Character Creation Challenge 15: Over The Edge

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

15: Over The Edge third edition

(website)

Over The Edge is a rules light system with a lot of flexibility, built to run a game of surrealist fiction with a base setting not unlike William Burroughs’ Interzone from The Naked Lunch.

This is its third edition, I haven’t played or run it since first. It’s even rules-lighter than the first and second.

But I’m doing it here now because WandaVision premiered today, a lightly surreal TV series with more going on than appears on its sunny surface.

One of Over The Edge’s first edition campaign hooks had the player characters discovering that they’re player characters in an RPG and reality breaking down around them. So it’s about as close as I can find to an RPG for what I think is happening in WandaVision.

There are also RPGs with reality at an extra remove where the PCs are actors or gamers and can influence the stories they’re in, which could also work, but I want a character who’s stuck in a false reality rather than knowingly visiting.

I also can’t find an RPG for a straight-up sitcom where everything turns out fine at the end of every episode (unlike Fiasco which is weighted towards everything routinely ending in disaster and isn’t really built for recurring characters) and for an actual sitcom game like WandaVision’s influence Bewitched I might use TOON or Risus, but OTE still works for its loose character definitions although you’d have to cut out the Strikes mechanic for damage.

Every OTE 3 character has a Question Mark for something they usually are, a Main Trait, a Side Trait and a Trouble.

Maddie Merlin

Starting at a new job in a new city and certainly not a witch

Level 2, Expert

Fight 1, Sway 1, Weird 2

Question Mark

Sensible?

Main Trait

Witch (as a Main Trait, she can move objects with her mind, cast long-term spells, and possibly influence the reality she appears to live in)

Side Trait

Blending In (covering up her supernatural abilities and trying to act normal)

Trouble

Starting to think everything else isn’t as normal as she thinks either