David as the Player
Hunter TyphonHe may look grim but Hunter Typhon is a hero. Hunter Typhon is what would happen if Typhon were a superhero living in Gotham City and trained by Batman. Hunter Typhon is capable of playing in two modes, Damage and Healer. Most of the time, in MMOs it is impossible to progress without working together. In DC Universe Online every character has all the skills it needs to go solo and be devastatingly effective when working in tandem with a group. I tend to stick to working alone. I wanted Hunter Typhon to be a stealthy hunter capable of getting around enemies. When I need to fight I take enemies out with my bow one at a time. As Hunter Typhon I am really fast, and I mean that. While other players chose the ability to fly I prefer to run up building and then jump over whole city blocks. I've never met an enemy I couldn't out run. This has caused trouble for me in the past. The one time I actually went to a mission with a group I played in healer mode. In healer mode I do much less damage but all of the abilities I have that heal me also heal the entire team and does it all much better. I got left behind at one point and had to run to keep up. I found the group just outside the Poison Ivy's final room. I didn't know why they were waiting so I just ran on through, in insectoid form, which increased my healing and decreases my damage again. The doors shut and sealed me in the room. I had to fight the final boss alone. It took a lot of work but eventually I did it. I "soloed a mod boss," as the gamer phrase goes. It turned out I wasn't actually signed up for that mission so I didn't get credit for finishing it. That was fine by me I did it once I could sure as hell do it again.
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Typhon ScyldingaThree years ago I was sitting in a movie theater watching Role Models with my best friends thinking, "I want to do that!" I did some research but couldn't find a local LARP to save my life. The one I did find never got back to me. Eventually I just gave up. One year to the day later, I was invited, by my cousin Anthony, to go Live Action Role Playing. It took a lot of work to get everything together. We had intended on going that December but due to various problems we didn't manage to go as a group until the next month. I decide that I was going to play a Druid. I don't know what attacked me to the list. I think it was the fact that Druids could turn into animals. I fell in love with the idea and quickly came up with a feral Druid named Typhon. Typhon had been orphaned at a young age and raised by a man named Leon Crowfeather. Originally that was going to be my name. Of course, originally I was also going to play as a character from what is the games equivalent of Asia. I ended up deciding on playing a barbarian. I figured this gave me the most leeway to act a feral where playing an Asian Druid would have probably made me more spiritual than feral. Over my first few months I learned a lot. Mainly I learned that Druid is not a combat class. As a character who was in touch with his animalistic tendencies I charged into battle often and fell just as often. Over time I decided that discovered that my abilities made me much better at defense than aggression. I started hanging back with the healers. I made it my mission to defend anyone who asked me to. If I something wanted to attack one of my friends I would throw myself in front of them to stop it. Typhon's friends found that he was an intensely loyal friend and always willing to go deep into the fray to protect his comrades. For all of his loyalty, and mine, Typhon has had trouble staying loyal. It's not that he is disloyal but that often his friendships with various individuals would put him in two conflicting groups. At one time Typhon even joined the clergy so that he could be better capable of protecting his friends. This angered the other Druids especially my mentor because she felt that I was being disloyal to Arawyn the planet which gave birth to the gods and who all Druids revere of above anyone. She felt that in my desire to protect my friends I had abandoned my desire to protect our world. Still though, through all of it Typhon as never stopped being a joy to play.
Gordon WestbrookNo I don't LARP as Gordon Westbrook. This is just the best picture I have of what the elegant, businessman, environmentalist extortionist wears when he is doing just about anything. Unlike my other characters Gordon isn't a nice guy. While both Typhons can heal their allies, Gordon uses his magic to run away and leave you to die. He doesn't care about the people who work for him so long as they protect him and his assets they can stick around but otherwise.... Gordon was made for a game my friend Dixon is running. Dixon gave us about twice the level that I normally run so this was a massive opportunity to power game. I built the character's skills with the help of my friend Nate. Nate's character Bishop is a major game breaker (he is so well built that nothing the I as a DM can send after can kill him without murdering the rest of the party) He planned to export his character into Dixon's game so we decided that we should design all our characters to be game breakers. Gordon isn't a very strong fighter. He can barely run. He has a weapon but no skill and he relies on others to do his dirty work for him. So what makes Gordon a game breaker? Money dear boy! Gordon has the highest Resources and Contacts rolls allowed. With two of the Resources stunts he has taken he needs to roll -4 to only have 10 million dollars available to him. With this in mind Gordon is in a position to bank roll the entire operation. Anything the team needs, even if it would be infeasible to get it they can have. Bribery is something that Gordon is plenty willing to do, but if a bribe won't work a threat will do just fine. Sure he doesn't have the strength to back up most things but if he can make a call and have your badge you'd think twice before looking into any of Gordon's shady dealing too. To this end Gordon isn't really a good guy, especially when you compare him to the Typhons who are both just getting by. He might be on the side of the environment but that doesn't mean he will agree that you are. He is the 1% of the 1% and he will use what he can to accumulate more money and force the world to bend to his environmentalist ways.
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