Session 0: Character Creation

[Rusty Tincanne]

Character sheet is up with all the info you all have put in so far, as well as a working instinct.

Backstory (rough draft): Rand's father is a peasant farmer, eking out a living in the countryside. Life was hard and there were too many mouths to feed, so he and a sibling were sold/bartered to a monastery as children (~7 or 8 years old) in exchange for a handful of coppers and a piglet. A great deal for his parents who not only had money and livestock, but fewer mouths to feed. At least that is how he remembers it, and though he is still a bit bitter, he recognizes that his life is better for it, having had regular meals (gruel, gruel and more gruel), shelter and an education.
Alas, the time came where Rand has been set forth on the world to repeat the tale. His "job" is to spread the faith by making it seem like a great life. And to purchase children to enter his profession.

While he will probably pickup the peasant trait, he won't be fond of using it. His belief will likely tie into having become more than his humble beginnings - and not wanting to do menial work. Unlikely to succeed at that if he is to purchase unwanted children and take them to the monastery, though.

Something like that, at any rate.

-----------------------------------------------

While staying characterful, I am trying to fill in some gaps I am seeing in our party: mapper, survivalist and healer. My hometown (Markarth) should help with the former, and being a cleric will help with the latter two. Seeing as we have two fighters already I don't know if I will add more to that. How many more skills do we get to allot, out of curiosity?

I also notice none of us have any dungeoneering experience (so far)! Lots of beginners luck tests, possibly.

[thesniperknight1]

Welcome Rusty

[Rusty Tincanne]

Thanks Sniperknight.

I posted all that earlier because it seems like a good idea (for our character's lives and monetary successes) to have a well-rounded skill set and inventory. If you lot want to go at it more organically, I am happy to do that, too.

If you are interested in sharing character plans, what were you planning in specializing in? What are your planned strengths? What skills do you think it is important to have covered?

[thesniperknight1]

Well, my character is a fighter but his real skill is a criminal, lock picking, pickpocket, defusing situations or bluffing, haggling for lower prices and such. So I am more of use when there is a humanoid creature of intelligence, I have that covered but not much use in a dungeon I suppose, other than fighter and maybe lock picking.

Although, I must say that I made my skills completely based on the character rather than usefulness, so I don't know if I should change my approach.

[drpete]

Hey Rusty! Welcome!

We haven't, as you can see, really gone into this thinking about how we do or don't "mesh" with each other, or trying to optimize (yet) though I'm open to it in the last couple of choices.

After this, we have social graces and specialty, I think, so we can spread that around to plug missing holes, etc. As you say, we don't have everything covered, though it's hard, and I think we have to have gaps.

I think our academic overlap and and the religious connection between the paladin and cleric make sense, but dunno now about the thief, since I went with alchemy rather than criminal in the hometown step. A key specialty could make that work well.

[C. Steven Ross]

To all: Yes, I think it's a good idea to take character building more slowly and not jump ahead to conclusions until all the pieces have been put in place. I mean, don't let that stop you from planning, just be open-minded about how your concept might evolve during the process.

MrHemlocks: still waiting on your Home choices.

[MrHemlocks]

To all: Yes, I think it's a good idea to take character building more slowly and not jump ahead to conclusions until all the pieces have been put in place. I mean, don't let that stop you from planning, just be open-minded about how your concept might evolve during the process.

MrHemlocks: still waiting on your Home choices.

Think he is done now. I wish you can send us a PDF of the rules to help better flush out our characters. There seems to be so much missing/unexplained.

[drpete]

Hi Mr Hemlocks,

Resolutions in the system are done with a dice pool mechanic. You roll a number of d6s, and 4,5,6 is a success, 1,2,3 is a failure. Obstacles vary, but simple things are 1-2 successes. You can get extra dice through help, equipment, etc. Our starting dice pools are in the range 2-4 dice, which are the numbers we are talking about in this part of the character creation. Those you don't have use half of either health or will until you learn them.

Traits are things about you that you use to either help you or hurt you... for example, my guy is thoughtful, so I can be helped by that by saying that my action has been carefully considered, or hurt by it by saying that I dithered too long rather than acting decisively.

We are stepping through a character creation questionnaire at this point. There are about half a dozen steps, and we are on step two. Broadly, the steps are (not necessarily in this order, I'm sort of trying to remember the steps here):

health/will & choose one skill for being human
choose a hometown
choose your preferred way of communicating (choose a skill to add or improve)
choose a specialty (choose a skill to add or improve)
consider how stereotypically "human" you are (a questionnaire about attitudes)
determine your social connections (questionnaire about friends and family)
determine equipment (from a starting list)

[C. Steven Ross]

Whoa, I think US just ate a post of mine.

Yes, what Dr Pete said.

Also since you asked, here is a link. Though I kind of doubt it will help you all that much.

For your starting skills, the format is that if you get a numeric value, it completely replaces the "Will" or "Health" and that those ability scores pretty much never come to factor into that skill ever again. So, your skills should be:

Fighter 3
Orator 3
Rider 3
Theologian 2
Ritualist 2
Survivalist 3

It looks like you picked Solitude as your home town. Great! Next time, please tell the whole group what you are doing and don't just update the character sheet.
Look at the description of Solitude on the World Map post. Pick one skill and one trait that you think best fits your character. Add the trait to your traits list. Since your character doesn't have a number, a rating, in any of the skills offered at Solitude (Commander, Cartographer, Scholar), the one you pick gets it's "Will" removed and you write in "2". Tell us about it.

[thesniperknight1]

I may be going too fast but does that mean that it might be better to not advance in a skill and simply use it as Will or Health? cause even if you only use half of it, if it's 4 you roll 2d6, while if you just learned the skill you would only have 1, which is just 1d6, but the way I understand it if you succeed enough times you advance automatically which can hinder you for some time. And what about skills that have neither health or will? Are they skills that can only be learned through a special mean like researching or studying? I know that I am getting ahead but I was just curious

[C. Steven Ross]

Good question, and smart thinking ahead.

There are scenarios where you would, if acting alone, be better off using an Ability (Health, Will; halved) with Beginner's Luck than you would a rated skill of 2 (an in rare instances you can have a skill at 1). The biggest thing you're missing, though, is that using Beginner's Luck halves all the Helping dice as well as the ability dice. When you make a test with a rated skill, you can expect another 1-3 dice added in from your friends Helping you out. If you're relying on your bare abilities and it's Beginner's Luck, those dice get halved and you tend to end up with a lower net value. Also! you need to be rated in a skill to Help one of your friends. So when you get a new rating in a skill, it improves you on multiple fronts.

There are no skills with neither Health nor Will. Are you talking about the abilities like Circles and whatnot? Those tend to get tested and improved at Town. Nature also can replace a skill you're not good at, so that gets advanced during adventuring here and there.

Your relations in your home Town, btw, can be convinced to teach you skills (or spells) that they know. The means of doing that is dependent on how you go about describing your actions within the fiction. Also, the Mentor skill can be used to teach skills.

[drpete]

Skill advancement comes from using a skill... Some number of passed rolls and some failed rolls advances the skill by one. A skill like scholar might be tested in a library, or alchemy through experimentation (trying to make something). Mentor lets you add a check to a skill someone else has, so they will advance faster.

Note that skill checks are the "clock" so you can't just spam skill checks to improve, or you'll get hungry and tired.

[Rusty Tincanne]

...or trying to optimize (yet) though I'm open to it in the last couple of choices.

After this, we have social graces and specialty, I think, so we can spread that around to plug missing holes, etc. As you say, we don't have everything covered, though it's hard, and I think we have to have gaps.

I like your thinking. Work on making a solid, satisfying, playable character, then worry about our cohesiveness/effectiveness as a group in the last few steps. That is making me think about a few changes in what I have so far, though I doubt I will. The biggest problem is that I always think I know what my character is, but the first few posts tell me what they want to be.

Regarding hometown: I listed the town where the monastery is located. Should I have used his actual hometown where he was born? I am guessing I did it right since he is picking up skills form the town - and that is where he was when older.
Regarding skills and traits: I will be taking the skill Cartographer and trait Cunning.

[C. Steven Ross]

Yep, you're good!

[drpete]

Rusty,

That's why I try to avoid going too deep with background before play. I often feel that if those details don't impact play (an old romance or a blood feud that never leaves the background fiction) what was the point?

I'm curious to see how this games approach will alter that. Concrete npcs and concrete rules for interacting with them might bring that to life, a bit

As to the optimization question, we haven't even talked about how the game makes you sweat blood to keep your belly filled and your torch lit, so I'm not gonna sweat if we don't have a cook or a dungeoneer

[thesniperknight1]

Can we use NPCs for skills like cooking?.........Okay we are going too fast

[drpete]

Knight,

I don't think we can count on help from npcs for cooking, though we don't absolutely need the skill.

We'll bring rations. One portion of rations will provide one meal for one person. With the cook skill, we can stretch that to feed the whole party. To use it to turn fresh rations to a meal for the party takes 2 successes in the dice pool. To make preserved rations stretch takes 3. If I have a skill 2 in cook, I am going to have trouble, but I can enlist help, and get extra dice. I can get an alchemist to give me sone spices, and have a laborer gather wood, etc. if I brought garlic, I can add it for an extra die, etc.

If I don't have the skill, I use half my...will, but I also halve any help dice.

If I pass, woo hoo, big meal. If I fail, I might've burnt it, or the smell might attract something bad, or maybe we eat it, but all get sick.

Whether we get the cook skill will be one of the determining factors for how long we can stay in the dungeon before our food runs out, but it's not absolutely necessary.

[thesniperknight1]

I didn't know it was that important.....until now I couldn't have learned that skill, if we continue character creation and that and that skill becomes available, I will be sure to choose it . What about dungeoniering? Should I change criminal back to 3 and get it as a skill?

[drpete]

Hey Knight,

Actually, I think you do have dungeoneer skill already, now that I look at your sheet Not particularly trying to push anybody toward anything in particular, and we'll get another skill choice down the road, but I don't think we'll be able to cover "everything"... sort of the point, I think

On a related note, I notice that (through no fault of your own, just the order of your selections) you end up with haggler 2 where if you chose haggler as your "human" skill, and criminal as your hometown skill, you would get haggler 3 instead and everything else would be the same... maybe that would be an ok tweak, Steven?

[C. Steven Ross]

I'm down with that change, yeah.