28 March

Essential Builds – Conan O’Brien

Written by Ryan Costello

Essential Builds Leave a Comment

It’s a good thing Essence20 settings are team-based, because today’s build needs a friend.

Welcome to Essential Builds, the blog that ties Essence20 strings to popular culture icons and makes them dance.

I’m Ryan Costello, one of the designers of the Essence20 system and an author on the G.I. JOE, Transformers, and My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebooks. As of this writing, I’ve written over 300 000 words for Essence20, contributing to over a dozen products and counting.

I give you the Conan O’Brien Essence20 build! There’s nothing on Earth like a genuine, bona-fide, electrified, talk show host player character! Conan O’Briiiiiiiiiiiiiiien!

Who Is Conan O’Brien?

One day, a former The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live writer was given the chance to host Late Night, the talk show on after The Tonight Show on NBC. He had minimal performing experience, no name value, and an undeniable awkwardness. But he had the endorsement of Lorne Michaels, who saw Conan as a generational talent when no one else did.

Conan O’Brien has been a household name ever since. Never out of the spotlight for long, he has over three decades of experience hosting multiple talk shows, and now has one of the top rated podcasts in the world. New generations of fans continue to discover him thanks to his The Simpsons cameos, award show hosting gigs, and an unhinged Hot Ones appearance.

Which is all very interesting, but probably doesn’t answer your biggest question: Why would I build Conan O’Brien as a character in an action & adventure roleplaying game? It’s honestly OK if you don’t get it, you’re not wrong.

Building Essence20 Conan O’Brien

The weirdest thing about this build is how easily it came together. The second weirdest thing about this build is that I decided against using a Transformers Origin to make Conan O’Brien a robot who turns into a clown car.

Comedy is this build’s central theme, and there’s a bunch of Essence20 options that fit. Conan also makes a big deal about his poor Irish Catholic upbringing in Brooklyn, Massachusetts. We avoid tying options to ethnicities, of course, but we’ll see what I can find to represent that part of his background. He’s also highly educated and highly vertical. Not the most important details to cover, but if I can translate his freakish height into Essence20 options, I’ll go for it.

Role

Spirit of Laughter (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

The last time Spirit of Laughter appeared in Essential Builds, it was for a sadistic undead warlock with a dark sense of humour. Some things never change.

I kid! This time we’re going with a much more straightforward use of this My Little Pony Role.

The Role starts with a pool of Cheer. He can spend Cheer to reroll failed Performance Skill Tests. Conan is a master at throwing shade at a joke that didn’t work to win the audience back.

Next, the Role gives Laugh Tactics. We get a lot of these as we progress, making Spirit of Laughter one of Essence20’s more customizable Roles. We have a lot of good options, too. Send In The Clown, which lets us use Performance for Initiative Skill Tests. Clever Mind lets us spend Cheer to use our Cleverness instead of our other Defenses. Finally, Side Splitter gives us a Performance-based attack, which saves us having to give Conan O’Brien nunchucks and a rocket launcher. It’s a powerful ability, and a great opportunity to roleplay the jokes that hurting our enemies.

Speaking of which, Spirit of Laughter has one of the most meta Perks in the whole system: Crack Up The 4th Wall. Once per scene, if you make the GM laugh, you gain a Cheer point.

The rest of the Role Perks follow a similar trend, turning expressions about laughter into abilities for an adventurer. I haven’t read the Role in a while so naturally I cracked up reading some of the names.

Yes, I wrote this Role.

Faction

G.I. JOE (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

Behold!

That’s right, one of my motivations for this build was to reference an obscure on location bit Conan did for The Late Show. He visited Hasbro HQ and had them walk him through the toy design process by creating a Conan O’Brien G.I. JOE. He joined the likes of Sgt Slaughter, William “The Refrigerator” Perry, and “Rowdy” Roddy Piper as celebrities turned into JOEs, although he was never released at retail. Still, that was enough to justify G.I. JOE as our Faction choice.

Funny enough, I had another option. In the banter segment of one of the first episodes of Conan O’Brien Needs A Friend that I listened to, he tells his staff that he wants to institute a dress code where they wear jumpsuits and mirrors on their faces. I was sitting there thinking “He’s describing Cobra!”

Even better, Conan O’Brien and Cobra Commander share a nickname: CoCo.

All that to say, I usually struggle with a build’s Faction, but there are Conan canon arguments for two.

Focus

Exemplar (G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Cobra Codex)

Ready to overthink? We’re making Conan O’Brien an Analyst Exemplar!

The Exemplar Officer Focus fills the squad leader archetype, and gives access to a fairly flexible selection of Role Perks from a different Role.

The Analyst is one of my favourite Roles. It’s a data junky, approaching combat with forethought and intelligence.

One of my favourite Conan O’Brien moments comes from his appearance on Inside The Actor’s Studio. He tells James Lipton about how he is most in his own head when discussing comedy. He did an impression of himself, saying “That might be the funniest thing I’ve ever heard” with the gravity of giving a widow your condolences.

Analyze Target, Informed Accuracy, Unsurprising, and Determine Probability are all Analyst Role Perks that reflect how Conan approaches not just comedy, but his interviews. More than most talk show hosts, Conan has the ability to make his guests at ease. He feels their vibe as soon as they sit down and knows whether to start playfully, go with ginger small talk, or to tee them up and let them swing.

Origin

Brainy (Power Rangers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

I had a choice to make. Brainy or Comedic.

Both of these Power Rangers Origins represent what makes Conan O’Brien so endearing. I didn’t know it, but I was learning about American history when I was watching The Simpsons as a kid because Conan O’Brien and the rest of the writing room threw in rapid fire weird facts and references that no one else was talking about. I was compelled to listen to Conan’s podcast after he appeared on 99% Invisible to discuss The Power Broker, Robert Caro’s biography of New York city planner Robert Moses.

When I must decide between two thematically appropriate options, I see which is less thematically and mechanically redundant.

Both themes are covered by our Role. Spirit of Laughter brings the comedy, and Analyst Exemplar brings the brains. It skews comedy, as it should. Conan’s a smart comedian, not a funny scholar.

The mechanics brought the tie-breaker. Brainy lets us petition the GM for a clue*. This mirror’s Conan’s ability to formulate a joke by pulling a deeply obscure reference out of nowhere. Conversely, Comedic’s Origin Perk adds a Story Point to the pool when we make “[our] teammates, [our] opponents, or both laugh with [our] antics”. While gaining both Cheer and a Story Point would be an economical use of our comedy, I’d rather diversify our abilities.

*Technically costing a Story Point, but considering that’s a standard use of Story Points in G.I. JOE, MLP, and Transformers, I’d argue the Brainy Origin Perk should let us gain that benefit for free.**

**It’s been pointed out to me by Renegade Discord moderator Matthew that Brainy was errataed in the recently released second printing of the Power Rangers Core Rulebook. It now lets you roll a Smarts-based Skill as if you were Specialized once per scene. That’s great. I wasn’t completely satisfied with my Smarts Skills selections. I debated whether to give Conan Culture (History) +d6 or Culture +d8. I was also weary of the low Awareness I gave him, considering an Analyst ability ties into it. The new version of Brainy solves all Conan’s Smarts issues!

Influences

1st Crowdpleaser (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

2nd Party Maestro (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

3rd Morale Booster w/Vainglorious Hang-Up (Transformers Roleplaying Enigma of Combination/Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)

A lot of the options so far center around the funniness of Conan as a comedian. Crowdpleaser highlights Conan as a performer. The Influence Perk provides upshifts on Performance Skill Tests based on the side of the audience. Will an adventure put Conan in front of 1000s to maximize the Crowdpleaser bonus at ↑3? Not often. But when it happens!

Party Maestro is a flavour-heavy Influence that does two things: instantly start a party, and add a Friendship/Story Point to the pool. This represents the spontaneity of The Late Show. You never knew if Conan was about to introduce a guest or a sketch, or if you were already in the middle of the Sketch. Party Maestro’s Hang-Up, which is flavoured around people being annoyed with the non-stop nonsense, goes out to the readers shaking their head every time I describe Conan as funny.

Finally, Morale Booster, the Influence that puts people in better moods. Weirdly, most of the Performance-based options up to this point have centered around selfishness and trickery. I thought we could use one altruistic option. But, because you can’t make millions of dollars telling jokes unless you think highly of yourself, I paired it with the Vainglorious Hang-Up.

Essence Scores and Skills

Social 8

I went all in: 6 Ranks in Performance and a Specialization in Comedy. Then, just for a little variety, I went with 1 Rank in Streetwise.

Smarts 6

I gave Conan 4 Ranks in Culture, although I considered a History Specialization. He probably has one in his future, but for now +d8 in all things Culture felt more appropriate than +d6 for most things Culture. The other 2 Smarts Skill Points went into Alertness.

Strength 1

I wanted to represent Conan’s fireproof turn on Hot Ones but couldn’t decide between Brawn of Conditioning. I went with Conditioning, but I’m still not sure.

Speed 1

Because you can’t have 0 in an Essence Score, and because we don’t need Initiative, I gave Conan 1 Rank in Driving. This is 100% a reference to the Late Night skits where he picked up a steering wheel and took his desk for a drive.

Conclusion

Let’s be honest: The Spirit of Laughter does most of this build’s heavy lifting. That said, I think the Analyst Exemplar Focus adds depth and dynamism. There is no other Spirit of Laughter build like this one. I didn’t go into General Perks this time around, but Human Companion from Transformers to represent Andy and Sona would be fun and further separate this from your average Spirit of Laughter build.

Hopefully Conan would approve of this build. If not, don’t worry, I’m lawyered up!