Swords of the Serpetine - Ladayev Xenia Agafangelyevna, lucky street peddler

Ladayev is a street peddler who came to Eversink from Irilevian, around a year ago. She had a little bit of money and spent it to acquire a small cart and a mule, which she uses to set up shop in different areas of the city. She is a very lucky woman, and therefore pretty much always is at just the right spot at the right time to maximize profits. Thieves have not bothered her (too much, there are limits to luck), and in the few areas the City Watch keeps free of street vendors she usually is gone a few minutes before they arrive.

Ladayev is also a priestess of the minor goddess Aefyoase, Lady of Serendipity and Good Fortune. Every time someone had a stroke of good fortune, and smiles, it is a small prayer in her name. Each time a coin finds its way to those in need through pure chance the Lady has bestowed her favor upon them.

The Church of Denari has taken note that the flows of money through the city are moving in strange rivulets, and have been doing so for some time. Fortune favors the bold and those in need, and this does not quite gel with the idea of free commerce...

I see this one as a Happy, Wistful, Devout, and a bit Secretive person who will usually whistle a tune (nearly always a prayer to her Goddess). Her favorite things in life are:

• to feel Aefyoase's winds guide my way
• to see money find its way to those in need
• the smile of someone Aefyoase touched

She has a Morale of 10, and Health of 8; her trust in her goddess helps her remain resolute in the face of any adversary. She has Charm 2, Liar's Tell 1, Servility 2, and Trustworthy 1. Her mythical abilities are not really magic, but mechanically I think the Sorcerer's abilities will do: Corruption 2, Forgotten Lore 1, and Prophecy 4 - she literally reads the flow of money, but also other seemingly random events. Only the movement of swans eludes her, for some reason. Her Spheres affect Mental, and are Money and Serendipity. Her Allies are the Commoners and Outlanders, but the Church of Denari is obviously quite the opposite. Finally, her signature gear:

A cart filled with an absolutely random selection of goods, that someone close by certainly needs.

Colorful clothing.

A belt with the symbols of Aefyoase hidden on the buckle.

A face that is always smiling, but that luckily people find hard to describe when the wrong person asks.

A mule called Alfonse.

And here is her sheet.

Swords of the Serpentine - Cassandra Carpino, White Hat Burglar

Cassandra grew up as the youngest daughter of the rich Carpino merchant family. Her youth was excessively boring as a result. One thing got stuck in her mind, though - her parents' desire and envy for the prestige of the nobles in Eversink. No matter how much money they made in textiles, no matter how many prayers they and their clients made for Denari, there was always that little something missing. The thing that made waiters in the best restaurants pay extra attention while their bosses slashed their prices. The look in the eyes of the commoners when they talked to even the lowest matriarch, compared to them talking to her own mother Marcella. It stung.

So boredom and envy made for a fun little mix, and via some contacts of her older, far wilder brother Adilson Cassandra met some very unsavory characters who helped her fulfill her desires. Her desire to show up the nobles as much as possible. Cassandra had become the White Cob, 'gentleman' burglar who never steals, but leaves their calling card at the most unfortunate places. Then disaster struck, and a rival in the guild of textile traders arranged for her family's mansion to be destroyed, with most of the family and servants still inside. Now the White Cob peddles his services to the richest of the nobles and merchants, testing their security, and telling them how to make their mansions and businesses more secure. Adilson, injured when the Carpino mansion drifted into the canals, has become the peddler and public face, and Cassandra does the rest...

Cassandra is Intense, Intelligent, Easily Excited, Meticulous, Secretly Romantic, and the three things she likes best in life are 

• to see the powerful realize that they are vulnerable
• a short fling with someone who will never learn your real name
• late-night chases across rooftops

She has both the Mercanti and the Ancient Nobility as Allies, she does provide valuable services and when out of costume is still a familiar face. The Thieves' Guild, however, really does not like her, or the service she provides. Her investigative Abilities are easy to do; she has quite a few social abilities, to deal with both nobles and non-nobles. She specializes in social engineering, for both information gathering and getting into guarded places. Beyond that she has all the Thief abilities to a certain extent; she knows many of the secrets the sneakier members of society like to guard. Her General Abilities are focused on Burglary and Stealth; she excels at being where she isn't expected and getting her mittens on things like keys that she shouldn't have. Add some Athletics for those nightly rooftops, some Sway in case something goes very wrong (or someone needs to be taken down a peg at a social event), and some Preparedness to reflect her meticulous approach to break-ins.

And here she is.

2022 Character Creation Challenge: Summary part 2

 Another post-challenge thing I wanted to do was point out a few characters made by others, with small comments why I noticed/remembered especially these. This list isn’t complete; with the deluge of characters, I am fairly certain I haven’t even seen the majority. Nearly all examples here I found in the corresponding thread in the rpg.net forums. For this post, I mostly go through the thread again to hunt down the PCs I remember. Since I want you to go to the original posts I will not spoil the contents.

Michael K has posted a series of characters for different games as Cortex conversions. Cortex Prime is a system I have been musing and toying with for a while, even ran a game or two in. It was great to the malleability of the system in practice, and it has inspired me to tackle this seeming moloch of a system once more. Here is the first post, here another.

Elsewhere, cptKadse put up a whole lot of characters for Shadow of the Demon Lord. These I read with interest; SotDL is not a game I ever really thought about. It plays in a genre I am not very fond of, and I had the impression of SotDL as some kind of high crunch DnD-like with an edgelord twist. Looking at the characters cptKadse made quickly changed my mind; I found them evocative, varied, distinct, and overall highly interesting. Even though “classical” fantasy is still not my thing, I am intrigued by what I have seen. Example characters are in post 1, featuring an explanation of the creation system, and there are the wonderfully focussed Tibby, the Skirmisher, and Huệ, the ArcaneBattery, but others are recommended as well.

Andurion made a character for Hard Wired Island on day 2, and since this is a really cool game, and was one I had planned to use as well, I paid attention. Nef Archer demonstrates that a cool concept for a Cyberpunk game works here where in more classical such games they would be dead weight. Also nice character background! Another great example came from Dawgstar. Their concept was essentially Battle Angel Alita (as they mention in the post), and showed nicely what a more combat-oriented character would be like in the system. Recommended. If you go through the thread you will find more examples of HWI characters, and the one thing they have in common is they all ooze personality and style. Yes, HWI is a keeper.

thorr-kan posted several Tiny D6 characters in the thread, and they helped deepen the appeal of the game to me. Such a cool lightweight system. The first one (I think) appeared here, and was made for Magnum Vice: Fury Force, which has been on my radar from the start. I mean, 80s action movies…! Overall Tiny D6 games made several appearances, used by several participants.

SunlessNick had many cool contributions, but here I want to highlight Tanya Mason (Esoterrorist). Not only made for a cool Gumshoe game, Tanya comes with her own nice story hook. I think I would love to see that specific story unfold one day. Later SunlessNick also posted a character for Timewatch. It was good to see such nice examples of Gumshoe!

MadWriter made me aware of the game AlmaMater. Cool character, I have to dig up the game someday.

By day 9 people were wondering about tendencies they found in their own creative choices. There are some fun observations, and the discussion made me think about my set a bit. I am not quite sure if I have one of my own. I mean, I am sure I do, but I don’t seem to be able to see it myself. The one thing I do notice is that I tend to color within the lines, so to speak – my characters are just made within the rules, my creativity does not really extend to the rules themselves. That is probably most visible in SotS, where a lot of people make cool PCs that are just doing really inventive things with the unique equipment and magic rules, pushing the system, something I do not really do.

Aegypto posted a nice idea for a character for an old favorite of mine, Over theEdge. 

Other notable mentions include TardisCaptain, who not only started this whole thing but then often dug into the systems of yore for a lot of PCs he made. More work than I would be willing to do, and the game selection was impeccable, with many rarely-seen treasures. I salute you!

Angille created a party by first making the creation a pathway following Cortex Prime. This was great to see. Others (including but certainly not limited to Archer , JoanieSappho, and SunlessNick ) also created whole parties for different games, and there were experiments where people made the same PC in different systems. I did touch on that a bit but was impressed by Hunter who started doing whole batches of characters in three different systems for comparison on multiple days.

Hafwit made a lot of cool characters as well but made me especially happy with their choice of ARC Doom for several. Such a beautiful book, and now I know I have to play it soon. The character creation as outlined in the first post played a big part in my newfound respect for rolling up characters, and the results are very much to my taste. Very nice, thank you!

SlackC made a character for the comic series Department of Truth, and used the Yellow King Gumshoe game for it. Beautiful!

There were far more notable contributions than the ones listed above, by the same and many, many other creators. I hope I can be forgiven for not even trying to list all of them. Bottom line: There was a lot of creative work done, and I thoroughly enjoyed browsing and reading the material others came up with.

2022 Character Creation Challenge: Summary

So, the games have ended, so to speak, and it is time to look back. First, some numbers:

Actual distinct characters made: 30. 

Characters with different versions: 2, with in total 5 variants.

Systems used: 14 to 23, depending on how one counts - are all Gumshoe games one system? All Tiny D6 games? All different variants of HPL Preparatory Academy?

By my count, the system with most characters made was Swords of the Serpentine / Gumshoe, followed closely by Tiny D6 games.

Now for some observations: While I was aware of some of my preferences before the games started, like not being too fond of long equipment lists, some others are new to me. For example, last year I would have said that I am not fond of rolling to generate PCs. After this exercise, I have to phrase that a bit more carefully - I prefer other generation methods with more control over the outcome, but rolling can be fun. That said, my favorites are systems that are less random and make direct use of words from character description for the mechanics, like say Tiny D6 or Swords of the Serpentine.

Another observation I have to make, though my starting recently to play in a Deadlands campaign does certainly add to that, is that I am feeling rather good about Savage Worlds, which I did not see coming. Its origin as a kind of miniatures-based tabletop wargame was hinting that I would not like it, and the rulebook is rather more mechanics-focused and abstracted than I like. But Dante Harrison (plus the not-posted SW version of White Beau) was fun to make, and in the case of HPLPA Swade is the clear winner system-wise for me. Though that does not say anything about the actual play; no idea how PIP or PDQ perform there. SWADE, however, seems to be fun to play, so might just eke out the others there as well.

Another fun thing is that in the end, all games caught my eye. Even the ones more chosen at random; I might have an issue with being easily excited. However, I have already lined up a Tiny D6 to run, and will try to get a SotS campaign off the ground - those two are just too tempting. Tiny D6 just seems like the perfect game for a quick pickup, and quick one-shots, with the option of turning things into something longer, as well as matching and mixing as needed to create the game one wants. It hits a very sweet spot of simple, meaningful mechanics and evocative character generation. And SotS just screams 'play me' - so many cool ideas to build upon, so much room to play in! It also sits on my very comfortable spot of 'GM plus Players with some narrative control'. I will be very disappointed if that one does not get showered with praise upon release, and an Ennie or two. Or five.

Now, looking back at my list of characters I can say that I would be comfortable playing all of these. There are two I am not too keen on, essentially the 'bad' guys. Though none of them are flat-out evil. But there are definitely some favorites. If I had to pick, I would go with:

Irene Langhans (KULT), who just seems like a perfect fit for how I like to play that game. She is already pulling at my heartstrings just by existing.

Imelda Minucci (Swords of the Serpentine), who is based on an image that didn't leave me alone and just became this nice character with hidden depths in both play and skillset.

Lisa Leipzig (Dark Streets and Darker Secrets), because she seems like the type of character who in-game would become very memorable very quickly. An everyday person that is secretly a larger-than-life figure screams memorable scenes.

Endre and Selina, and their Cheeselovers' Tiny Spa on the mountain. I would prefer playing Endre, I think, since I can only play one. They just seem like fun people to spend some time with, for some low-key 'daily life in fantasy land' play. A solid, quiet core to add some other PCs to who bring the shenanigans.

As for me being the GM, I'd hands down choose the Santambrogio family to run a game for, it would be a load of fun to see them try to re-establish the family fortune and status while dodging grandma. Caitlyn McGraw and Chris Lendo come in on a shared second place.

Finally, I didn't get around to making characters for maybe half the games I planned; too many repeats, too many last-second changes of plans. I am fine with that, it just means that I have more games to make characters for next year. And yes, this was a lot of fun, so I am all but certain to come back. 

Edit: 

And TardisCaptain has handed out badges to those who completed the challenge:

Great idea, and a beautiful badge! Thanks!