Let Me Introduce You to My Alter Ego...

Well, here I am, towards the beginning of another night shift, trying to keep myself awake and to stave off boredom... I've been surfing the web, looking at some RPG-related sites, and I came across one of those PC questionnaire pages. This sort of thing is kind of fun, and can definitely help you generate more well-rounded player characters. Being mildly bored as I am, I thought it might be amusing to try answering them for my current Torg character, even though he's doubtless quite well-rounded enough already.

Anyway, this particular page starts off with what the writer calls "PQs": the essential personal questions. These are pretty easy:

What is your character's name? Professor Wendell X. Bernard. Oddly enough, nobody has yet asked me what the "X." stands for. I know what it is, but I'm not gonna tell until somebody thinks to ask. So there.

What does he do for a living? Weird Scientist and freelance fighter of evil. (Gawd, I do love Torg...)

What does he do in his free time? Builds gadgets. Not that he ever has enough time to work on them.

How does he support himself? Actually, I think right now he's mostly living off loot the party took from bad guys.

How wealthy is he? Well, there was a lot of loot, but it's kind of starting to run out these days...

Who does he know and how well? Well, there's the other PCs, of course. And he knows a lot of people in Oxford, England, since he's been spending a lot of time there lately. He doubtless has some contacts back in Egypt, too.

Where does he live? Actually, he's mostly been globetrotting for the last year or so, but he recently bought a house outside of Oxford which he intends to use as his home base. This was probably a really bad idea for all sorts of reasons, not least of which is that England is bascially Medieval Fantasy Realm these days, and his precious technology tends not to work there very easily.

What does he own? All kinds of bizarre stuff that he collects in magpie fashion and hauls around with him in case it comes in useful.

Does he have family? No, although he sort of thinks of Aerial (one of the other PCs) as like a daughter or granddaughter to him.

Does he have friends or enemies? He's got all the PCs as friends (some of them more reluctantly than others). And he's got lots of enemies, most notably his nemesis, Professor Shariff.

On to the IQs (Inspirational Questions):

People
Who are your character's friends? Most people have someone they chat with, hang out with, or so on. Who does your PC go out drinking with? Who does he have coffee with? Who does he chat with while waiting in line at the grocery store? Do the neighbors invite him to dinner? Does he go hiking or biking with a club? Like I said, pretty much it's just the other PCs, since he travels around so much.

How close is he to his friends? How well do they know him? Do they know his hopes and fears? Do they know that he goes out late every night and sometimes doesn't come back for days? Will they notice if he disappears or comes home with bruises? I don't think he talks about his hopes and fears all that much. I mean, he's pretty British that way; he doesn't usually get all emotionally gushy or anything. But he does like to talk about himself -- oy, does he like to talk about himself -- so they all know him probably better than they'd really like to! And I would hope they'd notice if he disappeared or something...

Is he married? Does your character have a husband, a wife, a boyfriend, a girlfriend, a fiancee, a "significant other," a lover, or several of the above? He's recently acquired a girlfriend. I'm not sure he has the slightest idea how to deal with that, as he's been too wrapped up in his gadgets and things all his life to ever have an actual relationship before. But it's kind of cute watching him try to figure it out.

Is he protecting someone? A child? A relative? A friend? Why does he see himself as their protector? I think he sees himself as Aerial's protector, which is amusing, because if anything, it's actually the other way around.

Who does he live with? Does he still live with his family? What about housemates or roommates? Are these people his friends or do they hate each other? Again, he's pretty much been of No Fixed Abode for the last year or so. Once his house is finished, he'll probably expect the rest of the party to stay there when they're in town.

Who was his first love? Did it work out? Why or why not? Do they still know each other? Honestly, he's never really been seriously involved with anybody before.

Who does he work with? Is he friends with his co-workers? Bitter rivals? Does he hate his lazy boss or have a crush on his secretary? Not really applicable, seeing as he doesn't actually have a job.

Who is his best friend? Why? What secrets have they shared? What have they gone through together? I guess that'd be Aerial again. And they've been through heaven and hell. Or at least Purgatory.

Who is his worst enemy? Why? Shariff. And the Prof's got a list of grievences a mile long that he'd be glad to tell you about in great detail. But mainly I think it boils down to jealousy. Bernard's convinced Shariff has better toys than he does.

Who is his confidante? Who does he talk to when he's scared? Who does he tell when he's in trouble? That'd be the other PCs again. I suppose he feels most comfortable with Aerial, though he's more likely to be giving her well-meaning advice than asking her for help. He does turn to Keevok (the Paladin) for spiritual advice, though he often tends to get a bit testy when he gets it. Oddly enough, I suppose he's probably had the the most personal conversations with Cobb, because Cobb's the one who will ask the personal questions. Though generally that has less to do with Cobb being a concerned friend and more to do with Cobb being an ass...

Who would bail him out if he were arrested? Well, I think Aerial's carrying most of the party funds at the moment...

Who did he give birthday presents to last year? What did he give them? I don't think he's very good about remembering birthdays, really.

Is he a disappointment to anyone? In what way? Um, no, I don't think so. Unless there are bad guys out there sadly shaking their heads over the fact that he's not using his talents for evil. Which is entirely possible.

Family
What about his family? Does he get along with them? Does he ignore them? What do they know about him? Is it a small family, or an extended family with lots of cousins and aunts and uncles? Is it a close family, or do they only see each other at the holidays? Are any of them not on speaking terms with each other? Are there any "family secrets?" Who is his favorite relative? Who is his least favorite relative? Does he have any children?" I don't think he has any family. He's an old guy, so his parents are doubtless long dead. As far as I know, he doesn't have any siblings or anything, either, though it would be entirely within his idiom for a long-lost evil twin brother to show up someday or something.

Places
Where does your character hang out? Does he go club-hopping? Does he pick up people at singles' bars? Does he see movies, or go dancing? Does he play pool or go bowling? Does he read at the library or go ice-skating? What about the video arcade, the mall, a local college campus, or the park? He's more inclined to hole himself up inside a laboratory than anywhere else. Definitely not singles' bars or dancing or bowling... In fact, it's really hard to picture him doing any of that stuff. He does end up hanging out in pubs a lot, because that's where the party always seems to get together, but more often than not, he orders tea. (Which is good, because the last time he got drunk, he picked a fight with a bunch of German aviators and ended up getting arrested.)

Where does he feel safe? Why? Nowhere is safe as long as the evil Pharoh Mobius is free to wreak his terrible perversions of science! Ahem.

What sort of place spooks him? Why? Orrorsh. Because that's what Orrorsh does. (It's the horror realm of Torg, and it's deliberately designed for maximum creepiness. Shudder.)

Is there any place that he refuses to go? Why? What happened there? He'll go anywhere he feels he has to go to fight the good fight, yadda yadda yadda. But he'd really rather avoid Orrorsh.

What is his workplace like? Does he like it? Does his office reflect his personality? Well, his lab is strewn with vacuum tubes and random bits of bizarre machinery all over the place, so, yeah, it reflects his personality pretty well.

What is his favorite restaurant? Does he go often enough for them to recogize him? Does he have a favorite table? I think there's some specific pub we keep ending up in in Oxford, but I don't remember what it's called.

Hobbies and Habits
What are your character's hobbies? Throw character development points into little things like painting or writing, candle-making or horseback-riding. (How many points you want to dedicate to such things depends on your GMs. Some GMs will ignore such abilities; others will work them into their plots for fun and variety.) He builds things. All kinds of utterly bizarre things.

Where did he pick up his hobbies? Who taught them to him? Why are they important to him? Well, science and gadget-building are what he does. He doesn't really separate them into "work" and "hobbies."

What does he read? What sorts of books does he read? What magazines or newspapers does he read? Does he prefer SF, fantasy, horror, historical, romance, mystery, or current events? Scientific journals, probably.

How does he read? Does he take books out from the library or buy whole cases of them? How does he pick which book to buy next? Does he have a favorite reviewer? What book does he read over and over? Where does he read? Oh, geez, like he has time for recreational reading...

Does he do the crossword puzzle? In pencil or pen? Crossword puzzles are way beneath him, intellectually, but maybe he considers those strange, tricky British ones a bit of a challenge. If he does them, he probably does them in pen.

Does he read the paper every morning? Which section does he read first? Well, it's not like he can just get a paper delivered to his doorstep every morning... When he does read them, though, he probably reads the headlines first to see what evil is afoot in the world (answer: lots) and then turns to the science and technology section. And then writes really long letters to the editor explaining why the stuff in the science and technology section is wrong. Except he probably gets distracted before he can finish the letter and never sends it...

What movies does he watch? What was the last movie he saw? Did he like it, and why? Who's his favorite movie star? I think the last movie he saw was The Matrix when we were getting ready to do the VR thing in the cyberpunk realm. I'm sure he thought the technology (both portrayed in the movie and used in making the movie) was really impressive.

Does he watch television? What's his favorite show? What show does he hate? What's his favorite channel and why? Who's his favorite TV star? TV's a bit above his Tech Axiom (he comes from an alternate version of the 1930's, so they don't have TV yet), but he's seen a bit of it, and I think he's been very unimpressed with what he's seen.

What music does he like? Does he have a large music library? A small one? Does he prefer the radio, CDs or mp3s? Does he wear a walkman? Does he listen to the same album over and over, or does he hate it when people do that? I don't think he pays much attention to music. When he listens to it at all, it's probably classical.

What does he do for exercise? Does he work out at the gym? Exercise? Are you kidding? He gets more exercise than he can handle just trying to keep up with the rest of the PCs... The Prof's not as young as he used to be, you know.

OK, there's a lot more questions, but, frankly, I'm getting tired of this... Maybe later when I'm feeling even more direly in need of something to focus my brain on to keep it from shutting down...