Finding Family (character creation)

Hi y’all! I forgot to make a character thread to discuss character ideas! I am akin to a fool!

Copying from the main page:
*EDITED FOR CLARITY - Per a question from Samaritan elsewhere, when finished with your character you should have two class special abilities, two skills (one from your class, one free pick), and two to three Heritage monster moves.

Follow-up thoughts on this game and characters being made for it.

Planedawn Orphans, the campaign framework we're using, has a handful of themes rumbling along under its hood. Here they are, with some editorializing by me.

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When making your character, consider what relationships might already exist between them and another PC. Consider "atypical" relationships for a fantasy adventure game... parents and children? Mentors and mentees? Brothers and sisters? Friends, not rivals? Consider whether or not you have these relationships now, or if they're something you're interested in building towards (bearing in mind the glacially-slow pace of PbP of course).
When making your character, consider how the expectations/demands/privileges/curses of their old lives and old worlds have been disrupted. Consider media touchstones such as Star Trek (2009) in which Spock (Zachary Quinto) observes "Whatever our lives might have been [...] our destinies have changed." What happens when a Big Bad Evil Guy outlives the unjust world he sought to remake? What happens when a heroic Chosen One fails to save her world in the nick of time?
Consider when making your character the ways they their perspective has been broadened by The City and the Planes that border it. Food, culture, clothing, art, communities, song, dance, crafts, language... you are submerged in a sea of millions upon millions upon millions of lifestyles. Are there people that you have claimed (or want to play towards claiming) as your own? Are you filling the space of something lost with something new and different?

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The fact that Planedawn Orphans takes the protagonists all across the multiverse in pursuit of reality-creating artifacts, means that there is so much room for a variety of story types and story tones and I find that super inspiring.

When putting together stories for this campaign, I really want to try and channel those kind of metanarrative vibes you see in a lot of multigenre works. I'm thinking specifically of things like Planetary or Sandman, wherein every story has a different feel, follows the rules of the specific genre being emulated, yet remains part of the overall narrative. Am I going to capture those vibes? Legitimately, no idea. Are they going to be at the top of my vision board? Yeah.

Thanks for all the thematic stuff, Al, it looks dope. Planetary is one of my faves too.

Rolling stats!

Happy to offer it up, Sam. Gotta get everybody seeing what’s in my brain somehow! Plus, gotta trick people into reading Planetary, of course.

If my memory serves me right, looks like you’ve got a stat line of 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 2. Not bad at all!

Okay, here's a WIP:

Name: Livia Halfwoven
Stats: Str +1, Dex +1, Con 0, Int +2, Wis 0, Cha +1
Race: Half-Fae
Class: Necromancer
- Class Skill: Decipher
- Personal Skill: Heal
- Ability: Summon - (Spirits TBD)
- Ability: Dark Visions - Commune with the recently dead to ask a question (Modification of Cleric's Vision ability, if you're cool with it Al?)
- Heritage Move: (From Sprite) - Play a trick to expose someone’s true nature
- Heritage Move: (As a mixed race creature) - Empathise with an outcast (I made this up too, subject to Al's approval)

Background: Livia (or Liv) was an outcast, a rare half-breed of the eternal fae, ostracised for her half-blood nature, for the lack of magic that bloomed within her. Until a plague of unknown origin ripped through the community, confronting those who lived forever with a sudden, terrible death. Being an outcast saved her in two ways - firstly, she was not affected by the plague, and secondly, Liv's powers bloomed then: the deaths within the community causing her necromantic affinity to rise up, and giving her a sudden way out to the City. To try to find the question of who her father is, who sent this plague, and where to find a safe place for those who might have survived.

Edit: Add heritage moves

All of the above subject to change, and happy to flex depending what others come up with!

Ahh I never read Planetary back in the day, though I remember seeing it. Gotta check that out!

I think I'm missing something regarding character creation, though. I read World of Dungeons and I checked out pg. 26 of Dark Heart of the Dreamer, but I don't see where the monster moves are listed.

Apologies! Monster Moves are listed in the Dungeon World core book, and should be in the online SRD as well. More broadly, Monster Moves can be pretty much any single, concrete narrative development.

Dwarves might have "Stomach an ingested poison," a Ghost might have "Pass through a solid barrier," an Automaton might have "Intuit the inner workings of a device," etc etc. There’s room for us to invent monster moves as need be!

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I support coloring Commune to suit your necromancer! I dig it!

Here's the relevant SRD for reference

Argo, yeah! Looking forward to this.

Al -- the Monster moves. Not rolling on those, right? They are more like abilities.

Correct. You don't roll for Monster Moves, you just activate them by spending hold. You do get the necessary hold by rolling, though. At the start of a "session," or when you engage in whatever the rites of your heritage or culture might be.

Oh okay, thanks you two! That clears it up.

Also, I didn't say earlier, but I love your flavor text, Al. This is juicy stuff. Love this premise and all the potential it has.

I wanted to riff a bit on the death plague that Sam created and say that a death plague affected my character's realm as well. It manifested in a different way but maybe the two plagues are connected. I see the character as being a convicted criminal rotting away in prison when he got conscripted by a holy order to fight necromancers who conjured a plague of horrible undead beings that were encroaching on the realm. The holy order took their conscripts and subjected them to a forced transformation that gave them mystical powers to help in the fight, Dragon Age-style. Though my character was initially, and rightly, resentful of this, it soon didn't matter as the undead soon began to overrun everything, and it was far more a matter of survival.

This went on until it became clear that there was no winning this fight. The tide of undead was overwhelming. The last survivors prepared to meet their end when the leaders of the order said there was one more chance - to get to a certain holy temple in an inhospitable area. This temple held the key to defeating the undead forever.

The last remaining survivors escorted the leaders through a harrowing gauntlet and finally got to the temple, numbers much reduced. The leaders told the troops to hold off the encroaching horde just long enough for them to perform the ritual that would destroy the undead. Yet my character thought something was off - why hadn't they heard about this ritual before this? Why wasn't this option discussed earlier? As the wave of undead cut down his fellow conscripts, my character abandoned his post and entered the temple. There, he spied on the leaders, finding not a ritual being performed, but a portal being opened. The leaders sacrificed an innocent soldier to open the portal and disappeared through it, and enraged, my character followed just as the horde burst through the temple doors.

On the other side of the portal was the City, with no sign of the leaders.

Holy shit, @argo, that’s wild! I dig that a ton. I am making notes about necromancers and plagues and folks using the City as an escape hatch.

Sounds like your PC and Sam’s PC will have some interesting wrinkles in your interactions.

So, just spitballing here: sounds like maybe you’re going to try and go, what, high physical stats, maybe go for warrior abilities or custom-make a gish-type class? (@Samaritan,@Harrigan am i remembering right that gish is the slang for a magic-fighter?) I don’t know enough about dragon age to know specifically what being an experimental magical warrior gets you, but frankly I’m just picturing some dude glowing with magical tattoos absolutely bar room brawling some zombies hahaha

Haha! I like the glowing tattoos idea. I was thinking maybe something more sneaky, to represent his criminal past. Maybe a cross between rogue and ranger? Maybe some druid flavor? I was thinking that maybe some of the undead can pass for human, but animals always know the difference, so maybe there are some animal themed powers? Just kind of riffing again on Sam’s character’s fae brethren being targeted by the plague. We have kind of a life/death theme going here, it seems.

Absolutely! Whatever you want to go with, go for it!

@Samaritan I just saw your edits above: I dig your heritage moves! Are you envisioning "empathize with an outcast" as something that gleans understanding, or that earns trust? If you're wanting the former, I think the verbiage is perfect. You can put yourself in an outcast's shoes, feel what they're feeling, understand them. If you're wanting something that automatically earns trust, we may want to reword it to make that clearer. Regardless, I dig it.

Rolls:

So that's str +1, dex 0, con +2, int 0, wis +1, cha +2. Hmm I think I need to re-think my character a little.

So maybe he's a con man instead of a petty thief (high CHA) with no book learning (low INT), little in the way of physical ability (low DEX) who grew resilient and alert through his time in the war vs. the undead (okay STR and WIS, high CON). Maybe make a custom class and take Survival as the class skill and Deception as the personal skill. Maybe take Hardy and Lucky as special abilities. Now I'll work on the monster moves!

Still working on a concept, but pretty sure we're talking about a lizard-man warrior when his conquering race forced their enemies to activate some terrible, world-ending magic. -Or- they were fighting off some ancient and terrible alien worm-things and they lost, scattered to the four winds and beyond after their final losing battle. Seeing a strong protector / guardian type, a lizard out of time and space, lost without his leaders and cause. Might be looking for other members of his race. But we'll see -- basically a Fighter, but I don't want to tread on what Argo is doing...

Seeing him as polite, thoughtful, determined, the epitome of stalwart.


(If you guys don't know, GP supports just pasting images in. Auto-uploads to Imgur and links.)

Edit:

STR +2
DEX +2
CON +0
INT +1
WIS +1
CHA +2

Pretty solid stats, and I'm still feeling kind of a holy champion without a cause type. Could be he adopted a certain necromancer as a liege...

Nice, Harrigan! Cool pic too. No, I don't see my character as a warrior really. More of a survivor who lies and scavenges to get along...