Character Creation: Red Aegis

Another year older, another year gone (almost), another year closer to the grave. But what do we say to the Grim Reaper? Have a slice of cake. 

The Game: Red Aegis
The Publisher: Vorpal Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Weird game, this. It's meant to be played in a discrete number of sessions, and instead of everyone controlling a single character, you control a clan. Clans are collectively part of a tribe, and the game takes the tribe through prehistory on up to galactic colonization, with a timeline of omens that drives the action. Also the GM hat passes every session. 

Red Aegis is one of those games that, like Blood Red Sands, I would love to be able to play and I probably won't be able to, because it requires a different kind of engagement with the game and its mechanics than most of my players have. But I have higher hopes for this than Blood Red Sands, I think, just because tonally I think this is a little closer to something I could sell (though it certainly doesn't look any simpler from a mechanics standpoint). 

The other issue, of course, is that it looks like this game was Kickstarted in 2017 and hasn't been delivered, and the creators kind of ghosted? The file on DTRPG hasn't been updated since November 2016, so like, that's not a good look. Ah, well.

Actually, it reminds me of a legacy board game in a lot of ways, which is cool, because I like those. Anyway, creating a "character" isn't as important in Red Aegis, but it is still a thing - you create a "scion" of your clan. This also requires a clan and a tribe, that's not terribly hard. Let's see!

Yeah, first up, I need a tribe. There are a couple of example ones so I'm just gonna use one of them. Let's use the Itztama. That means my Affinities are Civic and Commercial, and my Bastion is Wimchanca, whatever the fuck that means. Moving on to clan. 

For clan, I need to choose a caste, which sets the attributes, although in the clan section it says to set attributes before choosing a caste, which doesn't make a lot of sense. Anyway, I think I want my clan to be of the courser caste - explorers and trailblazers and whatnot. That gives me an Affinity of Exploration and Mettle 6, Insight 8 and Guile 4. I think I shall call the clan Seeker Bird, after the flocks heading south every year (I would call it Clan Goose, but that's a little silly).

And moving on to scion! My attributes start equal to the caste ones and then get modified by some scion-specific things. Birthsign is first up, and I can roll for that, so I shall: 10, the Sky People. 

Next, let's do distinction, which also gives me a title. I roll a d10 and a d6 and get...Firm (huh-huh). Fortitude is half Mettle (3), Acumen is half Insight (4) and Cunning is half Guile (2). Cool.

And that's actually all but the shouting. We'll say that my scion's name is Hylas (the Firm). Hylas, as a member of the Seeker Bird clan, is an explorer and an adventurer, but what he's really known for is being able to outlast natural phenomena. Be it rainfall, blizzard, heat wave, Hylas always finds a way to survive it, and he won't let folks he's with retreat, either (this is likely to get him killed and/or make him a legend). 

That's really about it. The sheet has a bunch of blanks, but it's all stuff that would come up in play.