Character Creation: Fate of the Norns Ragnorak

I actually have a stack of RPGs to read as possibilities for the next thing I'm running (since Night's Black Agents wound up the other day), and this isn't one of them, but I've been reading it, and well, it's a cool game. Here we go!

The Game: Fate of the Norns - Ragnorak
The Publisher: Pendelhaven
Degree of Familiarity: Some, but not a lot. I played it once at GenCon like 5 years ago, and it was a lot of fun
Books Required: Just the one, plus a bag o' runes.

This is one of those games that I can't run with any of my current groups, not because the system is complicated, but because it requires a level and type of engagement from the players that I'm not gonna get. This makes me sad sometime, but I own something like 650 different RPGs, so I definitely have enough stuff to run. Anydangway, let's make a dweller (PCs are "dwellers," NPCs are "denizens").

Step One is level; the GM (or "Norn", in this case) decides how many levels everyone starts with. "Level" in this context isn't like it is in D&D or similar games, in which every time you level up you get a bunch more stuff. Really, the number of levels is a chunk of points I get to split between Destiny and Essence, my two main traits. The example characters start with 20, while the sample adventure in the back has characters starting with 9. I'll go with 9, since if I ever run this game, I'm likely to use the adventure in the book.

As part of this step, I decide on my Essence and Destiny. The resolution system in this game is all about runes; you draw runes out of your bag and place them on a player mat depending on what you're doing and how. You draw runes equal to your Destiny when you Wyrd (that is, draw runes), but you know runes equal to your Essence. So if you want to have a lot of variety but not be terribly predictable, you prioritize Essence, but if you want to be strong and specific, you prioritize Destiny.

I think that I shall prioritize Essence, because I like variety. Destiny costs 2 levels per point, Essence is one-for-one. I'll go 5 Essence, 2 Destiny.

Step Two doesn't apply; it's for adding upgrades based on characters that have died and gone to Valhalla or Glassivellir.

Step Three is where things get interesting; I have to draw runes from a bag, which I have. I draw runes equal to my Essence, which is 5. Here's what I get:

It's hard to tell in that photo, but the dots below the runes are blue, green, blue, green, green. No red at all. Hrm.

There are random tables that dictate things like personality, motivation and ambition, social standing, social connections, and name. That's 5 tables, and I've got 5 runes, so fuck it, let's see if I get a good combination.

The Isaice rune (first on the left) translates to "Strategic" as personality. I can get behind that. The next one, Wunjo, is "addiction" for motivation and ambition. I dunno, I'm not crazy about that one. Eihwas (middle rune) gives me a motivation of "Independence," and that sounds better. The Wunjo applied to social standing gives me Emissary of a Demi-God holy shit yes. I work for a Son of Muspel (fuck the Aesir) and I get good gear and 800 skatt a month. Nice. I get a spectacular weapon of my choice; I need to look at what's available.

Next is social connections. The Raidho rune gives me an Angel of Death, who prepares the dead for their last journey, and given that I want to send the glorious dead to Glassivellir, that seems good. Her name is Asta.

My dweller's name is Ragna, using the Gebgift rune to find it, and that's fine by me.

Step Four is choosing an archetype. Hrmm. I like the Ulfhednar a lot, but they seem a little more physical than me. Ah, screw it. I'll do that, and I'll be an Eater of Eyes (eating the eyes of an enemy can help regain my Essence). That means my Void rune is Physical (good, that means that's my only one!), the associated Passive is Sadist (my first attack in a round can blind someone), my Active is Eye Rake (again, I go for the eyes), and my Skill is Feather Fingers (sleight of hand). Groovy!

OK, this next part is cool, but weird. There are three grids: Passive, Active, and Skills. I get to bind one of my five runes to each grid. Here's the first one:

So I start from the center, and I can choose adjacent powers. I can go, say, up (Power Attack) and then left (Precision Attack), but I can't start from Precision Attack because it's diagonal. Hang on, this'll take a minute.

Well, it's really hard for me not to take Blood-Wolf Form, since that turns me into a giant goddamn wolf. I'll go one right, too, and take Mauling. I really want Howl, Blood Fang, so I have to take Flanking Attack to get to it. Oh, and um, Cleansing Attack, yes goddamn please...oh, wait, can't take that, it's diagonal. Cleansing Block, then.

Cool! Now Passives, same drill. Oh, Tactician makes sense. I'll take Martial Prowess, so that I can fight even if I'm not a wolf. Oh, Cerebral Warrior, yes please. Also Spirit Warrior. Those let me use Spiritual and Mental runes to use certain weapons, and that's just smart. And I'll take Combat Awareness; I have 360 degree awareness in battle. Seems useful.

And now Skills! Perception, definitely. I'd normally take Athletics, but I don't have any physical runes so I'll let that go. I will take Sneak, though. Verbal Manipulation, sure, why not. Animal Empathy seems appropriate, all things considered. And, finally...Sense Motive. Seems good for a tactician.

Step Six is buying equipment. I've got a bunch of stuff, and I don't much care about shopping, but I do want to figure out my weapon. I'll take a battle axe, and add one to DF (damage factor).

And that's it, actually! I'll say that Ragna has been an Eater of Eyes for some time, and found a body of a dead warrior who had been claimed for the Sons of Muspel. He ate the fellow's eyes, and was immediately confronted by Asta, the Angel of Death, and a Son of Muspel. Ragna made a deal with the Sons of Muspel to serve them faithfully, and to share his bounty of eyes (knowledge and so on) with them, in exchange for his life and forgiving the sin of grave robbing. Ragna really wants to be free of that arrangement and live his own life, and so he approaches his life like he does his battles - tactically.

Ragna is slight of build, lean and hungry, but he's quite strong enough to use the momentum of his axe to his advantage. And, of course, if he really needs to get busy he can just turn into a damn wolf. Ragna's black hair has gotten a reddish sheen since he took up with the Son of Muspel, and his eyes have become yellow-green, life a wolf's.

GenCon: Wow.

Holy cats. GenCon.

This was seriously one of the best years I've had at GenCon, both personally and professionally. I got to talk to a lot of really awesome people, I made some connections for projects that I'm really excited about, and of course, Onyx Path announced the second editions of the World of Darkness lines and that the next WoD game is going to be Beast: The Primordial, which I am, of course, developing.

Good stuff. Also we sold all the books we brought with us, which is pretty baller.

But I know, you're just here for the pictures and the GM's Report Card.

Picture first:

Seconds later, she was on the roof.

I spotted this young lady in the convention center and kind of squeed a bit, because Mirror's Edge is one of my favorite games and her cosplay is awesome. But I did want to say: It's polite to ask if you can photograph someone, even if they're in costume. Don't assume that because someone is out and about that it's OK to take their picture. I mean, it's probably not illegal in any case, so you can, but that isn't the issue. There are lots of things that you can do that it's still unpleasant to do, so have a little decorum (for the record, I asked).

Anyway, Thursday I had a game of Daedalus to run, which went pretty well. I think I want a more dynamic scenario for when next I run it, but I also have some rules tweaking to do - it's not quite as exciting as I'd like. For all that, the players enjoyed it, and I felt bad telling them the game wasn't actually out yet (but they could go to the IGDN booth and find awesome games that were!).

Cardhalla, always impressive.

And then I had a game of Dime Stories to play, after a quick stopoff for dinner at a food truck. Dime Stories is an RPG that plays a lot like Dogs in the Vineyard, insofar as you have traits and gear that add dice to your pool, though the underlying moral element isn't there. It feels a lot like Firefly with the "space" part perhaps ramped up a little, and the game revolved around us surveying for a mine and stumbling into a corrupt little town held hostage by a cruel thug. In the end, we wound up basically trying to broker a deal between the "native" folks who actually owned the land the corporation we worked for, but the nuance was a little hard to get to that late in the evening (plus one player was kind of a dick close to the end of the game, which kind of soured the mood).

I'm not terribly impressed with the game itself. Like, I don't dislike it, but it felt kind of derivative, and I didn't feel like the mechanics did anything new or special, they just kind of worked. That said, my buddy Jonathan is a good GM and kept things humming along, and didn't let us get away with the easy ending, so that was nice. My grade: B+

It's Spanish for "Tell me stories."

And then, sleep.

Friday I ran some curse the darkness demos at the booth, and then sat on a panel about Kids and Gaming, which was pretty cool and reminded me I needed to pick up Little Wizards. And then I had to zip over to a game of Outbreak: Deep Space. Which turned out to be...not so great.

So, part of this is my fault. There are two zombie RPGs whose titles sound kind of similar. One is called Outlive Outdead, and I backed its Kickstarter and even have a picture of myself in the book. I've never gotten to play the game, though. The other game is called Outbreak Undead, it's a huge, pretty book, and I often pick it up at cons and then put it down after I flip through it, because it looks boring. I thought I was playing the former; turned out I was playing an offshoot of the latter.

The setup for the game was OK; we were on a prison ship, woke out of cryo-sleep early, there are zombies, argh. Simple enough. The problem was twofold.

First, the GM had never run a con game before, and was quite unfamiliar with this game in particular and this scenario for it. He understood the rules, but he was having trouble applying them in context. He called for rolls to do things like open our cryo-tubes, which would have been more silly than anything else, except that the characters in this game suck. It's a percentile system, but my character - who is a corrections officer - had nothing over a 40%. There are some modifiers that raise your target number, but not by much, and as a result I think I succeeded about...well, about 30% of the time. Which is boring and sucks and is not fun to play. (We could get into a big discussion about whether failure is fun to play and can lead to character development - I talk a little about it here - but this was pretty much a standard "roll and you miss and on we go" kind of thing.)

Plus, we didn't do any roleplaying. Not one scene. It was a minis game, except we abstracted most of the combat as well. My Grade: D

ZOMBIE FAIL. 

So then...well. Turns out Friday was my 40th birthday!

You know, I don't like parties much, unless they're mine. I know how that sounds, and it's not that I have to be the center of attention, but I like knowing the people (at least most of them) at a party, I like having a little bit of say about what's going on around me. Anyway, this was pretty awesome. There was this cake:

Don't be fooled, it's actually full of vibranium.

The cake was awesome, but I swear it weighed more than Cael. But I got it to the space, and people arrived.

People.

People.

Peeeeeeople.

Hey, it's me and Michelle!

One of the comments I made was "it's amazing how closely my 40th birthday resembles my 9th," by which I meant all the superhero stuff we use as decoration. But it was great - a lot of people, some of whom I don't see very much, coming to join me for my birthday. I didn't feel older at all. I felt loved.

LIKE AN AVENGER.

And then, sleep.

Saturday I stumbled downstairs for the Onyx Path panel, where the aforementioned announcements took place. And then following that, I had a game of A Tragedy in Five Acts to run, for which I did not snap any pictures. That was, however, one of the most absurd games of Tragedy I've seen. A giant octopus named Calamara attacked San Francisco. One of the characters became a ghost in the first act, another a squid-mutant. And in the the, there was a nuclear blast set off at the Hostess factory, and everyone died, the ghost standing there in confusion. The winner (the Parent, playing the aforementioned squid-mutant) titled it The Squid's the Thing.

Something I did note: We had one female player. When she bid on scenes, one of the things she almost always changed was her character getting kidnapped or otherwise damsel'd. Food for thought.

From there, I wandered a bit, and caught some fellow freelancers in a bar (because where else would they be).

And also some of Batman's villains:

Either Batman has a plan to escape or they've prenegotiated. 

So then a spot of dinner, and then on to Fate of the Norns with Michelle! Now, this was another game I backed on Kickstarter and never played, but it's a pretty cool game. It doesn't use dice. Instead, you have a bag of runes from which you draw, and different colors mean different actions. The characters are neck-deep in Ragnorak (which, as the author/GM pointed out, isn't a one-night deal, it lasts generations) and we wound up fighting horrible death-bears. Two of us died, but in death, you have the chance to go to Valhalla and have the whole group (of players) "level up." I don't generally hold with levels, but I do like that death has a purpose and a mechanic. I would totally run this game for my players. My grade: A-

My character was a skald. I sang "Immigrant Song" in battle. 

And then, sleep.

Finally, Sunday! Sunday, of course, means Clay-o-Rama!

Now, strangely, I had 8 people signed up but only 3 showed, and then another joined us. So the match was quick.

Construction phase.

The battle is joined!

We had some pretty cool looking monsters. One guy - the oldest combatant - zipped off to the end of the table and waited for the other three younger boys to duke it out. He won, of course, but I do want to note that just before the killing blow was struck, his last remaining opponent used Bowl and threw his doughy butt down the table, whereupon his scorpion monster fell right apart. It was pretty satisfying.

Also, this game involves hedgehogs. 

From there, shopping. Michelle and I walked around, schmoozed a bit, bought a bunch of stuff, and killed time until it was time to tear down the booth.

Also a comp. 

And then onward, home!

I'm not experiencing con drop yet, though I might; it was a really good time, and I met some new awesome people and spent time with pre-existing awesome people. Next year, of course, should be the debut of both Beast and Chill, so I'm greatly looking forward to that, as well as seeing all my con-buddies.

Loot!