Teen drama goes to eleven

We had a character creation meeting for that upcoming Buffy game this Saturday. If it was any indication, the campaign is going to be a hoot and then some. It was so nice to focus on things that usually get a short shrift in the games I play or run, such as:

• What's my social status in high school?
• Am I seeing anyone and how serious it is?
• Are my parents and siblings cool or not?

I ended up with a 16-year-old son of black Haitian immigrants called Wilbert "Will" Price-Mars. He's a nerd, meaning he's smart and good at most school subjects but hasn't got that many friends. He's also a slightly paranoid conspiracy nut and a pretty good hacker. His dead grandmother was a famous Haitian Vodou Mambo from whom Will inherited "the sight" - the ability to see magic and supernatural things. He's got a big brother, Vincent (another PC), who is not so good with the bookish stuff, but who is the captain of the basketball team and who's done all kinds of juvenile crimes without getting caught yet. Will helps him to pass the grades and Vincent kicks the ass of any bully who messes with his brother. Naturally, Vincent is a handsome and popular guy.

Will has also got a girlfriend, a fellow good pupil who is an ambitious blond cheerleader and one of the more popular kids in school (also a PC). He's kind of baffled how they have ended up together, but he likes Elianor and vice versa and they are both interested in the occult. What Will does not know is that she is a beginner witch. Finally, we have a latina slayer PC, of whom I don't know much yet. But you can basically multiply Will's history by four to have an idea of how much social and emotional baggage the characters are packing before we run into a single monster. Sounds like Buffy to me!

This character creation session would not have been remotely as fun if we had all done our PCs separately. It would have been more difficult to come up with the connections between characters, and they are very important for a game like this. It also helped that the TV show was familiar to all, so we were on the same wavelength even though people have differing amounts of roleplaying experience (I think the guy playing my brother has only played computer RPGs previously, for example). Cinematic Unisystem is mercifully free of obscure terminology and number-crunching. Almost everything on the character sheet was immediately obvious to everyone.

We'll go live in January. I can only hope that the great atmosphere from the first meeting is carried over. I want to play something where it's more important to worry about calling my girlfriend than about whether it's best to load JHP or FMJ in the trusty old MP5, or about agonizing over the absolute best spell selection for the day (both of which can be fun, too).