Avatars in your Game
I’m not a huge fan of the murder hobo; I don’t know too many people who are. Every so often you have the option to really stick it to the murder hobo by saying the peasant he just killed was the arch priest of the Beggar God. That’s one of my personal favorites. And the next peasant that’s killed is the arch priest of the rival church of the Beggar God. That’s my second favorite.
All kidding aside, I enjoy having an avatar appear once in a while. That messianic figure is just perfect. He or she seems to have nothing, but the charisma on this being is something almost … godlike?
Not all avatars have to be of Thor and Bahamut, warlike and leading armies and demanding sacrifice. They don’t all have to be Fizban the Fabulous, either. Sometimes you can have the beneficent god who genuinely wants to see what life is like on the surface.
This makes sense. Politicians need to go to town hall meetings to understand their constituents, and likewise, the surface world is the town hall for the gods. The ones who care, at least.
Time for my comic book references.
“Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2” is opening in theaters on Cinco de Mayo, May 5th, 2017. In this film, Kurt Russell is going to be playing the Avatar of Ego the Living Planet. As the name implies, Ego is an actual planet who sends a small portion of himself to Earth to explore the planet and learn about people. He meets Star-lord’s mother and they produce Peter Quill. Peter’s mother describes Ego in his avatar form as “An angel, composed out of pure light.”
Ego would hire Yondo and his band of Ravagers to fetch Peter after his mother died, but they betrayed him and kept the boy, raising him as their own.
Peter was special and he never knew it. In “Guardians 2,” Ego will finally find Peter and explain his birthright.
How can you use an avatar? Did he or she lose someone or something? Did a group of their worshipers go astray and now it wants to return to the land and see what’s changed first hand? Now both sects can fight to capture this avatar, both feeling it belongs to them. Maybe there’s another faction as well, one that actually prophesied this event. More than this, what would happen if the members of another religion discovered the presence of a rival faith’s avatar on the land? What if this were an evil avatar but it could be swayed to the side of good, making the avatar rebel against its creator?
The possibilities are endless, as they are with any pen and paper role playing game.
Professor Bill
Comic Book University
Class Dismissed
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