We all have ‘em. As you get older, regrets pile up. It doesn’t alway mean guilt, though they’re often related. Things you said or did, injuries — slight or great — you did to someone, actions you took and shouldn’t (or worse, that you had to because you were forced to it.) Things you wanted to do…and never got to it, never had the time, never had the money, or were just too afraid to try. 

Regret is a pretty common theme when you talk to anyone in middle age or older. It’s a powerful motivator for some, and an even stronger anchor for those that let those opportunities they were too scared to go after slip by. It’s also excellent fodder for a character.

Let’s start with the Alien RPG (2nd Ed.): Marcus Fox looks to be in his 40s, but a lifetime in space — much of it in cryo — means that he is closer to 60. His hear is dark and wavy, he has got a perpetual five-o’clock shadow. He may actually not own clothes that are not tagged with the company logo or the ship’s name. He’s not certain — he hasn’t worn anything else in decades. He doesn’t talk a ton about his past except to his flight officer, Bixby: a man that has flown their ship, U.S.C.S.S. Victoria Jane for what seems forever. Fox avoids entanglements — and the wedding band on a chain he wears suggests that there might be something in his past that makes him want to keep on moving.

Maybe he shouldn’t have taken that “one last run” — but they needed the money. He knew she wasn’t happy alone, so one day she wasn’t…and told him to keep flying. Or perhaps the story was flipped, maybe he should have been more supportive of her new opportunity and in the end, space was quieter than the arguments. Either way, it’s easy to be alone. Or so he tells himself.

Noir is perfect for characters with guilt or regrets. The excellent comic book Blacksad — essentially a ‘50s detective series, but with anthropomorphic animals standing in for people as a visual for their personalities. John Blacksad is a panther who dabbles as a private detective. Always a good hook. Nosorol put out a roleplaying game based on the comics.

So here’s Henry Vaughn, a Badger Motocycle Hooligan that rides around sticking his nose where it doesn’t belong. His milestones for the game are 1) a motorcycle accident killed his sister — he was driving; 2) too poor to go to college; 3) military police during WWII; 4) can’t rejoin the “machine”. He’s like a lot of the guys that came back to America after the war — he can’t adjust to the enforced normality of being a good citizen, can’t just be a hoodlum like other bikers, and is well read, but can’t bring himself to join those beatnik fools (but he reads them, daddy-o.) He’s mean when he has to be, soft if it’s useful. He’s used to hardships — be it the beaches of Normandy or a stormy night ride on the bike, and man! you don’t want to be in his sights.

(Threes would be average, fours good — the schticks add another die to the die pool.) He a guy who wants to be respected for his smarts, but he was too poor and the posh crowd find him too blue collar (he thinks.) He feels guilt for the death of his sister, even though it wasn’t his fault. He feels regret for not having gone another way, but can’t seen to allow himself to risk to get what he wants.