Where I Read: Daggerheart (part four)

All right, communities. They can represent either a location, an ethos, or a common goal, meaning that more than one could apply to your character’s background, but you should choose the one that has most defined their outlook. Also, it’s all very complicated and nuanced and you should consider your character’s inner-most delicate feelings and THIS IS A GAME WHERE YOU CAN PLAY A WALKING FUNGUS WITH A TURTLE SHELL WILL YOU PLEASE STOP PRETENDING THAT IT’S SOME KIND OF HIGH ART?!!!

Sorry, sorry, I just couldn’t hold it in anymore. Honestly, it’s probably a miracle that it took this long for this readthrough to turn into an angry rant, usually that happens on circa page four…

Okay, let’s try to get through this without further outbursts…

Highborne communities… well, they’re nobles, basically. High and mighty, like to think that they’re better than the people who are really not their sort of people. They get an advantage on rolls to negotiate with those impressed by titles and wealth, which, let’s face it, are a not inconsiderable portion of the population. A suggested variation is that the aristocracy might actually be a magocracy, with nobles being those with magical powers.

Loreborne communities are all about learning and skill, and of furiously politicking to rise through the ranks. Guilds and schools are both typical Lorebornes. They get an advantage to rolls to have read about something in a book at some point.

Orderborne communities are ones that be described as an “order,” a group of people who think that they stand for something and are very serious about it. Clerical and knightly orders are the obvious examples. Once per day, they get to roll a d20 as their Hope Die if they can explain how what they’re doing is in keeping with their beliefs.

Ridgeborne communities are sturdy hill folk with a chip on their shoulder about how those damn dirty flatlanders can’t be trusted. That’s about it, they live in the mountains and hills where most people don’t wanna live. They get an advantage on traversing and surviving in harsh environments.

Seaborne communities live by and off of the water, as sailors, fishermen or pirates. Some might even be nomads who live their whole lives on their ships. Every time they roll with Fear, they get a token that they can trade in for a bonus on another roll, because they “can sense the ebb and flow of life.”

Slyborne communities are crooks, your basic thieves and scoundrels from the wrong side of the magic-powered train tracks. They lie, scheme, and get in trouble with the law. They get an advantage to rolls to detect lies, hide, or negotiate with criminals. There’s also some flavour descriptions of gambling dens, black markets and hideouts with hidden escape routes.

Underborne communities live underground, either in your typical fantasy gigantic cave system or just in a hole in the ground like a hobbit. There are some examples of houses hanging from the roof in the silk of giant spiders, or being built into the base of stalagmites. They get an advantage on rolls to either spot or hide in an area with poor light.

Wanderborne communities are fully nomadic. Examples offered are people traveling in great big air balloons, piloting kite-drawn skimmers across the sea, or just walking on their own two feet and living in portable dwellings. They get the ability to spend Hope to reach into their pack and take out precisely what they needed for the situation they’re currently in.

Wildborne communities live deep in the woods to commune with Nature. Possibilities include tree houses, hollowed-out trunks, or homes built into giant mushrooms. They get an advantage on rolls to move without being heard.

So that’s all of them. Okay, so none of that is terrible or anything, and some of the flavour ideas are nice, certainly it’s more interesting to have the players come upon a village of dwarves living in giant mushrooms than just have them stumble on yet another community of dirt farmers, but I don’t really like how non-mutually-exclusive a lot of these are. Honestly, I feel like these are the ones that should have been possible to combine for additional customization, not the ancestries. For instance, a pirate should be a mix of Slyborne and Seaborne, a scion of a magical overclass should be Highborne and Loreborne, a monk from a mountain monastery should be Ridgeborne and Orderborne… I feel like that would have made for more interesting and nuanced characters than being the bastard offspring of a turtle and a toadstool… Oh well.

The chapter ends with a long teary-eyed lecture on how to play disabled characters Sensitively, and I have decided that I’m not going to touch it with a ten-foot pole. Instead, I’ll try to get back into the spirit of things by trying out the character creation system.

So, first up I need a class and a subclass. Let’s go with Wizard, of the School of Learning. I’m all about the utility spells! I’m instructed to take my subclass’ foundation card – ah, okay, so you do get it for free, I missed that earlier – which in my case means I can take an extra domain card, and also I can take Stress instead of spending Hope when I want to invoke an Experience. Because my brain is all big and shit, see.

Further fringe benefits: I have the ability to perform flavour magic tricks at will, and when I roll a number I like (let’s say 5) on a die I gain Hope or clear Stress. I have the ability to make an enemy reroll a successful attack against me by spending 3 Hope. Naa na na na – na na – na na – can’t touch this…

I also get either a book I’m trying to translate or a small, harmless elemental pet. Okay, I decide that I travel alongside Sparky, my pet fire-imp. There are also a bunch of questions, and I’ll get to those, but let’s put the character together a bit more first.

Hum hum, I start with level 1, makes sense… Choose my name and pronouns, my name is Scielbald Fleetflipper and I’m a boy-frog (at the moment, at least – us frogs are known to switch depending on environmental factors…). Ancestry, as I just alluded to I’m a Ribbet, because while I’m not as psyched about that as I started out being I still think it might be fun.

Community… well, there it gets a little more interesting, doesn’t it? I could really double down on the nerd angle and go with Loreborne, but that feels a little too boring. So let’s say I’m Seaborne. I grew up among the fisher-frogs on the banks of the Great Gahoola Lake, until I was apprenticed by a wandering wizard. That’ll get me that ability to gather up bonus from Fear, making me more mystical.

Character Traits… well, my spellcasting comes from Knowledge, so I’d better take +2 in that. I also think I’m pretty good at hopping and skipping, so let’s put the +1s in Agility and Finesse. My spindly little frog-limbs don’t lend themselves to heavy lifting, so let’s put the -1 in Strength. That leaves the +0s for Presence and Instinct. I’m a little too bookish to be good at social niceties and noticing what’s going on around me.

As a Wizard, I start with 5 Hit Points and Evasion 11, and like all characters I start with 6 Stress boxes and 2 points of Hope.

Equipment! Apparently I get suggestions for equipment in my character guide. I had to spend some time trying to find my character guide, but it was hiding at the back of the book. It apparently suggests I start with a quarterstaff and leather armour. Sounds good. I also get a bunch of other standard adventurer stuff like rope and rations. Fine, fine – equipment always bores me.

Okay, so now it’s time to answer those background questions. Let’s go find them.

“What responsibilities did your community once count on you for? How did you let them down?” I was meant to follow in my father’s flipper-steps as the wiseman and lorekeeper of our village, and I was only meant to study enough magic to be more useful. However, once I saw the wonders of the world outside, I could never bring myself to return.

“You’ve spent your life searching for a book or object of great significance. What is it, and why is it so important to you?” I am searching for the Frozen Egg of Eugastine the Truth-Croaker. She was a great hero of the Gahoolan lands, but her bloodline has been extinguished over the years. Legend has it that one of her eggs was preserved in magical statis, and if it could be found and revived, the heir of Eugastine might yet return. If I could do that, it would prove that my wanderings were ultimately in my family’s interest, and I would be vindicated and forgiven!

“You have a powerful rival. Who are they, and why are you so determined to defeat them?” Ah, that would be that puffed-up buffoon Martinus Bloodwart! He’s always getting ahead of me, snatching up tomes of eldritch lore by offering prices that I can match. He seems to think that the High Art of magic is something you can buy your way to. Well, I’ll show him that the Gift cannot be bought for gold!

Next I choose two Experiences. Let’s go with “Lake-Town Shaman” and “Travel the World in Search of Elusive Lore.” That sums up my main conflict pretty well.

Then I need to choose my domain cards. Usually I’d choose two from the first-level cards for Codex and Splendour, but my foundation card gives me an extra one, so three in total. The Codex cards are all “grimoires,” so they give me several spells apiece. The ones I can choose between are Book of Ava (lets you knock people back, strengthen armour, and summon an ice spike), Book of Illiat (put people to sleep, shoot magic missiles, and speak to people telepathically), and Book of Tyfar (set people on fire, conjure a mist, and telekinetically lift things). For Splendour I can take Bolt Beacon (damage an enemy, and also they glow in the dark and get easy to hit), Mending Touch (heal) and Reassurance (let an ally reroll their dice).

Well, first of all, this is… really kind of flavourless. I mean, it’s pretty clearly repackaged D&D spells, but D&D spells are quirky and fun. These ones barely bother to tell you what they do other than strictly mechanical effects. Oh, all right, all right. I guess I’ll take Book of Illiat, Book of Tyfar, and Mending Touch. That’ll give me some nice tricks up my sleeve.

The last part is connections to other players, but as I have no other players, I guess I’m done. Well… I guess I can see myself playing this character, sure? There’s some quirky appeal to him, he’s got a nice range of abilities (almost a little too many, but it’s within reasonable limits), and there’s fuel for me to ham it up and get over-enthusiastic about stuff, which is really my forte as a player. But I can’t say that I’m all too psyched, either. It’s all passable, but it’s also all kind of… meh.

I can’t believe they took the fun out of playing a humanoid frog…