Game Wish 19: Heart Characters

This week's Game Wish (I'm catching up now) is about Heart Characters

Today's question is about your heart character. The heart character rests on the idea that over the course of a gaming career, players would revisit certain themes that were important to them for some reason, and that one or two characters in particular would embody those themes or ideas. Whatever it was about the heart character(s) would draw the player back to those themes.

Do you have a heart character? More than one? If so, what makes that character a heart character? If you don't have one, do you think there are themes you revisit with your characters? Or do you think this entire theory is full of it, and if you do, why?

Thinking about some of my favourite characters, particularly the on-line ones that had more detailed back-stories and personalities, I do notice a couple of themes. One is the 'Ordinary Joe' caught up in extraordinary circumstances, the other is the character who's life had been shattered, and must try and pick up the pieces and survive.

My very first on-line character embodied both of these. He was a technician with a comfortable life working for a large cyberpunk megacorp (formed of a merger between British Airways, Stagecoach and Virgin Trains, we decided). His life was shattered when he was falsely accused of causing a fatal accident and sent to jail for manslaughter. All his friends and family deserted him. At the point he entered play, he'd just been released having served his time, only to be caught up in the complex web of cyberpunk intrigue and violence.

I've already mentioned Karl Tolhurst of Ümläüt; his back story (in the game in which he first appeared) was the same basic theme; the tragedy was the murder of his lover with his best friend the principal suspect, the extraordinary circumstances were simply the fact that this was a Call of Cthulhu game.

I don't know what this says about me except that I prefer lower power levels; spandex-clad superheroes with their kewl powerz are simply not my style.