You Gotta Have Character

[Steve Long]

Here’s our back-cover text describing YGHC:

 

PEOPLE ARE STRANGE...

 

...and the stranger they are, the more fun you can have with them in your campaign! History is full of intriguing people, be they heroic or depraved, warriors or pacifists, artists or barbarians, wise men or fools — and they all make fascinating NPCs for your games. You Gotta Have Character features 25 of these individuals, taken from Jason Walters’s Digital Hero column of the same name:

 

Josephine Baker

Rodrigo Borgia (Pope Alexander VI)

George Gordon Noel, Lord Byron

Alvar Nuñez Cabeza de Vaca

Calamity Jane

Rector Harold Francis Davidson (The Prostitutes’ Padre)

Andrew Jackson Davis (The Poughkeepsie Seer)

Eleanor of Aquitaine

Arthur “Weegee” Fellig

Reverend “Little” George Hensley

Robert Hooke

Rodolfo Guzman Huerta (El Santo)

John “Liver-Eating” Johnson

Robert Johnson

Colonel Alexander Keith McClung (The Black Knight of Mississippi)

Sister Aimee Semple McPherson

Miyamoto Musashi

Mungo Park

William “Bill the Butcher” Poole

Pytheas

Jim Savage (King of the Tulares)

Thomas de Torquemada (The Grand Inquisitor)

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec

 

Each character comes with a character sheet, a detailed history and description, notes about how to use him or her in different genres or campaign types, and several plot seeds. Plus, You Gotta Have Character also features a witty introduction by Ken Hite, so what more could you ask for?

 

 

ISBN: 1-58366-094-1

SKU: DOJHERO115

Price: $26.99 US

 

You can buy this book in our Online Store.

Yon can buy this PDF in our Online Store.

[Steve Long]

Re: You Gotta Have Character

 

Here’s a copy of ghost-angel’s review of YGHC. Feel free to post other reviews, or links to them, if you like!

 

The Upside:

 

You Gotta Have Character gives us twenty-three real people from real history. As opposed to all those real people from fake history or fake people from real history. From the introduction by Ken Hite the book takes a humorous look at history, and gives us the facts (mostly) on some of the oddest set of characters to live and breath.

 

Each person is given from four to seven pages, most of which goes over their history. The more documented or colorful the history, the longer is goes on for. Accompanying each description are notes, quotes and other interesting tidbits about the person or the time they existed in. Each entry also has a bibliography where the author obtain some, if not all, the information. And in the case of artists a list of their works (be it filmography, written books or discography). Even websites with good information are included.

 

The greatest gaming aspect of the book isn't just the historical characters, it's the "Campaign Use" section each comes with. Each person comes with suggestions on how to fit them, or their personality, into almost any genre of gaming imaginable. From Horror to Sci-Fi, Fantasy to Super heroic. It's all there, on top of that each person comes with three Plot Hooks suited to both their historical place and other genre's.

 

A complete list of historical figures presented: Josephine Baker, Pope Alexander VI, Lord Byron, Alvar Nunez Cabeza, Calamity Jane, Rector Harold Francis Davidson, Andrew Jackson Davis, Eleanor of Aquitaine, Arthur "Weegee" Fellig, Reverend George Hensley, Robert Hooke, El Santo, "Liver-Eating" Johnson, Robert Johnson, Colonel Alexander McClung, Sister Aimee Simple Mcpherson, Miyamoto Musashi, Mungo Park, William "Bill The Butcher" Poole, Pytheas, Jim Savage, Tomas De Torquemada, and Henri De Toulouse-Lautrec.

 

One of the nice touches is the book doesn't give just dry facts and a perfectly historically accurate portrayal. It goes into the legends these people created for themselves, or that came up around or after they passed. While some are historically accurate, some take a good dose of Legend into the write-ups. Such as Robert Johnson who was, as a person, rather ordinary. Instead of the pure facts (which can be found repeated in the liner notes of just about any CD release with his works), it goes into the legend that came out of both his music and the times. His deal with the devil at the crossroads and the subsequent idea that he didn't die, but has been fleeing the devil ever since. Or El Santo, whose story can't be told without going into the legend created around the most famous of the Luchadores as depicted in his fifty-two movies.

 

We don't just get Men Of Action either, live "Liver-Eating Johnson" (who waged a one man war with the Crow Nation), or Mungo Park (The Original explorer of Africa). We get histories more gentle and interesting people as well such as post-Impressionist paint Henri Toulouse-Lautrec and Pytheas (Greek explorer, scientist and trader).

 

The Downside:

 

The book is undeniably short. At 125 Pages it's one of Hero Games' shortest books, and the shortest of the "Enemies" (or Characters in this case) Books. We only get twenty-three people. While all gaming books leave me wanting more this is one of the few where I reached the end and went "Wait, that's it? No more? Aww come on!"

 

Hopefully the book proves popular enough that Hero decides to do more like it.

 

If you subscribe to the Hero Games' EZine "Digital Hero" then this book is nothing but hardcopy reprints of the column by the same name. Only it's not everyone whose been portrayed in the past articles, just a lot of them. However, since a lot of people aren't subscribers to the EZine, this book is nothing but new information.

 

The Otherside:

 

This book, of all the gaming books out there, has truly universal appeal. Ignoring the Hero System write-ups of the characters, the history and descriptions of these very real people can be used in any game, anywhere. Especially with the helpful tips on how to transplant anyone into other genres.

 

The book is absolutely solid and good, despite being short. No game can go wrong adding this to their library of NPCs to draw from. You just can't beat history for the phenomenal level of strangeness out there. No costumed superhero compares to the on stage antics of Josephine Baker, and no Fantasy Warrior can outdo the single minded tenacity of "Liver-Eating" Johnson. And no royalty, no matter how ambitious, can outdo Eleanor of Aquitaine who was queen of both France and England at various points in her life.

 

History is just that cool.

[Sketchpad]

Re: You Gotta Have Character

 

This is the review I did a while back:

First and foremost, “You Gotta Have Character” is a sourcebook for Hero Games’ excellent Fifth Edition Hero System … though the contents could easily be used to inspire adventures and non-player characters in other systems. Let me also say that this book reprints almost two dozen characters from Jason Walters column of the same name that appears regularly in Digital Hero, the official e-zine of the Hero System. That all said, this book is an incredible asset for anyone running historical or time travel campaigns. Those who are familiar with Steve Jackson Games’ “GURPS Who’s Who” books will be most pleased with this collection of factual people in history (though some have a bit more dramatic treatment I believe).

The introduction to this particular book is a bit more entertaining than the common introduction. Within it, Walters humorously accounts his multiple requests to work on the columns with Darren Watts. Several of the highlights within the tale are footnoted and address at the bottom of each page. There are several books that could use an introduction like this, both gaming and non-gaming.

The entries of each character cover multiple pages and are decently illustrated as a whole. Each entry includes biographical information, game play information, stats and a bibliography. Also, in many of the entries, there are small tidbits associated with the character, such as quotations and era notes. I won’t spoil too much here, but I will say that the choice of characters, while a bit eclectic, give a good example of the flexibility of the Hero System, as well as presenting a good span of history in such a short amount of pages. I was mostly impressed with the content of each character. I’ve never been a huge historian, that’s more my wife’s area of expertise, but there are a few areas of history that I’ve fancied and, the characters that are from those areas, are well done and give more than enough information for someone to run a game. In fact, I would honestly recommend this book to anyone looking at time travel campaigns, as it offers some interesting figures that players could run into (or in some instances play).

The book itself weighs in at around 128 pages and carries Hero’s trademarked design within it, offering characters in the format that Fifth Edition Hero players have become accustomed to. My only gripe with the book is the organization. In all honesty, I would’ve liked the book if it were organized by timeline rather than the mish-mash arrangement that’s used. It’d be very handy to even have a timeline listed in the back of the book, but, unlike the majority of the Hero books, there isn’t even an index in the back.

Overall, I liked the book … but, as a Digital Hero subscriber, I also enjoyed the original articles that appeared in the e-zine. Of the characters listed, I really dug Miyamoto Musashi and Lord Byron, both of which were, in my honest opinion, well designed and faithful to what I know of the characters (as well as being a bit enlightening in some areas).