Ah, the past. Isn't it so...cute?
The way this really worked out--for the short, short time it ran--is that the players made characters and we worked out individually who they seemed to "stand in for" in the original ka-tet. I wish I had those character sheets with me! It was a good group of three characters to start with, with no-one being the clear "Roland" type, so that fell to my NPC, Bango Skank, a rough brit-punk young woman who had been lost in Roland's world and Roland's shadow for years, trying to find what she was there for.
But, we lost one of the players when he moved away, and after awhile, we decided that 2 PCs and one NPC did not a party make, so we hiatus-ed. I think it more likely that the game would re-boot instead of pick up where left off if I ended up running it again.
What I do remember being very pleased with was that all the characters had strong ties to the Vietnam war--two fought in it as American soldiers, and one was the grandson of a woman who lived in a village visited by at least one of those. They were taken out of time, so discussion about timelines happened, or course--and tended to anchor around the Star Wars movies, an easy reference point. They had some introductory "What the CRAP is happening!?" action as murderous monsters tried to kill them in each of their times and lives--and they escaped through strange doors into Roland's world. There, they fought to survive their attackers, and the landscape, overcame injury, and fought a cybernetic shark that was the Guardian of one of the Beams--and in doing so became true gunslingers, adopted by the Dark Tower as additions to its story, and Roland's.
Becoming gunslingers unlocked their potential, and let me give them more character points to spend to become more badass, as well as let them begin developing a special, quasi-magical/psychic talent to use for the rest of the game. It was basically a template added to their original character stats that they didn't need to spend experience points on, they just got for being there.
The other cool thing about this chronicle was my "Ka" system--a dramatic system designed to let the PCs be badass when they really wanted to be, but that would bite them in the ass at inconvenient, dramatic times. We used a die-system that added more ten-sided dice the higher your skill. A certain number or higher shown on those dice counted as a success. The standard number was an 8 or higher. Under the Ka system, players could lower it one number for one roll only by taking one point of Ka, down to a minimum of 3 or higher for 5 points of Ka.
Too good to be true? Yes. Because as the storyteller, I could spend a point of Ka that any given player had accumulated by doing the same for any one dice-roll of an enemy, or by increasing the number needed for them to succeed, or by railroading the game in certain directions. So, gaining Ka meant losing freedom of action, or that when fate decided you had done something very important to your story, it might then try to end your story soon after--you'd have done your part, time to move on.
The players seemed to enjoy the system and the setting--the game overall, even--but there was little interest in the game, so after we lost one player, we basically stalled a short time later.
But...the story of the Dark Tower isn't over yet. With the upcoming movies/TV series, I may be inspired to dust off the old notes--and better yet, more people may be inspired to walk in the ka-tet's shoes...
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