Bluestockings: A Thousand Faces

Character:  Val, M.D. Game: Life on Mars Episodes: 1 Theme Song: Don't Fear the Reaper by Denmark + Winter Keywords : Concerned, withdrawn, calculating Tonight we played Life on Mars, a game by Ross Cowman that was pretty clearly a precursor to the amazing Fall of Magic. The game is about a trip to Mars, where you then set up a base of sorts, and then eventually decide whether you want to return or not. We didn't get all the way to the end, but we got far enough along I saw some dramatic changes in the character I made. I chose a name, Val, and a position on the team. I was the last to choose and so I got Doctor. I made Val, a female doctor in her late 40's, who was also the psych on board because someone had to keep an eye on the sanity of the team. She mostly focused her practice on emergency medicine, and while she kept up with the records necessary to be the psych, she found little interest in the actual subject of the human mind. In play, you're asked i...

Character: Levana Karpinski Game : Hope Inhumanity, Ten Candles Episodes: 2 Theme Song: Everybody Stand Up by Bombs Away , Lean On by Major Lazer Keywords : Easy going, uncommitted, hopeful A few months ago I decided I was gonna play the same character with different worlds in 2017. You may have noticed it's 2016. What I did instead was make an apocalypse character. I play a lot of horror games in one shots. Rach, Rob, and I went to Jiffycon and Rach and I played Ten Candles by Stephen Dewey. In that game, you're given traits. But you get to kind of decide who you are before you get those traits. I made a character who was an EDM DJ by night and dog walker by day. So, she was mostly a stoner/MDMA-lover party girl who walked people's dogs to pay the bills while her DJing wasn't all that fruitful money wise. Her mother lived in the same town as her, but didn't really approve of her party-filled lifestyle. She was stubborn, just like her daughter, and their...

Character: Allison Greening Game : As We Know It Episodes: One Theme Song: Atlantis by Seafret Keywords:  Anxious, Protective, Irritable Andrew Medeiros and the ever awesome Angela Delong Andersson ran a larp game called As We Know It. I've never played a larp since the days of CyberGen larps at Dreamation that Jonathan Lavallee ran. I helped facilitate the few times I was there. It was never something I found much interest in. I mean, I enjoyed Dystopia Rising when I played for a few hours, also at Dreamation, but overall I didn't have the time, energy, or money for something as invested as a larp. And then there were whispers in the gaming community (okay, not whispers, more like shouts) about this Nordic Style Larp business. It was explained to me as "people sitting around being sad together in a room." Naturally, with my romance of sadness, I was intrigued. I had backed a few intense sounding small scale larps including the Forgotten by Andrew Medeiros, ...

  Character: Elizabeth Holland or Serina Game: Monsterhearts, Urban Shadows Episodes Played: ~15 Theme Song:   Going to Hell by the Pretty Reckless , You Don't Get Me High Anymore by Phantogram , Fuck Like A Star by Porcelain and the Tramps Keywords: Manipulative, scheming, dangerous A long time ago, about the time of Henry VIII, there was this woman named Anne Boleyn, you might've heard of her. Well, her and Cromwell were mastermind witches called Ink Drinkers. They were the kind of people who wanted to fell the Catholic church, their true enemy, and sot hey put Anne in power beside Henry and convinced him to abandon the Catholic church. To protect Anne, they turned her ladies in waiting into a magical version of a vampire. Thus, Elizabeth Holland became a vampire, with a magical tattoo that let her walk in the sun. From there, shit went to hell and the vampire ran away. She escaped to the rest of Europe, eventually to the new world, and has been landed in North A...

Character: Warren Legacy aka Amp Game: Masks Episodes Played: 2 Theme Song: Good Girls by Elle King Keywords: Disinterested, mean, provocative It's pretty incredible sometimes. The difference between how you see your character, as you're in their head (or they're in yours) and the way others perceive the character. How I see Warren, or Ren as she's called, is very different from how she comes off to the party, and partly, I find that really fascinating. So here's what's in my head. For a long time Ren has had her powers. She was born with them, and has been zapping people as a joke for a decade and a bit now. Her brother Atticus, "Atti", has decided she should be a hero. So for his stupid youtube channel no one really cared about, she'd go out with him and stop minor bad guys. This long-term heroing has resulted in her having really good control of her powers (I haven't failed a roll yet). About a year ago, Ren got into a fight with...

Character: Ellywyn Mirnug "Elly" Game: Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 Episodes Played: ~50 Theme Song: King and Lionheart by Of Monsters and Men Keywords: Hopeful, moral, amusing Back when I was first living in Toronto, my then-partner started a group of gamers and called them the Association of Ryerson Roleplayers and Gamers... or... ARRG. It was a university gaming club and that's where I met Mina. Mina has been and continues to be my go-to for any game I want to play that's kinda crunchy. For years, that meant 3.5. Nowadays she dabbles in other games, and I'm super excited for Fate of the Norns in January. But I joined a game of 3.5 D&D in the setting of Sandstorm. When asked what I wanted to play, I picked up where I had left off from my 2nd Ed game and wanted to play a gnome bard. Fuck I love bards. I love that there's a class designed to help keep the peace in a game most people play as murder hobos. I didn't know any of the players or the ...