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Hello Everyone!
I'm still on the road, and unfortunately it is proving more difficult than I thought to update the website from my remote location here in the UK. I'd blame the famously bad UK weather, but to be honest we've had good weather since being here. Maybe all the telecom workers are taking a holiday in honor of the upcoming Harry Potter debut. Regardless, I'm going to post some info here about a new race and class that haven't been covered yet.
Class: Chosen One
I'm excited about the Chosen One class for a lot of reasons. For one, it is a traditional fantasy archetype, but it still feels fresh. For another, it has all kinds of story-telling possibilities built into character creation. Frodo had the Ring to burden him. Buffy was the Slayer, like it or not. Ichigo didn't plan to become who he is. Chosen Ones don't choose - they get chosen. And in that choosing a whole mess of stories are born.
Not coincidentally, the Chosen One class gives the player a ton of choices. There are other classes, like the warrior, that are much more traditional for the player who wants to pick up a character sheet, roll some dice, and kick some butt. But the Chosen One asks the player to pick a focus: an ancient spirit that talks to him, a mentor, an amulet of power, a secret recipe for rice wine that makes him violent and cruel but also powerful. This focus becomes a bonus inspiration for the character. The character also receives bonuses (as with other inspirations) for "stunting" and working the focus into the narrative of the game, whether that's in social combat, physical combat, a chase scene, an investigation, or what have you.
Chosen One players also need to select whether their focus is primarily physical or magical. If it is physical, the character learns fighting combat styles as she advances. If it is magical, the character is spellbound, and she learns more magic styles than combat styles as she advances.
The socioeconomic world-building aspects of play are important to Chosen Ones too. As the Chosen One advances, she gathers followers to her cause. This might be a secret society, a religion, or anything else the Chosen One's player decides suits the character. (The player can of course decline it, as well, selecting another benefit - a more traditional character-specific benefit instead.) What the followers amount to are a free organization for the Chosen One, and a tool to re-write the culture of a region. As you might imagine re-writing the culture of a region can be very useful. Imagine changing the culture of a region to pacifist, so that the doom (default target number on ability/skill checks) is lowered by one or two for every character who has Peace as an inspiration. That can be a lot of fun for the right player. Especially if the GM plays it up with people laying palm branches down in front of the character whenever he enters a village - and sends assassins from more violent kingdoms crashing through the character's window every night!
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Race: Wights
For our race, let's look at the wights.
Now, hold on - they're not undead. They just look a little pale. Or gaunt. Or haunted.
There are undead in the Kingdoms, but most are too driven by their hungers to be rational. The wights, on the other hand, are a race of humans descended from a few islands in the eastern archipelago where necromantic magic has long been too common - both natrually and artificially. Most people assume that these ancient wights - the first ones - were normal humans who tried to use necromancy to prolong their lives.
The early experimenters were somewhat successful. Wights live ten to twenty percent longer than other humans. But they pay for their longevity with social status. Wights are pariahs.
Besides their looks, which can be disturbing, wights can feed on fear. Mechanically, that means that wights can gain a bonus mood or inspiration roll (to a characteristic check, combat check, anything, as usual) when another character in their presence uses or gains fear. In the game world, this means that people avoid wights at almost all costs. Who wants to associate with someone who can grow stronger - literally - from your suffering? Not just enjoy it, but actually gain power from it? People don't trust wights, and so they stay away.
There are three or four scattered wight Kingdoms throughout the Claw. The Kings are cold in Varteka, for example, and the race is welcome there. In the other Kingdoms, wights need every advantage they can wring from their undead taint.
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Art: Hm Sadly there's no art to go with the update today. But here's a teaser: my instructions for the Chosen One class to artist extraordinaire Jason McClellan were to make the Chosen One look burdened by her powers, like Buffy in the classic picture here. And Jason did a great job of it, albeit for a Renaissance girl, and with a sword instead of a crossbow.
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Sounds cool. :)
I'm imagining a wight who begrudgingly uses his ability to feed on fear to pursue good... great anti-hero stuff. :D
/*~Matthew Miller~*\
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I really dig the Chosen One. Nice!
I got together with a friend over the weekend; we loved the combat primer. You have a definite customer here. Can't wait for the final product.
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