Staying alive.
Attributes: All throughout history, there have been crisises, disasters, invasions, diseases and accidents that kill great lots of people, injure even more and are survived by more still. One of the most powerful things in the world is the survival instinct, so it’s not a surprise that The Survivor has become an amazing archetype — it has to be, in order to personify our drive to live despite the greatest of dangers barreling down on us.
The good side of The Survivor is obvious for an optimist; humanity can’t do any good or have good things happen to us if we’re wiped out without any resistance. On the other hand, any pessimist will tell about the dark side of The Survivor; some people (perhaps all people) should die and stay dead.
Taboos: If you ever die, your Avatar skill drops to 0%. And you’ll be dead. Because something killed you.
Stingy GMs may also rule that you break taboo to a far lesser extent if you get out of a dangerous or deadly situation significantly worse for wear, mentally or physcially (say, insane or missing a limb or brain-damaged).
On the flip-side though, your GM may rule that you can’t get or improve your Avatar skill beyond a certain point unless you’ve recently survived a dangerous or deadly situation, with the room for improvement directly portional to the risk and survival rate of the situation. If you walked away from a one-on-one gun fight in which no innocent bystanders were killed, your GM may rule that you can only spend 1 EXP to increase your avatar rating. But being the sole (or at least, the only publically known) survivor of The Second Holocaust, where millions of others died, would allow you to increase your avatar skill up to 95%. GMs should take into account what kind of disasters and dangers the character has survived so far during his or her lifetime before setting a limit on how high the avatar skill can go.
Symbols: Photos and paintings depicting the avatar undergoing his trials and tribulations are expected, but even better are the avatar’s scars, IBM-issued concentration camp tattoos, trusty supply kits and dirty clothes. The songs “I Will Survive” and “You Got Another Thing Coming” are standard fodder for the more idealistic avatars. The more…twisted avatars, however, prefer the skulls and blood-stained medals they took off their former oppressors and hunters. Journals and inspirational novels based on the avatar’s harrowing tale/s are brilliant symbols for this media age.
Masks: Hercules (Greek), having completed his 12 trials and become even stronger for it. Many horror movie protagonists are treated as modern masks of this avatar.
Suspected Avatars in History: In his earlier life, Stalin may have channeled this archetype when he was escaping the political prison, before he became a much more unsavory True King of Soviet Russia. The many jews, homosexuals, gypsies, communists and Slavs who survived the Holocaust are a sure thing, as were a few New Yorkers by the 12th of September, 2001. John McCain might have had a sliver of The Survivor in his mystical makeup over the course of his life, but it’s now overshadowed by his time as The Rebel, The Demagogue and The Warrior.
Channels:
1-50: The Survivor endures. You gain extra wound points equal to your Avatar: The Survivor skill (which also increases your maximum wound point total) for the duration of a crisis, disaster or similarly deadly situation. The GM decides what counts as fair game for this channel, although the deadly situation should probably be defined roughly as something that threatens the physcial lives of a populance, such as a tornado, an outbreak of smallpox or a force of antagonistic people out to murder them who either out-gun them, out-number them or both to a significant degree.
51-70: The Survivor rises above his situation. You may re-roll, using your Avatar: The Survivor skill, any failed roll concerning surviving or avoiding any external danger. This can allow you to resist deadly toxins, stay alive despite disease, hunt for food, dodge attacks and outrun the fireball, but it can’t help you disarm the bomb, kill the hitman or resist having information tortured out of you (it would help you not die from the injuries sustained during torture, though).
71-90: The Survivor inspires. A quick pep-talk and a successful roll of your Avatar: The Survivor skill will be able to grant one of your allies a +20% shift on their next roll or series of rolls (whichever the GM feels is more appropriate to the situation) to make some headway with regard to surviving or defeating some obstacle inherent to the situation that menaces the ally. This could provide a bonus to digging his way out of the snow, escaping a Nazi prison cell or figuring out a cure for the plague.
91+: The Survivor recovers. The forces of fate make sure the avatar never suffers significant permanant injuries due to a deadly situation, as defined by the first channel. That means the sadistic Nazi never manages to saw off his limbs or tear out his eyes or paralyse him below the neck before the Allies can bust in and liberate him. The plague never advances to an incurable stage before the vaccine is developed. Any Failed notches and mental disorders the experience gives him quickly disappear when it’s all over. In addition, the avatar gains back triple the normal amount of wound points via convalescence, regardless of whetever he’s in a deadly situation or not.
Expect the Godwalker write up in the Dukes section soon.
For a taboo, I might add something about how most really famous survivors had to give up higher ideals/morals/mores or make some other major sacrifice in order to survive: eat human flesh, cut off their own arm to escape, use a little girl as a shield, trip their friend so the bear catches the friend first, etc. So that the taboo is something like “Put ideals/morals/temporary well-being above survival”
This fits in with how, when archetypal movie “survivor” characters decide to do more than just survive, they often end up suffering more than even the other characters do. In theory, because the Archetype is a bit pissed at their avatar.
Also re: needing to have survived something in order to advance your skill – One thing I really liked the idea of in the description of avatars is that the world tends to work to encourage them in their roles, so that a Rebel is more likely to encounter Injustice, a Mother more likely to encounter children that need caring for, a Warrior more likely to encounter his enemies, etc. So, from a “practical” point of view, as a Survivor increases his avatar skill, he’s increasingly likely to be thrown into situations where survival is challenged, allowing them a chance to increase their skill. Of course, a high-skill Survivor is likely to keep finding themselves in horrific situations, so it’s one of those archetypes where you sort of dig your own hole. On the one hand, a stronger connection the archetype makes it easier to survive difficult situations, on the other hand, it makes life increasingly full of increasingly difficult situations. Good times.
Yes, I kinda wanted to shoot for the “higher avatar skill, mo’ problems” angle. I’m sure about the “give up your ideals to survive” angle, though. I kinda thought The Survivor would be about “become a stronger person by surviving”.
Of course, your angle is a good “dark side” of The Survivor, better than the one I thought of. Pat yourself on the back for me.
It’s really the same dark side.
You do something nasty to save yourself, and it makes your the kind of person who’s not worth saving.
Different sides of the same dark side!
With the 3rd channel: “survivors” as an archetype often seems to be more… individual – The guy who survived for 14 months on a raft eating seagulls and drinking rainwater, the guy who cut off his own arm to escape being trapped by rocks, etc. I tend to see it as more a combination of luck, skill, and overwhelming single-minded survival-instinct willpower. I’d put something about isolation/helplessness checks maybe?
On the other hand, the “group survivors” is increasingly prominent. The popularity of the show “LOST” might be a bid for the Team Player Survivor. Or a way the world shows that that has already happened. A resurgence of the “Swiss Family Robinson” ideal.
Nice job. I think I might use this if an opportunity comes up.
Cool archetype.
Bear Grylls is a Survivor. The man was once in the SAS but dropped out after he survived a near fatal parachute accident. He was told by doctors and other experts he would never walk again, but now he is on TV and just “surviving” everywhere. 🙂
REALLY fun Archetype here, thank you for creating it!
I’ve been playing a character in my current UA campaign for about a year now, and for the past 2/3rds of that year she has been an Avatar of the Survivor. Our GM fiddled around with some of the details that were still up-in-the-air as of the time that I decided to have her follow the path of the Survivor, and I have to thank a lot of the commentors here – especially Neville, BRAVO sir – for helping us to work-out some more specific details about the parameters of Taboo and the types of conflict that my character would encounter as her Avatar skill rose.
The most fun I’ve had so far is handling the conflicts that arise when she’s cornered in a situation where her emotional attachment to other party members makes it hard for her to avoid breaking taboo. Just recently, 6% of her skill stats were lost when she dove into a dangerous situation in order to save someone she deeply cared for, and I find that unusual conflict between an obsessive and their obsession to be REALLY fun and fascinating.
SO I’LL SHUSH NOW, but! I wanted to thank you, and rave about the exciting practical applications of this Archetype within our game!
It might be interesting to mix Survivor avatar and entropomancer together.