Over the weekend we ended up playing a Primetime Adventures (PTA) version of Roger Donne, set back during WWII in his "special unit" -- at the moment consisting of himself, Augustus Ward as a British aristo adventurer type who's from a family of dark ritual magicians, and Marie St Jean, a French Resistance fighter and vampire.  Triffic fun.

What was weird was what happened to Roger.

"Modern" (1953 or so) Donne is quietly self-confident, prone to casual witticism as things heat up, and disrespectful to authority with the air of someone who knows what he can do and that he can make the right decisions without being told.

I didn't want to just play on the "rebel" aspect in the PTA character, so I decided that self-worth issues were big for him.  This tied into the backstory I'd considered -- being a kid who was usually on the butt-end of being beat up (Roger's never been a terribly physical kind of guy) leading to his sense of duty to help others and general disrespect for folks using force (bodily or authoritative) to push him around.  It occurred to me (without really thinking it through) that this wouldn't be automatic.  Especially with a power as non-automatic as his clairvoyance, he'd have some serious confidence issues in the middle of wartime, when folks were relying on him.

So "WWII" Donne is, instead, an insecure, kind of awkward, wisecracking sidekick kind of a young man, half-given-up on himself and his abilities, desperately seeking approval and validation, wildly erratic in his power, and suffering a lot of anger issues.  He's still rebellious, but that's both the evolution of the previously discussed points and the angry flip side to his own lack of confidence.

He still ends up being the guy shooting the gun, though in those days it's more likely an M3 or a Sten than a .45 pistol.

But that all sort of just happend, unplanned.  If you'd asked me a week ago what Roger was like during the war, he'd have been a lot more like what he is "now."

I also have a sense, btw, that his intermittent powers are part of what led (at least in his mind) to his previous unit being wiped out, before ending up in the unit the PTA show details.  That's going to cause him problems.

By the bye, Roger's clairvoyance (which is more far-seeing/telepresence/minor precog/psychometry sort of thing, not mind-reading) will always be intermittent.  At best, it will be reliable as an instinctive sort of thing, a Spidey-Sense, but even that will never be 100% reliable.  Why?  Because as a GM I always hated those powers, as they are an easy crutch to avoid dangerous situations.  Omniscience makes for boring characters and (literally) predictable outcomes. 

What will change for Roger, I suspect, is that (a) he'll come to accept that limitation, and (b) with practice -- and confidence -- he'll do better.  But that's very hard for him to see in late 1942.  Like so many others in wartime, he's got to work through his red badge of courage moments, learn under fire what he can do, and live with the consequences.

He'll get there.

I actually preposted a couple of 100Words whilst I was gone, so I need to post them here as soon as I get a few minutes to breathe.

The other thing I did was start to write up some decent notes on Roger Donne and his wife, Chrys.  There's actually a whole host of characters begging to be part of their 1950s San Francisco -- Carl Grackle and his bar, Roger Arbuthnot, Mr. Grey and the Nine Tears, and others.  I need to do some research on the era, but I have an idea of how to start something. The question is, how it goes.

The funny (and heartening) thing here is that, in fact, while my impetus for the Donne & Donne couple was my current enjoyment of the Dresden Files novels, I realize I'm going for something very distinct here -- both in setting/power level (much lower power than Dresden) and in the focus of the characters (the relationship between the married couple).  This could be ... cool.