Like Hands Across America, but in a circle.
The Game: Circle of Hands
The Publisher: Ron Edwards
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
I remember this game getting a lot of chatter when it was Kickstarting. Without doing a deep dive into the archives of the time (I'd like to avoid being triggered today, thanks anyway), my recollection is that the professed "brutality" of the setting was the issue. Reading the Kickstarter page now, I can't really see what the fuss is about just based on that, but this was nearly a decade ago and I'm sure there was all kinds of discourse about it going on in G+ and so on, and I'm equally sure a bunch of people talked past each other.
I'm not interested in any of that. I read the game and the first couple of chapters, at least, are really laden with a lot of insight into the authors' goals and mindset in writing it, and then I thought "oh, right, same guy that wrote Sorcerer" and it kinda fell into place.
The setting of Circle of Hands is a kind of quasi-Dark Ages thing. There are several well-defined cultures (not really nations), magic is a Big Screaming Deal in-setting, and the characters are Circle Knights, who go out on ventures, ostensibly in support of the young king of Rolke, but the game is entirely focused on the ventures, not the in-between stuff. You also make two characters (everyone does, including the GM), and when you go on a venture you play any of the characters in the pool, including the ones the GM made. You just don't play the same one twice in a row.
(Side note: Something very much like this kind of emerged organically in my Chill campaign; everyone has at least two characters, so that in the very likely instance that one character is injured or traumatized, you've got another one to fall back on.)
I didn't get into the system too much, but honestly I think I'd probably give this game a miss not for any philosophical or content reason, but because it's a game with a detailed setting and that means my players would have to read it or suffer a huge info dump, and I'd rather play something with more collaborative elements. But the chargen system looks fun, so let's do that!
This is my "scratch paper" right here, of course.
So, we start off with Attributes. There are four of them (Brawn, Quickness, Wits, Charm), and we generate them by rolling a d6 and adding 1, except for Brawn, which starts at 6 (rather, "treated as if the die came up 5", which I'm sure makes sense to someone). I'm meant to roll a black d6 for Quickness, a white one for Wits, and a red one for Charm, and I happen to have all those colors, so: I get white 2, red 3, black 6 (boo-ya). I'm a Quick motherfucker. That's Quickness 7, Wits 3, Charm 4, for those playing along at home.
I then pick two traits from a list. I think I want to be Romantic (which is defined as "the delusion of narrative," which I really like; I think it'd be interesting to play someone searching for meaning in a nihilistic setting) and Ambitious. Those add +2 to Charm and +1 to Quickness and Wits, respectively, which means I end up with Brawn 6, Quickness 8, Wits 4, Charm 6.
My homeland is determined by my highest Attribute, which is Quickness, so I'm from Famberge.
Moving on to Profession: I get one Profession per four points of Wits, and since my Wits is 4, I get one. Easy peasy. I can't have Wizard as my only profession, so no wizarding for me (but note that everyone in this game knows some spells, it's just that wizards know them all).
Well, my highest trait being Quickness speaks to something a little more physical, though of course I could spin it any way. I think I want my guy's profession to be Merchant. That sets my social rank as "Professional."
Sex: Male. I usually default to male characters, unless there's a reason in-setting (like, if we're playing Thirsty Sword Lesbians or something). Sex does matter here, kinda, inasmuch as female Knights are unusual.
Magic: I get [Wits] points in spells, not [Wits] spells, although the book isn't always clear on this point. I have to take a mix of black and white magic.
(Side note: A lot of the spells "ascend" an unnamed character if cast on them, and I had to look up what that meant. Basically it means that character gets a name and some plot relevance, which I think is a really cool mechanic.)
A lot of these spells are pretty cool, actually. I'll take Waft (basically Featherfall) and Haze as white spells, and Reflect (redirect a spell targeted at me) as my black spell (it's level 2).
Details: Gotta roll the dice again. This gives me Demeanor, Feature, and Name.
Black die came up 3, added to Charm makes 10, so my demeanor is "Formal." Adhering to class-based social boundaries. That tracks for my ambitious dude.
White die came 1, plus Charm is 5, so my Feature is "mismatched eyes." Neat! I'm like Robbie Reyes! Or a husky!
Red die came up 3, and we don't add nothin', which means I take a name that refers to "blessed" or "god" (there's a list). As a Professional I have a surname as well. We'll say that, as a merchant, I used to drive my stuff around in a cart, so his surname is "Carter." We'll say the first name is Eduard.
Arming! I'm a Professional but have no martial training, so all of my weapons and fighting training comes from the Circle. And it's already checked! I can use a spear, basically.
Finally, Key Event. This is a brief description of the event that made Eduard become a Circle Knight. Interestingly, it's meant to be a factual - even clinical - account, rather than touching on motivation or philosophy (presumably this is because I'm not always going to be the one playing this character, so I shouldn't set in stone too much about his actual mindset).
Eduard's cart was raided - not a new thing, it happens, all he could do is avoid getting hurt. This time was different. They didn't take the horses, they killed them. They didn't take the goods, they burned it. Eduard made the mistake of trying to intervene, and one of the raiders stabbed him in the chest and threw him down a hill. The knife lodged between his ribs, which probably saved his life; he didn't bleed out. He managed to drag himself to a road and passed out. The next people to pass by were a pair of Knights, and for reasons that have never really been explained to Eduard, they carried him to safety.
And that's it! If I were playing Eduard I think I'd lean into the "delusion of narrative," especially him believing that he was saved for a reason, and being especially angry about the nihilism of the men that tried to kill him.
