Welcome to a bonus episode of Character Creation Spotlight! This episode we will be sitting down with Jeffrey Hayes to learn about, and create characters for, Haunted Hill Academy, a Fate based RPG about being a student at a mysterious boarding school!
Welcome to a bonus episode of Character Creation Spotlight! This episode we will be sitting down with Jeffrey Hayes to learn about, and create characters for, Haunted Hill Academy, a Fate based RPG about being a student at a mysterious boarding school!
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Haunted Hill Academy by Jeffrey Hayes
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Amelia Antrim 0:15
Welcome to a special bonus episode of character creation spotlight everyone. In this bonus segment, we are shining a light on some current or up and coming games to keep an eye out for. I'm one of your hosts, Amelia. And today, my co host Ryan and I are welcoming Jeffrey haze to talk about Haunted Hill Academy, a two player faith based game about a mysterious boarding school.
Ryan Boelter 0:40
Welcome to character creation spotlight. Jeffrey, it is really great to have you here.
Jeffrey Hayes 0:45
Thank you so much. It's so good to be here.
Ryan Boelter 0:48
Absolutely. Can you start us off with telling us a bit about yourself and what sort of projects you have going on right now?
Jeffrey Hayes 0:54
Yeah, so my name is Jeffrey Hayes, I am a professional game master, based out of San Francisco. That is how I make my living, somehow do my best
Ryan Boelter 1:05
nice
Amelia Antrim 1:06
living ways to make a living.
Jeffrey Hayes 1:10
I completely agree. I have a background in drama therapy. So I bring that to my game mastering experience. So all of my games are about emotional growth and development. Oh, yeah. My business is critical growth games. And the idea from that came from when like, critical role and all these other actual play shows were getting super big. Everyone got like the culture got really about critical success and could fail. It was like, Can we focus on the critical moments of character growth? Can that be what our games are about?
Amelia Antrim 1:45
Yes, yes, please. More.
Jeffrey Hayes 1:49
Games are about
Ryan Boelter 1:50
Yeah. Awesome. I
Amelia Antrim 1:51
love it. So since this is an abridged version of our normal show, we're going to stick to the highlights instead of doing a full like three hours about the system. So let's go ahead and jump in and find out what this game is all about. What's
Ryan Boelter 2:08
in a game? Yeah. Could you start off by telling us a bit about the core concept of Haunted Hill Academy?
Jeffrey Hayes 2:14
Absolutely. huddle Academy is basically what if that notorious, old haunted mansion in your neighborhood was a boarding school you could go to and you could learn there and find out all about the spooky secrets. I was very inspired by works like betrayal at the house on the hill and cabling woods, where they have all of these different supernatural things, coexisting at once, just one like door away, just always behind one closed door that you can open and unleash a Pandora's box of all sorts of stuff to happen to you. And I was like, Man, I wish I could have gone to high school in a place like that.
Amelia Antrim 2:56
Way more interesting than where I went. So are you playing as like students at this boarding school?
Jeffrey Hayes 3:06
Okay, everyone plays as students. It's kind of like if you took masks and like the focus on identity and label shifting and masks and mash that with Bluebeard's bride where you're constantly searching through a big old Haunted Mansion. Cool. That is the game basically.
Amelia Antrim 3:25
Very cool.
Ryan Boelter 3:27
It's very cool.
Amelia Antrim 3:28
So can you tell us a little bit more about like, the setting and what characters are specifically doing? Is there like a specific like timeframe that you're playing in? Or can you kind of set this mansion wherever you want?
Jeffrey Hayes 3:44
Yeah, definitely. The assumption going into the game is that it's more or less modern day, East Coast United States. But again, it is meant to be the ubiquitous mansions so if you want it to be in the future, one of my favorite games of this we played it, this hunch Hill Academy was on a space station. Oh, it had been like excavated from the ground it was on and lifted into a space station. That was super fun. The idea of kind of the history of the place is it's been around as long as there have been photographs to prove that it's been around and no one is sure quite when it's built so you can go back as far as you want. You can set it in any timeframe you want. But as far as gameplay is concerned, characters are in kind of a sandbox environment. Like this is your school to run amok. And if you want to, you know ditch class every day to try and figure out how to become an evil wizard you can do that. If you want to become valedictorian, if you want to take a ghost to prom, you can do any of these things. So it is your like slice of life supernatural horror, and I'm not here to stop you.
Ryan Boelter 4:58
That's amazing. You talked about the future and it instantly made my brain go to what if Starfleet Academy? Hmm.
Amelia Antrim 5:07
But haunted but haunted?
Jeffrey Hayes 5:10
Academy here for love?
Ryan Boelter 5:11
Oh, yeah, absolutely. So what sort of materials do we need to play a game of Haunted Hill Academy?
Jeffrey Hayes 5:19
So we need fate dice. Those are those six sided dice with two blanks, two minuses and two pluses. We need something to write notes with. If we were playing in person, we could use index cards. But I don't know if anyone will ever play in person again. So we have Google Docs. It's great. And yeah, you would need a writing implement in person. And honestly, that's about it.
Amelia Antrim 5:45
Oh, pretty easy. Yeah. So what kind of characters can you make in this game? What are our choices?
Jeffrey Hayes 5:55
That's a great question. How do I even answer that you create a student, like a normal teenage person, for certain values of normal like, again, the base assumption of the game is that you are an average student coming to the school trying to unearth mysteries. But if you want to jump ahead and create a character who is already magical in some way, or supernatural in some way, that is an option available to you. You can play as like, you know, a burnt out stoner type you can play as like a, you know, jock star MVP, or you can play as like a vampire who wants desperately to feel human again. Oh, you have options.
Ryan Boelter 6:37
That's amazing. I think I think we have enough to walk through creating some characters. Can you walk us through creating some characters together,
Jeffrey Hayes 6:47
right now? Let's make some people. Absolutely I would love to, there's just one step I would like to do first, which was, if we could look at the draft together, and scroll down to the academy history where it says rumors, if we could each either choose or come up with one rumor about the Academy. I think that'll inform a lot about the kind of people will be playing based on what rumor drew them to this school, maybe.
Ryan Boelter 7:18
Alright, so we're looking to figure out some rumors about this academy. And it looks like you've got quite a few examples in there. And I'm assuming that we can make up our own stuff as well. Oh, absolutely. Please
Jeffrey Hayes 7:31
feel free. Wonderful.
Ryan Boelter 7:33
All right. So let's see. Just some examples I am seeing in order to graduate you must leave a piece of your soul in an object somewhere in the building is possible to commune with artifacts to learn more about previous students. The supernatural rumors are a smokescreen for a drug smuggling operation based out of the forbidden Wayne. These are amazing.
Jeffrey Hayes 7:59
Thank you. I tried to draw inspiration from everywhere that fell even remotely spooky, so we had to get the Scooby Doo reference in there.
Ryan Boelter 8:07
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So there's there's definitely a wide array of potential rumors. And if we're each coming up with one this is going to be a while to cool. Okay.
Jeffrey Hayes 8:19
Yeah, that's the wonderful thing is like, because they're rumors, we don't have to worry about defining anything about the world in stone. This is stuff we've heard.
Amelia Antrim 8:28
I'm going to say that the library is actually a weird point in spacetime where it connects to all other libraries everywhere. Yes. So it is technically the biggest library in the world.
Ryan Boelter 8:45
Nice. The
Jeffrey Hayes 8:46
second you said the library, my soul lit up and then it just got better from there.
Amelia Antrim 8:52
I love libraries.
Ryan Boelter 8:55
Let's see.
Amelia Antrim 8:57
And Ryan I didn't even say anything evil, right?
Ryan Boelter 8:59
No. Okay, I'm gonna say there is a crystal hidden in the forbidden Wayne, that is said to transform you into your true self.
Jeffrey Hayes 9:11
Ooh, I really like that.
Amelia Antrim 9:12
I knew it was coming. I was like, how's this gonna be about love or magical girls?
Ryan Boelter 9:20
Something like that, right? A little more ambiguous, but still. You got one you want to throw at us, Jeffrey?
Jeffrey Hayes 9:26
Yeah, I'm gonna go with one they've already written here. The school's founder, Lester Walcott, filled her house with hidden traps and torture chambers to punish anyone snooping around to try and find the vault where she kept her for her vast fortune. And it's rumored that it's still in the house somewhere.
Ryan Boelter 9:44
Oh boy.
Amelia Antrim 9:46
All right, secret treasure, too.
Jeffrey Hayes 9:48
We love a treasure hunt.
Amelia Antrim 9:50
Always a good time. Absolutely.
Jeffrey Hayes 9:53
Cool. So if we scroll back up to character creation on here, we are playing a fate based game. Which means we have aspects we have short descriptive phrases about our characters. And we have four different prompts for aspects in this game, we have our core belief that is like your guiding light, your moral compass, it is the thing that defines how you approach the world. This can change during the course of the game, but if it does, that's like a world changing shift. It's a big deal. We have why Haunted Hill Academy so like the reason you've come to study at this school. It's a prestigious institution. So there's a good reason there, but it's also the spookiest place on Earth. So it's really about what's drawing you here. Your greatest desire that can be anything between like a goal and a wish it can be very short term or very long term. Some of my favorite examples of this have been I want to make the world a little better every day. I want to usurp Satan himself. And I just want to take Stacey Kevin son to prom.
Jeffrey Hayes 11:05
I want to use serve Satan and take Stacy Covington to prom while making the world a better place. Well,
Amelia Antrim 11:11
I think that's the only way that she would agree to go to prom with you. You usurp Satan. Like, you have to prove it to me.
Ryan Boelter 11:19
Yeah. I mean, somebody that really wants to go to the thing with me, going after you serve, saying I'm just sorry.
Amelia Antrim 11:27
You do that. That's the ultimate promposal right there.
Jeffrey Hayes 11:36
And then finally, we have our plaguing questions. So this is your opportunity to really telegraph to your guide, the person running the game. What kind of supernatural horror you want your character to experience? Some of my favorites in the past have been How did my parents really die? What if I wake up one day and everyone else is gone? Why doesn't my reflection ever look right? What happens when I blacked out? And am I the bad guy?
Ryan Boelter 12:06
That's really cool. All right. So it sounds like we're making aspects right now.
Jeffrey Hayes 12:11
Yeah, rough with aspects. That sounds fun. So all right, starting with core belief, core belief.
Amelia Antrim 12:18
All knowledge is good knowledge. Ooh.
Ryan Boelter 12:22
Try not to think of magical girl centric ones. But I think I'm just gonna have to lean in.
Amelia Antrim 12:26
I think you're gonna have to lean into it. Right. And I think we decided that we gave up on trying to do I know, anything that isn't that
Jeffrey Hayes 12:33
sounded like I was listening to the show.
Amelia Antrim 12:38
I mean, I want you to know that I'm certainly not trying to be anything other than myself right now.
Ryan Boelter 12:46
All right, core belief. Love is the greatest educator for justice.
Jeffrey Hayes 12:51
Awesome. But that tracks.
Ryan Boelter 12:57
All right. You and I create a character with us, Jeffrey,
Jeffrey Hayes 13:01
I would love to. my character's core belief is going to be everything has a price. All right, that is going to take us to why Haunted Hill Academy? Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 13:14
I know. I'm stuck on this one.
Jeffrey Hayes 13:17
Yeah, why on earth would you want to go to such a cool school. So I'm also not fighting against type today. And my type is always to create a super secret spy. So I love it. My reason for coming behind Hill Academy is I'm actually being hired by an organization to be here. And so my aspect is this is the mission. Okay?
Amelia Antrim 13:39
That's very nice.
Ryan Boelter 13:42
Okay, I okay, I think something's formulating a bit here. My my reasoning is because the school has the fastest internet connection. All the available universities. And my aspect is I'm in.
Amelia Antrim 14:04
I love it.
Jeffrey Hayes 14:04
I love but it's very good.
Amelia Antrim 14:07
This place. Spooky is what great internet.
Ryan Boelter 14:11
I mean, if you've got multi dimensional portals to every library in the entire world, that's like there's got to be some pretty fast internet
Amelia Antrim 14:18
connection. And everybody knows that computers are actually powered by ghosts anyway. That's true. So why they don't work most of the time.
Jeffrey Hayes 14:26
I'm just picturing like this big old Victorian clapboard house, like parts of it falling off and it's like, you know, they have the fastest internet. I know,
Amelia Antrim 14:33
right? Like completely falling apart. But somewhere in the basement, there's just like a server room
Ryan Boelter 14:39
where all the money went, right? Right? That's true. And that's why they got rid of modems because modems allowed you to hear the voices of the ghosts as it was connecting to the internet.
Amelia Antrim 14:50
That's what modems are. That's why it makes that sound exactly the screams of the Damned. dial up
Ryan Boelter 15:02
Yeah, you've got mail.
Amelia Antrim 15:06
I put it is the only place left with something to teach me.
Ryan Boelter 15:11
Oh, that's nice. That's very
Jeffrey Hayes 15:12
good. I yeah, that says a lot about the character very quickly. I like that a lot. All right. So that will bring us to greatest desire. And this is always phrased as an I want statement.
Amelia Antrim 15:30
I feel like I'm taking this very seriously right now. The stakes are so high
Jeffrey Hayes 15:36
stakes are so high. That's it. If I can just use this opportunity to mention something that's one of the things I love that gets captured in the gameplay of this system is the feeling of everything is that 11 out of 10 all the time of like, yes. Oh, I got to find out the secret legacy of my grandparents that I'm tied into that might be a call for Cthulhu. But I also have to get an A in math, but I also have to get a date to prom, but I also have to get an early bird in the school play.
Amelia Antrim 16:03
Yeah, it's a lot. It's a lot to balance. It is a lot. Being a teenager is tough.
Jeffrey Hayes 16:08
It is.
Amelia Antrim 16:12
Hmm. Okay. I'm gonna say I want to know the last unknowable thing. Death. Well,
Jeffrey Hayes 16:22
gosh darn. Bomb. That's awesome.
Ryan Boelter 16:30
I'm glad I'm apparently leaning into a like a magical girl. Hacker archetype I guess. So my greatest desire is I want to prove that I'm the best hacker in
Amelia Antrim 16:43
the world. Love that. That's why you went to a haunted school
Ryan Boelter 16:48
with a pretty good internet packet. Yep.
Amelia Antrim 16:52
I love it so much. I love it so much.
Jeffrey Hayes 16:55
Magical Girl hacker at 100 Academy is not an archetype. I know. And I knew I needed but Yep. But now that we're here, we're here. It's like, just the flavor combination that feels right together. It really does.
Ryan Boelter 17:08
Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 17:11
I'm going with for my super secret spy. I want to be a normal kid for once. Ah, yeah. Everyone else is doing all these great things and he just wants to maybe go get ice cream. Oh, you're not have to worry about anything, see a movie? Maybe get a C in a class? I don't know.
Amelia Antrim 17:33
I love it.
Jeffrey Hayes 17:36
And that is going to bring us to our plaguing question.
Amelia Antrim 17:42
I know I'm really stuck on this one.
Jeffrey Hayes 17:44
Yeah, there's so many different options for how this can go. We can bring in some psychological horror. Body horror comes up a lot with this for people. So I think I'll get started here because I like it when, like personal taste for me. I like it when the player in question could have a mundane answer, but is almost safer if it has a supernatural one. So I'm picturing this as a character who's been receiving threats in his dorm room every night from someone who knows he's here on a mission. And my playing question Who? Who has been sending the threats? Nice. You'd almost prefer to be a ghost.
Ryan Boelter 18:29
I went with Why can I feel the emotions of computers?
Jeffrey Hayes 18:34
Yes. Cyber magical girl.
Ryan Boelter 18:41
computers. I was thinking either like ghosts or like feeling the emotions of other users as they're using their computers.
Jeffrey Hayes 18:53
Awesome.
Amelia Antrim 18:54
I'm going to say what if knowledge isn't power
Jeffrey Hayes 19:00
oh oh, I feel the horror of this character. Everything about this character has been knowledge based. Yeah, who dare you do this tour sweet baby. I am personally affronted.
Amelia Antrim 19:19
As I said in our in our Call of Cthulhu episodes too. I like to take my little person and then I like to hurt them. I'm sure that doesn't mean anything about notes.
Jeffrey Hayes 19:36
Cool. So this is gonna take us into our identities. So in this game, when you want to add to your role, you don't add a skill set you add an identity. These identities that you start with at the beginning of the game are based off of common High School archetypes that we've seen over and over again and I say archetypes, I mean stereotypes. Let's be real. And this is intentional. It's, you know, you feel as a teenager, at least I did, like I had to fit into a box to get anything done. Yeah. And so there's this push pull mechanic throughout the game of these identities going up and down quite a bit. And throughout the course of the game, you can unlock new identities. So my question to the two of you is do we want to just play with for our character creation today the base identities? Or do we want to unlock some other options?
Ryan Boelter 20:33
You know, we want more options. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 20:37
Awesome. So in addition to here on identities, we also have a list, if you scroll down to the section marked unlockables, and advancement, there's a subsection of identities under unlockables. So for these, the only requirement that I'm going to have for us is if we have any unlockable identities that we use today, we must have a narrative justification for how we unlocked that there are examples in each one of those of how you might have unlocked it. But you can come up with your own narrative justification, but it's just something that would be helpful to us if we were playing the game to get us into the space of the character. Of course, because I'm playing with the two of you, I did send you a magical girl and necromancer identity
Ryan Boelter 21:27
you did. It's right there. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 21:35
So this is gonna work is we're going to have six points to spend total. And you can spend that into your identities. You can have no more than four points in any one identity.
Ryan Boelter 21:47
Okay, but you said we have six points. We spent four points in the identity or do we consume between multiple identities? Yes,
Jeffrey Hayes 21:53
we use these Yes. Oh, okay. six points up to 14 go into one identity. You can spend all six points and as one point each and six different identities.
Ryan Boelter 22:07
makes me super happy.
Jeffrey Hayes 22:10
So you're not locked in to just being a magical girl. You can be a nerdy jockey magical girl.
Ryan Boelter 22:15
Because I saw I saw glitch. And that one really sane to me a bit. Yeah. It almost feels like almost like a NEO type from the matrix. Definitely. Which would be really kind of a cool. I think I might be too I might be doing two two and two for mine. Between nerd glitch and magical girl. Because that just sounds amazing. Yeah, I'm gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna lock that in. Awesome. I don't even know exactly what all of them do. But you know what? It really paints a nice picture for this character.
Jeffrey Hayes 22:58
Yeah, definitely. So because these aren't skill sets, they kind of can do anything that you can convince the guy they should be able to do right. I have listed under each of them some examples of when you could roll with these identities. So like, you know, nerd might be used to recall some extremely specific information glitch might be used to literally clip through walls. You have your options available to you, but it's whatever feels right in the moment and feels true to where the character is that
Ryan Boelter 23:32
I like that
Jeffrey Hayes 23:33
most of the unlockable identities have to do with feeling you know, outside of humanity in some way so whenever your character feels like they don't fit in with humanity, you're probably going to use one of those identities.
Ryan Boelter 23:45
Very cool.
Amelia Antrim 23:46
I feel like I'm gonna say three for necromancer and three for nerd
Ryan Boelter 23:52
awesome That's amazing. Feels correct so a little bit of growing to do in each and you'll be tapped here a top shelf necromancer and
Amelia Antrim 24:05
writing writing all this but I'll type it into the character sheet later on there you go there we have it.
Jeffrey Hayes 24:12
I'm going to given my characters proclivities I'm going to keep him with the standard identities for now we're going to go for into cadet one into rebel and one into outsider.
Unknown Speaker 24:26
I like it. Nice. Cool.
Jeffrey Hayes 24:29
Hey, guess what we're done. We created characters,
Ryan Boelter 24:32
oh boy. probably have to do some naming.
Jeffrey Hayes 24:36
We do have to do some naming. There is one other thing that I want to point out on the character sheet here, which is our academic tracker. So in this game, unlike other games, we don't have hit points. We don't have consequences or anything like that. Your character in combat can take as many hits as you think narratively makes sense, okay, I'm not going to blackout or anything unless you decide that happens. So character death is never something the guide can inflict on the player. They, the it is something that the player can choose for themselves if that's what they want. But the thing that is on par with character death that they have to be aware of is expulsion. So throughout your game, you are going to be, you know, breaking a lot of school rules, probably to find the fun things in this this wonderful Haunted Mansion. And every time you break a rule and got caught doing that your academic tracker is going to slip down a step. f you have an expulsion hearing, and you must make the defense of a lifetime. And if you do not, you are expelled from the school and your story at Haunted Hill Academy abruptly ends.
Ryan Boelter 25:46
Oh, that's amazing.
Jeffrey Hayes 25:49
So that's how we kind of build in that weird tension of like, yeah, it's all about the horror, but it's also about the horror of like trying to live a normal life, which I think all of us really understand.
Amelia Antrim 26:02
That's the true horror.
Jeffrey Hayes 26:03
Yeah, I'm also remembering, since we are not playing the one on one version of this game, I mean, we're not playing this game at all. But let us go into the conceit that we are all playing together for the multiplayer variant, which is that thing. We're going to scroll on down on the sheet here to customizing your game the multiplayer variant. And we're going to take these four these three individuals and make them into a group with our fifth character aspect the shared secret. Oh. So when we are already in since we have completed everything, but our names, the players collaborate together to determine if secret they all share as a group, we get to pick one of the questions below. Or we can come up with our own questions. I have pre written our what incredible thing did we see Oh, I've left out a very key part of the game. And I'm glad we're here. Obviously so this is a big old Haunted Mansion. It used to be a haunted mansion. When the person who you know lived in the mansion died, they said it had to be turned into a school but everything in the school had to stay as is. So you know, students have classes in like sewing rooms and greenhouses and kitchens, etc. Instead of traditional classrooms because there weren't many in the house. To kind of acquiesce to this demand. A whole third of the school is off limits to students, and it's called the forbidden wing. And that is where the spookiest stuff is supposed to happen in the school. There are so many rumors like you know, if you go into the forbidden wing, the rooms change around or you might go in and never be able to come out because it'll show you or there's actually a whole separate mirror school and the forbidden wing. So that's just something that I wanted to make crystal clear about is what this forbidden wing is because I think we mentioned it but didn't actually say what it is. Yeah, yeah. So shared secret. What incredible thing did we see when we all snuck into the forbidden wing together? Or what supernatural trait do we all share that we can't tell anyone else about? Or what horrible thing did we all take part in together? Or what school disapproved club Are we all part of? And why is it so important to each of us?
Ryan Boelter 28:25
Interesting?
Jeffrey Hayes 28:26
Do any of these stand out to the two of you? Or do they spark new ideas in your brains?
Amelia Antrim 28:32
Oh, I mean, I feel like we could have a treasure hunter club.
Ryan Boelter 28:36
Blue. I mean that that kind of would gel well with my characters interests as well. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 28:46
I was also curious if there's something to like a hacking club. Mm hmm. Because it feels definitely linked to Ryan's character. I don't know if the knowledge of hacking kind of jives with Emily's character or not.
Ryan Boelter 28:59
I I I wonder if the treasure hunting might even be better because I think my character wouldn't want to associate with other hackers because because they're they're above them. Yeah. Cool. I do like what can What can I look for sure.
Amelia Antrim 29:15
Yeah. And that's like not super official. It's just like us looking for treasure but we can register it as a club.
Jeffrey Hayes 29:25
Well, schools disapproved
Amelia Antrim 29:28
we don't even have to register. Yes, yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 29:31
Is it just the three of us or do we have a fourth member who is an NPC?
Amelia Antrim 29:36
I think it's fun to have an NPC.
Ryan Boelter 29:39
Yeah. All right. But
Amelia Antrim 29:40
now I'm now in my head. I'm like, okay, but who is the NPC?
Jeffrey Hayes 29:43
Right? Yeah, I think we want a name and like one key identity for this person.
Amelia Antrim 29:47
I think they're a person that like they're, they and their parents did not know that this was a haunted creepy school or anything. They're just like, super freaked out by this whole experience. thought this was like a regular boarding school. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 30:06
I love that. That's a that's a great hook for my character who wants to also be normal?
Ryan Boelter 30:10
Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 30:13
This transferred here from a different boarding school.
Jeffrey Hayes 30:17
What is the most beige sounding name? We can give this person?
Amelia Antrim 30:21
Edward
Jeffrey Hayes 30:29
Edwards.
Amelia Antrim 30:31
Hey, Edward. I think his name is Edward Edward Whitmore.
Jeffrey Hayes 30:37
Yeah, it totally is. Shout out to all the Edward Whitmore's. Cool.
Ryan Boelter 30:43
That's amazing. Now we just need names for ourselves, right?
Jeffrey Hayes 30:49
Not quite so we know one thing, but we actually have to write in this fifth aspect. And each of us has to have a different phrasing of it. So back to our treasure hunter club.
Amelia Antrim 31:01
So it's just like a thing about
Jeffrey Hayes 31:04
it's about the ship to it. So in the example I gave, the four students involved accidentally summoned a demon. And the four aspects that came out of that are the game the demon is a game of pretend we took too far. I'll steal the demon away at any cost. I can get unimaginable power if I let the demon run free. Or what if summoning the demon wasn't an accident? So four very different feelings of the same thing.
Amelia Antrim 31:34
Gotcha. Okay, I'm gonna say the school has secrets and the treasure is the answer.
Jeffrey Hayes 31:41
Nice.
Ryan Boelter 31:42
All right, mines. Finding this treasure is the ultimate puzzle that I need to crack. Ooh.
Jeffrey Hayes 31:51
Thinking about my character, and how the treasure hunting club is useful for him to maybe complete his mission even though we haven't even decided what that is yet. But it's also just a fun, silly thing that feels like he can be a kid. So I am calling this aspect two birds with one stone. Oh,
Amelia Antrim 32:12
I like it. Very nice. It's perfect.
Jeffrey Hayes 32:18
And I've also come up with a name for my character and that is Austin. qog
Ryan Boelter 32:23
Nice.
Amelia Antrim 32:24
I'm going to name my character Hypatia, lol. Hypatia is very good. Ryan I thought of a name before you know this happened. market on your calendars everyone.
Ryan Boelter 32:43
trying to think of a cool hacker name. Hmm. That's that's what I'm hung up on. Yeah.
Jeffrey Hayes 32:50
Yeah. Obviously Austin cog is the codename. He's the agent at
Amelia Antrim 32:58
Why 82?
Jeffrey Hayes 33:00
I don't know it was the first number that came to mind. Okay. There's no significance I'm sorry.
Ryan Boelter 33:09
All right, so my character's name is Elmira, Argent. Hmm. And, and she goes by x x, mixed case. And then the Omega symbol x x. That's, that's your hacker name.
Jeffrey Hayes 33:27
I love my last question. Before we conclude character creation for both of you is we have these unlockable identities that we haven't necessarily explained how your characters got. So I would like to hear the narrative justification for how necromancer and then glitch and magical girl came into these people's lives.
Ryan Boelter 33:48
I would say necromancer is probably easier to explain.
Amelia Antrim 33:53
Yeah, I mean, I feel like you've been at the school for a couple years and like living in the library. And because it's all of the libraries, there's probably some like demon libraries in there too. And just I think at this point, still just dabbling just you know, just small bone constructs at this point we haven't like fully raised anything from the dead this point it's just you know, like maybe like a rabbit or a bird or something but now like a full human so working my way up right now
Jeffrey Hayes 34:33
man I'm like having to push down the GM muscles and made so who's there the first time and you somebody someone and What's your relationship like with that person?
Amelia Antrim 34:44
This show is extremely difficult to, to like I have described it as the eternal foreplay
Amelia Antrim 35:00
Never get there.
Ryan Boelter 35:03
Um, well, my character was kind of hacking her way through a popular MMO. And somehow got pulled into it. And she's not sure why it was at school, it was late one night by herself in her dorm and got pulled into this thing. And the like the main hero in goddess figure in the game, granted her the ability to get out of the game back to reality. As long as I took up the charge, that was kind of like the the whole impetus of the game itself. Like you're, you're these these characters that are like, trying to, to save the world from darkness, so on and so forth, by using magical transformation powers. So then I came back, but instead of just being a magical girl, there was some wires crossed. And that gave me my glitch powers to
Jeffrey Hayes 36:15
both awesome.
Amelia Antrim 36:16
trapped in a game is always like the best answer. Yeah. Can't go wrong. And you took only like, mundane ones, right? Like normal, like stereotype ones.
Jeffrey Hayes 36:30
Yep. I just searched the normal ones.
Ryan Boelter 36:33
Just to Joe average spy. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 36:37
Teenage spy.
Ryan Boelter 36:40
Hello, fellow kids. I two and 16 years old, just like the youth of today.
Amelia Antrim 36:54
All right, so we've made characters, right?
Jeffrey Hayes 36:57
We did. Characters character creation is very quick in this game. I love it. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 37:04
Oh, and we have like so many hooks already, just from this, like you said, You're itching to just like, pull on all of these strings already. That's really exciting. I love them.
Ryan Boelter 37:15
I like this a lot. And I love that you can spread your your characters through multiple different, you know, descriptors like that. That's those identities are pretty cool.
Amelia Antrim 37:27
Yeah, yeah, I like that you have the option to do more than one. It's not just picking a playbook and trying to fit everything into that. Yeah. And
Jeffrey Hayes 37:35
like your character can drastically change identities over the course of a single session. Like, yeah, you can completely swap who you are, and then swap back next session. And it's a fun exploration. So much like being a teenager, much like being a teenager, someone asked me like, so wait. So the academic tracker is like, the main thing that works against you, since you don't have hp. And I'm like, kind of like, that's not the only thing at stake, like you are constantly battling to keep your sense of self in this game. But also, maybe you're not like, your sense of self. Your sense of self is always fluid and changing. And sometimes that's good, and sometimes it's not. And those emotional reactions that come up, that's kind of the thing that's at stake in the game.
Amelia Antrim 38:19
Have you considered that your worst enemy is actually yourself?
Ryan Boelter 38:26
No.
Amelia Antrim 38:28
Monster all along? Yes.
Jeffrey Hayes 38:31
Was it actually the person I saw in the mirror or like the demon who was masquerading as my reflection?
Amelia Antrim 38:37
was actually the ghost that was wearing a human suit? There we go.
Ryan Boelter 38:43
And it wasn't a mirror, it was a window.
Jeffrey Hayes 38:47
layers upon layers.
Amelia Antrim 38:50
It's so deep. It's amazing. Well, is there anything else that you want to highlight about the Kickstarter or about this game? that we haven't gone over yet?
Jeffrey Hayes 39:00
I mean, I feel like there's just so much to the game that I'm proud of. Like, there's so many examples of like rooms in the forbidden wing and characters that you can get into. The game itself is very simple, but I've put a lot of love into the text of it to make it as evocative as possible. And I'm excited for people to get their hands on it. Yeah,
Amelia Antrim 39:22
I can definitely tell from what we've done here that it's it's very lovingly crafted. There's just so much to go on, even from like the couple examples that were locked over.
Jeffrey Hayes 39:31
Thank you. So I will say that it were a year out from the completed PDF, because I want to take the time to get the art and the layout and everything but anyone who backs to the $5 and up level gets immediate access as soon as the Kickstarter is completed to this plain text version, so that you can play immediately and have fun with it. And anyone who backs at the $250 level gets to sit down with me and play the game. Say nice,
Amelia Antrim 39:57
that would be fun. Yeah, that's it. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us to talk about this game. Thank you. It was a great time. I had so much fun. I love doing this. Do you want to remind everybody where they can find you where they can find the Kickstarter, all of that?
Jeffrey Hayes 40:19
Absolutely. So you can find me at Jeffrey, Jeff rawr or a WR on Twitter. But that's mostly a place where I post the pictures of flowers I get myself each week because I'm hashtag worth it. You can follow 100 Hill Academy on Twitter at 100 hilic had and there's a pin tweet that will take you to the Kickstarter link. But you can also just find it on Kickstarter under Haunted Hill Academy. And you can learn more about my business www critical growth games calm.
Ryan Boelter 40:47
Very cool. Well again, thank you so much for joining us for this special bonus episode of character creation spotlight. And thanks to everybody for tuning in. Don't forget to check out the Haunted Hill Academy Kickstarter, which is going on right now as of the release of this episode, we will see you next time.
Ryan Boelter 41:16
Character Creation Cast is a production of the one shot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot Character Creation cast.com. Add to the website to get more information on our hosts this show and even our press kit. Character Creation Cast can also be found on Twitter at Creation Cast or on our Discord server at discord dot Character Creation cast.com is one of your hosts Ryan Boelter and I can be found on twitter at Learn Neptune or online at Lord Neptune calm. Our other hosts Amelia Antrim can be found on twitter at ginger reckoning. Music for this episode is used with a Creative Commons license, or with permission from the podcast they originated from. Further information can be found within the show notes. Our main theme music is hero remix by Steve combs, and is used with a Creative Commons license. This podcast is owned by us under Creative Commons. This episode was edited by Ryan Boelter. Further information for the game systems used and today's guests can be found in the show notes. If you'd like to leave us a rating or review. We have links to various pre mute platforms out there including Apple podcasts in our show notes. Also check the show notes for links to our other projects. Thanks for joining us. And remember, we find that the best part of any role playing game is character creation. So go out there and create some amazing people. We will see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 43:02
We got to read some show blurbs show blurbs show show show blurbs.
Ryan Boelter 43:10
Character Creation Cast is hosted by the one chat Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one shot podcast comm where you will find other great shows like all my fantasy children. Each week,
Amelia Antrim 43:22
Aaron guitar science and Jeff Stormer take a listener submitted prompt and using some of their favorite tabletop RPGs create an original fantasy character along the way they share laughs stories verbal hugs, and populate a shared universe one story at a time. He did it
Ryan Boelter 43:40
for me to look at that. There are way for tunnels.
Amelia Antrim 43:44
I feel like even though we've had like no, like we've been late on getting this month series out and we're like behind it. We're like sorry, we have no content. Why do I feel like we've been recording, like every day
Ryan Boelter 44:00
because we have so much content, but it's just not for November, but it's like
Amelia Antrim 44:04
we have so much content but no no, it's what we need.
Ryan Boelter 44:08
Yes, yes, true. Cuz we got we got cool things like these Kickstarters going on right now. Right? So we've had this is the third spotlight in the last month.
Amelia Antrim 44:21
Yeah, we had like our microgames stuff for the bonus thing I know it's just like, I keep thinking I'm like I feel like we've been recording a lot of stuff. Why do we have that's sorry.
Ryan Boelter 44:34
It's fine.
Amelia Antrim 44:37
I spent like 15 minutes trying to explain to Nate what a Nokia phone was. And he was like so like Android and I was like no buddy, like a phone. And he was like Yeah, but like when you when you typed and it had the letters and I was like nobody It was a phone. It just had numbers for like doing phone thing. And he like could not wrap his head around it. Knowing Bless you, child.
Jeffrey Hayes 45:01
Yeah, I mean, he's never seen a phone that didn't. That was just for calling. Right.
Amelia Antrim 45:07
Right, right. Like what a world? Well, either so Oh,
Ryan Boelter 45:16
my kids to rotary phones and they weren't functional, but they understood.
Amelia Antrim 45:23
Yeah. Yeah. Cuz I was trying to explain that's how we used to play snake was on the phone. I was like apples. It was just a little pixel. I don't know. Like, no, they're apples mom. I was like, I don't think so. It's like, you're so old lady. Oh, these days.
Jeffrey Hayes 45:53
This game actually, like spun out of my work with kids with middle schoolers. And it was really fun. And like, I was explaining the game and like the thought process to them, and it was like, we were having a great time, but they made some reference that I didn't get. And they were like, oh, Jeffrey, do you feel old? Everyone drop an F in the chat for Jaffray. And I was like, what does that mean? You're making it worse.
Amelia Antrim 46:23
I know I feel that way. I'm much younger siblings to my youngest sibling. I think it's just about to turn 20 Yeah. And so like I talked to them, and I'm like, I don't know what you're saying. You're saying all these words and I don't I don't understand you. Like, I felt old for a long time. Like they have way more in common with my with my son than Well, they're closer to age to my son than they are to me. So you guys go talk about Sonic or whatever. Whatever kids are into.
Amelia Antrim 47:02
Yay, yay.
Ryan Boelter 47:07
All right. I'm gonna go ahead and stop my recording.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai