The Bad Ass Chronicles: What Makes a Character a Bad Ass?
A Weekly Installment By Jason Pilarski
As he travels through history, man has encountered a wide variety of people. However, one
type sticks out in the minds of everyone, herein lies the bad ass. This character type cannot be easily pegged with a single description,
so below is a list of the types of bad asses. Keep in mind that a character can be a combination of any description......so here goes:
Simply put, the first and foremost part of a bad ass is style and the
manner in which they compose themselves. You will never meet a timid bad ass. Self-confidence is a must.
Come on, have you ever called your wiener of a little brother a “bad
ass”?
He doesn’t have style.....and you need to keep reminding him of
it. Bad asses have style. A cyborg from the future with cool shades can be bad ass. A demon hybrid with two heavy pistols can be bad ass.
A ninja is bad ass. They excrete style out of every orifice... Yeah... I said it.
The
Stealther / Silent Assassin
Yes, I know what many of you are thinking. “How can someone who sneaks around be cool? What a wimp, can’t even come out of the
shadows to face their enemy!!” Fine. Go to sleep tonight with another person in the room. Wake up the next day......BAM...there is
Billy, lying next to you with three snapped vertebrae. He was sleeping just fine too, until he heard his own neck snap.
Who did it, you may ask?
Why, just your stealthy assassin. This is the type of guy who could bomb
a factory, kidnap a foreign ambassador, and be back just in time to snap Billy’s neck. Real life ninjas, people like Solid Snake,
and invisible midgets with knives fit into this category. Between you an me, Bill got what was coming to him. Bastard.
The Timex.
Takes a lickin, keeps on tickin. Pump him full of lead, bash his feet
with a sledge hammer, run him over with the car...it really doesn’t matter. Chances are, this guy is getting right back up, and will
be aching for some revenge. While they aren’t inherently killers, these men will dish it out when its been dished to them. Don't cross
em, and if you’re gonna kill them, for God’s sake, make sure they are dead! Many fear what they can’t kill for a good
reason. Two Classic movie examples are Mel Gibson in Payback and Uma Thurman in Kill Bill. Mel Gibson had nothing but money to motivate
him. The fact is, it wasn’t the amount of money either, it was merely the principle. How many people would you wade through for 70,000
dollars? How much torture could you endure ( see the earlier remark about the sledge hammer.)? Simply put, to go through and do all the
things Mel Gibson does in the movie, 70 grand would simply not be enough for most people.
To the same extent, Uma Thurman fought her way to bloody revenge. It wasn’t
about money, but about getting back at the people who stole her potential happy future away. Over the course of two movies, she not only
kills all of her former compatriots and their body guards, but also finds her lost daughter and....well.....Kills Bill. See.....the movie
was called that for a reason. Along the way she was shot, cut, stabbed, shot some more, buried alive, cut again, shot with a tranquilizer
dart, etc etc. Needless to say, after the first few bullets, many would say “ I’m going home to cry.” I mean, if you think
you've got what it takes, we can set something up. In both cases, the characters simply wanted to live their lives. Their past was behind
them, and they were moving towards a better future for themselves. However, something forced them to take drastic action, and go back to
their old ways. This usually means kill, kill, kill to get what they want done.
Now, for those of you in the roleplaying scene, the timex badass makes
for one of the most survivable characters. For example, a vampire character with a combined stamina and fortitude of at least seven would
qualify as badass. Why? Well, simply put......it takes a lot to take them down. A LOT. Ethan was a vampire I had made recently. He survived
at least 5 separate werewolf attacks...one of which was in the middle of the day. He took a direct beam of sunlight and shrugged it off.
Well, all of those werewolves were taken down with Ethan’s Silver Revolver, and one was even take down with silverware.
Yup,
that’s right.....fine utensils...a silver butter knife.....took
down a big bad wolf man... in the middle of the day. Yup. That's
how it goes when one badass thinks he can take out another. It
would be like me killing you with a plastic spork from taco bell.
Now, how could a puny little starting vampire survive all of these
ultimate killers? Well, a fortitude of four helped. He could soak
fire, sunlight, claws..all of those vampire killers. To boot,
the whole game I was spending my experience wrong. (Stupid Xp
points.....spending it like Mage.....grumble bitch moan). Yup,
with a fortitude of five he might of actually survived that encounter
with the dread wolf. He did survive the first swing to be fair.
So it goes when a little ventrue bites off more than he can chew.
I wert owned.
