just...fun to right. The right mix of camaraderie with boiling hatred and malice underneath the surface, all of a sudden I found quite an enjoyable character to write. there were times I considered asking verg to ax learner and just let me use murderer.

Which brings me to Onigokko.

When I saw's Sei's RP i knew right away I wanted to make a lie truth, I decided to create murderer.

Someone who concealed their crazy under a veneer of kindness. SOmeone who could smile with bright eyes while lusting for death. Of course, unlike murderer, manny was already a product of his world. Creating a serial killer wa snot feasible. I almost abandoned the idea before I figured out what I needed to do.

I de-aged murderer, took away his experiences but not his instincts. Manny became a killer who was right in the middle of a period called "escalation" He was concealing his lethality by letting it out only when the time was right. He would go to school and study and train, then when he couldn't take it anymore head out to the woods and leave a few squirrels staked out to starve or torture a deer. He hadnt killed any people yet but his desires were becoming harder to appease.

People often asked me "Say it in red! say he has never killed anybody!" Entirely honestly I could do so. conveniently, it never occurred to anyone to ask me if he craved doing so.

The key note of course was the facade. Like Murderer concealed Learner, Manny himself was a facade for his true amoral urges. Manny had a skill that concealed the fact that his sanity score was actually 1. As long as his will power was above 10, Manny's urges were controlled by his ability to only use let them out when he had some way to hide or lie away his killing intent.

To put that another way, basically I was RPing the Beast who was RPing Manny slayne.

If you are curious incidentally, skill "The Beast stirs" was actually just the standard skill you could buy "Madness." But unless Manny's secret was reveal, his beautiful Liar skill let me fudge skill descriptions and names. I had a lot of fun with that.

Full sheet

BTW, even though Sei tried to get me to change it, my favorite skill name was "In Plain Sight" the idea being everyone knew Manny was skilled at hiding, but they didnt realize he was also hiding in plain sight, in other words, concealing what he truly was.

**hero** · December 14th, 2018, 05:35 PM

See, no one believed me. No one thought he was definitely evil. At some point, i stopped believing it myself.

**Tobias** · December 14th, 2018, 05:37 PM

I don’t know what you are talking about, manny is a conflicted but ultimately good guy

you make think it’s strange to say this but consistently lying my ass off has proven to be a shockingly effective strategy

**Vritra** · December 14th, 2018, 05:44 PM

I'm sorry hero I just wanted to believe ;_;.

**Airen** · December 14th, 2018, 05:47 PM

I always knew he was evil

**hero** · December 14th, 2018, 05:56 PM

Also pretty sure my mw char can only stand against kirame with plot armor

**Spinach** · December 14th, 2018, 06:05 PM

You know that one guy everyone says is gonna make a powergrabbing sheet full of bullshit stuff?

Nobody told you that it was ME

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now Hero it's your turn write a post about Tae.

**I3uster** · December 14th, 2018, 06:33 PM

http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...=1#post2792370

This was the sheet for MW, already posted it, I guess I can talk a bit about the design process for this.

I think the base idea kinda came out of the fusion of two different concepts. One was something I once entertained as an FF premise, a travelling Japanese mage and his assistant, his dead sensei (in oneesan age range so you can have that sweet unresolved sexual tension) who had become a jiang-shi and thus was stuck in his suitcase for most of the time. For some reason one of the only things i remember about this is that the ofuda that kept her soul anchored to her dead body was written on an ace of spades card because peak urban fantasy aesthetic is doing shit like this. And the fact she had to bail him out most of the time because while he was some kind of spiritual problem solver once anything turned corporeal spiritual binding magic suddenly didnt do a whole lot anymore.

It had a pretty light tone in the end but it never materialized and I don't think I ever talked with anyone about it. Also this was back when I was writing another longer FF so this really was never gonna go anywhere. So I felt perfectly content disassembling that concept because there were things I liked about it. Mainly their dynamic of the straight laced sophisticated-seeming guy who is actually a fraud and the down to earth gets shit done girl at his side.

The second concept was a vampire idea that I aborted in its infancy for...some RP, I don't even remember. Basically I kept thinking of the body horror of my favorite Dead Apostle Ancestore, Blackmore the Birdman and how he fashions his servants to fit his own style. This for some reason triggered this association that if you were a vampire of higher status you would treat your servants like any person of the court would treat theirs: a living fashion accessory. So from then the free association game somehow got me to a haute-couture obsessed vampire that tried to break the boundaries of the human form by basically making stitched abominations with three legs and four arms then challenging himself with still putting them into fashionable outfits. I did have a lot of fun with the more flamboyant affect of fashion designers when it came to the character voice but otherwise this was kind of a one-note gimmick that didn't go anywhere.

And well, then MW came around, and kids heres the pro tip: if you ever feel like you create multiple concepts that by themselves don't have enough going on, just mash them together

We take the best parts of everything. I had my eyes on the vampire slot because I did not play a vampire PC yet and also felt slightly challenged by people calling this a weak template. Further this had the strongest familiar option allowing me to actually pull this off mechanically. Then it really just came down to how to tie this together mechanically and flavorful. Before that I didn't quite think I could mesh this and was almost halfway to making a Japanese vampire and basically going with the concept 1:1 but then I looked into what Nasuverse conceptions of a Jiang Shi actually could be anyway. A familiar, yeah, but they definitely can't retain that level of previous life memories if we go by Len so maybe I need something that is a bit out of the realm of mortal mages...hmmm...non mortals...gods...zombies...where do zombies come from...

Then I just became a hermit and binged voodoo documentaries for a weekend and that's when it really took off. Voodoo has so many interesting applications for the Nasuverse. The implementation of Loa by itself can prob get two Nasu nerds in a heated debate. The strong ties to Christianity (since it actually is a Christian denomination/syncretic religion/heresy depending on who you ask) and the zombie myth helped. This injected a bit more of a flavor in it by giving me a definitive patron for my guy which would be the closest to a "villainous" Loa in the voodoo religion. Usually Loa are basically a fusion of an ancestor spirit, animism and a catholic saint or christian figure. The guy I picked is often used as an analogue to Satan, Kalfu. Soon I got the association for crossroads (you guys might know the stories about whatever artist dealing with the devil at the crossroads for musical talent or whatever, this is often traced back to carribean myths which took their root in voodoo), the creation of zombies, the use of poison which would become a strong mechanical identity and a few quirks (we dont really do Smells but he usually was supposed to smell of mothballs gunpowder and rum which are all associated Kalfu things. Details make things vivid!)

Kalfu granting vampirism is a biiiiit of a stretch but considering his association with black magic and the magical ascension to vampire status I felt it was fine.

So now I got a concept, a mechanical identity, on to backstory and personality.

I really wanted that flamboyant personality because I had a lot of fun playing around with a character that was a lot more confident to the point of making others uncomfortable. On the other hand I didn't wanna play a sympathetic vampire so now the problem was marrying the two things without making something that is tooinsane and SUPER TWISTED. For my good friends know I make edgy shit but edge much like salt is best used in just enough moderation to not ruin the entire thing.

What I envisioned was basically the nouveau riche problem: someone comes from low birth, acquires wealth and status and then realizes that actually, ethics are for dumb idiots and nobody with any money gives a shit and life is more fun this way anyway actually. This way you have a sympathetic start that slowly twists this character and the slight con artist like edge that our Friendly Japanese Magus originally had. I could take him into a more tragic direction anytime I wanted this way without ruining any part of playing a flamboyant fashionable young man. And the fact that he had some form of agency and just chose the worse option does make him more easily villainous but humanized in enough of a way to make it fun.

Now it was time for the zombie familiar. I abandoned the Sensei idea because I feel a vampire should always feel old or they lose part of their charm (being young is for dhampirs). I had a bit of a problem getting a woman to have infantry experience so I just asked my mil guys how someone who effectively cant join infantry gets that and arrived at this point. Requires a bit of suspension of disbelief but I needed America as a focal point because of a bit of setup I got by Verg so this was the most elegant way to do it.

Her backstory didn't get a lot of attention mainly because her concept was that she was very simple minded. She basically only cared about getting in fights, getting drunk and hot dudes. It's a bit of a stereotypical association with Baron Samedi, probably the most famous Loa which let her get her powerset. I still like the way it in the end played with suicide bombing zombies, too bad it never saw action. Jiang-shi-tan survives by her still living in her suitcase (though Olga can be taken apart) and the no-nonsense in your face personality. Essentially Delacroix pretended to be something he never quite became, while Olga is 100% content with what she is and thus accepts even this weird arrangement with not a lot of resistance. Their interplay would've been a lot of fun as she really knew how to get a rise out of him and I would've spent day 2 basically drastically undermining the refined image Delacroix set up during Day 1 with Olga. Sadly she never got out of her suitcase. Oh well.

**I3uster** · December 14th, 2018, 06:47 PM

oh yeah one more thing

cool ability names

Spoiler:

**hero** · December 14th, 2018, 06:56 PM

From my phone? Ill try after all i dont go much in depth at character creation. I obviously wanted to create someone that would let me connect with the story and the GM and verg being a mystery addict, what better than a detective. I wanted to play as someone thrown into the war rather than some magi or whatever (i actually dislike their mentality and goals so i tend to avoid them), but after bouncing some ideas with Dranes regarding his own character, I thought it would be better if he played a protagonist role. Naturally that meant I obviously had to play a heroine.

Then when it comes to powerlevels, i tend to pick a combination of stats and perks that define the character, but go against their recommended build, to the point where doing it seems to bring about little to no benefit, if any. For example, Rei being blind could net her the worlds eye perk for no cost. But i didnt take it. I already dumped agi in previous instances, which is usually a god stat, so i decided to avoid it this time around.

Instead i took regalias pressumed most OP race and dumped its most vital stat. The result was a half blood with dormant powers so weak that it was safe to say that she was hardly any different from a normal human. At this point Tae was shaping up to be an Airen character, FC included, so i added the bike and the guns, why not?

She's.a good natured character who isn't really fond of violence, torture or murder, but who treasured friendship deeply and would dare to cross any boundaries to make that bond justice. Like many of my other human like characters, she was full of doubt and weaknesses, but unlike others, she worked hard to keep a strong front, unafraid of danger, supernatural or not.

The spark of inspiration is also linked to one of Vergs characters in Regalia who i dont even recall the name. He was someone who worked from a special faction within olympus, had pretty much Men in black vibe to him, was supposed to be a normal human, and still stood tall in front of Kazu, showing no signs of fear or bending to his intimidatory presence.

Anyways id love to play tae again.

**Leftovers** · December 14th, 2018, 08:05 PM

Taking a cue from Spin.

The topic of character creation came up during general RP conversation, with specific reference to a shared impression that TRPG sheets are often created with the player designing the powerset that they wish to play and constructing a backstory that justifies it, which I've derived from a number of TRPG sheets and PbP sheets made by TRPG players that I've seen. To be even more specific, the point of contention was whether the nature of dice games to completely derail a character based on a random roll made for a good or bad RPing experience, and thereon whether a player gets more fulfilment out of a character that they get to play over the course of a completed RP rather than one that they try to slowly develop and most likely never get to because PbP RPs tend to die younger than a peasant farmer during the Plague. The argument about TRPG characters being disposable and not meant to become attached to by design is frankly too long and irrelevant, as this is about the PbP equivalent: that being, the impression that PbP sheets are by their nature character-focused, in that they must derive from and fit into the given RP's setting and story, and therefore hold more storytelling potential, with great importance places in characterisation and the creator's plans for its development, and overall produce greater personal investment and a different kind of cumulative emotional and creative payoff.

Preamble halfway through, I should make this personal and say that while for me the spark for a sheet is usually something as shallow as an FC or a song's lyrics, there has never been a time when it was harder to write a character's backstory than to think up their powers, and that nothing feels more important in sheet writing than to create a character that is as natural a product of the RP - encompassing both setting and tone - as possible. Powersets are honestly a hassle to think up, to the point that I would gladly do away with as many mechanics minutiae as possible if not for a weird insecurity about overall RP powerlevels and powergaming that I don't actually even care about. The point being that the joy in the collaborative fanfickery that is PbP for me is playing a natural role in the story that the RP pitches to me with my character as the vehicle, something that only a suitable character basis that isn't too set on a singular direction can allow.

All that aside, two days before the MWR sheet deadline I hadn't yet settled on any one idea, of which none were particularly developed. Most of them were ideas for Overdrive that amounted to the barest concepts (to illustrate, "Spellslinger who slings lots of spells because he has lots of spells that he can sling", "Nun with Gun, except the gun is a cross which is a Holy Scripture and uh she also knows kung fu" and "Clock Tower lecturer, Zoology Dept. -> familiars, fuck idk Chimera?????" were three of the most """developed""" ones), the rulebook had a metric fuckton of perks that gave me indecision paralysis, so I basically had nothing except the desire to be in a Verg RP because Asha RPs are BLRP's Broadway. Then I briefly gave up on making a Master and turned to some old Servant ideas (Chanter? Daniel was one, I think I also sketched up a Caster Morgan that I later revisited for Reclamation) but the anxiety of imagined metagaming grew even worse and I couldn't cram in nearly as many NPs as I needed to assuage the childish concern about powerlevels. But even worse than that was the anxiety about having to get into fights all the time if I made a Servant, which for some reason seemed very daunting then because I had never gotten in a fight in a BL RP with its ~calculations~ and ~strategies~ and other alien concepts that I wanted nothing to do with.

So at that point I had pretty much nothing, and I did what anyone would do at that point, which is to go take a shower because showers are arcane wells of inspirations that you're guaranteed to come out of with a good idea that you hadn't had when you went in. And the realisation that I had was that I wanted to get in an RP but didn't actually want to fight in it, which wasn't necessarily a problem because......wasn't it actually a mystery RP with very prominent elements of puzzle-solving and clue-gathering that were plastered at the beginning and end of the rulebook, the general description of the plot, and numerous specialised perks?

And this was the result: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...it?usp=sharing

I usually derive my initial sketch of a character from a faceclaim that clicks for me and what BEST GIRL FROM ZAREGOTO made me think of was a modern-minded magus, a private investigator straight out of film noir, and a long-winded older sister character that loved to lecture people (ok this was pretty much ripping off the actual fc character's personality but in my defence i didn't think anyone else would read zaregoto ever). A magus in touch with modernity is something that can result in a caricature fairly easily but it was equally easy to imagine a young magus who wasn't raised in a basement workshop having a taste of the muggle world that would resonate with them. I know that the Milyonecalion connection was conceived early on but I don't remember exactly how I settled on the roundabout backstory that placed my PC there, although I suspect that deciding to take the easy way out and pick Runes as the magecraft of choice made me decide to place her origins in Estray, which would be straying close to the reprehensible backstory-bending-to-powerset territory if I wasn't just as much suspicious that I just thought Astrid Hildebrandt was a cool name and made her Danish because of Christemo.

Anyway. Runes were a tricky problem. I had decided on the character's main focus and didn't want to give up the perks that complimented the playstyle and added flavour to the character, but I had to take a Perk to be able to use Elder Runes, which I remember being just too costly to take. Getting Elder Runes would mean feeling more secure in my PC's powerlevel and I tried to work it in but eventually I realised I should bite the bullet and follow through with the idea of an investigation build without half-assing it (honestly it was more that the runes weren't worth leaving the bike). I took a detour through some weird Scandinavian dude's site dedicated to recreating a traditional Norse martial art based around staff-fighting while trying to think of power supplements that would allow my PC to fight if need be without ripping off Bazett in a completely inferior way, then settled on the perk that gave a Conceptual Weapon which spawned a nice piece of backstory that offered a justification for the transition to the Clock Tower.

(side note, but the bit about Touko and Beo visiting Thule Society and stealing Primal Runes or something to that effect was something I genuinely thought was from a Mahoyo spoiler dump without ever questioning it until I recently realised it was fanon that had spawned from a recollection of the memorable Touko/Elisabet segments from Maybe I'm a Lion, tmyk)

There isn't much to say about the actual rune spells and applications. I basically opened some fansites ranging from academic publications (that I didn't read) to neopagan bullshittery (that I did read), took some broad definitions, made a chart of possible effects and combinations, extrapolated a whole lot, made some sex jokes and called it a day. It's a pretty basic toolbox with some investigative applications and the odd speculative attempt at metagaming, although the runic combinations for the Conceptual Weapon got pretty funky with potentially interesting applications, and even though at the end I realised I hadn't actually made something directly offensive I was committed to the idea of being weak and banked on getting a strong PvP-oriented Servant to compensate (note: this did not happen). The bargaining with Verg for the specifics is included for archival purposes, god knows I wasn't trying to get anything specific out of it.

Now then, the investigative part. I knew that Verg liked his RPs heavily cryptic so the only way to ignore the fighting aspect of a HGW is by overcompensating in emphasising its mystery aspects. Eidetic Memory plus Thesis of the Still Heart and runes for eagle vision aimed at maximum clue-gathering potential, which worked nicely off the backstory while pandering to the classic detective image that the FC had originally inspired and this character was blatantly LARPing. Given that my approach to moving around during the war was to pick an inconspicuous base and keep a low profile while zoom-zooming here and there, the bike was perfect for quick and mundane-looking movement while also being cool as fuck and a callback to one of the best things in Fate/Zero (three people picked this flavour perk, one of them with another motorbike, we could have had an actual highway chase battle and now never will ;_; ). Overall I thought that this overspecialisation would keep the character involved in the social and investigative aspects of the game, to which Verg also added a plotline that he incorporated her into, and I finally had something coherent that I felt I could play in my hands.

If not for the fact that I had made a very smart character whom I, a not very smart person, had to roleplay doing very smart things, which became very relevant in the first instance where I had to tackle a mystery, when a combination of not knowing what hypothetical scenario to pursue first and not being sure whether to use a rune for enhanced clue gathering, which would necessitate a wise-up that would reveal that I had Younger and not Elder Futhark runes, and was thus on the lower end of the powerlevel scale, made me delay posting for a year until Verg disappeared and the RP died, which is something that I lament immensely to this day.

The character motivation that I imagined for Astrid was a childish sort of desire to pursue a mystery in its purest form, the kind that isn't born from practical necessity, which could in some vague and undefined way change her as a person. A magus with a modern mindset is often portrayed as a normal person with a quirk that gives his musty fellow magi fits, and while she is definitely atypical I imagined her not as an everyday person that happens to be a magus but as a magus whose exposure to the everyday world eroded the magus mindset that they acquired and caused them to flunk out of the path of the traditional magus. The way I saw this translate in action was a person that understood the mindset and value system of magi but followed what was ultimately a vague desire for "something different", which lent itself to dissatisfaction and inertia. There was an exchange with Trickster in the hotel room where Astrid strongly presents her convictions regarding the value of human life and the necessity for one to acknowledge and shoulder the responsibility that is taking a life, which was intended to later on lead to the question of whether doing that is a self-serving attempt to impart some kind of meaning - and therefore justification - to a reprehensible act when the time came in the HGW for people to die, which would inevitably call into question her own questionable and arguably shallow motivations to participate in a deathmatch under the pretense of unravelling a mystery she does not understand. To expound on that, another point was that while I placed her at around 27 years old, Astrid's aforementioned childish desire to Be Like Humphrey Bogart and do something thrilling by solving a tantalising mystery in a far away land put her in the first line of action for the second time ever with a well-established personality and investigator skills in place but no practical experience in something like a HGW, which would make for a wakeup call of sorts.

I had a txt file with potential lines of character development and interactions she could have with other player characters but my laptop is dead and I haven't thought of them in a long time. A couple of them had to do with the implications of frenching Trickster within the first two minutes of summoning her, then having a conversation with her naked on the bed, then getting a back massage from her, about which I can confidently say none of that was my fault. I also remember the last entry being something like "argue that as milyonecalion's administrator she can call a tactical enforcer deployment in tengetsu", which I wish I had thought of much earlier.

Anyway. Some of the RP posts that I am most satisfied with came in this RP, and I treasure the memory of being in the writing zone during the summoning night when Snax and I fastposted through the scene for the whole night. It helped me get an idea about RPing with a partner, shed some insecurities about my RPing, and attain a better understanding of how I'm most comfortable creating a character. I can see parts of the backstory that feel shoddy to me now and it's undeniable that the character bent to ability cost limitations as the backstory changed to accommodate a shift in powerset focus, which is kind of similar to my compaint about TRPG sheets, but the integrative approach to character creation resulted in a character that I am still very fond of and want to use in other stories.

So yeah, MW was pretty fun.

- - - Updated - - -

btw isn't it convenient that you can calculate when a sheet was written from how much clock tower information got actually written or changed later on

**Mellon** · December 14th, 2018, 08:18 PM

I don't want to write too much about MW!Maker in terms of mechanical details, but I suppose I can elucidate a bit on the themes behind her creation.

Fundamentally, Maker was born out of my desire to play with the "modernization" vs "traditions" angle that was hard-baked into Moon White (and served as the driving factor in the factional conflict of Tengetsu). Because I felt that the Traditionalists and traditional Japanese culture in general (Shinto, etc) would be extremely well covered by Verg, I wanted to try and make a character that emblemized the other end of the spectrum.

...that is the "oppressive" influence of modern/western culture that was erasing these traditions in the first place.

Maker was a foreign invader. Someone whose very existence exemplified a fundamental threat to the "old ways" of the island. Both physically and in a more wider cultural sense. I won't go too deep into the mechanical details, but her very presence was meant to eat away at the "Japanese" core that existed in Tengetsu. A thematic fast-forward replay of what has happened in Japan at large already over the past hundred years. An invasive presence, that unless dealt with, would completely one-sidedly end the factional debate without even lifting a finger, because her nature as a Heroic Spirit would fundamentally shift Tengetsu into becoming something else entirely.

But I really didn't want to play a mid-boss that everyone else teamed up to fight, since that is already a pretty well played out trope, so this entire threat was wrapped up in what was, for all intents and purposes, an honest to god saintlike figure. She was humble, would never strike the innocent or involve bystanders in the Grail War, treat everyone with kindness and respect, and would even offer protection to Masters who have lost their Servants.

In the end, the idea was to introduce a "morality" aspect to the traditionalist conflict and immediately position Maker on the "good" axis of that dilemma.

What do you do when the very force that is undermining your way of life and history is fundamentally a "force for good"? Which one is more important, your morals or your history? At the very least I wanted to make sure that whoever ended up taking down Maker would have to mire themselves in absolute villany in order to do so (a fact which was indirectly reinforced by the mechanical aspects of her sheet).

A kindhearted cultural invader who on the one hand saves and protects the powerless, while on the other hand bringing change and new winds to old shores, whether people want it or not.

I suppose its thematically not too different from proselytizing Saints who carried out miracles of salvation while also erasing the ancient religions and cultural practices of those they saved.

And yeah. I also miss MW. A lot.

**Mooncake** · December 14th, 2018, 08:57 PM

http://forums.nrvnqsr.com/showthread...=1#post1811477

This was my first submitted sheet for Moon White Redux, one that I'm surprised didn't get in over Archer, who did (since I felt my Servant sheet wasn't really as strong as this one was - but more on Archer later).

My sheets are usually inspired by a picture or music, and then an idea starts to rattle around in my brain, picking up old concepts that I've discarded or decided to wait before using. It's generally hard to do a sheet if I'm not inspired, even if it's for an RP I really like, so I usually end up submitting later than most people. Anyways.

Much like Buster did for the Vampire slot, as soon as I saw the Alchemist position I knew I had to have it. I'd never played an Alchemist in a Verg RP before, but I'd always wanted to, and the idea of Memory Partition and how it was translated into a play-by-post RP fascinated me. Naturally, I started casting around for a good FC/something to inspire me, and I came across this.

The rest began to fall into place.

One of my big rules that I try to follow in RPs is to never do the same kind of character twice, so I started drafting some concepts while I was looking at that picture. I remember lying on the floor of my high school library (crazy how it's been so long), thinking of things to do and listening to music. The first thing I decided to do was that, unlike hero, I wanted to max ABI. Since Memory Partition was what drew me to the Alchemist slot originally, I decided that I'd just invest into it all the way - I wanted a character that wasn't traditionally strong, someone more focused on the esoteric/obscure parts of Nasu. That's where the perks came from - another hard Mooncake rule is to not put self-buffing/reinforcement in my sheet, because I think it's boring (no offense to people who do it well, though, you know who you are).

I'd had the intent to use Glass Grass Traveller on a sheet for a long time, since I feel like the weird side of Verg's rulebooks are underrepresented in RP, and I wanted to do something different with this, try some new things. When I connected it to Joseph losing an eye later on, it felt like I was putting a puzzle piece back into place.

As I read through the rulebook, I'd decided to focus more on the murder mystery part of the RP pretty early on (I actually correctly solved the IC murder mystery that Verg posed to the players Umineko style, but since the RP died soon after I never got a response until I could confirm my full theory with Verg on IRC), since I fucking love that stuff. I decided, in keeping with less used perks, to go for Eidetic Memory, which is really when I started snowballing Joseph's main concept, as an encyclopedia of magecraft. Like Waver, I wanted someone who was actually really good at magecraft but can't really use it himself, so I started throwing things at the wall and seeing what stuck.

By this point, I had an FC, some vague ideas, and the barebones of a sheet, so I hunted for specific info on Atlas in the character materials, Tsukihime, and, God forbid, the TM wiki. Since Atlas's goal is to prevent the destruction of the world, I decided to make Joseph into a really zealous member of Atlas, which lasted for maybe thirty minutes. But with the skeleton that I already had in place, I decided upon the concept of someone who was actually trying to weaken magecraft to being with.

Since Atlas was stockpiling what they could to defend against this future destruction, I figured the idea of one of their alchemists traveling around and basically recording as much information as possible to send back wouldn't be out of place, which is when I got to Joseph's true concept in my head - someone who is recording as much magecraft as possible, so that, by disseminating it, he would weaken magecraft as much as he could collectively. He ended up being the kind of zealot who isn't outwardly passionate but firmly believes in Atlas's goal, so I made his real goal something that he couldn't tell anyone - because nobody wants someone with that kind of goal around.

I'd made a Dead Apostle sheet for a vampire called Cartaphilus some time ago, and I decided to integrate it into Joseph's backstory - since Verg referenced Executor Gullivan, an NPC - fighting one of the Dead Apostle Ancestors, I thought I'd mix the two together and have Joseph aid Gullivan (since Joseph would be a pretty competent alchemist at that point). This would allow me to take Unlikely Allies, which would allow me to make a high tier conceptual weapon, which would allow me to actually use my idea for the conceptual weapon I'd been designing as Joseph's prosthetic eye, which would tie into Cartaphilus removing it through a spell, which would allow me to have proper backstory reasons for taking Glass Grass Traveler. I was pretty proud of that one.

Originally, I'd planned to have Cartaphilus just be slotted into Joseph's backstory when I needed a Dead Apostle, but since the vampire Gullivan fights in the Ashaverse is Alexandria Cu-Aurus, that really didn't work. At that point, I should have swapped out Cartaphilus for Alexandria, but I was pretty stubborn about Cartaphilus being there, so he stayed. I think it worked out, but having another NPC tie-in for the RP would have been good. The jury's still out on that one.

Anyways, that incident gave Joseph's character a good place to grow, so I managed to tie in having seven memory partitions to his backstory neatly, and depicting his travels pretty well (which I based on Charles Darwin's accounting of his own travels), and by that point it was basically writing itself. Somewhere in there I decided to go for the fourth perk, Magus Killer, since it fit into the backstory and style of the character I wanted to write so well.

For the Conceptual Weapons, I wanted one that tied into Joseph's identity as a weapon smith/tinkerer, and one that tied into his overall goal of recording and disseminating magecraft. The second one became his Third Eye, which was built around the relic the Church gave him. That one was the more difficult of the two, since I was trying to walk a fine line by a) making it strong, b) making it thematically appropriate to Joseph, and c) making sure it wasn't overwhelming in combat, since I didn't want to be too strong (lol). Eventually I hashed out a powerful Conceptual Weapon that would basically analyze and destroy magecraft by "meeting something with its opposite", which I felt was appropriate for Joseph's character. The Cat's Cradle came about because I realized I needed some kind of weapon and I was running out of AP, so I made a CW that was basically a taser but to circuits instead of nerves, and justified it being much weaker then it would be by adding it being destroyed by Alexandria and Joseph only recently remaking it.

I would have liked to have had a really elaborate Base, but in the end I decided not to put any AP into it besides the bare minimum for three reasons:
1) Joseph's relation with the Church would let me have it in the Church's quarter, where I could depend on their protection.
2) I decided that the AP was better spent on Joseph himself, as removing any AP from him would, I felt, thematically dampen his skills in relation to his character.
3) I felt that if I made a really powerful base I would just not want to leave it, which wouldn't be fun, and so I wanted one that would actually encourage me not to spend time in it so that I would be spending my time hunting down other players and interacting with the world.

That was my Master - a little rough around the edges, sheet-wise, but one that I was proud of. This was the first sheet I made where I actually felt like I was getting better at both making sheets and at writing in general. I'm still sad this one didn't get in, since I really wanted to play a Master (and play Joseph), but in the end Archer got in instead. I'll do his sheet synopsis later.

- - - Updated - - -

Also his eye getting ripped out was what allowed me to use this image, so I was happy.

**Katie** · December 14th, 2018, 09:43 PM

I actually wanted to do something like what Spinach did for my Neverland sheet but that’s the price of getting real lazy, I suppose. So I’ll follow suit and discuss what went into the creation of my Moon White sheet—the one that got accepted, anyway.

Originally for Moon White I submitted a Servant I would continuously submit for every BL Grail War since because it was her fate to never be accepted, and I understand why. I’ve always liked knights, especially the classical noble deeds and honor type, but that sort of super duper vanilla ice cream palette I don’t think is very entertaining to GMs, unless they see it as a challenge to break your spirit.

Well, not that my Moon White PC was any better, but Shimamura Mirai I think is the marking of a real turning point in my RP career, as weird as that sounds. I’m not particularly proud of what’s on the sheet but I really enjoyed playing her for the most part and her existence basically shaped how I played from 2015 to late 2017.

In late 2013 I got rejected from Persona ’61 and in mid-2014 I got rejected from Ga-Rei’s original application run, and both of those losses in competitive RPs for the time really stuck with me. Losing really sucked because those big RPs would dominate IRC for a long time and it felt weird not being able to participate, so I swore I would do everything in my power to never lose again like some sort of anime protagonist.

Since then I’ve had a rather pragmatic approach to character selection. Getting selected is easiest when your character covers a niche that others don’t, because if you have to compete, you have to prove you are unambiguously better than everyone else in that category. If a GM has six slots and six factions, doing the least picked faction will probably help more than it wouldn’t. Other times what to actually select is more ambiguous, and sometimes you just have to slut it up for your hypothetical GM and play what they like, and from this bundle of insecurities and barest understanding of human interaction Mirai was born.

Extremely early on Verg had given me positive reception to that Lancer previously mentioned (yay), but we quickly knew from like three days in that everyone and their mother wanted to play a Servant. I couldn’t blame them—I, as a Regalia player, was hella pissed I hadn’t gotten to play a Servant in a HGW. Still, I figured I could make a Master. I had two submissions in total, so I could just do one Servant and one Master, right?

I think there were two driving factors into the conceptual creation of Mirai, since I really just entered with the idea of “making a Master.” Well, more like three. One was that getting into a Verg RP was the big shit and I liked being invested into the hottest trend so I had to put my all for it.

The other two reasons are honestly extremely intertwined. I knew from Satehi, who played Lapis, Regalia’s first bonafide full healer, that Verg really liked healers, which I probably thought was from seeing so many damage and status effects and buffs thrown at him that he just fundamentally appreciated the generosity of healing. Second, this was really appealing to me, personally, because before Ga Rei, I basically only played what people called “really edgy characters,” ranging from battle-lusting katana dorks to people that had too many diagnoses from DSM-IV and correspondingly had an extremely strained perspective of reality.

I was really burnt out on those kinds of ideas so being a healer not only seemed revolutionary, but also something I could use to pump up my Servant. There were so many magus perks that related to healing I figured it was an easy pick, and we finally had some baseline to work with. It’s a master, it’s a magus, we’re gonna heal and support and be a fundamentally nice human being. Tragically, magus and decent human being are generally at odds with one another.

MW applications started in January, and early January of 2015 is when the iDOLM@STER: Cinderella Girls started airing. This is a show that has had an immense amount of impact on my perspective even though it’s a garbage idol show. More specifically, I guess, a lot of my thoughts stem from Shimamura Uzuki, who is billed as perfectly ordinary, but tries her best and despite her apparent mediocrity shines as an idol. At the time I had only watched the first three or so episodes and finished the abruptly canceled New Generations manga, but by then I had figured out what I liked. I wanted to play a character who was bright and determined even if she was personally subjected to awful circumstances. Uzuki was both an inspiration and Mirai’s FC, until I decide to change it. I had stolen “Spinach’s cram to Saki character’s names together scheme except with iDOLM@STER”, and I figured Shimamura Mirai ran off the tongue better than Amami Mirai. Thus, Mirai became associated with Haruka and is some unholy composite of the three main im@s reds.

Mechanically I knew what I wanted to do, heal, but I wasn’t really sure as for the rest. I figured someone like her could lean into the social side to avoid conflict, so there went Thesis of the Still Heart, and everyone had been memeing about Fast Wheels for so long I had come up with a stupid idea that made the best use of it. I could combine both the base mechanic and a vehicle by having an RV as my Fast Wheels ride! I was a genius of the highest caliber!

And as such I took this meme and then hashed out my backstory, which is why it’s a complete mess. I knew she couldn’t be the main daughter of a magus family, both because this Grail War seemed awfully fishy and someone with her attitude had the wrong mentality to be a magus. So instead she became the second daughter of a magus family, whose Third HGW vet grandpa sent her off in the hopes she could accomplish something. That sort of portrayal as unwanted and useless helped add a bit of depth to someone who existed to be a positive for the world, I felt.

The RV came to play by also working as a makeshift ambulance, and helped cement Mirai as having seen some terrible things while also not actively being a perpetrator or a murderer or whatever. Some way to explain her ridiculous ability despite being the not!heir and to also give her sick street cred I’m sure never would have been relevant.

Spells I’m pretty sure was where I gave up but I thought gassing people and knocking them out and stealing their Command Seals was a sick idea so that’s why it’s there.

tl;dr mirai is a product of verg pandering

**Rafflesiac** · December 14th, 2018, 10:04 PM

Moon White Redux was my first RP, so boy was I shocked when I made it in among the big names. You can tell how new I was because my sheet had a teeny-tiny FC, no theme song, and I think that font's Baskerville Old Face. I'm gonna go from the top because I don't recall enough details to make anything coherent. Xander and Hargrave are of course puns: Sandstone and Gravestone. They're relatively tall because tall people are cool; redheads and blue + gray are also cool. I fucked up RPing his personality because I went too nice too soon, so given the chance to do things again I'd probably be initially colder to people, and I wasted a lot of time doing basic survival stuff instead of honing in on PCs for the kill.

I don't recall why I went with the Xander/Hargrave split, but I felt like it would keep things interesting and add the possibility of a cool mid-game reversal or twist. I had in mind that every time Xander released Hargrave, I'd roll a d6. If I got below a 3, Xander was screwed and Hargrave was permanent. With each time I used the Crest, I'd up the required roll by two to represent how this is a life and death battle Xander's fighting that he's really not meant to give Hargrave an opening in. The rationale for Hargrave's soul being in the Crest is part two souls in one body and the stronger one wins and part Magic Crests are accumulated Circuits and Circuits are part of the soul, so they should be able to hold the information of a soul. I made Xander a decently nice guy but also a killer because it's a Grail War, so you're meant to kill people, right? Plus his notion of survival is a fight to the death, so he'll never compromise on that.

His stats were made for optimizing spells and not getting hit, so I got nerfed by summoning Archer who wasn't MAXIMUM FRONTLINE TANK DPS (we still love you, Aniking). That would've been an interesting dynamic if Hargrave became Archer's Master, since Independent Action and all. I remember being in not really serious but not really joking talks with Siriel about taking control of Enchanter Psyche since Morm held him hostage, but that obviously came to naught. I'm not sure what the rationale for self-nerfing myself by giving Hargrave most of the good stuff; it probably was to avoid oretue powergaming. I really liked Xander's spells because they're mostly goofy and shitty but also useful. I made them thinking about what a Master could use to support his Servant. Dazzling Gleam I ripped off from Pokemon, but with no damage. Divine Impalement was the "make sure I'm not completely helpless" spell that it would've been great to maneuver people into with Archer's back up and my own tricks and strategies.

Labyrinth Air was definitely my favorite spell. Walls, platforms to avoid falling to death and also make aerial combat, rudimentary cages to lock people in place to get shot, makeshift tripwires and guillotines to fuck people running at me at sanic speed, instant defenses so I don't die, I had so many plans for Labyrinth Air. Especially with my Two Spells At Once perk, I could flashbang people while secretly setting up invisible walls with a wiggle of my toes, or put up a barrier while I heal someone, or... Man, the possibilities. Blessings of Asclepius was so I wouldn't die immediately after taking a wound and neither would my Servant. I think that makes me the second healer after Katie. Apathy Trigger was a really neat spell I thought of for base defense and wanted to make different from Hit Thing Hard or Block Hard Thing. Plus I could use it for negotiations to make people more amenable to my requests, or demotivated so they'd go away, or angry and careless so Archer could take them out. Precipice Blades is a motherfucking Kaziklu Bey reference, since that NP is cool and is also useful for AOE damage, attack, and defense.

BTW, Hargrave's an earthbender thanks to Christemo, who suggested earth magecraft when I couldn't think of anything for the life of me. I wanted to join and had a few rudiments, but couldn't bring anything together, so deciding on earth magic helped me come up with a name and then a backstory and character. Whether or not Xander ultimately completely eliminated Hargrave, learned his spells, and assumed the mantle of the Heir of Stone was something up to how the RP played out. For things like steps and counts, I looked that up in the relevant sources and made chants to go with (I think I was the only person who made spell chants?). By hijacking the earth with Precipice Blades, I could also fuck over bounded fields and spells dependent on the mana of the land. Ceres Ring was inspired by Yoshino Ageha's galaxy ring, since Psyren is fucking awesome and deserves an anime. Verg nerfed it a bit by making the individual stones rank C and them all combined rank A, but it still functioned as a turns the tables OP move for killing people. If Xander is about desperately scraggling for survival, then Hargrave is about mercilessly eliminating enemies. I wanted to make the trade off of Xander risking his life and newfound freedom worth it, and to also terrify any enemy who pushed Xander to unleash Hargrave. I did kinda wonder how that would happen without Xander just getting instakilled, but ehhhhh details.

I recall flicking back and forth on how much of a base and how much of formalcraft and such I wanted so I went the cheap but not gutter trash option. Anti-Forcefield is an obvious pun because I like puns while also hopefully stalling an unsuspecting enemy enough for Archer to shoot them dead. Anti-Espionage Field was to sleep easy at night and not get Medea'd like Shirou did. I almost got a translation Formalwear, but decided against it because I figured Verg wouldn't let language concerns fuck over players, like how Waver talks English to Kerry in Japanese and so on in Zero.

And then since character's the most important thing the majority of my sheet was backstory. This still tends to be the case, but a little more abridged now since I'm a procrastinator. Anyways, Hargrave was a decent grandpa until Xander's parents bit it at which point he became the trauma pops from hell. Also Ignatius and Jennifer are also rock puns - Igneous and Gem (not sure on that other one). Like most good parents, they were destined to die. I made sure to include my powerset in my backstory so it'd be justified instead of random. Also I just noticed that those taunt words in the letter spell ALPHA.

As you may have noticed, Xander had practically nothing to do with Tengetsu, so Verg ended up giving me a relation to a weird hooded sprog thing that ended up being the Einzbern who rigged up the whole affair. I thought that involving my character with NPCs prematurely was pretentious, but apparently GMs live and breathe players giving a shit about their NPCs and using the characters they worked hard to create, who knew?

Anyways, that's Xander. I wish I got to do more with him.

**Tobias** · December 14th, 2018, 10:40 PM

Haha oh man

Caster’s phantasm giving mirai mastery of martial arts, I forgot about that

i did that for two reasons, first I wanted to do something with an E rank phantasm that actually changed the game in some fashion instead of just fluff

And I wanted to have caster measurably show up saber.

caster: keep practicing blondy.

**Mooncake** · December 15th, 2018, 12:17 AM

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1...xRMgcVFYU/edit

Time for Archer, who actually made it in.

I mentioned how I make characters, with an image or song usually sparking something in my brain. Well, Archer's idea came from this song. I've never played Asura's Wrath before and probably never will, but it has a bitching soundtrack.

Before I stumbled upon this idea for Archer I was considering making a sheet for Archer Ashwatthama, using a version of this picture of Karna that I modified in Pixlr, but it just wasn't coming together, especially since the restrictions for the Archer class in MWR were so tight. I had a few more ideas - a Betrayer Servant (Cain), Caster Jesus - and while they were actually not memes, surprise, they just didn't really fit. Considering my very first idea was Rider War, I was just not having a good time designing Servants for MWR.

It was around then that I started drafting up the idea to make an Archer, and while I briefly flirted with the idea of Archer Barbarika, I didn't know what I wanted to do. I knew that I wanted to do an Indian Hero, because I'd never done one before, and that I didn't want to be super powerful, which was an oxymoron.

Then I stumbled upon that Asura's Wrath song while looking at a list of Astras, and as I began to listen to it and look at the description for the Agneyastra, something began to turn. I got the image in my head of a man on the main mountain of Tengetsu, a Servant, pulling back on his bow as fire began to wrap around it, summoning an arrow to light the entire forest below on fire. I had just read the Gita, so I thought about Arjuna, but that didn't feel right - and I thought Arjuna was a) too strong to bring into an RP (lol), and b) stronger then the rulebook would allow for an Archer to be stat-wise, so he was out.

I have a problem with making my sheets a little weak in order to make sure I'm not overpowering people right off the bat and becoming Anti-Fun, but it usually works.

I was hunting for Indian myths when I read the Ramayana, and then I just smacked myself and picked Rama. This was before FGO, so he was fair game for Moon White, and something about him just finally felt right. I had to do some extra searching and conversations with Verg on his status as an avatar of Vishnu and on the merits of him actually being summonable as a Servant, but after consulting with a few people and doing some quick research I successfully argued my case, and was vindicated by FGO several years later, something I'm still not sure how I feel about.

I'd just completed Joseph's sheet, which had a pretty try-hard backstory (for the Moony at the time), so I was definitely feeling a little drained when it came to writing a large backstory again. I decided to just keep it relatively simple on the origin side of things - Rama is a pretty well known hero, and I knew Verg knew who he was, so I just did a bit of summary, about under a page. I tried to work my own interpretation of his personality in as well, but I ended up playing him as more than a little arrogant; kind, in his own way, but not someone who would coddle you. It worked out well enough.

Since I was working on a very tight restriction for Archers (they got a little shafted in MWR, something I will never forget etc) I decided to keep his skills to the bare minimum. If I had to do it again I would take out Harmony and bump his other skills up one rank each - but four personal skills means that's not possible. Sadness.

The goal with his skills was to keep it simple, and yet embody both an Archer and Rama with the amount of points I had. Therefore, I wanted an Archer that could shoot arrows that could barely be dodged (Harmony), as well as giving him something reminiscent of his enlightenment as an avatar while also being defensive (Enlightenment). The Discernment of the Poor was for Archer to hover in ghost form by his master and basically be a lie detector for them, a nod to the murder mystery. Since I didn't think that I would get in (and if I did, that Joseph would get in before Archer), I didn't put much focus into stuff that would help with the mystery besides that. Generally I do a "masters are for discovery, servants are for combat" approach to Grail Wars.

Archer's NP was where I started to really have fun. I quickly realized there was absolutely no way to give Rama access to multiple Astras without nerfing them completely, and I hit a bit of a block. I wanted him to be able to use multiple Astras, but how? Even though he had a good amount of prana, with sheet restrictions I wouldn't be able to give him more than one high-ranking NP, and the Astras are definitely high-ranking NPs.

I found the answer to this block a day or two later when I was thinking of guns.

Bear with me.

Annoyed that I'd basically backed myself into a corner with Archer, I was thinking of keeping the ranged prowess and switching class to Gunner. I'd grown rather attached to Archer, though, and didn't want to discard him. It was about then that I realized the answer.

Instead of making his Astras be his Noble Phantasms and fulfilling the multiple Phantasm requirement for Archer that way, I decided that I would make his quiver the NP, a Phantasm that when activated gave him access to all of the Astras inside, basically giving him five Noble Phantasms for the price of one, something that was doable with the activation costs that Verg ascribed different ranked NPs, especially if I took some mana from my master.

The idea was that each Astra within the quiver corresponded to a different stat, like so:

Brahmastra - Luck
Agneyastra - Agility
Varunastra - Endurance
Vayvayastra - Strength
Manuastra - Magic

Basically, Archer would scout out the opponent, and when their stats were fleshed out a bit, he would use the Astra that corresponded to their lowest stat... and since all of them were B+ rank except for Brahmastra, which was A Rank, that meant the enemy Servant would need an A Rank in the chosen stat to come out of the Astra without taking full damage. Since this is and was bullshit, I decided that each Astra would break after being used, meaning that Archer could only use them once, making the uses of his Noble Phantasm legitimately Important Moments the way I wanted them to be. That's where the idea of a gun played in - his Phantasms functioned like a revolver, with the chamber rotating to the most appropriate bullet for each opponent. And, like a bullet, he wouldn't be able to fire it again once used.

Brahmastra destroying his quiver was because it was an A Rank Luck Check Anti-Army Noble Phantasm and something that I felt was legitimately bullshit and so balanced it by saving it for last by ensuring that the best value would be using it after using every other Phantasm in Archer's quiver. This was also what I was saving to use on Invoker, hopefully in a climactic battle that destroyed the central mountain of Tenketsu (I daydreamed about Moon White a lot, no shame).

His second Phantasm was something I tacked on because he needed one, and because I thought it might not be a bad idea to have a non-combat Phantasm, and something that referenced his rule.

Archer was fun to play as, and I daydreamed a lot about playing as him, but he was not designed to last the entire RP (sorry Raff). My ideal end for him would have been him gut-punching Xander in order to put him somewhere safe, and then activating Brahmastra in aforesaid climactic battle with Invoker. I'm pretty ok with the idea of having my PCs die if they earn it/deserve it/fuck up, and since this is a Grail War I prepared for death. I would have been really, really surprised with the idea of Archer winning, as I wanted a character that would basically burn his power throughout the war - someone who would be a very nasty encounter, but not necessarily a Final Boss.

His original FC was this picture, which I liked the most out of his two FCs, but when Aya needed an FC for the banner she intended to make (which you can view on the front page of the OOC), the two of us worked together to find this, which wasn't bad, and definitely captured some of his unassuming arrogance.

In hindsight I'm fairly satisfied with Archer. I really wish I'd gotten the chance to do more with him, and actually get to combat, but I had a lot of fun with his interactions with Xander and plotting out what to do, which Raff and I talked a fair amount about over Skype and also when we met in person, which was a fairly surreal experience.

I just want to shoot someone with my NPs.

I miss Moon White.

Thread: Sheet Graveyard

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