D10 Secret Character Features

 I have been thinking about applying the Landmark, Hidden, Secret information formula to character creation. So here are 10 potential Secrets to stick to characters in a game, in no particular order.

 

The GM rolls for each player character in secret during character creation. Do not tell the players this table exists, or their results.

1. A pixie whispered in your ear as a baby. You can understand the speech of Sprites and Brownies, though you cannot speak it. 
2. You bear the crest of an ancient warrior king as a birthmark. Proof to the followers of the Triumvirate that you are his soul reborn. If any of their acolytes should see the mark, they can regale you with tales of your previous lives and their great deeds.     
3. You were born during a fierce winter storm. Winter Wolves will see you as kin, and the lower orders of the Holly Court will treat with you, provided you have not wronged them otherwise. 
4.  A natural affinity for druidry lives within you. An archdruid can see this potential and would take an interest in training you in the Green Way. 
5. Stolen away like a babe in a cradle, literally. If you ever meet the Baroness of the Foxholt face to face, she will immediately recognize you as her long lost second child. 
6. As a tot you gave a gift with a pure heart to a nixie.  The fair folk of stream and river take joy at your passing, and will aid you in a time of dire need.
7. You are a savant at the art of baking. If you discover this about yourself your chiffon cake will be the talk of high street.
8. Faeries abjure you, for you feasted among the blackberries past Samhain, against all good advice. The Puca of Dromore Hill has his mark on you, for good or for ill.
9.  As a child, a tinker tricked you out of a golden coin. His guilt lays heavy on him to this day. If he meets you again, he will give you a map to great treasure to repay his debt.
10.  Your mother took a star from the sky to raise as her own. Upon your death, you may grant one wish as you see fit. Afterwards your body vanishes, returning to the firmament.

 

Two cakes goddammit, and a ramble on Legend in the Mist

 As is often the case, I am working too much and playing too little. I'm doing my best to dig my nails in and get back on the horse and whatever other struggle metaphor you prefer. I'm having an okay time doing it.

A buddy in a discord server gushes about a game I have not heard much about, it's called Legend in the Mist. And it's doing exactly what I've been trying to work out for the past two years. Almost.

Fuck right off (lovingly, I don't know the devs)

It is such a specific emotion coming across a game that's doing what you are trying to do, so exciting and so crushing. And for the same reasons I've been having trouble getting my own game to table it will likely be a while before I can get a group together to play LitM. So I am stuck with reading it!

The tag system seems absolutely fantastic. Clear and character defining, easy to hack and to fix at the table. My first and biggest concern is the floating modifier problem. Because you are picking through what is often a list of 10-20 choices, some of which will change every roll. This is the price of complexity, but having played and ran quite a bit of The Wildsea I know the difficulties players have when choosing from even a short list of potential options. 

What I end up wanting (looking at the character sheet especially) is a place to write tags grouped by action, so "Trusty Broadsword" and "Light on Your Feet" which might come from different themes can be bucketed under "Fighty" tags. This is a reminder for myself to make sure that is an option on my own character sheets.

The same goes for statuses and field tags. They a so juicy, in a way that really reminds me of Ryuutama which I absolutely love. But again they're floating modifiers! Is there a way to keep that complexity without them being that way? I'm sure they would have done so if they could, and I certainly can't think of a way. And I really do love that it incentivizes meals and rest in a way that would otherwise be handwaved, and mechanizes things like injuries or terrain that would otherwise be nebulous. It's more visually complex, but it's also easier for the player to keep a picture of the scene in front of them. I like that a lot. 

It reads really good, the upgrade system feels overblown but in a way that could be really fun at the table. It has a bit of a GURPS vibe of the math scaling the same so if you don't match your position and effect properly you get odd outsized scaling issues, but that loops back around to being very mythic and fun, when a Dragons "Scaly Hide" is beaten by "Determination" and a "Father's Yew Longbow".

It's so so close to what I want! And that makes we want to freak out! It's really really hard to get excited about your own work when you see something like this. I have to remind myself that it's missing things that I want, it's missing the play structure I am looking for, and the kind of magical world I want to capture. It's missing some of the OSR danger I still want in a fantasy game.

It's so close, and I'm really excited to get it to the table and see just how close! But it's not my game

Two cakes goddammit, two cakes.