I've always been interested in many different types of games, especially roleplaying and computer/adventure games. I am also interested in many different fantasy and science fiction movies, TV shows and novels, not to mention toys. It was only a matter of time before I rolled all of this together.
This is how it all started. We had a game for our old Apple IIgs computer called Ultima IV. It was one of these fantasy adventure games in which you had to chose a name for your character. Now, I've never been good with names -- either remembering them or coming up with them for characters. (In fact, I have a few roleplaying characters that are still nameless...) So after having played the game through a few times, I was starting to run out of ideas for names. (And heaven forbid that I actually use my name in one of these things! 8^) So I dredged my brain for a name from somewhere, and pulled out the name of one of my Transformer toys: Kickback.
This Kickback was an Insecticon, one of the bad guys, who turned into a grasshopper. It wasn't actually one of my particularly favorite characters, but it was the name that came to mind, and so I used it.
Sometime thereafter, I was playing another computer game called Autoduel, which also required a character name. Since I couldn't come up with anything good then either, I reused the one from Ultima: Kickback. Thereafter, it started almost being a tradition for me, and so when I was starting a game of Pool of Radiance (an Advanced Dungeons & Dragons -based computer game), I ended up using that name for one of my characters there, which eventually progressed to Curse of the Azure Bonds, the sequel.
It was only after I began this game that I had the following thought: Wouldn't it be interesting if all these various "Kickback"s were all the same guy? I decided at that point to make him a perpetual reincarnate (i.e. whenever he dies in one world, he gets reborn in another). I decided to use the Transformer that originally inspired the name as the beginning of his existance, and managed to weave all of the various lives that I had already determined (and wanted to throw in) into the continuity that the rest of our roleplaying took place in.
So far, I have determined the first few incarnations and the "latest" few. I had to determine the first few, in order to establish his reincarnating, and then added a few thereafter just to see how it went for him the first few lifetimes. I have also defined the AD&D incarnation as the "current" lifetime, since it is the first one that I'd actually played out; not including computer games; and I wanted it to be quite far along in his existance, which has left a bit of a gap in his continuity. Which is fine by me, because it provides an open area, where I can throw in whatever new life I want him to have had.
More detail on the course of his lifetimes can be found on the Incarnations Overview page.
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meb@wildspace.com Last Modified: 11 October 1997 |
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