# RPG a Day 2023 - Day 8: Favorite Character
tags: #thoughts/RPGaDay/2023
![[RPGaDay2023.png]]
Honestly, there's been so many over the years that I'm not even sure where to start. Several decades of characters, most of those spent as the omni-GM.
I think I'm going to have to go with *William Albacastle*, a.k.a. "Willie Pete", the character I played in the playtest of **[[Mage the Ascension|Mage: the Ascension]]**. Who eventually ended up being one of the signature characters in the line, appearing in **[Iteration X Revised](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Convention_Book:_Iteration_X)** and the **[Time of Judgment](https://whitewolf.fandom.com/wiki/Time_of_Judgment_3:_Judgment_Day)** novel.
This wouldn't be such a horrific admission if the character wasn't just me with the volume turned up to 11 and if I hadn't cowritten **Iteration X Revised**.
I am vaguely proud of the fact that Albacastle is one of the few seriously physically disabled characters in the RPG lexicon, but his physical disability is and what his character is all about, even though he's a quadriplegic.
No, his character is about the fact that he is a *charmingly nihilistic asshole*. And is neither ashamed nor unhappy.
In fact, it's his absolutely unrepentant personality that makes him a pivotal character in **Time of Judgment**. It has nothing to do with his physical limitations or even, technically, how he overcomes and disdains them through his use of advanced technology. The character is about how those things don't matter.
This runs extremely counter to almost every other representation of people with disabilities in RPG literature. Which I *hate*.
In almost every other depiction the most important thing about that character is their disability, their incapacity, their failure at an elemental level. Which means they can never overcome, they can never triumph, they can never transcend, that limitation. It becomes the only thing that they represent.
Albacastle is an arrogant, self-involved, dismissive ass – who just happens to be a quadriplegic, works for the Technocracy, and does things with drones.
His disability informs who he is but doesn't conform who he is.
Like I said, he's basically an avatar character I threw together for a playtest who just sort of grew beyond the original conception and became something and someone far more interesting in a lot of ways.
Never shall we see his like again.