The Caligula

Basic Information

The Caligula is a Stock Character who is the leader of a great Empire or Nation - and stark raving mad! The character trope ranges from Ax Crazy to just a Bunny Ears Lawyer, but the original Caligula (more properly named Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus Germanicus) was a murderous bastard.

Related Tropes:

• Royally Screwed Up
• President Evil

Sources

Bibliography

1. TV Tropes Wiki

Game and Story Use

• A brutally competent Caligula may also be the Big Bad Evil Guy and/or Magnificent Bastard. A less skilled one may be just The Pawn.
• Often accompanied by a sprawling entourage of bodyguards, hirelings, battle butlers, concubines, sycophants, alchemists, slaves, Praetorian Guard, friends, rivals, enemies, assassins, casanovas, torturers, etc.
  • See also Standard Royal Court.
  • Just how crazed, perverse, barbaric, and megalomaniacal you portray this character as will determine how lewd or dangerous his Royal Court will be. Do you have one inmate, or a whole asylum?
• In a magical setting, the Caligula may have some sort of Deal With The Devil, or awesome Magic and Powers that keep the state running without his needing to worry about Bureaucracy or Charisma.

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Building This Character

The primary write-up below assumes a Caligula with the basic competencies to hold together his empire for at least a year or two. Less competent Caligula's will vary quite significantly
Character Level

• High level - at least. Epic is not unheard of, and they may be more powerful than the entire adventuring party of PCs. As tempting as it may be to make The Caligula a weak little putz with a big army, that doesn't work as well in fiction and gaming as it does in real life. Authority Equals Ass Kicking is a very powerful trope, and subverting it often feels anticlimactic.

Attributes

• Social or Mental Attributes are usually the focus of the Caligula - you need at least one to keep the Empire together, especially if you're crazy.
• If your game system has solid and functional Social Mechanics, then this character needs a high rating in whatever is used to resist them. Whatever determines Willpower or Force of Personality in your system is probably a high priority.

Skills

• Social Skills help make your schemes and eggshell empire more believable.
  • Intimidation is a must, though I suppose you could replace it with Taunt or Torture if they exist as separate skills in your system.
  • Persuasion, Oratory, or Acting are good to keep the populace fooled.
  • Bureaucracy, Law, or Politics - if The Caligula doesn't have them, he'll need to lean heavily on his advisors and allies.
  • Cold Read or other Investigative skills for predicting people may help root out enemies - of course, without such skills you're left with little choice but killing imagined enemies, which fits the trope as well.
• The decadence and immorality of the Caligula should be manifested on the character sheet in some way. The aforementioned Torture is one option. Others would be Seduction, Surgery (Vivisection, really), Animal Handling (for some man-eating "pet"), Rope Use (don't ask), Melee, or Arson.

Special Abilities

• If there's anything you can take that boosts your resistance to persuasion and social rolls, it'll help make the character seem extra determined - like any good maniac should.
• Some games have a Merit or Advantage that represents Nobility, Leadership, Henchmen, Bodyguards, Wealth, Influence or the like. Any or all would be appropriate for The Caligula. Of course, the position of King or Emperor may carry a lot more power than a couple of Feats can sum up.
• Intuition or Good Luck are also possibilities. There's some potency to the archetype of the madman despot who's survived dozens of assassination attempts.

Flaws and Hindrances

• The point of the character is that they are insane, but so powerful it's overlooked. Regardless of whether or not the game has Sanity Rules, ham it up! Take your Quirks and Eccentricities to barbarous extremes.
• Since the character has so much power at their fingertips, you may want to give them a fatal flaw that can be exploited.

Variants

• The above assumes The Caligula is mad and barbaric, but still has the ability to keep a state running. However, a particularly harshly Lawful society may be reigned by an uncharismatic despot who no one dares challenge. *
  • If Fear keeps the empire running, The Caligula needs no social skills beyond Intimidation.
  • If The Caligula is just a pawn for more savvy manipulators, he might lack social skills entirely. Someone else calls the shots, while the emperor's mad whims run the nation into the ground. Such a clueless Caligula probably has much higher Physical Attributes and lower Mental ones.
  • In a magical setting, the Caligula may have some sort of Deal With The Devil, or awesome Magic and Powers that keep the state running without his needing to worry about Bureaucracy or Charisma.