Shadow of the Demon Lord: The Fall of Tain Faw

After a bit of hiatus, we're back in the land of Rul for our grand finale.

The characters take a day to rest, and then head for Seven Spires. Oballa draws them a diagram of the city, and points out the four paths leading up the hill, three of them leading into a tower, the fourth (the Southern Path) leading up to the gate into the city. The city is, of course, surrounded by the seven towers, but one of them (the Tower of the Hammers of Justice) has been completely destroyed and is naught but ash and burning rubble. 

The heroes talk it over and decided to head up the Northern Pass, as it leads to the tower of the Keepers of Lore (and Homraz is pretty sure nerds will be no problem). Oballa obtains them a horse-drawn carriage. Dagmar dismantles Skadi and puts it in the back of the carriage, and Mayfly powers down and lays in the back. Homraz quaffs a potion of invisibility and ascends the hill between the paths with Bashir, who can remain stealthy thanks to his training as a druid and woodwose. 

They find as they go, though, that the whole hill is under a shadow. They feel disjointed and weighed down, and they all feel their minds and souls being torn. Dagmar's skin becomes puffy and swollen, and they start to emit a sweet, unpleasant stink. They cover up with a cloak and decide that they need to stay covered. Bashir, meanwhile, glances skyward and begins to obsess over flying things. Homraz grows an extra finger and toe on each hand and foot, respectively. 

The characters get to the top of the hill and find that the doors to the tower are open. A man in scholar's robes comes out, gibbering and clawing at his face, and then picks up a rock and tries to scrape off his flesh. Bashir knocks him out, and Dagmar reassembles Skadi so that they can be fully covered. They also wind up Mayfly, who takes the Shadow in better stride.

The walk into the city and people stare at Skadi, but aren't really sure what to make of it. As they're walking towards the palace, they note people looking up, and spot a woman with wings and a fiery sword incoming. Bashir screams and rolls under the wagon, and the woman swoops down at Dagmar. Dagmar braces and strikes it, and Homraz bursts from invisibility and attacks. As people from the city scatter, Homraz hacks away with his ax, and Mayfly puts a bullet in the creature's head, killing it. 

The citizenry recognizes Homraz and starts chanting his name. Homraz, never one to ignore an opportunity like this, screams at the people to reclaim their city, and people start grabbing pitchforks and going after demons. Homraz drinks down a potion of growth he's been saving for a special occasion and grows to 15 feet tall, leading his companions to the palace gates - the nearest ones are close to the burned-out wreckage of the destroyed tower.

When they get to the gate, a number of skeletal guards away them with bows. The creatures fire and the characters attacks; Homraz smashes one to bits and Bashir and Dagmar jump in as well. And then they notice the ground is shaking...Mayfly flits up to the edge of the wall around the palace for a better view, and spies an immense reptilian head coming up out of the ash. "DRAGON!"

The dragon rears up and spews fire over them, setting Homraz alight but barely harming Bashir (thanks to his Oak Hide spell). Homraz charges in to fight the beast, and Dagmar hands back and shoots at it. Bashir follows Homraz, striking at the monster with his club, but doesn't manage to injure it much. Homraz, of course, cuts it open pretty good, but a second blast of fire injures Homraz further and destroys Skadi (though Dagmar jumps clear unharmed).

Dagmar, furious and exposed, shoots the dragon in one of its ax-wounds, and it shrieks and falls. Homraz lops off its head with his ax, holds up the head and screams "This is going on my wall!" The citizens cheer, and Oballa motions them into the palace - she's opened the gate while they were fighting the dragon.

Inside, everything is dim, quiet, and eerie. A horrible slimy mold runs up the walls. They start walking, looking for a way toward the palace, but the mold seems to be growing. It slides down to the floor and starts oozing up their legs. Homraz tries to free his legs, Dagmar tries to beat the mold with his club, and Mayfly lights a torch to it...and then they see the mold vanish from the ground. It's still on the walls, but it's just mold, and it's not moving.

Bashir, unfortunately, is still very much convinced it's covering him. He pulls off his trousers and falls down, trying to roll away from the stuff. Homraz picks him up and smacks him around until he comes to his senses, and he tugs his pants back on. The group heads deeper into the grounds, and Bashir spots something that looks like a humanoid figure with antlers darting across his field of vision. "Faun," he mutters, and everyone goes on alert. 

The group sees a faun appear from the shadows and fire a crossbow bolt at Homraz, screaming "Death to monarchs!" But Homraz see through the illusion and it falls away. Mayfly, tired of these images, casts a spell to create sunlight and the characters realize that the mold definitely gets thicker in one direction. Homraz pulls out a pendulum and asks if following the mold will lead to Tain Faw - and realizes that yes, it will.

They press on until they come to the gates of the Palace, and a courtyard that's completely covered in mold. Homraz beats his ax against the wall and calls out Tain Faw, and the demon answers. It appears in their midst and slashes at them with its claws, but the characters fight back bravely. It injures them, teleporting around the area, but then Homraz catches it off guard and buries his ax in its chest. Mayfly shoots it in the face, and Tain Faw dies, receding into the mold. The mold, in turn, seeps away, and the Shadow of the Demon Lord fades.

Homraz returns to Caecras and takes up the mantle as the Emperor. He makes Dagmar his chief engineer, and installs Mayfly as the head of the Cult of the New God (the Mechanarch). Over time, the Cult's faith merges with worship of Father Death.

Bashir, meanwhile, is granted a large plot of land in the most peaceful part of the Empire (probably the Low Countries). He takes one single dragon scale and turns it into a fruit dish, the sole reminder of his days as an adventurer who fought to free Urth from the Demon Lord's shadow. 

FIN

Movie #592: Renaissance Man

Renaissance Man is a mostly-comedy starring Danny DeVito, Gregory Hines, Mark Wahlberg, Stacey Dash, Kadeem Hardison, Khalil Kain, James Remar, Lillo Brancato, Richard T. Jones, Peter Simmons, and Gregory Sporleder.

Bill Rago (DeVito) is an ad man who used to be a desired commodity in the biz, but has fallen on some hard times, largely because he's an abrasive jackass. Fired for the unforgivable sin of trying to pitch an ad campaign over a speakerphone because he was stuck in traffic (remember when everything wasn't virtual?), he collects unemployment for a while and then lands a job as a teacher at a US Army base.

His job is to teach eight "squeakers" to...comprehend. And here we have one of my niggles with the movie, not a deal breaker but just something I think should have had some more attention (there's a bunch of these) - what exactly is the problem these kids are having? All we're told is that they "can't hack it" or "have sawdust for brains," but during montages all we see is a few of them having trouble with obstacle courses and, in one instance, reading a compass-like thingie (look, I've never been to basic training, but I'm thinking the screenwriter hasn't, either). 

Anyway, utterly unprepared for this job, never having been a teacher and knowing precisely dick about pedagogy, Bill shows up and meets his class. They're all young soldiers from poor backgrounds, rural areas or inner cities, but what exactly makes them unable to "comprehend" being a soldier is unclear. Bill flounders for a bit, and then while he's having the students "read something" (whatever they wanted to bring from the Px), they ask him about the book he's reading, which turns out to be Hamlet. Bill winds up teaching Hamlet to the students, and this makes them...smarter, I guess. They graduate from basic, and Bill decides to stick with this program, I suppose on the assumption that there will always be squeakers. 

I have niggles with the central premise, that is, if there are soldiers that, because of a lack of language skills and cognitive abilities, are having trouble in basic, there's not already something in place for that? Even if informal? And if the program is, as it's kind of portrayed, the brainchild of the base's colonel (Cliff Robertson), why hasn't he put a little work into it? Bill gets no lesson plans, no guidance, other than "teach them basic comprehension." He winds up teaching them Hamlet purely because they show a little interest. For that matter, why is Bill reading Hamlet for fun? Don't get me wrong, I love Hamlet, but I'm also a theater geek and even so, I'd much rather watch the play than read it. Does Bill have a background in theater? He recites a monologue from Romeo & Juliet from memory, so that would imply he did some acting at some point, but he doesn't come off like someone who loves theater or literature (though he clearly has some training in English, but like, he's an ad guy, so that tracks).

Basically, what makes this movie fun is the performances from the class. They have some fun chemistry, both with each other and Bill, and we get to know them enough that when one of them (Kain) gets arrested as a drug dealer, it's got some weight and their reactions matter. There's a scene in which one of the students (Brancato) recites the St. Crispin's Day speech from Henry V when his drill sergeant (Hines, in a bit of really weird casting) demands to hear some Shakespeare in the middle of bivouac training in a rainstorm, and while it makes no goddamn sense if you hold it up to scrutiny (how did this kid, with no particular affinity for literature, memorize this speech? And more to the point, why?), but it's a moving moment because Brancato sells it. The rap version of Hamlet, too, headlined by Kain and Hardison, is fun. 

All in all, it's a light and fun movie and it could have been a white savior movie a la Dangerous Minds, but Bill's unpreparedness for teaching kinda levels the playing field (and also that several of the students are white). 

My Grade: C+
Rewatch Value: High

Next up: The Replacements

Character Creation: NCOK

First we make a character, then we dust. My life is exciting.

The Game: No Country for Old Kobolds
The Publisher: Steve Wallace Art
Degree of Familiarity: None; it's a PbtA game so I know the underlying assumptions
Books Required: Just the one

No Country for Old Kobolds is a Dungeon World hack that has the players taking on the roles of kobolds, those lovable (?) little dog/lizard people that get slaughtered in droves by first level D&D characters. NCOK embraces their limited lifespan, so players are actually taking on the role of a family more than an individual character (that is, you play one character at a time, but when that character dies, you'll make a new scion of that line). 

Like a lot of PbtA games, there's a lot of player-created background. If I were actually playing, we'd make a kobold village, which is really the lifeblood of the game. Also, we'd come up with neighboring Countries that make life hard on us. 

But, as usual, I'm not gonna do the backstory stuff because that's group work and this is just me. The good news is that to make a kobold, I really don't need the other stuff. So here we go! 

First I need a family name. I'll choose Pondscum. 

Now, looks, complete with the usual PbtA lists. I'll say that my little Pondscum (huh, that doesn't sound fun, easy to see why they went with ponies instead) has milky eyes, a short frame, green-tinted scales (hence the name), and stubby horns.

Stats! I get 1, 1, 0, 0, -1, -2 to divide up between the usual six D&D stats. After this particular Pondscum dies, I'd use his stats as a base but add one to one of them to represent the...evolution, I guess?...of the family. Let's put the -2 in Constitution, that'll make me die fast. I'll put the -1 into Strength, my 0s into Wisdom and Intelligence, and my 1s into Charisma and Dexterity. 

I get WIS+2 (so 2) Abilities. I'll play to my strengths, such as they are, and take If I Can't See Them..., allowing me to become invisible by staying perfectly still, and Voice of the Wild, allowing me to command animals to do my bidding.

And, finally, I roll a d6 for my hit points. I roll a 6! That means I start with 4 hit points, because of my shitty CON score (though 4 is actually pretty respectable for a kobold). 

My kobold's given name is Bloop (the Pondscum family gives birth in the swamp, and children are named after the first sound the make. Often it's some variation on "bloop"; it's kind of our "John"). His scales are green and tend to have residual algae on them, his eyes have a nictitating membrane that makes them look cloudy, and Bloop feels most comfortable in the water with just his eyes and horns visible. He looks a lot like a bullfrog when he does that...which is great, except that other species eat bullfrogs. Ah, well.

That'll do it!

Masks: Gimme the Car, Issue Two

It's a game post, or, as we call it around here, "Matt's Blog Post Type 3." 

Last issue, our dynamic trio took on a singing swan lady and then ran afoul of Ilijah Intrepid (would it have killed you guys to spell the name "Elijah" like normal people?). So here we are in Moonlight's sanctum facing off against the dude.

Pyre shoots Intrepid with one of his alien weapons, a gun that fires a pellet of expanding foam to immobilize him. Intrepid looks impressed for a moment, then taps a couple of his fingers together and teleports behind Pyre, reaching for his communicator. Jade Eagle zaps Intrepid's hand with her eye-beams, shorting out the glove, and Intrepid yelps and tosses the glove. Moonlight attempts to encase Intrepid in, well, moonlight, but Intrepid absorbs the construct with his other glove and fires it right back at Moonlight.

Pyre jumps in the way of the blast, and it turns him to ice. He falls to the ground and shatters, and Intrepid tosses a little metal sphere into the shards, which roll them up into a larger sphere. Intrepid grabs said sphere, but Jade Eagle flies over and socks him, sending the sphere flying up. Intrepid reels back and tosses a couple of little glass rectangles to the ground. They break, and two huge alien creatures appear, six-legged, tiger-sized monsters with horrible spindly mouth-folds. One of them leaps on Jade Eagle, and the other charges after Moonlight. 

Moonlight puts up a wall to block the creature, and the creature just slams into it. But the one attacking Jade Eagle tackles her and munches on her head. Pyre manages to reform himself and turns himself into a huge wolf-creature made of ice, but can't quite get his bearings before the other tiger-monster goes around Moonlight's wall and tackles him. Jade Eagle struggles, but can't get the creature to let go. She feels her hands tingle and realizes she could probably call on the power of the bloodstones still embedded in her flesh, but decides that would be a terrible idea and just endures.

Intrepid tosses a disc onto Pyre and immobilizes his (knowing that Pyre can pretty easily reform and free himself), and pulls out a little remote device. "Give me the thing, and your friends don't get hurt." Pyre tries to think of a way to get out of this, but doesn't want to put his friends in more danger. He hands over the communicator and makes a grab for the remote, but Intrepid is too fast. He pushes the button and he, and the monsters, vanish. 

The heroes free Nightingale and she patches up Moonlight and Jade Eagle (both are bleeding from the needly bites from the tiger). Pyre turns into a stormcloud to vent some anger; Jade Eagle tells him to take it outside. Pyre grabs the glove that Intrepid left behind and, with Moonlight's help, analyzes it. It's futuristic tech; the glove is made of millions of nano-wires. When the fingers are tapped together, it can achieve different effects based on the order of the taps. It's too badly damaged to repair, but Pyre manages to rig it so that they can use the teleportation effect to send the wearer and anyone in a five-foot radius to the other glove - once. The heroes decide to do a little preparation before going after Intrepid. Pyre gears up with his remaining weaponry. Jade Eagle heads out to talk to her legacy folks, and Moonlight heads home to get ready for school the next day.

Jade Eagle gets patched up (again) by Auntie, who dresses her down - aliens have different biology than we do, so they can sometimes bypass a Jade Eagle's invulnerability. Casey says that maybe it's time to "show her." Auntie agrees, and Casey takes Selena out to the edge of town, and opens the Eyrie, a hidden sanctum that the Jade Eagles have used for years. 

Charlie, meanwhile, goes to school and immediately has rumors spreading about why he's got a weird ring of wounds around his head ("I heard he stuck his head in the piranha tank at the zoo!"). Tandy - Sol - corners him and says that she doesn't want him dying before they have a chance, um, fuse, and reminds him that he's got the power of darkness eternal at his disposal. He should just release it and not get hurt by alien tigers. Charlie responds that while he does have that power, yes, using it recklessly, even in self-defense, isn't how he rolls. 

Next time, we'll see if the heroes can stop Intrepid and keep to their principles. 

Elemental Legends: House Built on Sand

Well, not built on sand per se, but...you'll see.

Last time, our heroes were at the tea shop when they learned that an angry mob was heading for the jail to kill Thunas. The characters head out to stop said mob, and Gerde wastes no time getting in front of the jail and turning back the earth-shaping that was being aimed at the doors. Feng, meanwhile, mindwarps some of the vigilantes to head home, while Ember and Khatun survey the crowd trying to find who might be instigating all this. They both spot a man on top of a building, watching over the scene and gesturing as though shaping. 

Gerde tells the folks to go home; Thunas is going to go on trial and that's that. Just then, a layer of sand flies from behind her and slams into the mob (she didn't do that). Khatun causes a tree next to the building to grow up and block his line of sight, and the sand falls. Feng goes and stands next to Gerde, offering strength, and together they get the mob to disperse.

Meanwhile, Ember tries climbing up the tree to get to the guy, but when she gets to the top she gets a face-full of sand and falls back down. She tries to get it out of her eyes, but just makes it worse, and starts to lose control of her powers. The ground cracks and lava starts to rise up, which of course gets everyone's attention. Khatun climbs the building and sees the guy - clearly an earthshaper, by his tattoos. She tries to encase him in ice to keep him from fleeing, but the lava has made things too warm and the ice turns to slush. The man falls off the building and lands in a poof of sand, and then runs of into the crowd.

The heroes reconvene (and Khatun washes out Ember's eyes). Khatun heads back to the inn to meditate on what she's seen, and the others try to follow the man's trail into the city. Khatun reflects on the guy, and while she didn't recognize him, she did notice he was wearing a quartz necklace - very much like Onil's. That would make him Calri, Onil's cousin. 

The others, meanwhile, have been looking at the now-cowed vigilantes (Gerde tells them to go home). Gerde also notes that the man they saw apparently likes to take a high vantage point; this enabled him to avoid her vibration sense. Ember climbs a building and, figuring that she's not going to be able to see the guy, instead tries to find his scent (he had a faint odor of clove). She catches a whiff and runs off towards it, and winds up at Onil's house. She doesn't see Calri, but notes that the whole place is shaking. She sends a flare up to alert the others.

Khatun finds the others and tells them what she figured out - this guy is Calri, Onil's cousin, which makes him a sandshaper and the one that actually destroyed the stable. Just then, they see a blast of fire shoot into the air (Feng notes that either that's Ember or it's something they should check out). They rush to find it and wind up at Onil's house, which is now quaking. Gerde tries to get a bead on the quakes, while Ember, Feng, and Khatun rush into the house to get everyone out. 

Ember goes into a side room to look for anyone who needs help, but an outer wall collapses and leaves her trapped. Khatun and Feng wind up in Onil's room, where she's trying to stop the quake with her own shaping powers, but she can't focus enough to do it. Khatun picks her up and heads for the door. Feng looks out a window and sees that the worst of the quake is coming from a copse of trees. He yells to the others and leaps out the window.

Gerde, meanwhile, is trying to contain the quake, and it hurts. When she hears Feng's direction, though, she parts the trees, and there's Calri, exposed. Ember, panicked by being trapped, blasts open the wall, but the lightning reverberates back on her and she stumbles out, barely able to start. Feng mindwarps Calri and Gerde earth-shapes the ground to bring him out. 

Onil berates her cousin, and says that they had agreed to join their necklaces (which supposedly are items of great magic power) when they turned 21. However, Onil became concerned at Calri's ruthlessness, and refused - and it seems she was right to do so. They take Calri to the jail, and Khatun tries to get the guard to release Thunas, since Calri is the real culprit. She is told, however, that she can present that evidence at his trial. 

Character Creation: Supernatural

Happy Sunday! 

The Game: Supernatural
The Publisher: Margaret Weis Productions, but the license must have expired because it's not up on DriveThru anymore
Degree of Familiarity: More with the underlying system than the TV show
Books Required: Just the one

Supernatural is one of those properties that I'd probably be really into but just never got around to watching (but it's still on Netflix, so maybe someday). When Midnight Roads came out, I remember people asking me why Supernatural wasn't in the inspirations, and the answer was simply that no one working on the book suggested it and I'd never seen it. I have now seen a few episodes, and I can safely say that it looks like a good property upon which to base an RPG...except that "normal people hunting hostile supernatural creatures" is not exactly untrodden ground for an RPG.

Reading the game, I don't see the "hook." I mean, I do, because the core concept is solid and the show has a following, but like, off the top of my head: Hunter: The Vigil, Chill, Monster of the Week, Vampire$...there are so many of these games. Does Supernatural have something so unique to its setting that it demands another monster hunter RPG? Or was this just a case of cashing in on a popular geek property? I dunno, I suspect the latter, but in any case, I'm more interested in seeing how Cortex handles the genre. 

Right, so, chargen. My friend Jenn gave me this song for inspiration ("Sweet Jane," Cowboy Junkies):

(She actually gave me this song Friday and I was going to use it for ACKS, but I like the song too much to waste it on that game.)

This song has a sad, wistful vibe to it, and makes me think of loss and bittersweet memories. I actually think it's pretty much perfect for inspiring a Supernatural character. The classic monster hunter, of course, is someone who lost their family to monsters, but I think I want to play someone who left his family because of the monsters. 

Wade Berry used to be a social worker. He had the unenviable job of performing house inspections; might not have been his first choice, but he was big, strong, and soothing (he looks like everyone's dad or cool uncle). Wade had a husband and two boys, and like a lot of folks in his job, he struggled with leaving the shit at work and dealing with compassion fatigue. 

And then one day, he did a visitation and the girl who let him into the house, probably all of 13, seems undernourished, nervous, gaunt - nothing too uncommon, except she had odd wounds on her neck and wrists. Wade called for an ambulance, and then opened a door he thought led to a master bedroom. The room was pitch dark, and he went in and opened a window. Sunlight flooded the room and someone - something - in the corner of the room screamed and disappeared.

Wade never saw the girl again, and apparently she disappeared from the hospital that night. All Wade knows is that she was anemic. But the next night, Wade's dog turned up gutted on his porch. His husband, who works nights, started seeing people following him. And then Wade got a letter at his office that simply said: You'll pay for burning him.

Wade wasn't an occult expert, but he was smart enough to figure what was going on. He left town, ostensibly to visit family. His husband reported no more stalkers, but Wade started to see them. That's when he realized he couldn't go home.

Right, that's a good, if sad, start. What next? Need to set a starting level; Wade's pretty obviously a rookie. That means 42 Attribute points, 62 Skill points, and 0 Traits. 

Attributes: We buy them in dice, so a d6 (average) costs 6 points. There are 6 of them, so spending enough to get a d6 across the board would mean I've spent 36, giving me 6 remaining. Ugh. I want Wade to have higher-than-average Strength and maybe Vitality. 

Well, if we do d6 across the board and then spend 4 more to jack Strength to d10, and then 2 more to jack Vitality to d8, that's all my points. I can live with that. I could lower something to raise something else, but I don't see Wade as below-average in any of the other Attributes, so that'll do.

Skills! I get 62 points. I can take up to a d6 in a General Skill, but past that I have to buy a Specialization, but I only have to pay the difference (meaning if I want a d10 Specialization I'd need to spend 4 points on it). Let's see. I'd like:

Animals d4
Athletics d6 (Weight Lifting d10, Running d8)
Covert d4
Discipline d6
Drive d6
Influence d6 (Bureaucracy d8)
Knowledge d4
Lore d4
Perception d6 (Empathy d8)
Unarmed Combat d6 (Wrestling d8)

That's 62. Cool, now Traits. I don't get any for free, so I have to take Complications if I want some Assets, which I do. Let's see! 

Well, Combat Paralysis d4, that sounds good. I'll take Dead Broke d8, reflecting that Wade just kinda walked away from everything and he's got basically nothing to his name. Hunted, obviously, and whaddya know, "vampire with a grudge" is an example at d8. Straight & Narrow is an easy d4 because Wade doesn't like to break the law, and I'll take Memorable d2 (Wade is a large, muscular black man, and depending on the venue and the situation people will remember him). That gives me 26 points of Assets to pick. 

OK, I'll take Brawler d4 (Wade can fight, he's just better in theory than practice). Devoted is perfect - Wade is Devoted to going home, but he's gotta take out this vampire first. Good-Natured, that's perfect, d6 (I've spent 16, so I've got 10 remaining). 

Higher Education; he's got a Masters degree, after all. D4 oughta cover it. And then...Hmm. I want both Natural Athlete and Sensitive. I could take one at d4 and one at d2, I suppose, or I could just take one at d6. 

Actually, you know, I'll ditch Brawler, take Natural Athlete instead (d4), and take Sensitive at d6, and that'll finish out my points. Derived traits put Initiative at d6 + d6, Life Points and Endurance Point at at 14 each, and Resistance at d6 + d6. 

Wade, as I mentioned, is large (6'4"), very muscular, dark skinned. He didn't take much with him when he left, so he's got a duffel with a couple of changes of clothes and an extra pair of shoes, some cash (not much; he wasn't going to drain the bank account), a couple of notebooks (Wade is notoriously averse to tech and prefers to write longhand), and a book about vampires (perhaps Lust for Blood by Olga Hoyt). I think he'd be played by Winston Duke. I also think it'd be fun to have him stumble into a group of hunters going after something nasty and getting wrapped up in it, and I'd want the "season" to conclude with him finding that pale girl again, probably while "Sweet Jane" plays.

Character Creation: Axe Body Spray

OK, actually, it's Adventure Conqueror King System, which is abbreviated ACKS and thus pronounced "axe." I guess I could also have with "Acks", as in the noises that these dudes make:

The Game: Adventurer Conqueror King System
The Publisher: Autarch
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I'm actually not sure why I own this game. Not because of the controversy surrounding its author (controversy, like talk, is cheap), but because it's really not my cup of tea. It's very much in the OSR mold, aka the "the games that came out in 1974 and are basically glorified war games are the only good ones", and that's totally not what I get into. But here we are.

Reading the book, it reminds me very much of early D&D, which I suppose is the point. A couple of knobs have been tweaked, and there's an emphasis on Law vs. Chaos in the alignment, rather than good vs. evil. Also an emphasis on becoming badass enough to become a warlord or a king or whatever, which I kind of like; some attention to the endgame of a campaign is nice. But anyway, let's do this.

First off, I roll 3d6 six times for my Attributes (I appreciate that the book doesn't tell me to conceptualize first). I get:

STR 15
INT 13
WIS 11
DEX 17
CON 8 (oof)
CHA 9

Now I choose a class. Each class has a prime requisite Attribute, so obviously I want to play to my strengths and pick a class that relies on Strength or Dexterity. Shouldn't be hard. Ooh, elven nightblades have Dexterity as their prime. I like that, that sounds cool. Reading their write-up, they're basically assassins with some magic sprinkled on top; starting at 2nd level they can cast some spells. Doesn't help my 1st level ass, but that's fine. I get a few nifty abilities (I can spot hidden doors easily, bonus to initiative in the woods, that kind of thing), and I get a bunch of thief abilities (hide in shadows, climb walls, etc.). 

Next I'm meant to note that I have zero XP, but there doesn't seem to be a slot on the sheet. Weird. Oh, wait, no, it's on the second page. That's fine.

Hit points: I roll a d6, add my CON bonus (which is -1, ugh), and that gives me...2 hit points. Holy shit, I'm probably not long for this world.

Attack throws and saving throws, that's easy, just copy them off the chart. And now, Proficiencies! Hey, I get to choose something! I Adventuring as a starting, um, adventurer, and then one from a class list and one from the general list. Now I gotta think about concept a little.

Well, nightblades are supposed to be subtle and stealthy, and my dude is going to fold like a sheet of crepe paper if anything hits him, so I better lean in to that. For my nightblade Proficiency, I'll take Weapon Finesse (letting me use my Dex bonus instead of Strength when attacking with a one-handed weapon). For the general one, I'll take Lip Reading (weird, I know, but the idea is to hide and spy on people, and then stab them, I guess). 

I have (roll dice) 110 gold, so I guess I should buy some shit. Leather armor is 20, so that's fine. A hand axe is 4gp, a crossbow is 30, and a case with 20 bolts is 2, so that's 56 spent. I'd buy adventuring gear, too, but y'know I don't like shopping in games, so I think I'll call it there.

For alignment, I think I'll go with Lawful. Sure, an assassin and spy might seem obviously Chaotic, but I like a challenge. I think my nightblade recognizes that killing is inherently un-lawful, but in some cases, allowing someone to live leads to greater instances of chaos down the road. A controlled burn is better than a forest fire, that kind of thing. 

Like most elves, he's tall, pointed ears, pale and somber. He's not as beautiful as most elves, but in his case that means he's just kind of bland-looking - still pretty, but not memorable. His eyes are violet, his hair is grey (but like, cobweb grey, not grey because of aging). He cleans his armor meticulously, and has shaved down his axe and crossbow so that they're perfectly balanced. His name is Luos Nobe Ebonsoul (yes, it's a palindrome, might as well go all-out).