Adventurer wanted

[ffutures]

I'm writing the stats for the team of intrepid adventurers I'll be using for a Forgotten Futures playtest at a games con next weekend, and would like suggestions for at least one more. The genre is steampunk, and the plot is basically 1900-ish comedy espionage. I've put the rest of this in a cut since someone playing in the game might otherwise see it.


I normally prepare six characters for convention games and expect to use four or five of them, but every now and then I do end up with six players. This time I want the characters to be amateur spies, given the usual "when you're on holiday in XXX keep an eye open for YYY and ZZZ, old chap" vague instructions from a chum in the Foreign Office. So far I've got the following as my tentative choices:

The three characters from Jerome K. Jerome's "Three Men in a Boat", all of them more or less average people with skills more suited to office work and a friendly cricket game than espionage. I might consider replacing them with a comedy duo rather than trio, if anyone can suggest plausible characters for 1900-ish.

Miss Jane Marple, a precocious teenager, niece of one of the above who fancies herself as an amateur sleuth and actually has some talent in that direction (though not nearly as much as she thinks). Accompanied by NPC maid / chaperone who plays little or no part in the plot.

Montmorency the Steam Dog. Your basic steam-powered K9 equivalent. Probably best run as an NPC, but a fun role for anyone who is good at taking instructions completely literally and using them to cause maximum chaos.

And that's it. I'm stuck for a sixth character (or fifth and sixth if I use a comedy duo rather than trio). Preferably not a combat monster, femme fatale, etc. A servant of some sort is a possibility, but not a super-competent Jeeves clone or a Baldrick type.

Any suggestions?

Comments

[original-aj.livejournal.com]

Either a very old Harry Flashman, as he appears in Mr. American, or possibly a descendant (actually or spiritually) might be amusing. It'd be a bit difficult to arrange the same level of fortuitous coincidence while still being fair to the other characters.

What era did Raffles come from?

Missionaries can cause all sorts of grief for their fellow players, as can opinionated old ladies. One other option is to have one of the male characters actually be a woman in disguise - there are plenty of examples - or have two versions of the character to give the player the choice of gender (might help if you can't predict number of male/female players?)

I know you said not a combat monstrosity but (from http://www.lothene.org/others/women.html ) these sound like fun ideas and needn't be spectacularly good:

Ella Hattan, also known as Jaguarina "Champion Amazon of the World," the "Queen of the Sword," and the "Ideal Amazon of the Age," fought competitions with knife, rapier, foil, sabre and broad sword in the United States between 1884 and 1900

Edith Garrud opened a dojo for jujutsu close to Oxford Circus.She trained a group of "fighting suffragettes", the bodyguard unit for Mrs Pankhurst. (A suffragette could be quite a problem for the male characters actually. I'd do it!)

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I like both ideas (and I wonder if Edith Garrud ever ran into Barton-Wright, who reinvented Jujutsu as "Bartitsu" and thus inspired the Sherlock Holmes martial art "Baritsu") but I think both might be a little bit powerful. Like I said, this one is strictly amateur time.

[original-aj.livejournal.com]

Doesn't need to be Edith - could be a keen but not very good student. Plenty of comedy value there. Very proactive "Don't patronise me" character, who gets totally carried away and really wants to prove she's as good as (or preferably better than) the men? "I know Jujutsu you know! You have been warned!" There are after all no shortage of real people who aren't as skilled as they think they are.