Character Creation: Fortune's Fool

I was in a production of Romeo & Juliet in college. It was really terrible. The guy playing Romeo delivered that line like "O I AM FORTUNE'S FOOOOOOOOOOL!"

Anyway. I'm running this game tonight, and I think I have time to make a character. Let's find out!

The Game: Fortune's Fool
The Publisher: Pantheon Press
Degree of Familiarity: Some. I played it at GenCon a few years back, and it was a good time
Books Required: Just the one, though there are apparently a few sourcebooks.

 
So, Fortune's Fool is a Renaissance fantasy game, played with a Tarot deck. There's a lot to like about it, and a couple of things that are a bit problematic. Let's get to it.

Step One: Race. That'd be human, dwarf, orc, goblin, elf, or halfling. I'm sure humans are "diverse" and "adaptable", because they always are. Yawn. (This is why fantasy games annoy me.) I'm gonna play a halfling, I think. No, wait! I'll play a goblin. Yeah. I have the beginnings of a concept.

Oh, but hang on. Goblins are not native to Europe, and they have restrictions on their religion, which is fucking stupid. Hrm. And the religion section explicitly says that not every race can choose every religion. Mental note, address that in my review.

Well, anyway. I guess I'll go back to halfling, then. As a halfling, I start with:

Agility 6, Body 4, Heart 6, Perception 7, Status 4, Martial 0

Fortune Smiles on Cups and Swords, and Frowns on Pentacles and Wands. I also get -1 Movement for foot-speed purposes, since I'm short.

Step Two: Do a thing that most modern games have figured out is stupid, but that is still important here for some fucking reason Choose gender. 

Yeah, seriously. Well, I like playing male characters, so I'll do that. That gives me +1 Status (picking female would give me a penalty to Body and Martial. No, I'm not kidding), and I can choose one of four Skills. I'll pick Running.

Step Three: Choose Size. It's all relative, of course; even if I'm huge, I'm still just huge for a halfling. I think I'd rather be small (for a halfling). That gives me a -1 to Body, but a +1 to Agility, and gives me the Star and High Priestess as Fortune Shines cards.

Step Four: Age. Hmm. How old do I want to be? I had been thinking youth, a kind of scrappy halfling teen. I think that's fine. I'll take Youth. That gives me yet another +1 to Agility, a -1 to Heart, and a +1 to Perception. Also I get Lovers and Star as Fortune Shines (but I already had Star, so pbbt). I get one Skill Expertise Point.

Step Five: Birthright. This is, like, birth order. I want my character to be out on his own at a young age, and to have no real family, so Orphan seems my best bet. I get...holy shit. Another +1 to Perception and Agility, and another -1 to Body and Heart. I get Judgement and Hanged Man as Fortune Shines, and I get to pick some Skills. I pick Stealth Expert, Survival, Climbing, and Escape Artist.

Step Six: Native Environment. Well, that's easy. City. I get another bump to Agility, and Hierophant, Chariot, and Justice as Fortune Shines. I also get a Skill choice, and I want Art.

Step Seven: Social Class. Peasantry, please, which has the side effect of a +1 to Body, which I need. I also get Strength and Sun as Fortune Shines, and Construction, Driver, Lockpick, and Vocal Control as Skills.

Step Eight: Religion. See, if I were a goblin, I could be Muslim, "Occult," or Jewish, but not Catholic, because...I guess the Church doesn't admit goblins? I dunno. Anyway, I want Catholicism, so here we are. I get two Fate Twists, I get a choice of Latin or Arcane Sense, and a +1 to Martial Training...because...um. I have no idea. I'll take Arcane Sense, I don't see my little halfling as knowing or understanding much Latin.

Step Nine: Add One to a Selected Statistic. OK, so I need to total up my modifiers. 'Scuse me a sec. My stats now look like this:

Agility 10, Body 3, Heart 4, Perception 9, Status 5, Martial 1

Hmm. I think maybe Body, which I'm sure figures in to hit points.

Step Ten: Derived Traits. A bunch of quick math, done and done.

Step Eleven: Calculate Skills Draws and Spend Skill Expertise. OK, need to figure how to do this. Actually it's pretty easy. All Skills have a starting draw value (well, most do, some just modify other traits). Skill Expertise can just add directly to that; if I were older I'd get more. I'll add my lonely point to my Art Skill, making it 5 instead of 4. Oh, and there weren't nearly enough slots on the Skill section of the character sheet. Booo.

Step Twelve: Determine Wealth Level. I kind of want to be poor, honestly. I have to draw a card and see what I get. Wheel of Fortune, which is a special card and not on my sheet. Does that mean anything for purposes of this draw? No. And then I draw the Star, which is a Fortune Shines. It adds an effective 3 to my Status for determining my Wealth, which makes me Middle Class. Bah. Well, that's what happens with these lifepath-like chargen systems, I guess. I'll make it work.

Step Thirteen: Select Martial Skills. You know, if everybody has to be a little fighty, I'm glad that combat skills are on a separate track. Heh, this'll be quick. I have 1 Martial Training so I get 1 Martial Skill. I also get basic training in one weapon for free. So I'll assume I'm trained in a short bow, and I'll take Double Nock. Any fight this guy's in is going to be ranged, or else I'm stupid (and probably fucked).

Step Fourteen: Determine Fate Twists and Starting Fate Pool. Fate Twists are neat little things you can do with Fortune Counters to screw with the Fate Deck. I only get so many, though (just two, actually, because I'm Catholic; pagans get 1, but they can also use magic). I draw two cards, and get the 10 of Cups and the 7 of Discs (Pentacles). That means I get...Borrowed Trouble and High Roller. Which means what? Ooh, neat. Borrowed Trouble means that any time someone discards a Fortune Weeps that's a Fortune Shines for me, I can take it. High Roller means that I can make it so the next draw has to be resolved with a Major Arcanum (which means it's either going to be very good or not so good).

Step Fifteen: Tedious Shopping. Actually, it isn't that bad. I can have any gear equal to or lower than my Wealth rating (Middle Class). So some simple clothes, a short bow and some arrows, that'll be fine.

Step Sixteen: Change Shit. I can circle new Fortune Shines or buy other things by reducing my Fate Pool, but it's only 2 as it is. I think I'm good.

OK, my character's name is Calondrucio. Calo, as he's called, grew up poor on the streets of Venice, and lived in a disused room in a rectory off one of the cathedrals (he sneaked in and took over). He hangs around the workshops where stained glass windows are made, and fell in love with the process - he steals bits of discarded projects or broken windows and tries to make his own, but of course the best he can do is some sculpture. Since I'm Middle Class, not Poor or Destitute, let's say that a glazier - a gruff old dwarf named Stephano took him in and is teaching him the ropes. Stephano isn't in the best of health, though, and Calo wonders how much longer he'll really have.

GenCon 2012: GM's Report Card

I am recently returned from GenCon Indy, so again, I pop my memory card into the computer, upload some photos, and share my experiences to all and sundry!

So, this particular GenCon was kind of a special one anyway. It was the premier of curse the darkness, the first roleplaying game from our new company, Play Attention Games. We weren't sure that we'd have the books there, but they did get delivered, in enough time to sell a few and hand them out to our Kickstarter backers that made the show. So that was nice.

Let me back up. We left Cleveland on Wednesday, my birthday. I was recovering from a god-awful cold (really felt more like a flu, but it went away too quickly for that), and so I kind of felt like hell. Michelle was, as you may know, an Industry Insider Gust of Honor, which meant she did a bunch of panels for them and got a free badge (but they didn't even give the panelists water at their panels. Really, guys?). But that meant we were both really busy all con, and Wednesday was the only day that things were really chill. (It was also my birthday.)

So we got there, and we checked in to the JW Marriott, which I recommend. Nice place. Check the view:

Blue, da-ba-di-da-ba-die.

We got checked in, and then headed over to the convention center to get our badges. This is what GenCon looks like on Wednesday.

Kind of empty.

Except that we then discovered that the line to pick up badges that had been preordered wrapped around the goddamned block.

Yeah, should've had them shipped.

We got the badges. There were some slight issues; I think the girl that was looking for my badge was not familiar with the convention that "Mc" tends to come before "Ma" in alphabetized lists, because it took her a really long time to find me. And then they gave me hassles about giving us the boys' badges, because they didn't have IDs to show (duh, they're kids). But we finally got it sorted. So we left from there and went to get dinner. We decided on Mikado's, because noodles and broth sounded good to me.

Mikado is only open to vampires, apparently. GET IT?

So we ate, and then walked back through the convention center toward the hotel. We saw Cardhalla being constructed:

There's an "after" picture later, too.

And then back to the hotel for sleeeeeep.

Next morning, the boys rolled out of bed and immediately turned on the Xbox.

NO ONE UNDERSTANDS MEEEEE.

No, screw that! This is GenCon! Time to go to the dealer's room! So they got dressed:

Gamer funk protection?

 ...and headed over to the convention center again, carrying a box of t-shirts.

This is what GenCon looks like on not-Wednesday.

We got to the booth eventually. Michelle was chipper.

Chipper!

Still chipper! Those blue things are curse the darkness shirts.

At the booth, we had lots of people come up asking for punches in their Cheese Weasel punch cards, including a member of the Miskatonic Cheerleading Squad.

Go pods!

 As I wandered out of the dealer's room to run my first game of curse the darkness, I saw a really tall Wookie.

ARRARHRHGHNN.

 The first game turned out to be set in the convention center. The city was burning, and one of the community's people, someone skilled at firefighting, had vanished. The other characters found him baking on a rooftop and saved his life. I did not, however, snap any pictures.

So after that, we went to the Games on Demand rooms. Now, I'm totally volunteering to do this next year. It's a great system, folks get to play the games that they want, and it really showcases the strengths of low- or no-prep RPGs like Fiasco, Monsterhearts, Apocalypse World and curse the darkness. We played Apocalypse World, which was a lot of fun. I was a sex-club owner in a drowned city (Seattle; my club was in the space needle).

Somewhere in here, too, I got the emailed from Drive Thru RPG saying that my books had been shipped, and would arrive Friday! I was pretty damned elated. I may have squealed. Anyway.

Trevis, our maniacal GM.

The game was only two hours long, but we got a really good sense of it. Like TechNoir, which I had the pleasure of playing at Origins, this game starts you off with an archetype character, which you can then customize. It also makes a point of defining the relationships and connections between characters, and asks which character is making trouble for the guy running things. I was the guy running things (the club owner), and one of the other players was playing a psychic who wanted to either run my club or have a bigger piece of the pie. The game centered around getting the club up and running again, and ended with us taking someone hostage and fleeing back to the club. It probably would have been much bloodier if we'd had time to pursue it.

The GM, thrust into running this as all GoD GMs are, kept pace, threw complications at us and (and this I truly appreciate) asked us to supply details and backstory about NPCs. It was a lot of fun, and I was sad to learn that the game isn't available for purchase yet. My Grade: A.

And then I had a pickup game of curse the darkness. In this game, the characters were outside of Vegas and had to find out why their power went out. They biked to Hoover Dam and found some folks trying to blow it up, but they all went through a Removal Challenge together and all survived, and made the essential choice (seriously, everyone draws the same suit in a six-player Challenge? That's mathematically unlikely). Good time was had by all, however.

So then sleep. Next morning, I went down to play Four Colors Al Fresco.

This game uses d16s, which is weird.

 Now, I'd played this game a bunch of years ago at Origins. The system is wonky, but fun, and the setting is awesome. It's a supers game set in an alternate Renaissance Italy. Our group was a bunch of Omegas who were socially unacceptable - my character was Ozymandius, King of Kings (Deceased), a Mum-Ra kind of character. The other characters included a boy who cares for a goose that can lay golden (among other types) eggs; a necromancer who can only animate the bodies of fish; Princess Zoe, Midas' daughter, made of living gold; Swanmay, a warrior woman with power over birds; and Lazarus of Bethany, the man raised up from the dead by Jesus. Together, we were just too weird for polite society, and so eked out a living in the mountains.

I like this starting point, and our characters were wacky but had enough chemistry to be fun to play. And then the game was about a bear-demon that was killing people. It was fun, it just felt a little...pedestrian. I had to leave early because I needed to go pick up the books, so it's possible I missed something important. With that in mind: My Grade: I

After that game, I got the books and then we were going to play Advanced Dimensional Green Ninja-Educational Preparatory Super-Elementary Fortress 555 (hell yeah, I c/p'd that ). But that's a very hyperkinetic, random game and Michelle and I weren't feeling up for it. We rested a while instead, and then wound up going to dinner with some friends. I wound up bailing early. I felt like absolute shit for some reason, and I didn't want to relapse into sickness. I did see a couple of interesting things, though.

A living statue.

An unliving barista.

Cardhalla, now complete.

 Next day! Saturday! I had a 10AM game of curse the darkness to run, so I did that. That game was a lot of fun. The characters were coffee growers in Hawai'i, and were searching for their store of coffee that had vanished overnight. What was interesting, though, was that this group really latched on to the notion of breaking the rules, to the point that they would hand me Between Points when they referred to "our coffee" rather than "the coffee." More deaths this time around, very cool group of people.

So from there, I went to the booth and spent the afternoon there handing out copies of curse the darkness to backers. It was closing time before I got to leave, and Michelle and I got dinner at a food truck.

HELL YEAH SHRIMP PO BOY.

Food trucks are awesome!

Ya! Monsters!

And then back to the JW for our game of Fortune's Fool. 

That's my camera case. How meta.

So, I signed up for this game because it uses Tarot. Your draws are successful or not based on the number and whether the suit (or Major Arcana) is a favorable one for your character. The game was based on Beauty and the Beast, Michelle played a character called Belle, I played Sir Gilbert, who wound up contracting the curse of the Beast and getting all hairy and people-eat-y at the end. The game was a lot of fun. If I have a criticism, it's that toward the beginning the GM had a tendency to interrupt, but he got over that (he's a big personality, like me, so I know how it is). :) My Grade: A.

And then we went to the hotel bar, had a drink, went to bed. Nothin' fancy.

Next day, on the way to Clay-o-Rama, I saw strange and beautiful things:

I'm a sucker for supers.

Robots!

More supers!

A dragon made of balloons!

And then I made it to the Family Fun Pavilion, where I found my table and folks got working on their Claydonians.

Preparing for war.

All set to the dulcet tones of Radio Disney!

Killlll meeeeeee.

The battle was joined, and it went the way it usually does. Bloody (clay-y?) melee...

And the adorable little girl that no one thinks will be a threat hung on with most of her hit points until the end, and then mopped up the survivors (hers is the purple thing up there).

So then it was finally time to wander the dealer's room, which, despite being in the room a good deal of the con, I hadn't been able to do. So I took some pictures.

Lolth!

Some...elf guy with a panther!

Michelle, Dave Brookshaw, and a box!

John Kennedy, and his girlfriend, Kat!

My GenCon 2012 haul.

 So in general, good con. Next year: Definitely doing Games on Demand. Definitely not doing Guest of Honor. Ain't worth it. They don't treat you right. Actually, the con in general could stand to step up its customer service game a little. This "no refunds" bullshit is getting a little stale.

But I hate to end on a negative note, so I'll just say: I'll be there next year, hopefully with some spankin' new games to show off!