My older brother James has this habit of introducing me to certain media and then years later losing interest in it himself. He did it with the bands Crossfade, Nightwish, and Limp Bizkit. I still love those bands and James thinks they’re a bunch of big babies. In the late 90’s, he introduced me to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (second edition). I became addicted to it and he now thinks D&D players have no life. James changes his interests more often than he changes his underwear (not that I would know anything about his underwear habits).
But if it wasn’t for him, two things would have happened. One, I would assume RPG’s are all hack and slash and no role-playing or puzzle solving (like the Final Fantasy franchise). And two, Charles Goodhorn would be an afterthought. I originally wanted to call him Charles Goldhorn (because I had a Lego piece that was a golden trumpet), but James advised me to tweak it to Goodhorn to fit Charles’ paladin class. That ended up being good advice.
As a D&D character in the late 90’s, Charles Goodhorn, a human paladin, reached level eight before he was never used again. Throughout those eight levels of awesome adventures, I learned what it meant to be a true good guy. Paladins have a strict code of behavior they need to conform to lest they lose their magical powers and become fighters without weapon specialization. They have to have a lawful good alignment, they have to donate money to a church or to poor people, they have to help the weak whenever in danger, and they can’t have henchmen who deviate from lawful goodness. I followed this code of behavior to a tee until one day at level eight, he broke the rules by assaulting someone of good alignment (at the time, I thought the guy was evil). While Charles never actually made the transformation into a fighter, he was never used again.
In 2010 when I was still writing movie scripts, Charles was revamped into an orc paladin and became a sheriff in the D&D-style fantasy movie Gangs of Kingston. He was basically one man trying to keep order in a town highly populated with criminals and sociopaths. The streets of Kingston were piled high with dead bodies and blood pools. That’s not an exaggeration, that’s what Kingston looked like.
After a while of being overwhelmed by his duties, Charles became apathetic over time and doesn’t reconsider his disposition until the main character, an elf warrior named Jonah Jeriqee, immerses himself too deeply into the gang system of Kingston and almost gets himself killed. This would have made an awesome movie, but unfortunately, I don’t live in Hollywood, so there’s no way it would have made it onto the big screen. Plus, 2010 was a time in my life where my writing had no literary influences and therefore suffered greatly.
That’s two times in a row where Charles Goodhorn has been overlooked, both as a human D&D character and an orcish movie character. If I ever do recycle him, I’d want him to be done right this time. He’s not going to be an apathetic sheriff nor his he going to get somebody’s alignment wrong and almost kill them. He’s going to be the perfect good guy until the very end. He can have a few flaws, but not so many that it changes him into a sociopath. If ever becomes perfect, he can be a side character. Either that, or he can be the lead character who earns his way to becoming perfect. Sounds like a perfect day for a D&D story. Sounds like an even better start to the third act of Fireball Nightmare (if I have one). My spine is tingling with delight! Either that or I need to see a chiropractor.
***JOKE OF THE DAY***
Q: What does a futuristic police officer produce while he’s in the bathroom?
A: Robo Crap.
