I Will Never Meet Vigo Again

I went to Kamcon a few weeks ago, and I had a blast! I met some great new people, tried out new systems, showed off my work, and even got to play my first session as an Agent in Delta Green. I have big plans for my return next year!

I woke up Monday morning feeling somber.

Yes, that was surely in part due to exhaustion. A testament to how much fun I had. But what kept running through my mind, on such a strong loop that I could hardly sleep, were the characters. I made one for each of the four games I played in, each a different expression of myself, each carrying a little piece of my soul, and I would never get to play as them again. That's true of every character I make, I suppose, but I've never created so many with such passion in such a short amount of time.

The one I miss most was Vigo.

My last game was a session of Dream Askew with the creator, Avery Alder, of Monsterhearts fame (!!!) Dream Askew is the only story game I played that weekend, so without a plot to focus on, we went 100% in on character. We built a vibrant little apocalyptic queer community from the ashes of a wasteland Costo, struggling in some ways and thriving in others.

Vigo was The Tiger, a gang leader that's simultaneously exploiting and protecting the community. She was tough and scarred and focused on maintaining power by any means necessary. She had a fragile peace with an opposing biker gang to balance, and a reckless sister who was always fucking around with something. Her relationships were transactional, even with herself. She didn't have much in the way of gender exploration (a fact I felt very conscious of, as the world's straightest man playing the world's gayest game), but then, I figure that requires a level of vulnerability she would never tolerate openly.

Then we started playing, and I got immersed in the fiction. Vigo was fun! She had a comical inability to solve small problems by herself, and an extraordinary capacity for diplomacy and control. Her monopoly over violence lingered in every scene, yet she never even came close to exercising it, because she didn't have to. Her position in society made her responsible for all its problems, which constantly forced her to do the hardest thing in the world for her: ask for help.

I thank the other players for boosting her as much as I did. When someone said "everything goes through Vigo," I felt proud. When another said that she wanted to be "Vigo's girl," I felt desirable. And when that crush was quickly and hilariously dropped, it felt earned and just a little tragic.

I wish I remembered their character names, but I didn't take any notes. I will never meet them again, either.

By the end of the session, we had solved a water sanitation crisis and grew as people. A lot of great drama sprang from nothing in the way that story games are wont to do. But it was only the start of the story. The pilot episode. We had so much further to go, so much more to explore about the world and our history and interrelationships. And now it's gone. The show was cancelled, and all we have left is the memory of watching the pilot episode, once, and now never again.

I could try to recreate her. I bought the book. But if I try to force it with a new group, it won't be the same, and it'll be worse than what we would make intuitively in the moment. That's the point of playing to find out! I might try to adapt her into a story I'm planning to write in November, but that's a different Vigo. The same spark in my heart. But a different character nonetheless.

I suppose I write this to remember her while the memory is fresh, to leave a touchstone I can come back to in the future. I will move on. She will have plenty of company in my character graveyard. But for now, she is missed.

Goodbye, Vigo.

(Also this didn't fit anywhere else, but in the finale Vigo competitively cranked her hog with the rival gang, and then played them in a very serious game of baseball before dance-clubbing. This was very important to her character and channels a lot of her inner depth, you wouldn't get it)