Godbound RPG and Dalianna Wavecrest
I sort of have to talk about the two together, I think. So, Kit started gearing up to run a little plot in the future of FurryFaire via Discord. Frankly, I'm not so enamored with Discord as a venue for roleplaying, but I see it's got ups and downs so... meh to that part. While Godbound is based on playing growing divine characters, it does have rules for mortals/heroic mortals, and the pitch involved making characters as the latter. As usual, I was fairly slow to really sit down and take a look, though as the game design has a high degree of overlap with d20 D&D the shock wasn't too great.
There are a few inherent "problems" in applying it to Faire, though. Now, in fairness, that would be true of virtually any RPG system. The MUCK's reality has been shaped by the systems used before, and any new one introduces things that suddenly can or cannot be done or simply function differently. The Gifts appear to fit in Godbound as a major component of what divine characters can do. Heroic mortals have more limited access to these, but they can still be pretty character-defining powers and they run the gamut fitting perfectly to being something totally unheard of before in Faire. The Strifes, supernatural martial arts, feel very out of place to me as well. Have I seen previous characters who could fight unarmed with supernatural powers? Sure, but they had a very, very different feel to them. And in particular, the one that allows a character to attack and deal damage with literally no one noticing feels like a terrible design feature for any game that could include PVP actions (which is a bit more likely on a MUCK/etc. than tabletop). But... it is what it is. Without a lot of effort redesigning and tweaking, it's not going to fit the existing paradigm any better, so it's probably easier to work to adjust expectations.
So with this framework and the pitch of an Orient Express-like train voyage as the initial setting, I pondered characters. Rationally, I knew I needed to create someone who was at least moderately social and not stand-offish. Playing any sort of sits-in-the-corner or solo-focused type is really only digging a deeper hole when I'm starting off as an introvert myself. Of course, knowing and doing are different things. I opted for someone not directly tied to previous characters - too much baggage there, though I did toss around the idea of another hoomiku. Though I supposed Lairu still left a mark on me as I ended up gravitating toward a sun-touched lutrai. Mention that one of the larger populations of them was in the Roan Islands, a land previously defined as sort of a Caribbean-style collection of pirate isles. I figure in a hundred or so years, villages could become towns and the place could grown into a shipping hub that's a bit less chaotic.
And so I put together Dalianna Wavecrest, daughter of a reasonably well-off merchant family. The Wavecrest family, as envisioned, has a moderate fleet that does shipping as well as hiring out as escorts and pirate-hunters. It seems a good background to make someone idealistic about doing the right thing and standing up for the little guy. Add a little daeva heritage (potentially, but not explicitly, descended from Lairu) and I've got a good paladin-pirate. Piratedin? Pallyrat? Oof. That's allllmost enough that I think I should have made her a rodent. So she's seen some legitimate fighting at sea, has knowledge of sailing and trading, and has a couple solar-based Gifts. Between her heritage and the family business, it makes sense that she'd be very into stories of heroism, including legends of Rymian chainbreakers - so I gave her a little side-habit of seeking out new chapbooks of adventure to read. It all fell together pretty well, I think.
And when Kit heard about it, he made some off-hand comment like "Oh, you made the perfect character for this," which made me immediately think there would be vampires involved. And that's a little funny because her solar corona effect lets her deal damage that is 1) magical and 2) counts as natural sunlight against vulnerable creatures - neither of which was said to matter when we actually encountered the vampire, so she really wasn't in any better position than anyone else.
I remain a bit unsure where to go with Dalianna, though. The first couple levels came fast - like, really fast. I can't pursue any more Gifts until level 4, though, so more supernatural stuff is sort of out. And other Talents? Hmm. If I wanted to really be able to kick butt, there's a strife or two that give some majorly useful combat ability. I still have trouble justifying "supernatural martial arts" thought. There's a water-legacy talent that sort of fits for an otter, but goes full on "you can breath water," which again feels like a bit too much. Numbers-wise, it might make sense to boost her strength to better use the heavy cutlass that just fell into her hands, though it's only situationally better than relying on her own aura and I don't really see her as above average in strength. I don't know, I'm sort of stuck on deciding her level 3 Talent because she managed to be pretty much what I imagined at level 1. Is that a strange problem to have?
Social ties among characters in the game strike me as a bit odd so far. Most of the PC characters have been met and pulled in by NPCs, thus having the most connection with them. The PCs in general sort of came together to confront the vampire and are hanging out together, so that's not terrible, though that encounter went so quickly there wasn't much "bonding through shared danger" or anything. And some characters have paired up really fast, making for a different sort of awkwardness in some cases. I feel it'd be premature to really judge things at this point, so I guess we'll see how things play out.
There are a few inherent "problems" in applying it to Faire, though. Now, in fairness, that would be true of virtually any RPG system. The MUCK's reality has been shaped by the systems used before, and any new one introduces things that suddenly can or cannot be done or simply function differently. The Gifts appear to fit in Godbound as a major component of what divine characters can do. Heroic mortals have more limited access to these, but they can still be pretty character-defining powers and they run the gamut fitting perfectly to being something totally unheard of before in Faire. The Strifes, supernatural martial arts, feel very out of place to me as well. Have I seen previous characters who could fight unarmed with supernatural powers? Sure, but they had a very, very different feel to them. And in particular, the one that allows a character to attack and deal damage with literally no one noticing feels like a terrible design feature for any game that could include PVP actions (which is a bit more likely on a MUCK/etc. than tabletop). But... it is what it is. Without a lot of effort redesigning and tweaking, it's not going to fit the existing paradigm any better, so it's probably easier to work to adjust expectations.
So with this framework and the pitch of an Orient Express-like train voyage as the initial setting, I pondered characters. Rationally, I knew I needed to create someone who was at least moderately social and not stand-offish. Playing any sort of sits-in-the-corner or solo-focused type is really only digging a deeper hole when I'm starting off as an introvert myself. Of course, knowing and doing are different things. I opted for someone not directly tied to previous characters - too much baggage there, though I did toss around the idea of another hoomiku. Though I supposed Lairu still left a mark on me as I ended up gravitating toward a sun-touched lutrai. Mention that one of the larger populations of them was in the Roan Islands, a land previously defined as sort of a Caribbean-style collection of pirate isles. I figure in a hundred or so years, villages could become towns and the place could grown into a shipping hub that's a bit less chaotic.
And so I put together Dalianna Wavecrest, daughter of a reasonably well-off merchant family. The Wavecrest family, as envisioned, has a moderate fleet that does shipping as well as hiring out as escorts and pirate-hunters. It seems a good background to make someone idealistic about doing the right thing and standing up for the little guy. Add a little daeva heritage (potentially, but not explicitly, descended from Lairu) and I've got a good paladin-pirate. Piratedin? Pallyrat? Oof. That's allllmost enough that I think I should have made her a rodent. So she's seen some legitimate fighting at sea, has knowledge of sailing and trading, and has a couple solar-based Gifts. Between her heritage and the family business, it makes sense that she'd be very into stories of heroism, including legends of Rymian chainbreakers - so I gave her a little side-habit of seeking out new chapbooks of adventure to read. It all fell together pretty well, I think.
And when Kit heard about it, he made some off-hand comment like "Oh, you made the perfect character for this," which made me immediately think there would be vampires involved. And that's a little funny because her solar corona effect lets her deal damage that is 1) magical and 2) counts as natural sunlight against vulnerable creatures - neither of which was said to matter when we actually encountered the vampire, so she really wasn't in any better position than anyone else.
I remain a bit unsure where to go with Dalianna, though. The first couple levels came fast - like, really fast. I can't pursue any more Gifts until level 4, though, so more supernatural stuff is sort of out. And other Talents? Hmm. If I wanted to really be able to kick butt, there's a strife or two that give some majorly useful combat ability. I still have trouble justifying "supernatural martial arts" thought. There's a water-legacy talent that sort of fits for an otter, but goes full on "you can breath water," which again feels like a bit too much. Numbers-wise, it might make sense to boost her strength to better use the heavy cutlass that just fell into her hands, though it's only situationally better than relying on her own aura and I don't really see her as above average in strength. I don't know, I'm sort of stuck on deciding her level 3 Talent because she managed to be pretty much what I imagined at level 1. Is that a strange problem to have?
Social ties among characters in the game strike me as a bit odd so far. Most of the PC characters have been met and pulled in by NPCs, thus having the most connection with them. The PCs in general sort of came together to confront the vampire and are hanging out together, so that's not terrible, though that encounter went so quickly there wasn't much "bonding through shared danger" or anything. And some characters have paired up really fast, making for a different sort of awkwardness in some cases. I feel it'd be premature to really judge things at this point, so I guess we'll see how things play out.
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