House of Cards GM Log

Casting Call

posted by Ginger at 10:59 AM, July 16, 2003 | Filed under : Casting Call , NPCs , Player Characters | Comments and Followups

One of our lurkers asked how we do casting and how much input the players have into casting decisions for the game.

The players have first crack at casting their own characters and (in general) their own NPCs. If they can’t come up with a casting they like, the GMs and the other players will happily offer advice, because we’re all opinionated. I’ve gotten some good advice from the players about NPCs, and at least one player got help with a casting decision for her character.

The GMs sometimes have an idea of what we want for an NPC and sometimes it’s just what we come up with.

Martin and Merlin were cast after I saw Dogma. I keep saying this and people keep not picking up that they should worry. It turns out that Martin is actually Matt Damon in The Bourne Identity, but that was coincidental. The movie came out after he gelled that way.

Stoat and Bill Roth were both castings for type: I wanted people to hear Stoat, and James Garner is quintessential 70s everyman, which is how I see Bill Roth.

I knew when I saw Toby Stephens and James Franco (Cleph) that they had to be roughly who they ended up being. Mark wanted to cast Toby Stephens, but he was already cast in my mind.

Celina was around for a while before I realized she was Arref’s character. I saw Winifred Horan of Solas playing last summer, and knew that was who I wanted for Celina. Rosario Dawson was a compromise, because she looked more like Winifred Horan than anyone else I could find.

Some of the castings are themed. Many of the Rangers are country singers; the mothers are old 30s and 40s and 50s movie stars.

It also helps if I can find a useful picture. I have abandoned possible castings over lack of good images. The images need to be a certain size and/or quality, and they need to be suitable for futzing with Photoshop filters. Frex, the picture for Jovian was very hard to do because of the lighting. If he’d been an NPC, I probably would have recast him.

Follow up: the trackback URL for this entry is: http://www.whiterose.org/MT/mt-tb.cgi/1950

3 Comments

Arref
Jul 16, 2003 12:02 PM

There are no good pics of Win Horan--and few of Rosario Dawson. This must mean something to Celina's basic place in the universe, but I'm unsure what as yet.

Ginger
Jul 16, 2003 1:27 PM

If you ever have the chance to see Solas play, you should do it anyway (they're fantastic), but you'll see the intensity that inspired the original choice.

She's one hell of a fiddler.

Mark
Jul 18, 2003 8:37 AM

I chose that particular shot of D.B. Sweeney because I was aware that Jovian was on the younger end of the range for PCs. I wanted him to have a vaguely military bearing and a sense of resolve, but still retain a boyish quality. If I hadn't found that shot, or if it had been totally unworkable, I'd have dug up a "Strange Luck" still that made him look a little more cynical and broken-in...which may yet prove a better fit. We'll see.

The point being: Sometimes casting isn't the only step. A particular role, a particular view, may convey more of the essence of the character than another of the same individual.

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