Darrin’s new character sucked the least… it was an Elf mage… that was loyal… but yellow… oh, and he was a werewolf!?
Andrej’s character was blinded in his childhood… he also became a mage. Fair enough… When he rolled stingy master and had to get rid of one of his starting powers he ditched light and kept bolt (“it’s of no use to me” – uh yeah, could be useful for your party members whereas throwing around bolts WHEN YOU CAN”T SEE is going to be downright hazardous to them!?)
Oh, It gets better…
Then there was Lloyd’s Character. The “truly elder” half-orc bandit/mercenary… “Truly elder” is 100 on the d100 age table. Sure he got ten rolls on the professional table… but his strength and vigor would drop by two die types after he was done generating his character and could never be raised. Also, at the beginning of every game he was to draw a card from the deck, if it was a joker he would die of old age at the end of the session… Oh but that’s not all… during those 10 rolls on the professional table he fought in two wars which ended with many rolls on the “battle scars” table… one of which blinded him. Yeah, blind. Just like Andrej’s character… Oh, it gets better… he also ended up being a member of a secret society – The Broken Staff – their purpose: to destroy all arcane objects they come across….
So we got a cowardly (but loyal) elf-mage-werewolf, leading around a couple of blind guys… one’s another mage that likes to throw bolts around at things he can not see and an ancient scarred half-orc warrior sworn to destroy all arcane objects he comes across that just might die at any given moment…
Here’s another situation where the tables kind of break down… there’s no modifier for parents health on the age table – so according to the rolls Lloyd made concerning his parents – they would have both been alive and well… I made him add 50 to each roll and any result over 100 meant they were dead from old age. I made him add 40(?) for his siblings rolls. Despite that most of them (3 or 4, I believe) ended up still being alive!?
So on this first Savage Saturday of the year all made some new chracters… Here’s what they came up with…
Lloyd and Andre both went with Dwarf Warrior types, Ivan McGregor and Torte, respectively.
(Remember: click on the pictures for a bigger version)
Ivan McGregor (Lloyd’s Character)
Ag d8, Sm d6, Sp d6, St d8, Vg d8,
Pace 6, Parry 6, Toughness 7
Skills: Fighting d8, Shooting d6, Notice d6, Stealth d6, Intimidate d6, Throwing d8, Guts d6, Knowledge (Dwarvish History and Culture) d4, Streetwise d4, Persuasion d6
Edges: Low Light Vision, Brawny
Hindrances: Arrogant, Wanted, Quirk (braggart and racist – Dwarves are the best!)
Gear: Long Sword (St+d8), Throwing Axe (3/6/12, St+d6), Kilt, Back Pack, Rations, Flint& Steel, Hammer, Whetstone, Shovel, Knife (St+d4),
Torte (Andrej’s Character)
Ag d6, Sm d6, Sp d6, St d8, Vg d8,
Pace 5, Parry 5, Toughness 5
Skills: Fighting d8, Notice d6, Stealth d6, Intimidate d6, Guts d6, Climbing d4, Survival d6, Streetwise d6, Riding d6, Persuasion d4
Edges: low Light Vision, Arcane Resistance, Brawny
Hindrances: Overconfident, Big Mouth, Stubbourn
Gear: Battle Axe (St+d8), Kilt, Backpack, Canteen,
Amanda is still playing the character she originally rolled up – being the only one that didn’t die in the second gaming session…. She is playing Brijit Dannerwood, a halfling thief.
Brijit Dannerwod – Halfling
Ag d8, Sm d6, Sp d4, St d8, Vg d4,
Pace 6, Parry 2, Toughness 3
Skills: Notice d10, Stealth d12, Knowledge (plants) d4, Lockpicking d8, Streetwise d12, Boating d4, Persuasion d4, Healing d4, Climbing d6
Edges: Luck, Connections (Theives Guild, The White Hand), Quick
Hindrances: Doom Monger, Small, Minor Pacifist, No friends
Gear: Clothes, Lock Picks, dagger (Str+d4), back pack, spare clothes, bedroll
All are to have written backgrounds by next week or they don’t get bennies! Brijit’s background was basically rolled up, Amanda just has to come up with names for siblings and parents and whatnot. I’m interested to see what Lloyd and Andrej come up with as I insinuated that particularly detailed or interesting backgrounds might gain them bonuses to skills, attributes or possibly even edges…
I’ll be sure to add those to the blog next week!
In the meantime we played a quick little encounter on the road to Sykl, The city where the trio are headed in search of employment.
Blocking their way were four stout lads of Novsk who indicated that they (the characters) were trespassing on the land of Erik Redaxe and would have to pay The Toll… There may have been some racial slurs involved in the challenge.
Ivan decided he would have none of that and started things off by tossing his axe in their general direction… After watching it sail over their heads they shot an arrow into him. Torte pointed at the “leader” that had challenged them, in an intimidating way, and shouted “YOO, YER DEED!” and charged. So intimidated was he that he was shaken!
Torte ended up fighting two of them, Brijit charged in against one… it took Ivan a turn or two to recover from the arrow in him, he then charged in to help out the “wee one”, though in the end it was her, the minor pacifist, with no fighting skill whatsoever, that hit him and caused some 37 damage….? It worked out to 7 or 8 wounds (cut his head clean off!)
At one point the men tried to break off and run, but Ivan and Torte Chased them down. Once down Ivan went around finishing them off… (I may just give him a bonus bloodthirsty hindrance if he keeps that up!?) Tehn they collected up the weapons and loot and continued on into the city. There they spent some time trying to sell the weapons they had looted from the dead and we called it a night.
At one point during the game Ivan was explaining that a Dwarf was like “a man and a half” and thus brijit, being a Halfling, was “like…. Errrr… uh… and eighth of a dwarf…?!”
Brijit decided to point out his faulty math and countered with “well… if a dwarf is a man and a half and a Halfling is half a man shouldn’t that mean that a Halfling is a third of a dwarf…”
The cogs turned in ivans head until it hurt and he dicided it wasn’t worth trying to figure out – he knew she was less than him – a lot less than him – and that was good enough so he threatened to cut her in half if she didn’t like his math then growled menacingly and brandished his sword a moment before storming off…
The campaign is taking place in the same world as I’ll be setting my Hordes of the Things Campaign (you can see a map at the linked post).
6 comments:
HEY! That arrow hurt....a lot!
Yeah? Yah big wimp....
Torte fought for four days with an arrow through his testicle... beat that!
I truly laugh out loud about the one character leading about the two blinded characters. If this doesn't just scream an adventure (to the death), I don't know what does!
Yeah I've truly gotten my moneys worth out of that toolkit just for the laughs it's brought from simply rolling up characters - though it often makes characters that are just not playable.
We COULD have played with those characters.... but I thought the werewolf would be more of a pain in the ass for me - having to keep track of the phases of the moon and figure out what mayhem the character would have caused when he did go wolfy.... it probably would have caused much trouble for the party as they had been planning on exploring lost cities in a desert wasteland... so stuck out in the desert with no other flesh to chew on for miles around but your parties.....
They'd all have ended up dead in an adventure or two an we'd be rolling up new characters anyway. so I thought I'd cut to the chase and just have them make new, playable ones and try and get a decent campaign going.
"get a decent campaign going"
I guess you are right on this one. Why waste small amount of gaming on a pointless game?
I find when playing a campaign where you start with characters using the regular generation system it takes a LONG time for them to not suck so much... I've started giving them 5 experience (and hence a level-up) EVERY game session until they get to veteran and that seems to help. Thereafter I give them 1-3 depending on what they accomplished.
Sometimes when they've made characters I just simply say "have 20 experience" and start them off at seasoned...
This time around I gave Lloyd and Andrej 6 attribute points and 20 skill points to start with (not you Darrin, that's what you get for not showing up!) and that worked out pretty nice.
Another thing I tried - in an attempt to get the players to flesh out their own characters - was have them write detailed backgrounds for the characters. I then take the backgrounds and award bonus skills, attributes and edges based on what they've written. I've asked them to do that with this batch so we shall see what they come up with.
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