Oh Frabjous Joy

Above is a photo of our dining room table right before we kicked-off our new game set in Wermspittle...or at least it begins in the vicinity of there. On the upper-left you can see the raw 'mark-up-at-will' copy of the map of the surrounding countryside. The more finished version was posted previously. Toward the middle along the top of the photo you can see most of the raw outline-map of the Cave where Joy went exploring for her very first adventure. We used one of the cave-maps I scribbled into a smaller Moleskine sketchbook a while back as part of a One Hour Challenge. We marked-up and filled-in the map as we played through the place and the fleshed-out version of the map will be included in tomorrow's post. Off to the right is a bottle of Schell's Snowstorm. Good stuff. In the middle are a bunch of dice, including the purple-green set we bought for running games at conventions, the infamous giant black d20 (a suitable counter-part to the very big ivory D20 we gave to Chirine a while back), a D30, A new-fangled 'hit location die,' we picked-up at The Source last summer and most of the crappy old dice that came in the old blue-box basic set that have managed to not get ripped-off after all these years...

All that plus pens, paper and imagination...and we were ready to get started.

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First we determined Joy's Age. I gave Jody the option of either picking the age category, or rolling for it on the following table.

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1. Very Young.
2-5. Adult.
6. Very Old.

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Jody opted for Very Young (1), she then rolled 1d10 for her starting age. She rolled a 10. There are some other tables pertaining to age, but we'll skip them for now. Suffice it to say that Joy just barely avoided going to Wermspittle this year and most likely would get sent off next Spring, in order to avoid the perils and pitfalls of going through puberty in the Low Land regions where lingering toxins make that a horrible, or even sometimes fatal experience.

Since her character Joy would be starting their adventuring career at a Very Young age, this meant that Jody rolled 3d6 and discarded the lowest result for her initial stats. She has the ability to improve any of her stats by 1 point per 100XP up to three times, after which the costs goes up to 300XP and no ability can be raised past 18 unless there are some rather extraordinary circumstances, but that won't be anything to worry about right now.

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Joy's Initial Stats: STR 6, DEX 10, CON 7 , INT 10, WIS 19*, CHR 6. Hit Points: 4

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For Background Jody selected Odd and for her Heritage she took Mostly Human.

Being Odd gave her a Wisdom of 19 and granted her three special abilities; Intuitive Learning, ESP/Perception Manipulation, and Latent Spell-Casting Talent. Joy can learn new languages and skills very quickly, adjust her senses to suit her surroundings, and she has the capability to cast spells should she have the opportunity to learn any and we decided to handle spells in-game.

Being Mostly Human means that there might be some sort of blood-kinship between Joy's family and perhaps Eloi, Morlocks, Tsalalians, or some other group, but since she had not yet come into her powers, Jody opted to let things develop through play. She'll need to discover the truth about her Heritage in-game. We also discussed the general outline of her family and rolled for the number and type of siblings, relatives and the like. Spell-casting runs in the family, so that influenced some of the random tables I set-up for her such as the one for Books that might get found in the course of her exploring the now abandoned farmstead. Her mother may have left-behind one of her earlier grimoires for Joy to find.

She has not yet committed to a particular class and we'll handle that in-game as well. There are a lot of options for her to consider and she might find a mentor, enroll in formal training, or knock about a bit on her own until she figures out what she really wants to do. She begins with some skill in hunting, hiding and hitting things with her sling and not a lot else just yet; again this is being left open for development in the course of the first session or two of actual play. Oh, and we know that she is literate in at least one language, possibly more--she might find some handy resources in the course of investigating the old farmstead that affect how many and which languages she knows or can read.

So, with a fairly minimal outline of a character in-hand we jumped right into the first game session.

Joy started her first adventure with a suit of (light/hand-me-down) Leather Armor and a hunting bow, knife and sling. She went off to visit a Little Cave she had discovered on her family's property. It was a fine Summer day when she entered that cave...but Jody can tell you more about that when she posts her Actual Play Report tomorrow.

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Joy in Wermspittle