Oswald (Oz) is a nobleman son, raised with all the traditional upbringings of a gentleman: riding, swordsmanship, table manners, etc. He took leave from the university to live out his own version of Homer's Odyssey in hopes that he can write about his adventures. To his family's disappointment, Oz has yet to return from his journeys and it’s been close to three years now.


Working Character Sheet

Oswald Crispton
Mantle

ASPECTS
High-Concept: Nomadic storyteller with a weakness for skirmishes
Trouble:      Terrible ideas make the best stories!
Personal:     UNDEFINED
Personal 2:   UNDEFINED
Personal 3:   UNDEFINED

SKILLS
02 *    Great(+4): Rapport, Blades
03 *     Good(+3): Will, Empathy, Knowledge
04 *     Fair(+2): Athletics, Contacts, Investigate, Notice
05 *  Average(+1): Ride, Physique, Lore, Shoot, Stealth
05 * Mediocre(+0):


Athletics, Blades, Burglary, Contacts, Crafts, Deceive, Empathy,
Fighting, Investigate, Knowledge, Lore, Notice, Physique, Provoke,
Rapport, Ride, Shoot, Stealth,  Will

Two Great, Three Good, Four Fair, Five Average.  Please do not delete the
Mediocre(+0) ranked skills.


STUNTS
Core mantle stunts are free. You may take one additional stunt (mantle or otherwise) for free.  Any further stunts cost 1 refresh.  Refresh starts at 3.  You may go down to zero refresh.

Stunt Name
Stunt Details

STRESS & CONSEQUENCES

Mental Stress (Will)       [_][_][_][_][_] // [_][_][_][_]
Physical Stress (Physique) [_][_][_][_][_] // [_][_][_][_]
Mana (Lore)                [_][_] // [_][_][_][_][_]
Consequences               [2][4][6]

Refresh 3/3.  Mental and Physical Stress tracks start at five-shifts.  Each slot negates one stress only).  Each rank in Physique and Will adds one shift to the length of the corresponding stress-track.

This message was last edited by the player at 14:04, Thu 22 Oct 2020.

So.. yeah. A poet. The idea for this is less Shakespeare and more bardic story teller; perhaps I should change that. Oswald’s doesn’t aim to hero each tail but to tell an engaging story. By night’s end, it is not uncommon for the whole tavern to be in hushed anticipation for the ending of his most recent fable.

To me, this type of ability seems best represented by Rapport. Any thoughts on that? Maybe a stunt to augment it? After reading craft, that doesn’t fit. I think Lore would be the next closest but it rally feels like rapport with permission being granted by a stunt or aspect to use it in this way.

I’ve glanced at the recap and the world info but now I’ll be digging into them more that I’m in the game. While I’m doing that, how do you all see this type of character working into the story? Is there an aspect (pun intended) of him that needs to be developed to fit him in more seamlessly.

I suppose he would need a reason to be working with/for the Veiled Hand.

Thoughts in this space or with anything else I mentioned?
This message was last edited by the player at 00:32, Fri 16 Oct 2020.

He needs a vector in to the Veiled Hand (and the Queen's confidence).  But he does not need to have been one of the attendants.  "The Veiled Hand" generally refers to the network of information passed between attendants and friendlies.

But this is a new thing.

There's a surly kind of Queen's Guard named Menkliia who is the Queen's left hand on this.   He's the highest up the chain that the PCs are aware of.   Your handler is Stefen, "the pock-marked man" (echoes of the Farseer Trilogy is on purpose)..

Druvir is a prosperous port city in a fairly prosperous nation.

I acknowledge that the very fact that it's a port city means there must be other lands, other peoples out there, which we haven't defined.  So, it could be a thing that Oswald is from outside Aroen (the known land).  Queen Jia appears to have a bit of a thing for collecting anomalies.  I mean, she's got a Khunic Oathsworn  among her court... (a dread figure from Khune, one of our current PCs).

So, to start off with, you'll want to decide what kind of land Oswald comes from.

• Kumlar, our default.  A Bard/Troubador. etc would surely have a place.    (A PC, Nathan, is Kumlaren).
• Khune, a Harsh land to the Southwest.   More Arabic and Middle Eastern in influence  (a PC, Cara Yisil, the Oathsworn, is Khundari)
• The Plains of Taren.  Think North American Indian plains culture... (a PC, Arui, is Tarenti )
• Khadid, Once a proud nation, the land itself was torn asunder by the great magical working called the forbidding, which ended the Great War.   The land exists, but it is corrupted and rife with twisted monsters and other oddities...  But man is a hearty creature and there are scattered villages all throughout Khadid, still.
  
  Several generations after the Great War, the Khadiden are multi-generational refugees largely integrated into their respective societies.  But, it's sort of like the Medieval Jew in that tehy're a part of, yet curiosly distinct from their socieities, and probably often persecuted (or depending on how different they are, perhaps fetishized)...  At the moment, no current PC is Khadiden.
• The Cyrenni, Fisherman and pirates.  The original inhabitants of Sachs Isl and the other Eastern Islands.  They're not really defined beyond "fishermen and pirates, and the fact that Cyren is the second largest population center in Kumlar, and essentially the gatewway to the rest of the world.  I'd probably rip stuff off from Freeport for that one.  It's a blank whiteboard for you, if you want this...

Now, as to Skills...  I see Lore and Rapport being predominant.

Lore
For being literate, learning your stories and songs, understanding the context of said stories.

Rapport
For making people like you.  This is the performance skill, definitely.


Are you a all Familiar with the Lynn Flewelling's trilogY "The Nightrunner" series?  It starts with "Luck in the Shadows".  MY roommate and I refer to it as "the Gay Elf books" (because the main character eventually discovers that he's both, though not at the same time).   One of the central characters (the main/characters mentor/lover is first seen as a a troubadour/bard type.  And it's absolutely <U>perfect</I> for explaining why someone  might criss-cross the nation, know all sorts of people, all sorts of things and be remarkably well-informed about the state of affairs all over.

This is just what I was sort of envisioning when you pitched the concept.

With that in mind, it makes the character less about the performance (oh, the rapport should be up there), and way more about the background... A bard absolutely must be talking to people, learning things...  asking questions and possibly ruffling feathers in the process.  That's how they get their stories!.  And boy does that fit the into this game-concept really really well...

Above I’ve started a working character sheet. I’ll make updates there until I have a final, unless you prefer a new post for each update (happy to do either). I have a few aspect ideas but need a bit more information to flesh things out more.

I’m tempted to go Kumlar to keep it simple, but a Khadid gipsy vibe is kind of calling my name. Do the Khadid have nobles? does the leaving university idea fit in with them?

I haven’t read nightrunner, but I like the idea of giving contacts a +2 at minimum due to Oz traveling around so much.

You have knowledge and lore as available skills, what is the distinction between them and do you view lore as something Oz would have gained during his formal education?

Combat has blades, fighting, shoot.  Is fighting fists and non-bladed weapons, or is blades an umbrella for close combat weapons? Also, are black powder weapons a thing, or just bows and crossbows?

And the whole mantel thing:  I found a blurb speaking to them as a role sort of thing, but I couldn’t find a “this is how you make one” type of post. There was even an example of a troubadour! :) From the mechanics perspective, only having one free stunt outside a mantle makes me want to take a mantel for the extra “free” stunts, but what does a mantle give me that I can’t portray with my 5 aspects and the usual 3 free stunts? I hope I don’t sound like I’m being critical, I’m honestly not, just trying to figure out the difference and how it can apply to Oz.

If you're seen Castle with Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic, then the Investigator-Bard relationship with my Nathan might be an in

In reply to Nathan (msg # 5):

I haven't seen that.  Tell me what you're thinking, it sounds interesting.

In the tv show, Fillion is an author tagging along with Katie, a homicide detective, whilst he polished up procedural for his latest murder mystery. Along the way he helps solve some of them

Was wondering if his noble name might have meant someone in the Blue Cloaks (the city guard analogue) would have passed him off to me?

Khadid really hasn't been fleshed out, so it's wide open.   While there might have been nobles, the utter decimation of the nation's capital and it's following inability to defend itself meant that the nation is simply no more.

Those who claimed Khadiden nobility might well have been such.  They might've been able to escape as refugees, while the remaining Mondain, the forces back broken, pillaged and ransacked every settlement they could find on their wayback to the Mondat mountains.  Some, perhaps, never left Khadid, and they are the progenitor source of several of the twisted monstrosities that exist there.

I like to envision Khadid as having the precursor to a formal university...  Which the College of Mages in Kumlar have picked up and run with.  The fractious nature of the houses in Khune probably means it hasn't quite gotten the same traction there.

So...  A troubadour descended from a noble Khadiden house would be do-able.  As a noble, he'd be acceped in Kumlaren court, btu there'd always be that little "lesser than" feeling because he's not Kumlaren...



You have knowledge and lore as available skills, what is the distinction between them and do you view lore as something Oz would have gained during his formal education?

Right, I gotta remember what game I'm in.  This one has the little bit more detailed magic system.

Knowledge is General Knowledge (Fate Core: Lore).

Lore is very specifically mystical and magical knowledge, the awareness of spirituality, cosmology, mana and the flow of magic.  Lore is an anchor stat for creating a mana pool IF you are a fast-caster.  The Mana-Pool is a magical stress-track that will eb eaten up before you need to consider eating up your Mental and/or physical stress-tracks.




Combat has blades, fighting, shoot.  Is fighting fists and non-bladed weapons, or is blades an umbrella for close combat weapons? Also, are black powder weapons a thing, or just bows and crossbows?

Pre-black-powder, please.   Alchemy is definitely a thing, and explosive properties are being explored, but they are not yet introduced in such a capacity as to be familiar or frequently encountered.

Originally it was Fight (unarmed), Blades (any hand-held melee weapon), and Shoot (any projectile weapon).  It still is.  We had a discussion in which I offered to revise the skill set because the unarmed fighting just never came up...  We chose not to retcon the skill-system in that regard.




And the whole mantel thing:  I found a blurb speaking to them as a role sort of thing, but I couldn’t find a “this is how you make one” type of post. There was even an example of a troubadour! :) From the mechanics perspective, only having one free stunt outside a mantle makes me want to take a mantel for the extra “free” stunts, but what does a mantle give me that I can’t portray with my 5 aspects and the usual 3 free stunts? I hope I don’t sound like I’m being critical, I’m honestly not, just trying to figure out the difference and how it can apply to Oz.

You can be critical if you want to.  It's far too late for us to nerf it now.


As to balance...  I'm willing to allow another stunt for free if you choose not go with a mantle.  But, really I'm most certainly not overly concerned with instituting mechanically Balanced character creation.  Meaning, I'm not going to worry about  making sure that Mike is just as powerful as Tom, because Tom has one or two more stunts at his finger-tips.   Sorry.  That's a discussion we've had already, I believe.


How to build a mantle
At it's heart a mantle is a container for unique but consistent consequences, unique s stress-tracks, and stunts all thematicaly associated.


The easiest example I can think of is the Vampire.

A vampire is assumed to fund it's unique powers (the stunts) by the blood it consumes.  An Aspect alone doesn't tell us what kind of limits that as, nor how much of this limited resource is available to him before he can't turn into a bat anymore...  Providing a unique stress-track, called a "Blood Pool" condition allows us to do that.

So, he requires the Aspect defining him as a vampire, and that gets him the blood-pool.  When not empty, he can then mark off a box or two of this unique stress-track to fund his vampire stunts.

There's a trade-off, of course...  If he's exposed to sunlight, he gets the Consequence (also a condition) Sunburnt.  And when he's sunburnt, he cannot access any of his stunts until he's healed up...

So, that's modeled as so:

MANTLE: Vampire
Requires: An Aspect indicating he's a vampire
Allows access to the following Conditions:
Sunburnt [_] (unmarked until exposed to sunlight)
Blood-Pool [_][_][_][_][_]  - Mark a box to fund the relevant stunts (if so defined in said stunts).  Some stunts may not need to pull from the blood pool.

Now... why take it?

Maybe you need it, maybe not.  I'm not pushing for either way.

Cara, our resident Oathsworn has a unique Mantle wherein she feeds from the blood of her... benefactors?  donators?  and can evocation in their domain of expertise, btu she's limited to only the length of her mana-pool...  Once it's used up, she can't cast any more until she's fed again and replenished the pool.  Kinda just like the vampire example above.  There's more nuance to it, but that's the fundamentals.

I like Mantles.  I feel that it allows for a mechanically unique character with very specific concerns.  But I also recognize that sometimes the subsystem is overkill.

After each chapter, we will have a little OOC discussion where I ask about what worked and what didn't, and will adjust rules and other stuff as appropriate.
This message was last edited by the GM at 09:14, Sun 18 Oct 2020.

Dependents.

If you've read The House of Shattered Wings by Aliette de Bodard you'll figure out what I'm shamelessly ripping off immediately.

Awesome.

Mantles!  So it looks like you're another player who doesn't want to play a wizard or sorcerer?  DnD Bards have magic, do you want to be an Evoker at all?  Or not be an Evoker but have music based Bard Magic or some such thing?  Like, Evocation is Battle Magic.  But if you want to be able to cast none battle magic (think illusions or enchantments) with Evocation's speed, we can build a Mantle that does that.

High-Concept: Poet with a wordy longsword
Trouble:  Starving artist sounds better than fat noble

So, there are a few immediate directions that spring to mind.

• Being some sort of highly social character who can call in Favors as their resource bar/stress track?
• Having a magic talking sword with Swordlore or something else thematically appropriate as its resource bar/stress track?
• Actually being a Noble with Wealth as its resource bar/stress track?
• Straight up DnD Bard with a couple of Enchantment and Illusion effects, and something like Spellsong as your resource bar/stress track?

If you hate all of those ideas, I can keep spit balling ideas
This message was last edited by the player at 02:11, Sun 18 Oct 2020.

The first parallels a little of what I"m feeling with Angharad, albeit she's doing it with spirits.  That's got a nice symmetry to it.

The second touches on something I'd wanted to explore in the Fate system, but didn't (because we already had a jumble of new rules)...  and that's the idea of treating some very special unique weapons as an artifact similar to those found in Earthdawn.

By doing research and satisfying some unknown conditions, you can essentially "unlock" the awareness of various Aspects of the Artifact.

My original thought with the wordy long sword was two fold. Wordy because he’s a poet but know how to use his sword as his words at time. But my second idea was maybe there are some ruins carved into the blade that do something neat.

I’m not really interested in getting into magic myself. Maybe the Ruin Sword could have some anti magic properties, like a counter spell.

We could combine the mantle and artifact idea?

Rather that diving into the possibility of a mantle, Let's round out the basic character first.  A Mantle might not be necessary for what you want to achieve.  Cara, for  all her desire to help, loves creating mantles.  I prefer to do one step at a time to prevent unnecessary work.

As it stands right now, I see two Aspects:

Poet with a wordy longsword
"Wordy longsword" put me in a frame of mind to expect it to speak (at least to him)... and all the damned time!.   Possibly not what you were going for.  I don't think it's an effective juxtaposition of the two elements: poet and swordsman.

I think I want to flesh out the back-story and driving motivations a little bit more before we revisit the High-Concept.

I want to know what this character wants, what he's seeking, perhaps what his fundamental wound is.    Not that Poet with a Wordy Longsword isn't intriguing...  I just want more context.


You gave this as a concept background:
Oswald (Oz) is a nobleman son, raised with all the traditional upbringings of a gentleman: riding, swordsmanship, table manners, etc. He took leave from university to live out his own version of the Homer's Odyssey in hopes that he can write about his adventures. To his families disappointment, Oz has yet to return from his journeys and it’s been close to three years now.


At the end of the day, the nations of Aroen are mostly a feudal society.  Is he the first-born, set to inherit the family's wealth and holdings?

You say "to his family's disappointment..."  which suggests that there is living family who has perhaps coddled him a little and let him have his way despite their misgivings...   Is this the seed of the tension in this character?



Starving artist sounds better than fat noble
So...  He's turning his back on the nobility, on his name?  Is there a story here?  What kinds of trouble do you want to see emerge from this?

He's now in the Kumlaren capital city, Druvir and about to get mixed up in a clandestine operation tied directly to the Queen of Kumlar, herself.     Why get involved?


Any thoughts on other Aspects?

Bearing a blade weighed with promises?

Control has (correctly) needed to restrain my creative impulses in this regard on several occasions.

It's what I love so much about Fate Accelerated.  Your Aspects, Mantle, and Stunt use mechanics to control narrative.  How many times have you, for instance, made a super scary Nosferatu character.  The sort where you really pour your heart and soul into the writing to convey just how repulsive they are... only to have all the other players ignore it because they are too busy playing their bad ass warrior vampires?  They are thinking about how cool their Vampire is, not how scary yours is.  Fate Accelerated gives you three tools to add mechanics to your flavor!

Take Cara.

High-Concept:  Devourer of Mantles.

Here is the first paragraph of her character info.



I wanted Oathsworn to be scary!  But why would another player who is playing their bad-ass warrior knight care?  I need mechanics that they need to interact with, that create the role play effects I want.  So how do I do that?

I pick Aspects, a Mantle, and Stunts that give me all sorts of tricks centered around the Provoke skill.  I literally have mechanics that support the story of my character.

So you're on Aspects, the first step.  What do you want to be?  How do you want to be seen?  How do you want others to react to you?  That helps shape your Aspects.
This message was last edited by the player at 21:11, Sun 18 Oct 2020.

I did a little writing this morning for my aspects, and they've evolved a bit through our discussions. Please let me know what you think. I've finished selecting skills and have updated these aspects on my top post.

# High Concept
**Nomadic storyteller with a weakness for skirmishes**

## HC Background
Leaving the life of a nobleman's son behind, Oz seeks to find his own place in this world. Always fond of literature and contests of valor, he's made a living for himself traveling from town to town, captivating taverns and amphitheaters with epics of his heroic adventures. Not one for common brawls (unless it can make a great story!), he seeks for story fodder through courageous acts and honorable deeds.


# Trouble
**Terrible ideas make the best stories!**

## T Background
Oswald's desire to tell amazing epics often overrides all other rational thought. Putting himself into disadvantaged positions to tell more intriguing stories are a means to justify any end.

# Personal Aspect 1
Nationalism related. Still need to figure out where he's from.

# Personal Aspect 2
Veiled Hand connection.@Nathan, you mentioned perhaps crossing over characters' paths to give me a connection to the Hand.  Is that something you're still interested in?

# Personal Aspect 3
Perhaps something about his sword or some other piece of gear he's acquired on an adventure.

Happy for the connection if its interesting for Oswald as a character :)

In reply to Nathan (msg # 18):

Super cool.

I glanced around for a good spot with a lot of info about your character but couldn't find it. So I'm gonna start you with a writing prompt then your response can serve as my writing prompt.  If you want to go about this another way happy to try it out, this seems the most PBP friendly.

Tell me about a time you were on a mission for the Hand, where did you see Oz telling one of his stories, and how did it get complicated?

Although, not as a member of the Veiled Han... as it hadn't been formed as an active cell prior to this game...

Nathan;  If you like, I can share the Google Drive link.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:52, Thu 22 Oct 2020.

In reply to Control (msg # 20):

Happy to

Will respond to the prompt later today