Character Creation: We Are All Mad Here

I've seen a cat without a grin, but never a grin without a cat. 

The Game: We Are All Mad Here
The Publisher: Monte Cook Games
Degree of Familiarity: None with this particular supplement, but I've run Cypher
Books Required: We Are All Mad Here and Cypher System

It's pretty niche, actually - Cypher already has an urban fantasy supplement (that'd be It's Only Magic), but this one is about fairy tales. As is typical of these Cypher sourcebooks, it presents a solid foundational understanding of what it's trying to do, with an emphasis on safety and consent (and given the dark underpinnings of a lot of fairy tales, that's probably good), and a few ways to use all this in a game. Like Stay Alive! and the aforementioned It's Only Magic, WAAMH has a larger setting with some new foci and some particular rules, so I'm gonna make a character for that.

That setting would be The Heartwood, which posits a fairy-tale world that modern-day characters get drawn into, but what enables that is that their lives are touched by mental illness or neurodiversity. Note that it's not that being mentally ill or neurodiverse enables going to the Heartwood, just having a connection to such things opens the door, as it were. 

(This has the potential to be done really badly, and I find myself thinking of games like Madhouse or Asylum that try and make mental illness a cornerstone of the game, but wind up treating such things as character classes or things that give you superpowers. The Heartwood doesn't do that, however. The meat of the story would be in the Heartwood, with the mental illness stuff as a framing or grounding device. I dunno, I think it's pretty cool. I also think that right now I'd like a little more escapism in my gaming, and I'm pretty sure my players would too. Moving on.)

So: Chargen in Cypher works as usual, I'm an [adjective] [noun] who [verbs]. One of the foci (that'd be the verb bit) in WAAMH is "Befriends the Black Dog," which gives you someone with an animal companion that is representative of grief or depression or whatever. Too close to home? I don't know, maybe, but I've always loved the "black dog" metaphor for depression, so I think I might use that focus here.

Blake Underwood was 25 when he lost his fiance in a car accident. He was completely unhurt, but Tony was killed instantly. They had plans, they had a wedding taking shape, they had been talking about adopting a child, and it was...gone. And Blake stopped talking. 

When he opens his mouth and tries to talk, he just...stops. He's pretty sure he has a voice, but he doesn't, or can't, use it. He goes to a grief group and he really does try to share, but he can't bring himself to speak. He fortunately has a job that he can do purely on a computer, so he communicates via email and text. But he doesn't speak. 

And then one night, he stood up from his bed and took a step out of his bedroom door and found himself in the Heartwood, and he could speak. He was accompanied by a huge, black dog, menacing, strong, and totally silent. The dog doesn't howl or bark, and it barely makes a sound when it walks or pants. Blake is pretty sure that if the Black Dog ever does make a noise, then when he goes home to the "real world", he'll be able to talk again. But truth be told, he's in no hurry for that.

OK, well, that's "fun." (I actually think Blake would be a lot of fun to play in the right group.) So we know his focus already, but what about descriptor and type? Actually, what does Blake look like in the Heartwood? I think that he still looks human and looks more or less like himself, but he fits into the "Woodsman" fairy tale kind of archetype. As interesting as it would be to make a speaker, I think I'd rather go with explorer (but again, we'll call it woodsman). 

How about descriptor? Ooh, Fragmented is interesting, especially since so much of Blake himself is bound up in the dog. Appealing is, well, appealing, too. I think I'm gonna go with Kind, though, because I think that's how Blake would come across in a fairy tale.

OK, that means I can start actually pull this together mechanically. I get Might 10, Speed 9, Intellect 5 for being an explorer, and then 6 more I can throw around. I'll put two into Speed and four into Intellect, I think. I get Effort 1, of course, and I get Might Edge 1. I get appropriate clothing (so, fur and leather), a weapon (short bow, please), and then various expensiveness of items, but I'm gonna skip that for now.

I get four explorer abilities. I want Extra Edge so I have Speed Edge, thanks. I'll take Physical Skills (climbing and balancing). I'll take Surging Confidence (when I use an action to make a recovery roll, I get another action). And then I'll take Knowledge Skills and say I know the geography of the Heartwood, and nature lore. 

Right, for being Kind I get +2 to my Intellect pool. I'm trained in all tasks relating to pleasant social interaction and determining others' dispositions, but I have an inability in detecting lies. And then I get a power called Karma; I can spend 1XP to have an NPC treat me with kindness, if briefly.

And over in focus-land, I get a Beast Companion, which is obviously my big, silent black dog. There's not a name for it; Blake just calls it "my dog." 

And that's pretty much it! Blake, in the Heartwood, looks a little older than he is in real life. He had a low but firm voice, and even smiles sometimes. The dog is always at his heels, and puts its head on his lap when he sits.