Character Creation: Beyonder

Not based on the Marvel character, of course.

The Game: Beyonder
The Publisher: Flying Nightbear Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

You know, as an aside, I was looking at my "current" games shelf (where I keep the books for the games I'm currently running/player), and it's a decently diverse lot: Chill 3rd Ed, Blades in the Dark, Epyllion, D&D5e (still boggles me that I'm running that, and I'm actually really liking it), Pugmire, and Wildsea. And that's not counting the one-shot games; I try and run one a month. And I think back to most of my 20s and 30s when I ran basically World of Darkness stuff all the time, largely because I was writing it and I needed to keep the mechanics bouncing around in my brain. But if I had it to do over again, in addition to, like, doing a lot of things differently that have nothing to do with gaming but ultimately affected my career in RPGs, I think I'd de-emphasize WoD a little and run some other stuff? I think it ultimately would have been really beneficial to the early game design I did with stuff like curse the darkness. 

(Not that it matters in the end, of course, because of where we've ended up - not only do people not play my games but in a lot of online spaces you're not even allowed to say my name, which is fucking absurd, but hey, it's important to have a boogeyman, I guess.)

All of this to say: I've read a lot of RPGs, and Beyonder is not necessarily one that jumps up and says "run me" to me, but that's a me thing. It's a lore-dense fantasy game, and those have a heavy lift for me because they're not my kind of game generally - if I'm playing a physics simulator fantasy game, I'd almost like it to give me room to make up my own setting, at least partially. With that said, there is obviously a lot of love that went into this game, it's well-supported, and the races at least are pretty cool (and the "humans" section focus on their social acuity rather than making them "adaptable" and "diverse," so that's nice).

Also, you can custom-make a character, or use this nifty little choose-your-own-adventure minigame to do it, so that's what I'm gonna do because how often does that happen? Sadly the online character builder on the Flying Nightbear site seems to be down, but no matter, I can use the book and a paper character sheet like it's the fuckin' 90s. 

I'm not gonna screenshot every single question, obviously, but I will for question one:

There are six Guilds, each focused on one of the six Energies of the game, and depending on which Guild you belong to you'll be good at different types of...magic? Actions? We'll continue to find out!

I'm given three options: Reprimand the little tyke, make it into a game of tag, or ignore him and continue on with business. I'm certainly not going to reprimand him; let's take a stop-and-smell-the-roses approach and play a bit of tag.

This transitions into a game of hide-and-seek outside of town, and gives me the option to continue the game or investigate a strange bird call. Ignoring a child during a game of hide-and-seek is a dick move, so I'll not do that.

I find the kid hanging from a tree pretending to save the village from a dragon! I'm given the option to tag him, but warn him to be careful coming down, or grab the rotten branch and drop his ass to Mother Earth's unforgiving bosom. In keeping with my "not a dick" policy, I shall do the former. 

And this determines my race as kamari! The tree people! Neat! 

 

I'll set my gender (or "gendar" as it's misspelled on the character sheet) as male, 'cause I don't want to be a tree. And let's move on! 

I send the lad home safely and go to meet Shalta, my Guild contact. When I get to his farmhouse, I find him and his sons being attacked by kobolds shassels! At this point I get to choose my Guild, starting with which broad category (Physical, Mental, or Ethereal). No particular racial advice to fall back on. 

Well, my character thus far has been distractible and playful, so let's go with the simplest answer and say I step in front of the shassels to stop them. Continuing on, I'm given the option to fry them with magic fire, suck the energy out of them and make them collapse, throw one of them across the yard, or levitate myself and the Shalta family away. Hmm.

I don't think a tree-person should be playing with fire, and likewise levitation seems off-brand. Let's go with a "roots leaching away the energy" thing and pick that option. 

This makes my Guild Soman, allowing me to mess with the Energy of Body. That sounds good.

Neat, I have no idea what most of that means. But back in fiction, I drop two of the shassels, but the third one escapes into the forest. Shalta gives me four options: I can summon the military, I can get another Soman to help me be stealthy, I can talk to my Guild and call in more magic, or I can talk to the mayor and be diplomatic about this.

Well, not doing the first one, because ACAB. I'm leaning towards stealth or diplomacy, honestly. Since my first decision was to be social, let's do diplomacy. The mayor gives us the option to actually employ diplomacy or send a strike team, and I think I've made my thoughts clear. This makes me a Negotiator!

And then I go back and talk with Shalta, and I'm given the option of helping him deal with the shassels, investigate potential corruption within the city, or go off and do some magical mapping. 

Well, I think that dealing with people is most in keeping with what I've done so far, so let's investigate corruption. This gives me gear and other related traits:

I'll take the sling, I think. And then I get to decide where I'm from. I'll pick the Great Northeast, which gives me a +1 to Athletics.

And that's actually it, kids. Lemme just total everything up here...

OK, so I don't see any naming conventions and I don't see a list of languages, which is strange. Let's assume that the kamari probably have names in their own language that are at least partially chemical (being plants), so they have names in Common that folks who can't "speak" their language use. Since my character is social, easily distracted, and generally playful, we shall call him Squirrel. Squirrel is a young-adult kamari, about 42. He's got little buds on his head and arms, and occasionally you'll find a little yellow flower growing somewhere (he got pollinated by this flower when he was a sprout and it just keeps popping up). 

That'll do it! Don't know if the "chargen adventure" would be viable for a group, but it was fun.