Snake Plissken – The Role Model

If you know me, you know I’m all about playing the character. I like my characters like I like my muscle cars: lean, mean, and totally AWESOME. So today I’m taking one of my favorite characters of all time and breaking him down into what makes him the perfect role model. (RPG role model. Please don’t actually be Snake Plissken.)

The Setup

In John Carpenter’s Escape from New York, Manhattan has been walled off and turned into one giant prison. Once you go in, you don’t come out. When the President’s plane goes down inside, the government offers a captured ex-commando named Snake Plissken a deal: bring the President back and walk free. To make sure he doesn’t just wander off, they inject him with tiny explosives that will kill him in less than a day unless he makes it back in time.

Snake gets in, makes friends, enemies and a lot of dead people, and gets out with the President. Then the President shrugs off the people who died saving him, so Snake swaps the all-important tape for a novelty music cassette and destroys the real one. Mic drop.

Sound familiar? It should. A deniable asset, sent into a walled-off zone by people who don’t trust him, with a bomb only his employer can switch off. That’s a Shadowrun pitch. Swap Manhattan for something like the Chicago Containment Zone and the capsules for a cortex bomb, and you’ve got your next run.

How to Build Your Own Snake

1. Start with enemies. Snake walks into the story with people who want him dead, and that means conflict from the first scene. Conflict is story, and your GM will thank you for the fuel. Next runner you make, give them someone who’d pay good nuyen to see them flatlined.

2. Add frenemies. Snake keeps bumping into people he knows. They aren’t friends, exactly, and they aren’t enemies either. They tolerate each other just enough to get the job done. In Shadowrun terms, that’s half your contact list.

3. Give them a backstory that explains their skills. Snake is a decorated ex-Special Forces soldier who turned to crime after the government betrayed him. That one line explains why he can do what he does and why he hates the people giving him orders. A former corp security operative who got hung out to dry does the same job for a runner.

4. Pick a look and commit. Snake wears an eyepatch. Annnnd that covers that. He’s also got a cobra tattoo on his stomach that presumably trails down… well. One or two striking details beat a paragraph of description every time.

5. Talk less. Snake barely speaks, so every word counts. A little brooding goes a long way.

6. Earn a reputation. When Snake’s partner was caught and killed, the whole underworld assumed Snake went down with him. So everyone he meets says some version of “Snake Plissken? I heard you were dead.” Give your runner a rep that walks into the room before they do, and maybe a rumor they’d rather nobody checked.

7. Have a code. Snake’s a criminal, but he cares about people who put their lives on the line for what they believe in. When the inmates who helped him die and the President can’t be bothered to care, Snake makes him pay for it. He’s been burned by the government before, and he isn’t about to hand it a win for free. That’s the difference between an antihero and a thug.

The Real Secret: Transition

The best stories are about a character who changes. They start with one set of ideals, and the conflicts in front of them push them somewhere new. Snake begins as a bad guy forced into a job he doesn’t want. By the end, either he’s learned to be a better man or the story has shown us the good that was there all along. Honestly, it doesn’t matter which. Either way, we know the real Snake Plissken by the last scene, and he’s a character you’ve grown to love.

That’s the goal for your runner too. (If this sounds familiar, it’s the Personal Demons formula from my Best Character Formulas article. Snake is the poster boy.)

Now go rewatch it. I know I’m going to.