August 2012 Archives

Tonight I recorded an interview with the Roll for News podcast, talking about Revenant and Full Moon. This was my first podcast recording, and it was pretty fun. I should do more. Thanks to Ryan Shelton for having me on!

Jamie is playing in a new Full Moon campaign, and she needs to create her character. She spends some time thinking about a character concept. She wants to play a character who has come to the moon to help people, someone whose past led her to work toward a brighter future. She decides that her character will be a nun who has opened a shelter in the community that provides relief to those down on their luck.

Sister Lois (as Jamie names her character) is good at reading people, a very handy skill when dealing with addicts and criminals. Before she took her vows, Lois was in the military. She has seen her share of violence as well as the kind of people that profit from it. It made her sick and drove her off Earth. Still, she has kept her fighting skills sharp, and she knows a bit of field medicine as well.

With this concept in mind, Jamie looks at the skill list. She knows her highest skills will be Protocol and Fighting, and she wants a decent Medicine skill as well. She decides to use the suggested array of skills. She puts her Great rating in Fighting, and her two Good ratings in Protocol and Medicine.

For her two Fair ratings, Jamie takes Persuasion (for talking her clients through their problems) and Athletics (as Lois keeps herself in good shape). Her three Average skills go into Investigation (as she is just generally alert), as well as Mechanics and Survival (left over from her military training). This leaves Lois with Mediocre ratings in Infiltration, Scholarship, and Vehicles.

Thinking about it some more, Jamie decides to lower her Fighting to Good and her Medicine to Fair. This gives her two skill points back to buy Specialties and Stunts. She likes the idea of being able to size up groups as well as individuals, so Jamie buys the Human Terrain stunt for her Protocol skill. She wants to hone Lois' combat skills, making her more defensive, so she also buys the Ballistic Probabilities stunt for Fighting. Finally, she buys a Fighting specialty in Rifles and a Protocol specialty in Bullshit Detection, giving her an extra +1 with those skills when the specialties apply.

Jamie thinks about her Aspects for a while. She wants them to be evocative and interesting, but not too complicated to explain. Her first aspect sums up her core concept, World-Wise Nun. Another aspect speaks of her background in the military, which she writes down as Hoorah! Sister Lois wants to help people, because she believes Everyone Can Be Saved. Unfortunately, she still has a cynical streak, because The World is Full of Assholes. Jamie decides to leave her final aspect undefined until the other players have finished their characters. That way, she can forge a connection to another character with a mechanical benefit.

Jamie finishes up by noting that the refresh rate is 5. She jots down any mundane equipment she thinks Sister Lois would have (a rifle, for instance), as well as a brief description of the sister herself.

The Revenant Kickstarter ended successfully Sunday night, and yesterday I released the rules document to the backers. The game will be available here in a few months.

I will be attending Gen Con in Indianapolis next week. Unlike other game designers whose blogs you may read -- and quite a few of them are doing similar blog posts around this time -- I'm not doing anything in an official capacity. At this point in my life, Gen Con is my vacation. I'm going to be playing in a few games and attending some panels.

We have unlocked three of the first four stretch goals at the Revenant Kickstarter, so I went ahead and announced a new one: a second game to be released in a similar fashion.Revenant Kickstarter Update #3