#RPGaDAY - Day 8: Favourite Character

He wasn't quite like other dwarfs after the...
incident.

If I was ever the kind of roleplayer to talk about my character ad nauseum, I think I've passed that phase, and I tend to only discuss my PCs in the wider context of the game.

I think. My friends may be shaking their head and chuckling.

But either way, I couldn't get a grip on today's topic as talking about a favourite character that I'd played, so I'm going to talk about my favourite that I've seen played.

Sven the dwarf was played by my friend Ben in a WFRP game at Uni, and he was kind of the opposite of the classic WFRP dwarf. First Edition WFRP had a phenomenon called the iron dwarf, which was when a starting dwarf character could be too tough for any goblin to hurt, barring extreme circumstance.

Sven wasn't like that; he was the glass dwarf, as fragile as a dwarf could be. He was, like, elf fragile. He was also slow, and not all that smart, but he was as strong as an ox. As a party, our combat strategy against heavy opponents was to make sure Sven made it through the turn still conscious so that he could belt the enemy into the middle of next week.

But the joy of Sven, who ended up as the Graf's champion of the city of Middenheim, was his simple and uncluttered perspective on life. When we were discussing how to prevent anyone stealing our boat, Sven chipped in:

"Let's sink it!"

When he won the challenge to become Graf's Champion he demanded a song, and was delighted by the improvisational skill of the Dwarvern Valley Singers when they subbed one instance of the word 'gold' with 'Sven'. On their own, these incidents were amusing, but what makes Sven my favourite character was the unrelenting Svenness.

Ben was a smart guy, but he threw himself into Sven to the point that we would occasionally feel a flash of annoyance at his inability to grasp the nuances of a situation, followed by a deep admiration, because Ben did grasp the nuances, but he chose to overlook them without a second thought. He never let up, never compromised, yet never actually screwed us over because for all his one-note response strategy, Sven was our guy.

Sven, Sven, Sven, Sven
We'll sing of his deeds, again and again
With the strength of a plough horse
And the wits of a hen,
We'll never forget him,
The dwarf they call Sven.