- Mr Fronts
- Jan 31, 2016
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Yo! The Mafia supports you. But don't tell no one. Spread the word.
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Something I have done with every online game I’ve played is created a backstory for the character to help in my role playing. With Star Citizen, and this is in keeping with how much I’ve grown fond of the game, I’m building an extensive scenario around the character. I haven’t done this much research into building a back story since my producer days. It’s been great getting into that obsessive creative mode.
For me to get into the skin of the character I had to decide what type of character I wanted to play. Did I want to be a killing mercenary? Did I want to be a trader? I knew I wanted to be an explorer. I’m not really a combat kind of guy. I saw the game had an element of data running, which fit into my old-school cyberpunk vibe. Knowing that foundation helped in forming my character. That was important because a danger for me is if I’m not sure what type of character I tend to get into a phase where I must get everything. I could get lost in chasing what seems to be the cool and exciting thing without thinking through if what I’m getting will benefit me. Having a plan in place can prevent crazy purchases, which I have seen a lot of players do.
The first thing I knew was I wanted a character that was like me. Let’s be serious; if I was going to roleplay a character, it would be easy if that character had qualities that I had. Something else that became incorporated into the backstory was using real life events to enhance the story. A technique I learned a long time ago in writing was setting up triggers that would keep me focused on the overall goal of a character, story or background. For instance, when I was developing the book Reality Gambit, I laced a lot of minor character names or objects to events that I could relate to feeling and emotions I had at the time. For example, there was a group in the book called the Takagi Turks. The association I got from that was from The Who Quadophenia. I knew a guy in high school (I’m still in contact with him on Facebook) who used to wear a jacket like that from the album. That makes me think of the hidden punk vibe I had at that age. I was kind of straight laced but there was the rebellion that was just below the surface that I used for Julian Sinclair that fueled his unhappiness with society. If I ever strayed in my notes from something Julian would do, those key phrases and events I set up would make me think and make sure what I was writing was something my main character would do.
With the persona I made in Star Citizen, I wanted to have a character that was like a lot of 80s British writers of comic books for DC and Marvel that injected new life into established second or third tier characters. Simply put I wanted to do a radial twist on the usual role playing character, which meant twisting and refining the usual background of the character.
The first thing I did was study what had been put out in the Star Citizen universe. I had a few ideas of what I wanted the character to be, but I had to see how it fit into the world they established. To be honest, I made some mistakes in the beginning. Ultimately those mistakes helped because it made me choose what elements I wanted to keep and then fit them logically into the established world.
Early on I wanted to make a guild and I built a guild that was a complete betrayal of what I wanted to do in the game. I tried writing scenarios that would make logical sense for my thoughts about the guild but the options felt forced. If you have a guy who is based on being a mold breaker, it didn’t make sense he would fit into a corporate mold. The history I made for the character didn’t fit the character or the guild he was establishing. I thought about dissolving the guild and going solo bit I didn’t want that. I liked some of the back history of the guild but not other parts.
One thing I find hard to do, and this goes for any creative person, is throwing away hard worked on concepts. To just jettison things out feels like the time spend developing them was a waste of time. I’ve realized through years of doing this stuff is everything is a building block. There could be a kernel of a good concept in an otherwise bad idea.
The surprise Trump win in the election, and the fact that I witnessed this election in another country, made me think about the box I put myself in with the character. Thinking outside of the box I knew there was a way I could make the backstory and the character work in my eyes. Here’s another thing I try to avoid in setting up these scenarios. Something I don’t like in popular culture shows is the linear relationship between protagonist and antagonist. If you watch shows like Arrow or Supergirl, the hero makes it a point of feeling that the city is theirs so they must protect it. I wanted a sense of heroism with the character but not a possessive “no one else can do this but me” attitude. I wanted a hero aspect in the character but a realistic one, not a comic book one.
The Trump effect meant for me that all plans didn’t have to follow a path, but that shouldn’t detour from the main goal. What had been bugging me the most about the persona I set up was it was serviceable and actually good for someone who was a heavy gamer. I was trying to set up a scenario that would work for the community, not what was best for me. I had a backstory set up where this guy came in, worked hard, then got handed a dream job of a lifetime, did well with that and was rewarded with a promotion and this new wonderful opportunity. What spoke to me and excited me was the subtle hints I built into the scenario that the happy work life might not be real. I built in hints, reminders that the company might not be as friendly and open minded as I set up in the initial backstory.
That left me with the option of starting a new guild with a new backstory or salvaging the backstory I had. I picked the unknown at the time option three.
The backstory I laid out was good but the focus was on the corporation and not the persona. I realized I wanted to know about the character and his motivations, not his resume. I started thinking about what would make someone leave a comfortable job and start from the bottom again. I didn’t want to have it as a ‘protect my city’ answer.
While I was formulating this reconstruction an image from a protest in the past few years burned in my mind. I had been thinking of the image and I desperately wanted to have that image fit with my character. I couldn’t find an easy way of doing it. It was powerful but in the established universe I didn’t see how it could work. In the backstory of the guild, I had a conflict that occurred in an unexplored sector of space. I had some settlers put roots there, a few corporations laid claim to the area, and the company that my character ultimately ended up working for negotiated at treaty between the settlers and the corporations. In the original notes, I hinted at an attack on a space station where negotiations were held. In the original write up, those negotiations elevated the prestige of the company which over the years brought them close to galactic prominence.
I could break down a lot of general psychological issues as to why having this image as a motivating factor would bring emotional substance to the character, but the bigger issue for me was making it fit logically into the lore. No matter what I did, because of the long-time line between incidents in the space station attack and the present day of the character (which was about 100 years) I couldn’t make the timeline work. At this point I can see many people saying just shift it and no one will care. With the amount of writing I’ve done like this in my Hollywood days, I just can’t retcon something without finding a logical way for seemingly conflicting events to work.
What finally broke the code was the side issue that evolved with the President-elect. I saw the election results from another country. It took me some time after returning to the stares to realize Donald Trump was the President-elect. It didn’t seem real. I felt like I did when our division was removed from my last job. It’s disorienting. I wanted to blame my former employer for the loss of my job but finally I had to move on. I wanted to have my character fired from his job, which would force him to become a freelancer. I wanted the photo somehow incorporated into the backstory. I had come up with a name for the woman in the photo, Jacqui Sckylar, who lead a revolt on the colonies in the Banshee system. It was her attack that lead to the treaty being signed. Had I left her story like that it would have been good but I knew what the photo represented. It was of defiance to the system, righteous defiance. I couldn’t have that image represent something negative in the sense of her defiance being wrong. Even though my scenario for my character leaving made some sense in the way I had things constructed at the time, it didn’t sit right in my gut.
I remembered a documentary I saw about Patty Hearst where the theory was Patti was a willing participant in the bank robberies she committed with the Symbionese Liberation Army. The picture of the defiant woman against the police took an interesting twist in my head. By adding an eccentric aunt that was a reporter, adding elements from Patty Hearst’s life and just a pinch of typical TV stuff, I constructed a backstory that felt right for the character.
I would have to say the character’s backstory is a hybrid of the original and new version in equal parts. For me it feels like a full character and the choices made by the character makes sense by the template I’ve established. The new template helped in establishing the construct of the new guild, from its history to its charter and logo. I’ve kept a few bits of information hidden, but there are enough clues, not easy clues, that someone looking for them can see what direction I’m aiming for.
Working on this element of my Star Citizen character has been fun. I could use a lot of creative skills I haven’t used in years and it felt good to work on designing a small section of a universe.
Finally, I want to show the final results of the backstory I established for the guild and my persona’s history. First is the guild history:
History –
On September 5, 2901, Jacqui Sckylar died. Sckylar was the leader of a UEE resistance group. History remembers her for her involvement in the Curiel Corporate War, where several corporations battled for control of newly discovered planets beyond the Banshee system. Hawat Information Conglomerate worked on negotiating a peace settlement between corporations, but Jacqui Sckylar lead a group of paramilitary troops and attacked Bethel station, the neutral station where peace negotiations were held. Many were killed, including Ravi Hawat, CEO of Hawat Information Conglomerate at the time. Jacqui went underground and was captured eight months later. She was tried and convicted of the Bethel Station massacre without offering a defense. Sckylar was held at UEE Penal Satellite 17, known as The Box until her death.
The McFarland Accord, drafted after the attack by new HIC CEO Andre Hawat and ratified by the warring corporations and UEE, ushered in a new era of cooperation and free flow of information between companies and the UEE. The accord lead to the prominence of Hawat Information Conglomerate. By 2940, when the Ravenheart expedition to the areas beyond the Chronos region had been completed, the new CEO of HIC Michelle Hawat was poised to take the company to the next level.
I was the first officer on the HIC Research vessel Antioch, one of the ships that was part of the Ravenheart expedition. When we returned, I was given a hefty expedition compensation package and promotion to Executive Acquisitionist. A meeting with Georgina Cookson, the Number Two of the company who was directly under CEO Michelle Hawat, led to my appointment to the point person for Division 26, the program set up to process, analyze and correlate the value of information from the expedition.
In 2944, my aunt Shailagh Jarrett died. She was a freelance reporter with the Carney-Gibbs Journal. She won the Canegallo Award for Ethics in Journalism fifteen years ago, for a series of articles she wrote about Skylar and the conflict in the Banshee system. The award was created “to honor the journalist of integrity and character who reports with insight and clarity in the face of political or economic pressures and to reward performance that inspires public trust in the media.” I inherited property and journals from my aunt which had some information from those reports that didn’t get into the final draft of the articles. Around the same time there was a shift in power at Hawat. Senior Executive Donald Conway took over the company as CEO after the board gave a vote of non-confidence for Michelle Hawat. I was “relieved” of my contractual obligations with Hawat Information Conglomerate.
I decided to take the basic principles I established with HIC and refine them for PVI. PVI will ensure that knowledge beneficial to achieving interplanetary cooperation in solving intergalactic problems of economic, social and cultural difference is available to all who request. We are collective gathered for support of fellow explorers and information brokers. We will never ask, persuade or demand information you find be exclusively carried by us. We do not control whom you sell or give your information to. We are independent in every way and are merely a gathering of individuals who can use our collective resources for bolder and cooperative endeavors.
Next is my character’s bio:
Fifteen years prior to working for Hawat Information Conglomerate, I worked several jobs in the field of data reconstruction and acquisition. I learned a lot of my skills from my Aunt Shailagh Jarrett. She was a reporter that worked for the Moran Dunn News Agency in the early days of the company. When I was ten my parents and siblings were killed in a freighter explosion. My aunt took me in and before I knew it I was her apprentice. When I was eleven my aunt quit the agency, supposedly because she felt trapped with one company and felt her talents could be appreciated elsewhere. I think the real reason she left was to spend more time raising me. Whatever her reasons, I learned so much from her about the business of gathering information. Eventually she secured a job with the Carney-Gibbs Journal that she held until her death. When she secured a job with them I knew it was time for me to leave the nest.
I never thought I would become a corporate suit. I liked the freedom and challenges of being independent. I didn’t have to get involved in office politics and any personal conflicts were resolved when I was assigned to another project. Between gigs Aunt Jarrett was always working on a story that I could help with research material.
I started working for Hawat Information Conglomerate as a temporary data acquisitionist. My supervisor at the time was impressed with my work and I was offered a permanent position with the company a year later. Three years on the job, when I was a senior acquisitionist, I was selected for the Ravenheart expedition; a deep space exploration mission stretching past the Chronos system. The chance of working on a long-range mission exploring uncharted territory was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. The seven-year mission revealed a lot of scientific, resource and navigational information and was key, along with the ten other long-range exploration missions at the time, in elevating the prestige of Hawat Information Conglomerate and CEO Michelle Hawat.
When we returned from the mission in 2940, I was given a hefty expedition compensation and promotion to Executive Acquisitionist. I spent a couple of years analyzing the information we obtained on the mission. While the desk job was secure and the compensation and perks were exceptional, I felt confined in my position. I missed the freedom I had when I was freelance, but the pay was. A meeting with Georgina Cookson, the Number Two of the company who was directly under CEO Michelle Hawat, led to my appointment to the point person for Division 26, the program set up to process, analyze and correlate the value of information from the expedition.
In 2942, my aunt Shailagh Jarrett died. We were still close, reminiscing and catching up on events in our lives when we saw each other, but between her system trotting adventures working for the Carney-Gibbs Journal and my seven-year mission, well, we drifted apart. Before she died she was awarded the Canegallo Award for Ethics in Journalism. It was for a series of articles she wrote about Jacqui Skylar and the conflict in the Banshee system. The award was created “to honor the journalist of integrity and character who reports with insight and clarity in the face of political or economic pressures and to reward performance that inspires public trust in the media.”
Many years ago, Jacqui Sckylar was the leader of a UEE resistance group. History remembers her for her involvement in the Curiel Corporate War, where several corporations battled for control of newly discovered planets beyond the Banshee system. Jacqui went underground after the attack she led on the Bethel space station. After a massive hunt by the UEE, she was found, tried and convicted of the Bethel Station massacre. She offered no defense of her actions. Sckylar was held at UEE Penal Satellite 17, known as The Box until her death. My aunt interviewed her for series of articles at the time of Sckylar’s death. Her award was for a new set of articles she did, revisiting the massacre, the trial and incarceration of Jacqui Sckylar.
I inherited property and journals from my aunt which had some information from those reports that didn’t get into the final draft of the articles. Around the same time my aunt died, there was a shift in power at Hawat. Senior Executive Donald Conway took over the company as CEO after the board gave a vote of non-confidence for Michelle Hawat. I was “relieved” of my contractual obligations with Hawat Information Conglomerate in a company purge.
Thankfully, my involuntary retirement was at a time when I needed a shakeup in my life. Being free of corporate obligations will allow me to follow in my aunt’s footsteps. With the skills I have learned from her and years of freelance and corporate training, working to establish a gateway for independent explorers and information brokers get fair compensation for their services as well as not being restricted in whom they can see information to will be liberating. It can afford a freedom of information many haven’t seen in some time.
End result:
No-pants space traveller with their wrists rotating slowly in impossible directions, stuck waist-deep in the cargo bay floor, with a fabulously deep backstory.
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Nov 18, 2016 16:08
