Right, so!
The Game: Seeker
The Publisher: Vajra Enterprises
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
You know, Seeker may not be my particular cup of tea, but it's at least not another D&D clone boasting that it's so unique because it doesn't have classes or levels. (Actually, the award for "seriously? Have you been asleep for the past 30 years of RPG history?" has to go to the game I saw being Kickstarted where you play monsters in an urban horror/fantasy kind of setting. Like, that's the gimmick, you play the monsters. So unique.)
Anyway, in Seeker you play a...seeker. That would be someone who has walked away from their old life in order to pursue philosophical and spiritual enlightenment, using whatever tools they choose. So you want to play a Christian itinerant preacher, you want to play a wandering Buddhist monk, you want to play a hippie with a vague sense of spirituality expressed through crystals, you want to play an atheist who is trying to find their place in the universe, rock on, all roads lead to Rome. Seekers have "magic", of a sort, but it's very subtle and generally expressed, in story terms, though coincidence and expertise and other invisible things, rather than throwing fireballs around.
The system is a little weird, and I'll be honest, my eyes glazed over the first couple of times I read it so I'll have to take another look as I'm making a character. But the game knows what it wants to be, and that's always a good step. I don't know if it's a game that I would like to play or run, but that's mostly because my experience with games that really ask players to explore what's in their characters' heads on a philosophical level really need a concrete way to represent that at the table (see, for example, Promethean, but also Kindred of the East, just off the top of my head). In Seeker, you wander around and help people, trying to put things right and challenge yourself, and that's cool and all. It just didn't scream "run me!"
Regardless, I have a theme song, courtesy of my pal Toasty:
I almost put this song off for my next character, because tonally it's not a great fit for Seeker, but I do like a challenge. This song is about someone who got beaten and nearly killed coming back for bloody revenge - very straightforward, but not exactly something that lends itself to this largely nonviolent game. But, then I thought, the obvious assumption would be that you were making a character based on the badass that comes back for revenge - but supposing I make a character who was one of the original aggressors?
So! Jewel David Ballard ("J.D." to his friends, as he found his first name hella embarrassing) ran with a very wrong crowd when he was in his late teens. One day he and his buddies were hanging around drinking in the middle of the afternoon and wound up hassling...some guy? He was a local, J.D. remembers that, and his name was Chris or Chuck or something? He's pretty sure that one of his buddies had some reason for starting shit, but it was a while ago and J.D. was drunk. Anyway, things escalated and this guy wound up on the ground spitting out his teeth, and J.D. always felt vaguely bad about it, but it also always kinda felt like a dream to him. Did it really happen? The guys never talked about it.
Oh, it happened, because that guy came back some years later, when the "drink all day" had become "drink on the weekends while we watch football" and most of the guys were married and the town had gotten even smaller. That guy - J.D. still doesn't know his name - came back, killed his friends, and burned half the town. J.D. got away with "just" a bullet in the shoulder, and stumbled away from the burning wreckage as the guy ranted about God's vengeance and justice and suchlike.
As J.D. ran, he thought about that, and thought about how he and his friends absolutely did something terrible to this guy and that he deserved recompense. But at the same time, did it have to be death? Does one beat-down equal multiple murders? But then, that certainly wasn't the only wrong his buddies had ever committed. Is that how God's vengeance worked? And if God really wanted this kind of shit not to happen, wouldn't putting some love in their hearts rather than whiskey in their bellies a little early have been better? J.D. didn't know it as he fled his burning home town, but he was taking his first steps as a seeker.
Whew, OK, apparently I felt like writing today. On we go!
Step One is concept, and I feel like I've covered that.
Step Two is Attributes. I have 24 points to split between 8 Attributes, minimum 1, maximum 5 (many things about this game remind me of early White Wolf games, actually).
Agility can be average or the higher side of average, so I'll put that at 3.
Awareness is about noticing things, and as we've established, Jewel isn't the most perceptive of cats. I'll just leave it at 1.
Charm can get put to 3, I think, as can Endurance. Intelligence is 2 (again, not Jewel's finest point). Speed can be a little higher (4), as can Strength and Willpower. That's 24!
And "Charm" isn't on the character sheet. Nice going, guys. Oy. Anyway, I have 10 Hit Points, too.
Skills! I get 10 points. Skills cost differing numbers of points per level, and damned if I can figure out the logic behind the costs. Like, Criminal and Combat are both 4 points per level. Is that to discourage us from taking them? I happen to know that many of the Paths (the splats, we'll get there) grant combat bonuses, so it's not like it's not part of the game.
Well, anyway, what kinds of things does Jewel know how to do? I don't see him as particularly well -educated, so that'll narrow it down a bit.
I feel like Athletic is a good idea, but it's 3 points per freaking level. I'll just take one, I guess. Well, no, looking at the rest of the skills, I think I'll take two in Athletics, and one each in People, Traditional, and Labor. I get a free specialty in each of those, so I'll take Outdoors (Athletics), Building/Repair (Labor), Social (People), and Survival (Traditional).
Step Four is Paths, the aforementioned splats. There are 8 of these, or rather, four with two...viewpoints? Goals? There's Thought, Harmony, Self, and Feeling, and in each one you can go + or -. For example, -Self is a kind of Buddhist striving to remove ego and let go of the self, while +Thought is about using the mind and thinking through problems. It's not a bad approach for a game about practical philosophy, actually (though I'm hardly a philosophy major so I don't know).
Anyway, I have four levels in these. I could take one dot in four or four dots in one or whatever combination makes me happy. Hmm.
Well, I feel like Jewel's goals are going to be centered around justice, atonement, violence (understanding it, not committing it), and maybe anger. That to me suggests that +Harmony and maybe -Feeling make the most sense, though I think I want to give him one dot in -Harmony (putting himself outside society) just because he's already got some foundation there. So let's say -Harmony 1, +Harmony 2, -Feeling 1.
I get specialties here, too, and also Focuses. Let's start with -Harmony. I think that Jewel feels like being outside of society and breaking taboos is something he's done for a long time, but he wants to understand how he got to that point without hurting anyone else. So his Focus there is reading - he reads true crime, analyses of killers and other people who have done terrible things - and tries to put it all in context. His specialty here is Combat (I get an effective +1 to -Harmony if I'm fighting dirty; again, not aspirational, but instinctive). I need a brief philosophy statement about each Path, too, so for -Harmony it's "No one breaks the rules, we step over them."
Over on the +Harmony side of things, Jewel does find this aspirational. Here's where he pins his hopes of atonement, redemption, and being a "good person." His Focus here is "acts of service" (basic good deeds for people that need them). His specialty is "fix Harmony" (it's one of the Path abilities, allowing him to figure out what part of a system is broken). His statement here is "If you want to fit in, do the work."
And, finally, -Feeling. For Jewel this is about not losing his temper or getting swept up in passion. It's not about being joyless or robotic (ew), but more about maintaining a functional calm, I think. His Focus here is "small talk." Sure, it's more social than -Feeling stuff usually is, but at its core it's about interaction without strong emotion. Specialty: secondary (Paths have a primary and secondary "plus", and in this case the secondary is a bonus to activities that benefit from a calm and rested mind). Philosophy statement, in honor of my late father: "Who gives a shit?" (Not to say dad was dismissive or dispassionate, far from it, but he was a very big proponent of choosing one's battles.)
Step Five is equipment, but there's actually a system so I won't skip it. I get five "equipment points" to spend. I'll spend one on an equipment packet for Athletics: Outdoors (good hiking boots, serviceable backpack and bedroll), one on a packet for Labor: Building/Repair (tool roll, duct tape), one on a cell phone, one on a junker bicycle, and one on a bit of pocket money.
Step Six is advantages and disadvantages. Standard stuff, disads give me points, advantages cost points, but I can also use points to raise Attributes and Skills, which might not be a terrible idea. Let's see.
Well, I'll take Hunted: Seeker as a disad. The "guy" with whom Hell was comin' is still looking for Jewel. That shoulder shot was meant to just put him down temporarily, and the guy didn't count on Jewel getting away. He's a seeker, too, though obviously we have some philosophical differences.
I'll take a Demon, as well. Demons aren't necessarily literal, they're just impulses or personality traits that get in the way of a seeker's journey, big time. Jewel's is Shame, triggered by violence. I thought about Rage, but Jewel never really engaged in violence out of anger. He just...didn't stop.
That gives me 8BP to throw around. Attributes are 1, Skills are 3 for 1, and advantages cost whatever they cost. Let's look at those first. Nothing there I like, actually. OK, Attributes. I'll put one in Awareness so I'm not quite so thick, and I'll bump up Endurance to 4. Six BP left, holy shit, that's a lot. I guess let's put some into Skills. 1 BP gives me three skill points...huh. Does that mean Skill levels, like in earlier chargen, so one more point in Combat would cost 4 skill points? The math isn't exactly consistent. I'll assume it does, because otherwise BP would be bananas powerful (I mean, they kinda still are, but whatever).
No, you know what? I'll drop the Demon and just keep the other disad. I think that's a pretty good starting point for Jewel, especially given that adding Skills means adding specialties and so on.
Step Six: Eccentricities. (But wait, wasn't the last one Step Six? Yes, and this one is too! This is what happens when you don't proofread, kiddies!)
These are just little quirks about the character that are noticeable and, as the name implies, eccentric. I think Jewel says "call me Jewel" when people ask his name, or when introducing himself, or just to open conversations. He tightens bolts and screws and performs other little fixes if you leave him alone in a room too long. And, finally, Jewel smiles at everyone. That...doesn't always have the effect he wants.
And that's it! Jewel is out there on his bike, ready to roll into town and try and be helpful, and in the process learn a lot about people getting suspicious of anyone being kind.
