Day 18th: Vivian A Winters, Army of Darkness

 One more day, one more character! I went with an older system I bought around October of last year, Eden Studios' Army of Darkness! It's my first Unisystem too, I would put it in the same basket as the Storyteller system of being mostly traditional with a few attempts at a more narrative experience. I haven't seen it in action, but my first impression is that I like it better than what White Wolf was doing at the time in that space! I'm not sure about current Storyteller stuff though, I think the most recent book of them I looked at was for Scion first edition. It seems like it would be a pretty fun time to play, even if it exists in that awkward space between traditional and narrative where you have just better game options in both direction and there's nothing super specific to the Evil Dead experience in the system. Speaking of, as the title of the game suggest, this is an Army of Darkness game, with quite a bit of ink and page spaces dedicated to rehashing the plot of the movie, giving stats to its character and even including a spin-off adventure! It even encourages running Ash and the characters from the movie as the party and just redo the movie as one of the sample setting! There's not even advice to run something like Evil Dead 2/Evil Dead Rise or even Ash vs the Evil Dead, no modern setting directly. Now of course, it predates Ash vs Evil Dead by a lot, but I think the comic did take place in modern day and had cross-over that would be decent inspiration for a campaign. You probably can steal rules for magic in the Unisystem's Buffy game for a character like Pablo from the TV show. I assume that game has that.

Art by Mikaink at YCH.Commish.com

Anyway, for the character, I decided to make a modern day character who would star in her own Evil Dead movie. I'll come clean, I basically made Buffy, creating a College Girl Experienced Hero with the Promised One quality. Rather than a Cheerleader however, she's an actual Football player, giving her the 4-point version of the Buff Guy quality. Her concept and story came to mind quite quickly after leafing through the Quality and Skill list! She was a Cheerleader in High School, joined the Feminine Football team after going to University, she's studying Law and she has a goth girlfriend calling herself Onyx. She also has been plagued by terrible nightmare of undead demons and horrible carnage since she was a little girl, visions from the Necronomicon and the demons of Kandar. She goes hunting with her grand-dad and uncles every year and she's not much of a driver, though she has her license. She's a quarterback, a real good one even before being a Promised One unlocked her greater than human physicality, justifying her "Real Big Chin" quality as her being used to leading and inspiring her football teammates. Her kung-fu skill is from self-defense class.

 She's pretty reckless and impulsive, tempered by a fear of rejection as a 6ft girl probably faced a decent amount of bullying about it, even though she's real pretty as befit the leading woman of this hypothetical Evil Dead movie. I gave her Arachnophobia, deciding her immunity to non-supernatural fear would not apply, though her bonus would if she's forced to do something involving spiders, such as fighting a giant spider deadite! The tragic love drawback sounds like it be fun to play, a good source of hook and plot points! To start with, I decided that the start of her adventures is that either during a party or some holidays with friends at a cabin, her girlfriend Onyx somehow got hold of the Necronomicon, unleashing hell on heart and becoming a Deadite Sorceress! I leave it up to the Director (this game title for the GM) if she can be saved still, but Tragic Love suggest that nah. It's also up to the Director if the rest of the adventure is modern day or if she gets sucked through a portal and thrown to another time period!