You're both more than welcome, lovelies! I am hoping for one or two more players, but I also think a small intimate game is a better fit for a story rich with intrigue. Let's put up some character ideas so I can start plotting how to involve your characters in the mystery. Here's the nice simple template:
Name:
Gender:
Age:
Profession:
Physical appearance:
Personality:
Background: (The generic bibliography version. And do those ever really include all the dark little secrets? The jilted lovers, the people trampled, the bodies in the backyard...? Choose what you want to keep hidden.)
Rumors: (This is a bit more unique to the game setting. What's floating around old Hollywood about your gentleman or dame? Are they known as a player, having a tryst with a well-known actor? Are they a notorious gossip? Connections with the mob? These are things everyone might have heard at the party, and can be true or pointless deceptions.)
A special section you send only to me. This is your character's secrets. Things you don't want other people to know, but that I may choose to include as part of the intrigue. Does your character have a long lost lover or relative? Maybe their whereabouts will resurface. A rival that went mysteriously missing? Maybe a blackmail note will show up at their door.
Here's an example and also a character that will show up in the game...
Name: Frederick "Ricky" Cain
Gender: Male
Age: 46
Profession: Businessman
Physical appearance: Mr. Cain is classically groomed; always looking smart with a carefully tended moustache, slicked hair, and immaculate suits. He's considered a handsome example of a rich fat-cat who, in the heyday of his youth, could have passed for a Hollywood version of Robin Hood. A devilish smile, piercing eyes, and a trim figure all contribute to his continuing reputation of a lady killer.
Personality: The charming, generous, and oh-so-debonair front he portrays to guests and associates mask his mercurial inner nature. Only the servants and his few enemies dare to whisper of Mr. Cain's violent and unpredictable temper. Although quick to anger even around those he wishes to manipulate, he is equally swift to mask it with sugar-coated pleasantries. Perhaps it's well-disguised fury that has contributed to his fast rise to the top of the business food chain.
Background: Mr. Cain owns a chain of highly successful jewelry stores along the east coast simply called "Cain's Jewelry Co." He supplies diamonds fresh from the mines of Africa - big, beautiful, and wiped clean of blood. It is his products that are featured on every major magazine cover and around every starlet's neck up on the gleaming silver screen. For a formerly penniless entrepreneur, his path to fortune is nothing short of miraculous, and steeped in mystery.
Rumors:
- Although constantly seen escorting the prettiest of the socialites and actresses around town, not much is known of Cain's most personal relations. What is known is that he has been married three times, all of which have ended in divorce. However, none of his wives can ever be reached for an interview. Which makes sense, of course, because all have seemed to mysteriously relocated out of the country shortly after their legal separations.
- Word on the street is that Cain has paid his fair number of gangsters and mafiosos to help get rid of budding jewelry companies that pop up along the west coast. It is rumored he wants to take the second side of the continent by storm and set up a national monopoly.
- Henrietta Gabba, head writer for the L.A. Gabbler (a gossip magazine), writes that she saw Mr. Cain going to an all-boys party on the arm of a flamboyantly flexible young actor. In her words, he is a "enthusiastic fan of ungodly sodomy" and should be avoided at all costs.
