LogFAQs > #966164616

34. Oracle (Barbara Gordon)
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Bae <3

Oracle might be the singular NPC with the most lines across both campaigns. I can't say that for sure, but Oracle has 4916 results in the server. Barbara has 1899. The reason for this is that she was our boss in campaign 1. During No Man's Land, we all didn't have access to Batman or Nightwing, Alfred was lost, Robin wasn't in the city yet... Oracle was it. Half the players lived in the Clocktower with her. She was spoken to by every character so many times. She was the glue, character-wise, that brought our disparate parties together.

When I first signed up to play in campaign 1, I gave it very little thought. I was dealing with my own campaign and work, and this was just something that seemed fun that I signed on for because I know Scarlet is a comics wizard. And when I had to design a character, I went with a silly little something. After all, like this campaign, we were encouraged to have contacts with existing characters, so my one sentence pitch was: Piano player who is forever friend-zoned by Barbara Gordon. It felt like a fun idea, I had no idea she would be so central to the campaign, and I am sure Scar was laughing it up at the time.

There is so much to say about Oracle from campaign 1, but for the purposes of keeping this write-up more campaign 2 focused, I'll try to make it quick. In campaign 1, Oracle was the head of the team, as she'd be with the Birds, as she'd be with heroes in general around. In fact, Oracle was already the brain for the hero community - most scenes with Oracle started with her on her headset talking some hero through a mission they were on. But she managed to find time for us - after all, Gotham was her home, and it was pretty fucked, so that all was very important.

During campaign 1, Oracle was instrumental to most every PC in some way - Roz'etta who returned to campaign 2 found a best friend who taught her the very best of what humanity could be and that she was worth something - to herself and the planet. Spirit who was offered a real home - a place he could sleep and be safe and be taken care of. And Spirit went through some shit in campaign 1, so it was a big help. And Data 7, who was Artemis at the time, just had someone who cared for him. Others - Fastbreak, who recently joined campaign 2, went through a big maturation in campaign 1 that Barbara helped to push him along.

And then there was Fields. My character from campaign 1, who I never had any intention on chargen of actually getting anywhere with Oracle, had friendship blossom into something a bit more (which was great because Nightwing is a dick), and it helped to really centralize him as a consistent, albeit simple, character. His number one influence was Barbara, the girl who helped him out with bullies when he was younger and before she was injured, who he learned was Batgirl by accident and who influenced him to train to fight, and whose guidance he (almost) always followed after entering into the hero community.

In the world of the campaign, Fields managed to play a part of normalcy for Barbara, giving her time to be just a young woman for a change. I won't lie but the roleplay played a sort of therapeutic role for me as well. But mostly, Babs was just a kickass girl who was hyper-intelligent, very capable, her paralysis was not a disability but just a thing, and she represented a strength that perhaps only a Batfamily member could have. In campaign 1, whenever I would do rankings, she was either number 1 or number 2, depending on the day, and that would stay consistent.