What story does your group of players tell about your character?
We don’t have that many stories about me as a player. Usually we tell stories about my NPCs like the Warden, one of my most successful attempts at building dread, or Pechora, the goldfish with the memory of a goldfish. My player stories are usually about how miserable my luck is, like when an enemy paralyzes me for the entire fight during a surprise round, a controller deals exactly one hundred damage to me with a critical hit, or I miss with every single attack during a pitched final battle (coincidentally, those were all in the same campaign). It’s gotten so bad that unofficially I’m allowed to roll 5d6 and drop the two lowest whenever we build characters.
The most persistent story relates to one of my first sessions in a Mage: the Awakening campaign. I was playing a vapid pop star, and I found myself in a limo with an NPC who I think was my manager and also a vampire, or something. I had occasion to make a phone call to somebody, and the conversation went something like this:
Me: I roll to dial the phone.
DM: You really don’t have to—
Me: Too late, already rolling. *clatter clatter*. That’s…one success and two ones. So that’s a botch.
DM: Uh—
Me: *mimes picking up a phone* Hi! Yeah. Yeah…okay. *hands phone to DM* It’s for you.
DM: *takes phone* Hello? Yeah…I know… *closes eyes, shakes head* I know. *hangs up*
Contrast that with another player, who rolled to press an elevator button and had raucous success. The GM ruled he “pressed the button just enough to activate it, but not so much that it stresses the spring”. That group in particular, whom I’ll discuss a little more tomorrow, had and still has a bevy of hilarious results from critical success and failure.