Trying to step it up to 10 characters a month for the rest of 2022 so I hit 100, so far so good, this is 10 for September.
The Game: Gravemire
The Publisher: Clawhammer Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
Gravemire is Southern gothic horror, and it's got a solid pitch - you're in a town called Scarstone, the town is slowly dying, and it's surrounded by a swamp that's been overtaken by a kind of Mist/Annihilation sort of scenario. You go out into the swamp to do jobs of various sorts, and probably die. The game is highly lethal by design, and actually has a specific scene set aside for when a PC dies. I'm down with that, of course.
What I'm less down with is the lack of a character sheet. The thinking is that everything you need to know about a character can be fit on a post-it note (so sayeth the book; I sayeth that it might fit on an index card, but a post-it would be a bit cramped), and that's perhaps true, but there's something nice about having all the info about a character in a format that everyone at the table shares so that everyone knows where to look when you ask for a particular roll. Also, the GM in the game is called the Dealer but it uses dice, not cards. I just think that's odd.
But in any case, last character of September. On we go!
My character's name is Winthorn Pepper, but everyone calls him "Pep". Pep is here in Scarstone working for a big fancy New Orleans lawyer name of Charlie Stills. Mr. Stills hired Pep to track down some fellow who'd just inherited a lot of money. Pep found the guy's body outside of Scarstone, and wired Mr. Stills about what happened. Stills wired back "who killed him dont come back till you know," and Pep is still here, so that's how well that's going.
Right, good start. Skills, then. I get 15 SP, which I can use to buy skills (a-doy), but also to raise my Health. Skills are arranged in 3 tiers. Tier one skills are highly specialized, tier two less so, and tier three are broad like "Combat" or "Stealth." Conveniently, the tier is also the cost, so if I wanted a level-3 tier 3 skill, it'd eat 9 points.
Pep is clearly someone you'd hire to track someone, so he needs a skill to reflect that. I think Tracking People is probably specific enough to be tier two, not one, so I'll take +3 there, which eats 6 points.
Figure that not everyone wants to be found, so I'll take a tier one skill reflecting Pep's ability to threaten people into coming with him. Convincing Threats, maybe? Just +1 will do it. 7 spent.
Gotta back up those threats. Fisticuffs sounds like a tier 2, so I'll blow 6 more there. That's 13 spent. I'll put two into Health, which boosts it by 1.
Now I can take an Aversion and get more points, if I want. I actually don't think I do; I like the idea of Pep being pretty even when things start out and him cracking organically over time (or, y'know, just dying).
And finally, I answer four questions:
- Pep hopes to find who killed Simon Phipps, the young man he was sent to find. He's gotten a few leads in Scarstone here and there, but all the evidence he's collected leads him to believe that the person(s) responsible are beyond the Border.
- Think I covered this already.
- Pep didn't think he was hiding from anything, but sometimes he gets the feeling that Mr. Stills blames him for Phipps' death. But he didn't have anything to do with it! He couldn't have...?
- Pep is afraid of a truth he doesn't remember, or a fate that he's taken on but didn't deserve.
And that's pretty much it! No sheet to attach.
Winthorn "Pep" Pepper
Health: 8 Willpower: 10
Skills: Fisticuffs +2, Tracking People +2, Convincing Threats +1
