Character Creation: The Well

Well, well, well. It's a deep subject. (I'll stop now.)

The Game: The Well
The Publisher: Shoeless Pete Games
Degree of Familiarity: None yet, but I'm sure we'll delve into it at some point
Books Required: Just the one

The Well is a game with a very interesting setting, some amazing artwork, and a system that kinda makes me go "OK. Huh?" 

The setting is this: There's this well. It's an immense stone silo kind of thing going down forever, and every 60-some feet (21 meters, whatever the fuck that means) there's a new level. Untouched levels just have a doorway and a giant corridor, but the inhabited levels have been carved and mined and turned into habitats. At some point in the unknowable past, people fled something into the Well and kept moving down, because the dead in the crypts in levels above keep reanimating and killing them. And bones turn into shit like this:

Like I said, art's really good

So you play "gravediggers," people who venture up into the higher levels to hunt treasure and kill monsters. There are three inhabited levels collectively known as "Bastion," and in a bit of worldbuilding that I really like, the last stop before going into the up is a bar where the keeper, a former gravedigger, gives you half a shot of booze on the house with the unspoken promise that you'll be back for the other half later. 

So all of that is really cool, yeah? Like I said, though, the system is a little weird. It's roll a d6 and beat a difficulty, but the difficulty is routinely much higher than 6, and you wind up needing modifiers to hit it. You can use "gambits" for bonus dice (not too dissimilar from a Devil's Bargain in Forged in the Dark games), and so on, but I admit that I was not entirely clear on the mechanics even after reading the example of play. 

But I'm a smart guy; I'm not out of my depth. Let's make a character!

Step One: Weapons & Armor. I get three choices off this list. I kinda want paint (magic in this game is expressed through runes, which get painted onto things with luminous paint. Anyone can do it, if you know the runes, and they aren't simple). I'll take paint, which gives me a rune that I know by heart, which I'll pick later. And then I'll take a pick and a shield; no full armor, which will make me vulnerable, but also not impede movement. I think my character has fully embraced the idea that if the shit really comes down, you don't have to be fastest, just not the slowest.

Step Two is Kit. I get a basic knife, three torches, flint & steel, and a bag, plus five picks off a list. I'll take booze, bandages, another dose of paint (which gives me another rune), lockpicks, and a lantern.

Step Three is history. I need to pick what I was trained in before getting desperate enough to be a gravedigger. I think my guy was pretty much always that desperate; he was "trained" as an urchin and a criminal. He stole the lockpicks from another thief who'd gotten old and brain-rotted, and he's going upwell because he figures if he can hit a score big enough to get him an apprenticeship with a locksmith or something, he'll never have to do it again. 

Step Four! I get a Skill. I can do any of the Skills, but I'm good at one of them. It's tempting to say Mechanics, but I think Stealth makes more sense.

Step Five! Runes! I get two that I've memorized, probably because they were commonly painted near me. Let's see. I think I shall take Annul (turns off other runes), and Light (does exactly that). 

Step Six is Connections. I get friendly with one of the factions in Bastion. I think it makes the most sense to say I'm friendly with the Indigent; I know the other poor people from Bastion 1. 

Step Seven: Self-Image & Habits. First I get three descriptors to form self-image. These don't have mechanical effect, just a guide to portrayal. I think my guy is squirrely, greedy, and light-fingered. 

Habits, meanwhile, are vices that I can indulge to clear stress. Tempting to say that theft is a vice, but I think for this guy theft is professional and that stealing shit from people actually really makes him nervous. His habits are carving (like, in stone) and throwing rocks. 

Step Eight: Everything else. Resilience starts at 10, asset points start at 0, that's easy. 

Name: Folks in Bastion 1 call him Hardscrabble or just "Scrabble". He doesn't really remember his real; he thinks of himself as "Elit" but doesn't remember if that's a name, a nickname, or just something he heard. Scrabble is short, skinny, probably about 18 but could be a little older. He's missing teeth, his fingernails split easily, and he chews his lips. He's carved some meaningless symbols onto his shield and the haft of his pick, maybe for decorative purposes, maybe to hide a name that was already there (he certainly didn't buy those tools). 

I think Scrabble would be likely to get eaten by something, but it's possible he'd become loyal to a group of gravediggers during their travels, you never know.