For the first episode of our 30th series, we welcome Kyle Allen and Russ Wilde from the Prism Pals podcast to discuss Quest, an RPG created by T.C. Sottek from The Adventure Guild, and start diving into the delightfully cozy character creation.
For the first episode of our 30th series, we welcome Kyle Allen and Russ Wilde from the Prism Pals podcast to discuss Quest, an RPG created by T.C. Sottek from The Adventure Guild, and to start diving into the delightfully cozy character creation.
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Ryan Boelter 0:01
Welcome to series 30 everyone, Holy cats that's 90 regular series episodes. It's been a fantastic journey to get here but I won't celebrate too much right now because Amelia is currently on the road as I record this called Open, which means you are stuck with me for the next minute or so. First things first, a huge congrats goes out to the folks over at Asians represent for their any gold win for best podcast. This is so very well deserved. And if you haven't gone to listen to that show, I absolutely recommend doing so. We're still doing one to two week breaks between series, which has been so good for our mental well being. So that should give you time to sneak in a few episodes of their show after catching up with ours Of course. Another congrats goes out to Amelia as well. Who has been chosen as a judge for next year's Emmys? I know she's both excited and nervous for this opportunity, but I think she'll do great. Also, a big congrats goes out to all the other folks who won big over this last weekend. I don't think I have anything else to say during this cold open. I know things are still waving arms wildly in life right now. And we are both very thankful that you've stuck with us through all of this. I hope that you are staying well. And if you want to let us know how you feel about this podcast, feel free to head on over to Apple podcasts, pod chaser or any other podcast review site and leave us a rating and review. All five star reviews really help us out and help others to find our podcast. And I know it gives us some really great feels, especially during these Tough times, and it's free to do which is also great. But I digress. With all of that out of the way. Join us on this a quest to cover quest with Kyle and Russ from prison panels and enjoy the show.
Amelia Antrim 2:51
Welcome to Character Creation Cast a show where we discuss and create characters The best part of role playing games, with guests using their favorite systems. I'm one of your hosts Amelia, and this episode my co host Ryan and I are excited to welcome Kyle Allen and Russ Wilde from the prison pals podcast to discuss quest a fantasy role playing game by the adventure Guild.
Ryan Boelter 3:13
Welcome to Character Creation Cast both yo we're really excited you could join us.
Unknown Speaker 3:17
Thanks for having a
Ryan Boelter 3:19
happy to be here. Awesome. Let's go ahead and start by introducing both you two of our audience. Kyle Can you tell us a bit about yourself and where people can find you online any projects that you're currently involved in all that sort of fun stuff?
Kyle Allen 3:34
Well, we are from the prison cause podcast which is an all LGBTQ plus queer, family friendly all ages podcast actual play. All those good things I just posted off the same thing five times. That's fine. My name is Kyle. I am on twitter at super underscore no no underscore no more super quiero I got the underscore removed filings. Big contention there long story we don't go into that. We're at super quiero and I just released my first game on my new NGO. I do stuff with off the table, the stream and Podcast Network. So I'm all over the place, but mostly person pals where my life is beholden to.
Amelia Antrim 4:21
And rest. What about you?
Russ Wilde 4:22
I'm Russ. I use a them pronouns. You can find me on Twitter at Russ Wilde list. I am the guide for the prison pals podcast, which is app prison pals on Twitter. Since Kyle forgot that I'm sorry. I also am sometimes on off the table on Fridays, and I'm also on huttopia, a BIM Park run and community led streaming channel. Yeah, you can also hop on our prison pals twitch where me and one of our other players play cat quest.
Unknown Speaker 5:00
quest to good ties.
Ryan Boelter 5:04
Awesome. All right, well, let's go ahead and get into this. And we will start by discussing what this game is all about what's in a game? All right, can you go ahead and tell us a bit about what what is quest? What what's the setting of quest. So
Russ Wilde 5:20
quest has a like very, very basic setting that the game comes with, which is, Hey, there are multiple planes, it's easy to travel between them. All sorts of wacky things happen in them. There's like your plane, the shadow plane, the weird magic plan, and then one other that I can't remember. But very much the setting is very details light for what the book gives you. And it really does lead to you building your own worlds, your own settings, your own towns, that kind of thing. It's very much just a Here's a basic framework so you understand how the powers work kind of thing. Go ahead and have fun. There you go.
Ryan Boelter 6:08
Guys, good old fantasy sandbox.
Amelia Antrim 6:12
What sorts of things do we need to play this game?
Kyle Allen 6:14
quest is a single d 20. system. So all you need is one d 20. So if you play Magic the Gathering you're set. And you can buy the core rulebook, which is really all you need to do it online, you can get the PDF version or you can get like the physical copy. There's also a nicer physical copy, which is real pretty. There's all types of other things that are like supplemental that you don't really need to play the game. All you really need is one die and the book, everything else is like you can get cards. There's decks of monster cards and item cards you can play with, but most of it's just in one game and one book,
Russ Wilde 6:53
although I will say that if you get the PDF version of it, it comes with the deck and the Monster cards as like PDF versions of it. So if you wanted to, you could cut them out, print them that kind of thing and make your own cards at home. It's just that the versions that quest you can buy, they're so pretty.
Amelia Antrim 7:14
Yeah, I'm such a sucker for stuff like that. I'm like, I don't need it. But like I just really want it.
Ryan Boelter 7:20
I was I was reading those and they're they're Tarot sized cards, which is just phenomenal. And I saw like the box of the core cards is just looks huge. And if they're Taro sized cards, that's extra huge. And I want it but it's all sold out.
Unknown Speaker 7:41
Until I look at that thing. Oh, this was a big boy.
Russ Wilde 7:45
Yeah, I say as I hold it up. It is larger than my hat. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 7:52
That's amazing.
Russ Wilde 7:53
Big Head. Yeah.
Russ Wilde 7:59
Awesome. Use the noise as I put it away get
Unknown Speaker 8:04
back to where you came from.
Ryan Boelter 8:07
back into it.
Russ Wilde 8:08
Yes, it's a very, very simple game when it comes to like what you'd like Kyle said just to die, the core rulebook and some friends but of course you can play it by yourself if you really wanted to
Amelia Antrim 8:21
play with your enemies if you want, you
Russ Wilde 8:22
could get your enemies. I will solve my problems for quest tools.
Unknown Speaker 8:29
Time to do two
Russ Wilde 8:33
more solutions. Don't spoil my next upcoming module the module.
Ryan Boelter 8:40
Well, what kind of stories and themes is this game meant to explore then?
Unknown Speaker 8:45
A
Kyle Allen 8:46
traditional fantasy base? Yeah.
Russ Wilde 8:49
So the way that they book is currently set up is definitely meant to explore traditional fantasy themes. similar sort of vein to the show. To the game we don't mention. But some of the things that it has, like it very much comes from a different place than other Fantasy games do.
Kyle Allen 9:13
But we're gonna read the intro. Because that's like what really sets the tone because like when you first open the book, The very first thing you read his little paragraph says, Welcome, friend. This is a special place of retreat from your worries and obligations. Now, close your eyes, take a deep breath and open your mind. Ready? Let's begin. And that's how the game starts. Right? And that that tone is prevalent throughout the whole game, which is just phenomenal to see.
Russ Wilde 9:41
And like. So if you read through the book, it's very much a very familiar tone. book talks with you in but it's not a like, talking down to you tone. Yeah, the book talks to you like a friend. Yeah, I'm very soft, very caring. Instead of like, pure Other rules roll these dice. Yeah, it's a climb. Here's the math you need to do.
Ryan Boelter 10:06
I was when I was reading through this I was like this is this is like the cozy familiar hug of RPGs. Mm hmm. Which is really interesting to see.
Russ Wilde 10:18
And like, so right now it's set up for Fantasy games, but I do know that the Creator is planning on making sci fi expansions for the game system, and creating other sort of expansions to kind of allow people to play different games with the quests sort of RPG system
Ryan Boelter 10:38
asis? Yeah, it makes a lot of sense. I'm excited.
Amelia Antrim 10:42
What do characters do in this game?
Russ Wilde 10:45
better question. What do you want your character to do in the system? Right?
Amelia Antrim 10:48
It's a very broad question. And it depends on the game I should say. Some games are very specific always supposed to do but true.
Russ Wilde 10:56
So in quest, you're really set up to do a lot of things. Like there's a lot of interaction based moves for like abilities. If you're like dealing with other people, there's stuff for dealing with enemies you're fighting, there's stuff for dealing with the environment, that it's really set up for you to just solve a bunch of problems. But even if you don't have an ability that solves a problem, you can still roll for it. Like the system is very open on how you interpret the rules. So truly, the limit of what it sets up a person or a party to do depends on the party themselves, what they think up what they come up with the sort of solutions that they determined. It's really up to the individuals and the type of story that's happening. For example, I've used quest for an IPM game that we were doing. And one of the things that happened was that the players got a magic fairy wand that none of them knew how to use so Every time they tried to use it, I had them roll for it. And wacky things happen depending on how they roll. So like, it all just depends on the game and how your players and you as the guide, approach the situation.
Kyle Allen 12:17
I will be the one to mention the game that will not be mentioned. So what TC so tech, the creator of quest. I've read a few of his interviews and he talks about when he was when to go make quest. He had only ever played Dungeons and Dragons before. And he had looked at it and thought that it was it was a bit too much for what he wanted, and decided that he wanted to essentially make a very similar game that could do the fantasy, the traditional fantasy setting in a simpler way and it just a different way. And so when he was creating he stepped took a step back and like away from like the indie market. We didn't I get influenced all these things and just made his own thing by himself. So the only real inspiration that I know of I'm not TC, I can't really say is of d&d and that Tolkien fantasy, it just removes all the bad stuff. So it is anything you would do in one of those games that are one of those stories and one of those books you can do through quest.
Ryan Boelter 13:26
It's amazing. It's it's basically d&d without that stuff, like you said, which which there is a lot so yeah, it's really interesting what looking through this and seeing a lot of familiar things, but also, like, fairly unique sort of things that I that I haven't really thought of in like the fantasy genre role playing games before, which was really cool to see. Which kind of leads right into the next question. What what what is unique about quest
Kyle Allen 14:00
Okay, so it doesn't have a perfect answer to, because this is one of the things that drew me to this game when I was first looking at it. Okay, I'm gonna scroll down and go look at the character creation things. So with character creation, you have like different like skill paths and the moves and stuff like that. And there's a few that are really that that like, if you're reading it, you're like, This is fun. And then you think about you're like, Oh, that's what that is. So I'm gonna go look at there's one move in particular, there's a couple that are like a little different, but the one in particular is like the most zany and wild is from the doctor role. There is a move in the which one is diagnose, diagnose, and healing. know which one to treat is that examination, the examination path called diagnose, and it reads I'm going to read it to you. So you touch a creature extending your senses to diagnose a mysterious affliction, like a disease spell or curse. You must correctly guessed the entire name of the affliction. If your guests is wrong, the spell fails and you must spend one adventure point to try again. The guide will give you blanks to fill in that show how many words are in the name and how many letters are in each word. You may start by guessing letters that appear in the name. If you guess and letter correctly, the guide will reveal everything everywhere that letter appears in the name. If you guessed incorrectly six times, the spell fails. You're playing hangman with your guide. While you're playing hangman, as a as a mechanic in this game, that's amazing what in the heck. There's another
Russ Wilde 15:38
example of this with the fighter. The very first thing in the fighter book is dueling. And the last ability of that entire tree is called duel. Basically, you find a creature in single hand combat and if you have the deck, you take the three card for cards for the previous abilities you've gotten, and you play fine to the Queen with your dm, you shuffle the cards around, you hold up a card so you can see it. And the DM, the guide has to guess what that card is. If they're wrong, you activate that ability for free and then you continue on. Wow. And it just like the game makes little mini games within itself that is so interesting. And like set up so uniquely that I haven't seen in other games before.
Kyle Allen 16:31
Yes, and there. There are plenty of other like unique things. And those two were like the ones that like when we were because when I look at a game, the first thing I do is I go to the character creation process. I look at that and see what that's like, just see if I like it. And those were really jumped out at me at first but like when you get into like the mechanics of the game and how like you would you actually play like the ranges of like the distance is obstacle. The distances is instead of like doing math and like this is 60 feet or 30 feet And all this stuff is either in reach nearby in range or too far. And that's all you have to do. There's no movement, there's no like distances, it's just the basics of you can move a little closer, a little too far.
Russ Wilde 17:15
Another thing to mention, there's no money in the system, as in, like money exist in your world. It's just assumed that your players have enough money to buy food tested and in to do like regular things. But if they want to buy something special or do something super special, they normally have to trade something, or they have to do a favor for someone. And it allows for more of a bartering system in the game. And the other thing is, you only have 12 pieces of equipment. That's the
Amelia Antrim 17:48
I did notice that. Yeah, that like there's the spots and it's like very clear, like,
Unknown Speaker 17:53
you can be this is all
Russ Wilde 17:54
you get. And it's not it's not set up in a sense of light. Haha we're limiting you instead up in a sense of like, just put what's important? Yeah You don't need to put the you have a 50 foot hemp in a robe, three torches or 50 caltrops just put what's important if you ask the guide Hey Do I have this the guide more often than not will say yes because you're
Unknown Speaker 18:19
right about encumbrance roles. Oh, I want to know how
Unknown Speaker 18:23
slowly I've moved
Amelia Antrim 18:28
all our I have to get rid of something or I can't run.
Kyle Allen 18:31
I just played tested something about friends making and they're doing that and I was like, I love you. But please No,
Amelia Antrim 18:37
please. I would like to continue being friends. This is my note
Unknown Speaker 18:41
for you for the place.
Ryan Boelter 18:45
Although I do like me a cruncher game sometimes, but maybe not as an RPG. In a tabletop everything's
Amelia Antrim 18:52
for everyone. You know?
Ryan Boelter 18:54
It's very true. But yeah, that's that's there's a lot of good, unique things. about this that I didn't glean from just going over the rules, you know, quickly.
Kyle Allen 19:05
There's so much.
Ryan Boelter 19:06
Yeah, there is a lot in this game. But it's like so simple in terms of how it presents itself. Yeah. Okay, cool.
Amelia Antrim 19:18
Let's talk a little bit about the history of this game. Where did it come from? exactly the thing.
Kyle Allen 19:26
This thing was kickstarted. I know that I don't know much about this part. I see your notes and I'm like reading those and I'm like, Oh, yeah, that's right.
Amelia Antrim 19:31
This is the emilian Ryan look up this thing on Wikipedia,
Ryan Boelter 19:35
although you can't because it's called quest. Yeah, it's the SEO on this is got to be nightmarish because it
Russ Wilde 19:45
is nightmarish.
Ryan Boelter 19:47
I mean, you can look up quest RPG and get to it. You can look up the the adventure Guild, which is also kind of a generic name, if you think about it, but with the called us first
Russ Wilde 20:01
quest has the best website which is adventure dot game is it's amazing. It's just like the just that like URL. I'm just like, wow.
Kyle Allen 20:12
Like, it's very like reflective of the game itself. Simple gets to the point and it tells you what you're doing.
Ryan Boelter 20:18
Exactly. Yeah, so I it was released in 2019 by the adventurer guild LLC. And it. It recently kind of gained a resurgence in the spotlight. Because of all the stuff going on at the the unnamed giant RPG in the Indus house
Unknown Speaker 20:39
already named I yeah.
Amelia Antrim 20:43
We've done an episode on it. And we talked about it all the time. Now.
Ryan Boelter 20:47
Yeah. So recently, within the last one month or so, there's been a large uproar on Twitter because of various bad practices that wizards the coast has been And employing at their company and also the, the problematic content of d&d. Traditional and otherwise, that is just kinda kind of just not good to have in a modern RPG.
Amelia Antrim 21:17
unnecessary and grotesque.
Ryan Boelter 21:18
Yeah, so a lot of people were looking for some an alternative to telling these fantasy stories. And quest seemed to be kind of the front runner at that point.
Russ Wilde 21:31
And so recent stuff that's happened is that with everyone jumping to quest very quickly, a lot of the community started to question Hey, why are we jumping to another monolith? When the Creator has talked kind of about how he wants this to be an instagrammable game, he wants it to be pretty game, that kind of thing. And I believe it was last week or the week before the creator of the game released a creators license. Yeah, creators guide didn't see that. Yeah, basically saying, hey, create whatever you want in charge however much you want. All you have to do is let people know if they attribute it that's it. Just be like, hey, this based off of quests, yeah. Which when you consider what DND has done with practices like DMS guild and that kind of thing and how they work. They say, hey, you can use our name, but we own your work. Yeah, which is a very predatory practice. I know some people are fine with it. But me personally, I've always felt a bit squishy, especially for the fact that like they can take down so this happened with a with the ether rich anthology. They made their anthology they posted it on DMS Guild, and DMS guild took it down. And the people who made it were like, Hey, can we post it somewhere else, and DMZ killed said no, it's ours. Now, it's not going anywhere else. Oh, wow. Because once you've uploaded it, it doesn't belong to you anymore.
Amelia Antrim 23:08
Oh, I've seen a few instances of that with DNS,
Unknown Speaker 23:13
and having a lot lately. Wow. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 23:15
Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 23:16
Yeah. This is a full Creative Commons license, attribution. 4.0, whatever. Um, and yeah, like, the only thing is you need to attribute it. And you can't do word for word direct translations.
Kyle Allen 23:30
I think that's the only limitations on it, which is really cool to see. They do say if you want to translate it to another language, contact us and we'll talk to you
Ryan Boelter 23:39
yeah, it sounds like hey, if you're willing to do the work, we're willing to probably pay you. Yeah, for that which is really amazing to see. Especially, you know, in this day and age with the RPG industry, I really like the direction that this is going
Amelia Antrim 23:55
with me. I really like anything to that, like encourages our artists and creators to charge for the work that they're doing.
Russ Wilde 24:03
Yeah. But in time you put an effort you like, you deserve to make money for those that, you know. So one of the things in the book that like I believe is towards the beginning of the book, the toss a coin. Yes is the toss a coin. It's like a section in the book that says, hey, we don't really care how you got this. We don't really care why you have it. But if you liked it, feel free to buy it off our website. It's not like, hey, if you have this illegally, we're gonna hunt you down, right? Like some other companies act like but it's very much like hey, like, it's that same familiar tone.
Unknown Speaker 24:41
Yeah,
Russ Wilde 24:42
it's okay. We understand times are rough times are hard. But if you can toss us a coin,
Ryan Boelter 24:47
yeah, it's it's fantastic. Like, what does it say here? games like quests are meant to be shared with friends, and we're very glad you're here. It's so interesting. To have this like super familiar like welcoming tone in this throughout and and having that right there in the first couple pages it's just phenomenal
Kyle Allen 25:12
when prison pals was first talking about making the switch to quest for our show I reached out to TC directly just to like touch base and just to just see just to like just talk to her the person like hey we're doing your we're gonna be playing your game and immediately he was like just says amicable in like the the book he's very like, friendly and was very open and happy to see that we were using the game and encouraging of it. And he was like, I can't really do anything for you because we're still small, but like, it's really nice to see you doing this and we'll hope to grow together through it. And it was really nice to see that.
Russ Wilde 25:50
These switch back in May right?
Kyle Allen 25:54
We were one of the first ones to switch to quest like publicly it was us and off the table with the two things that were both tied to dragon
Russ Wilde 26:00
Yes
Russ Wilde 26:02
we switched when the when everyone found out that Mike murrells was still working at wizards when that big reveal dropped that hey guess what? He's actually been working on the RPG this entire time we just have been telling you all
Amelia Antrim 26:20
we just don't really care
Russ Wilde 26:21
yeah so that's when we initially jumped over and we were lucky we like got there just in time to be like, Hey TC Hello this is what we're doing and then everyone else showed up and then I'm assuming his inbox just blew up yeah i'm sure cuz he legitimately on Twitter is good. Like, there's so much going on. I need like a hot minute please.
Kyle Allen 26:46
It's really interesting like, like the, the trajectory that quest has had because like he said it was only released in 2019. That was like the Kickstarter was kick started at 19 Around this time, too. I've actually just like was like searching it in my email. I Like I found the notification from Kickstarter saying this new games, you should back it. I'm like, Oh, that's funny. But yeah, they kick started in 2019. And it didn't actually release like publicly until 2020. February. So like a month before quarantine hit. And it's like no one heard of it. No one was talking about him, really? And then as soon as the DND stuff happened, everyone was talking about it. Yeah, like that. Climb was wild to me. I can imagine. Do we do you know, by chance or sort of curiosity? how well the Kickstarter did.
Ryan Boelter 27:35
I don't like it. Look, I assume it funded. Yeah. Since we have the game.
Kyle Allen 27:42
Class, the role playing game Kickstarter. The original goal was 65,000. The End the will they reached was 153,000. Oh, that's pretty good.
Ryan Boelter 27:54
Yeah, that's nice. Very cool. We love Kickstarter.
Russ Wilde 28:00
Especially now they've allowed their unions.
Unknown Speaker 28:02
Yes. Blessing ins.
Ryan Boelter 28:04
Mm hmm. So yeah, that's that's basically the history of quest. And now here we are, and we've got that creative license for anybody to just go do stuff with. I am extraordinarily tempted to create a magical girls quest game.
Unknown Speaker 28:22
We always need more magical girl games. I know,
Russ Wilde 28:25
our friend we've played with made glitter hearts, and are just like, yes, yes, more magical girls.
Ryan Boelter 28:35
If I wasn't already working, I came here I would probably go and create a magical girls for this one.
Russ Wilde 28:42
If only I've already seen people releasing roles. I've already seen people for me saying like, mini modules, that kind of thing. And it's been like a week and a half and I'm like, wow, everybody's so creative, and I'm tired.
Ryan Boelter 28:58
I mean, that's fair. I could just do a roll. And that would work. Wow. Okay, I got things to think about, but I'll table that for later. All right. Before we get into the actual character creation, there are some basic terms and concepts that I'd love to go over. And I only found three things that were maybe even worth talking about. Maybe for a so I saw success bands that might be a little difficult for some people to grok right away. Can you talk a little bit about what what the success bands mean in this game, it's,
Kyle Allen 29:39
it's very reminiscent powered by the apocalypse game. So if you play power by the apocalypse games, and you're familiar with the 10, plus sick, full hit the seven and nine partial and below seven, no hit. It's very similar. It's just slightly different in a one to 20 scale. So in the game, whenever you roll For something which they do specify, if like, your of your role is like the doctor, and like none of your things really pertain to what you're doing. But it's like a doctor type thing. You don't have to roll for it, it's just you roll for the things where you don't under if you don't know, it doesn't make sense for your character to know what it's doing. So you make the roll. There's no modifiers to the roll you there's no stats in this game, you just make the roll. And whenever the die says on 120 is what you do and you consult the five tiered the ban, that's what's called bands. So the top is the Triumph which is a 20 and 20. This is an exciting moment, you automatically succeed at what you're trying to do. And you may even find added fortune. If you're doing damage, double it. So that's like whatever you're doing, you hit it and you did the extra bit to the success band is 11 to 19. you accomplish what you were trying to do without any compromise If you're dealing damage dealing standard amounts that's just like you did it. Congratulations. Six to 10 is the tough choice. you succeed in your action but there's a cost, the guy will give you a choice between two setbacks. Then there's the two to five which is just failure you fail your intended action, in fact, face a setback and the guides choice. So with the tough choice, you get to choose between two with the failure the guide implements one on you. You might lose equipment, take damage from an enemy counter attack or face some other misfortune. And the final one is catastrophe. Which is a natural one. Oh, no, you automatically fail. And you must have suffered a severe setback I just realized that I said Lulu says Oh no. So on brand.
Russ Wilde 31:43
It's when you roll them that one and you go Oh, no.
Russ Wilde 31:49
Um, so one of the things with the success bands that's very important to realize is that with this game, you should only be rolling for things when there's a chance of failure. Hear, it doesn't make sense to roll for like a bunch of things. And like perception checks don't really exist in this game, which you might have from other games, just because there's no real way to as a guide give a setback for certain things. So like having someone open a door if it's not trapped, why are they rolling for it? That kind of thing. So one of the things that I've seen from some games that I've witnessed is people will ask for a roll and then realize, Oh, I need to give a setback. I don't know what to give you as a setback here. Hmm. So like, figuring that out, especially if you're transitioning from other games can be difficult if you're especially if you're transitioning from games that don't have that sort of, kind of failure mechanic ends. It's more difficult to get a hang of, but it doesn't have to be like end of the world kind of setback. For one of the games, I ran the Character tried to hop on the back of a giant Swan and the swan had never been written before. So I had them roll. And they rolled a a tough choice. As you know, they roll the full failure. And so the swan went to bite them, and instead of biting them, broke the rains and then flew away. So, like, it wasn't the end of the world, they could still get where they needed to get, but it just got a little harder. Mm hmm. So that's like one of the important things with the system, especially when you're guiding and trying to help people roll for things and calling for things. That's awesome.
Ryan Boelter 33:37
I really like how it's kind of a blend of traditional d 20 and pbta rather than there, huh? Yeah. All right. So hitpoints a lot of people are probably familiar with the concept of hit points that your health pool etc, etc. But this game handles them slightly differently. From what I've kind of gleamed looking through the rules a little bit, can we talk about hit points a little bit?
Kyle Allen 34:05
You got 10. Yeah, that's it.
Russ Wilde 34:07
That's no more. No, you never you can have less.
Ryan Boelter 34:11
You never grow in hit points. That's, that's wild. Russ Wilde.
Russ Wilde 34:16
So if you've read, I've read the prayer, the creation license, the creator's license thing. One of the one of the things that talks about with hitpoints is there's a reason that they never go up. The reason that they never go up is because you never want to create a slugfest, which is what a lot of higher level d&d turns into. It turns into a who can lose the most hit points the fastest, rather than a interesting sort of story you tell. So one of the things that he says in the creators guide is, Hey, don't give abilities that increase the head points, because you never really hit super hard, and you never really get hit super hard. Huh, it's it's not how the system is working. It's not numbers aren't above like 10. In most cases, the only time you really get above that is if you have a super powerful boss, like endgame boss might have like 40 hit points, and that's the max hit points they have. And like that kind of thing. But it's one of those things where you look at it. And hey, hopefully you know how to subtract from 10. The math isn't too hard there, huh?
Ryan Boelter 35:33
That's pretty cool. Is there? Is there any you said there's ways that you might be able to have less hit points aside from damage?
Russ Wilde 35:42
Yes. So there is a legendary ability for the Invoker legendary abilities are basically abilities that summarize your role Hmm.
Kyle Allen 35:54
Like a capstone or a prestige
Russ Wilde 35:56
and so the Invoker has an ability called resurrection I believe, which what it does is you can have resurrect to other PCs or NPCs who have died. But you lose two hip points oh wow permanently. Once you you lose all of your hit points, you become a Wraith, which is another legendary ability and you basically gain that legendary ability permanently and you're stuck in that form. Wow. So the the caster is losing the hip points permanent
Ryan Boelter 36:33
Yes. The person that they revive comes back probably 10 health and all that fun stuff.
Unknown Speaker 36:40
That actually is called sacrifice sacrifice.
Russ Wilde 36:42
Yes, I was gonna say that. That's what I read recently.
Ryan Boelter 36:46
That's really cool. I like that. Interesting. And is there any way to go above 10 hit points with like temporary health or any sort of like items or equipment or anything like
Kyle Allen 36:55
that's how shielding works in this game. So like there's no armor class or anything like that. There's no like Captain meet its shielding is just like buffer points basically.
Ryan Boelter 37:04
No cool. So it just seems like it's pretty basic. All throughout. Oh, yeah. Interesting. Okay, I have a lot of questions. But let's let's move on to adventure points.
Russ Wilde 37:19
So adventure points are basically your points that you use to do things like your special abilities that you have. Some of your abilities have points to activate or points to activate more powerful versions of them that kind of thing. You start the game with 10. When you first start playing, you start with 10. At the end of every session, you gain five, but during a session because you'll probably be burning them through them pretty quickly. You gain them for like solving puzzles, figuring out riddles, meeting new characters, gaining new allies, that kind of thing. It's really up to the guides discretion. One of the ways that we've used that we're now using adventure points is as like a spending system of like, hey, I want to do something extra with someone else that isn't describing our abilities. And I'll be like, hey, okay, spend a few more adventure points. And you can do this, uh, we used to do this in d&d when we were playing it, and we used inspiration for that because I like to give inspiration out like candy. Cuz if you really don't want that bad roll, go for it. Use your inspiration. Yeah, so it's a really simple system. Start with 10 get five at the end of the session.
Ryan Boelter 38:40
Very nice. I so I heard you mention, and it's breaking my brain a little bit. Ah, this game doesn't have stats.
Russ Wilde 38:49
Notice that nobody scores nothing.
Ryan Boelter 38:51
Yeah. So everybody's on equal playing field throughout. What's
Kyle Allen 38:57
the only thing that really like dictates your your question? actor is the role and the path you choose everything else and
Ryan Boelter 39:04
also your character profile, and to probably a lesser extent, equipment that you have. Very cool. I like that. Okay, what is there any, anything, any other concepts or terms that we might need to know going into character creation that I might have missed?
Russ Wilde 39:21
So there's like, a few big things. There's roles roles are basically this games version of classes. learning paths, which are the specific sort of paths within a role.
Russ Wilde 39:37
Not really subclasses been kinda
Amelia Antrim 39:41
like, almost like kind of skill tree.
Unknown Speaker 39:42
Yeah, like, traits. It's the closest thing in ttrpg, you'll get to a skill tree.
Russ Wilde 39:48
Yeah. And then there are abilities which are the items on a skill tree. That's basically it. As far as I know, Kyle, anything
Kyle Allen 39:59
anyone's covered Everything Yeah, basically a
Ryan Boelter 40:02
very cool well we'll get into all of that more in depth. Are we ready to make some people? Let's do it let's make some people let's make some people I'm super excited for this yeah me too. Oh my god I
Amelia Antrim 40:16
love this character sheet
Kyle Allen 40:18
character sheet is beautiful art beautiful It's also good I am the the form there's a form fillable one character sheet that you get with the game. There's one it's like the character profile there's one it's a worksheet and there's one it's like both of them combined in a form fillable format the form fillable one I actually just emailed TC before we started because I forgot to email him a while ago because the form fillable one as it is has some issues with it with when you actually fill it out like for the boxes might be connected and it might try to say I wear armor and it says I wear armor armor and move with armor. I'm from armor.
Unknown Speaker 40:57
You can't fix it.
Kyle Allen 40:58
Oh then like the ancient In the AP sections can't fill in. So like I emailed him, I was like, Hey, we fixed it on our end. But like, Can you fix this, please?
Russ Wilde 41:06
Yeah. Just for the website for people who want to play the game.
Kyle Allen 41:09
Yeah. Cuz another member of prison pals, Mario, they had to go in and like on Adobe and just fix it, so we could use them. Mm hmm.
Ryan Boelter 41:18
Alright, so I do have the character sheets here as well. I don't think they are form fillable though. But this is why I was it's literally just a paragraph.
Russ Wilde 41:30
Yes. So how the game sets up for for players is that you make a character profile, and then you present it to the group as you start the game, like when you first sit down to play. One of the things that guide one of the things that the guide does is they make a world profile, talking about where you're starting, where you're going, what the world is, like that kind of thing. I know this is a podcast more focused on Character Creation Cast. Oh no,
Amelia Antrim 42:01
we love world building. Haha.
Unknown Speaker 42:04
So Joe did not convince me at all.
Amelia Antrim 42:09
No, we really love
Ryan Boelter 42:11
collaborative world building is probably second very closely if not first in some cases to character creation.
Amelia Antrim 42:21
And okay, I'm actually gonna print this world profile.
Russ Wilde 42:23
It's basically
Russ Wilde 42:27
the world profile is the guides version of a character profile because the world has a character to a sentence it responds it reacts it exists. So it's meant to be starting with like the starting area where everyone starts and then scope outwards. You don't need to know every single little detail about your world. It's more about like where the players are now what they're doing now, that kind of thing. Hmm. So character creation.
Russ Wilde 43:01
Let's just go stop for a second. Yeah. Yes, Russ. Russ, I'm hoping someone has
Amelia Antrim 43:07
to keep us on track.
Unknown Speaker 43:08
I have shown up I'm taking over them.
Russ Wilde 43:12
So you have your eight roles, which I will try to read if I can find the page with the roles 20 page 22. Thank you later. Invoker Ranger, naturalist, Doctor, spy magician and wizard are the eight roles that come with quest. One of the things that quest talks about is that hey, you can pick one roll and stick with it. But there are other ways to play the game like everybody could be dual world you pick two rolls and build out that way or screw the rolls, pick whatever abilities you want. And it's really set up so you can do that however you want to do and still have a very balanced character but very versatile. To tile so you can go into multiple different areas. So when you're creating a starting character, what you do is you pick six abilities total, if you're going with a single role thing, then you pick six abilities from your role like fighter, that kind of thing, dual role, dual role kind of thing. And like you said before, these are skill trees, so you have to take the first ability before you can get the second ability on a path. So you need to pick them in order down the path, but you can pick for multiple paths.
Kyle Allen 44:31
Or you could just start out the gate with the entire skill bath. Oh, picked, there's no prerequisites, you can just start off like I had this entire path. Thank you.
Russ Wilde 44:40
Yes, you can be like I have all of the abilities from the dual path and two abilities from one
Ryan Boelter 44:46
other path. Wow. So the the most diverse you could be at the beginning is six different classes with the beginning ability on one of their paths.
Russ Wilde 44:57
You know, each role has I think about Five paths give or take with like three to five abilities depending
Russ Wilde 45:05
on the path. Goodness.
Amelia Antrim 45:07
All right, Ryan, what
Ryan Boelter 45:08
do you think, Lord? There's there's so many good ones on my, the one that I personally if I was gonna sit down and play this game in a campaign, the one that that kind of stood out to me as the most to me would be the Invoker. Sorry, I don't want to do that one.
Amelia Antrim 45:27
Okay, well, I was kind of thinking maybe I would do that one. Now. I want to clarify that I did see that under doctor there is necromancer. Yeah. I'm gonna rein myself in and for once in my life not making that command. Wow.
Kyle Allen 45:41
Why would you know?
Amelia Antrim 45:42
I guess I think I have like the last like two or three. I feel like, I'm gonna like not do that. Oh, Jamelia
Ryan Boelter 45:50
can have a little necromancy as a tremble
Amelia Antrim 45:53
on that. Okay, no, like last time it was to be fair
Unknown Speaker 45:58
entirely on accident. That's very true. It wasn't
Amelia Antrim 46:01
up to that heritage.
Ryan Boelter 46:02
Accidental necromancy is a you know, it's
Russ Wilde 46:09
become an accidental necromancer. extra steps there.
Amelia Antrim 46:14
Yeah, I saw I rolled on a table that was like, Oh, actually, you know blood magic. Oh,
Unknown Speaker 46:20
by the way.
Amelia Antrim 46:23
You were you were maybe dabbling in black magic.
Russ Wilde 46:26
Yeah. So we're full roll. We're in tables you have.
Amelia Antrim 46:30
Yeah.
Russ Wilde 46:33
Random table. Oh
Amelia Antrim 46:34
my gosh, I love them so much. We did aside, we did a panel at a cat a con this year where we took random tables from a bunch of different games and we had our audience roll on tables. And then we made characters based on what we got off of these roles. And they were a mash. They were.
Ryan Boelter 46:54
It was Oh, yeah, they were all mutant animals. Somehow we kept on the mutant animals. tables from palladium.
Amelia Antrim 47:01
Yeah, they're all mutant animals. They did all wear hats. Um,
Unknown Speaker 47:05
yeah. Amazing.
Amelia Antrim 47:07
There was radioactive spaghetti.
Ryan Boelter 47:09
Yeah, there's radioactive spaghetti. Yeah, warehouses and a law firm. Yep. It was very cyberpunk. And very interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 47:21
Okay, so I think I'm gonna do Invoker Oh, fun Fun.
Ryan Boelter 47:25
Okay, I'm still thinking so, Kyle, Russ, what are you thinking about?
Unknown Speaker 47:31
I'm gonna do spy. I'm making a SAS.
Unknown Speaker 47:35
Language Russ.
Russ Wilde 47:37
Darn it. Kyle. Why would you do this to me?
Amelia Antrim 47:42
Hey, both makes fine.
Unknown Speaker 47:44
No, you can't do a rough Hey wait.
Unknown Speaker 47:47
Ivy's old despite Yeah.
Russ Wilde 47:51
So then, since I wanted to be spike, cuz my issue is that I always pick Druid and there's like two Druid eBill Druid classic. Your arranger and naturalist are both Druid and Ranger kind of like mixed in between the two. All right, and I always take that so instead I'm gonna go doctor. Cousin never play a cleric
Kyle Allen 48:14
duck the duck Goodman. Okay, so
Ryan Boelter 48:16
we got Invoker a doctor a spy the magician seemed kind of interesting to me because of the word psychic in there because I love me some psyonix but it looks like it's a like illusionary magic and parlor tricks and stuff like that.
Unknown Speaker 48:36
And that and
Amelia Antrim 48:39
not feel like you want to go naturalist you think? I don't know. I just feel like
Ryan Boelter 48:45
you know what, I'm you Let's do it. I'm gonna go naturalist because flowers and Druids are cool.
Kyle Allen 48:54
The Magician has the scariest skill treat the Learning Path to me called mannequins. terabyte
Ryan Boelter 49:02
sounds great. Oh my Okay. Wow. Okay. I mean, you're talking about mannequins and spooky stuff like that. You see me staring go
Kyle Allen 49:16
also they are for the magician is just top notch.
Ryan Boelter 49:20
Oh, that's fantastic multiple arms. No fake face with glasses. That's pretty cool. Ah, mannequins Come on clairvoyance contrition mind control mayhem I know I don't know why I'm taking so long I'm picking
Kyle Allen 49:36
a class. That's another thing with a big choice with the magician they do mind control but it's not like mind control in games that you're used to. Yeah, where it's kind of icky and gross. Yeah, this mind control is very much doesn't cross that line. into not things we want to talk about. You know what I'm, I want to I want to create a pew pew. sort of person. So I'm going to go wizard. All right, pew, pew, pew pew magical pew pew.
Ryan Boelter 50:08
Um, All right, cool. So I am a wizard.
Kyle Allen 50:11
You're a wizard Brian.
Unknown Speaker 50:13
Yeah, wizard.
Ryan Boelter 50:15
So that would be I'm the party's wizard. Great.
Amelia Antrim 50:17
Yep. Cool. So what's next? Number two, enter the scene.
Ryan Boelter 50:24
So it looks like we're playing Mad Libs at this point.
Kyle Allen 50:27
Yeah, essentially.
Ryan Boelter 50:28
So this this theme of game games within games seems to be pretty prevalent even in character creation.
Kyle Allen 50:36
Yeah, I like it. Because like the one thing that the character profile does not have is a place to put your abilities which I think is because there's a deck that you can get if I'm wrong, Ross. Am I wrong? I mean, that's the core
Russ Wilde 50:49
deck I was showing earlier. Okay, yeah,
Unknown Speaker 50:51
the core deck you get you would have tarot cards, all your abilities in it.
Kyle Allen 50:56
Which is but so like your character profile has Nothing to do their abilities it's just your role is only matters when introducing yourself. So it's not like I have this ability this ability now ability.
Russ Wilde 51:06
Hmm. So what you're supposed to do with the deck is you take the decks and everyone takes their cards from it, and then they have it in front of them so they have their abilities easily listed in front of them. Okay, very easy to reference. Nice. And you go, Oh, I shouldn't have six cards. There are six cards in front of me. Great. That's pretty not did I forget to level up this session where what am I supposed to have? How many spells? Did they get new spells yet?
Amelia Antrim 51:38
Do I remember what those spells do?
Kyle Allen 51:40
Ah, so after making taking a role, you choose your role. The next thing at the end of the scene, like Amelia said, when you fill out the next sentence, which is when people see me, they first notice my blank, blank and blank and you fill those three lines in with something about your body, something about your face, and then your vibe.
Ryan Boelter 51:59
I think Love that you're basically creating your own your own fantasy race here if you want.
Kyle Allen 52:07
Mm hmm.
Ryan Boelter 52:08
There's no races, because head of tentacles is not an option for your body.
Kyle Allen 52:15
And these are all just suggestions. Yeah, but everyone got that
Ryan Boelter 52:18
that is such an evocative head of
Russ Wilde 52:21
there's also this digital tail and the web fin. Yeah, like, there's a whole bunch.
Amelia Antrim 52:28
I'm super into iridescent skin. Mm hmm. Oh, I'm picking up.
Russ Wilde 52:34
I'm going stout stature.
Kyle Allen 52:36
I just made my own.
Russ Wilde 52:38
I'm going good for you. Yeah. Someone is creator.
Kyle Allen 52:44
I just decided to go full chaos and just like make something that doesn't like exists in a stereotypical fantasy world. So my body is made of mist. Hmm, that you mean,
Russ Wilde 52:55
urgent nasi.
Kyle Allen 52:57
No, I'm literally missed.
Russ Wilde 53:00
You mean strahd
Amelia Antrim 53:03
no rush Miss Yeah,
Ryan Boelter 53:05
somebody is wanting them near because they miss them.
Kyle Allen 53:10
If you want me to hug you you get moist.
Unknown Speaker 53:13
I hate
Russ Wilde 53:15
I hate that so much. Do you though why would you speak that into this world?
Kyle Allen 53:23
So for face I chose off the list
Ryan Boelter 53:28
Kyle lots of reasons
Kyle Allen 53:30
romantic eyes and body of mist romantic eyes. Well together like who else the duty from a farmer mislead presence.
Russ Wilde 53:39
The third option they give you on the chart in the book is vibe, which love those.
Ryan Boelter 53:47
Yeah, there's a lot of good things in there.
Russ Wilde 53:49
Yes, so I in total for my body. I have stout stature. For my face. I have an antenna and for my vibe. I have entropy Judas vibes
Kyle Allen 54:02
Who? I shall the list? Yeah,
Russ Wilde 54:04
yeah, it is. I saw that one. Yes.
Ryan Boelter 54:08
I don't know if I want manicured fuzz on my face or timeworn face.
Russ Wilde 54:15
I will say about this digital antenna. It doesn't tell you where the antenna are on your face.
Ryan Boelter 54:21
So that's true.
Russ Wilde 54:23
Surprise, surprise, everybody. Let's find out.
Kyle Allen 54:27
antenna beard.
Russ Wilde 54:30
I won't say how many I decided this digital is
Ryan Boelter 54:35
not useful, right? Mm hmm.
Kyle Allen 54:38
Okay. You could be Davy Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean.
Ryan Boelter 54:43
You know what I've already got a lot. Already got tentacles. I've got head of tentacles from my body, which I don't know how that works. Um, I'll go within tennis
Russ Wilde 54:53
my body as a head of technical body as a floating head Am
Ryan Boelter 54:58
I just all tend to bowls with
Kyle Allen 55:01
your ears that are a blob of appendage of it'll tell you our little tiny tentacle antenna.
Russ Wilde 55:08
I like to think that you have like one that's hidden inside your testicles. is like hidden by the dead. Oh wow.
Amelia Antrim 55:15
It's rather like the sigil though cuz like I would love it if they just like popped out. Mm hmm.
Ryan Boelter 55:22
All right, and I
Amelia Antrim 55:23
went with a severe jawline and a captivating grin.
Kyle Allen 55:26
Oh, we love a severe jawline. I'm gonna
Ryan Boelter 55:29
go with gentle Amelia
Russ Wilde 55:31
making an actual person while the rest of us are making this role monster.
Ryan Boelter 55:38
I went okay. When people see me they first noticed my head of tentacles, vestigial antenna and gentle disposition.
Unknown Speaker 55:47
Oh, so
Kyle Allen 55:50
soft pendants monster. Yeah, I did when people see me they first noticed my body of mist romantic eyes and an air of mystery. Why'd you miss your air? heroin? Oh, no brain move thing great.
Unknown Speaker 56:11
But I got cute eyes.
Ryan Boelter 56:16
Oh my gosh, the puns. I love it.
Amelia Antrim 56:21
Thank you for joining us for part one of this character creation series. We'll be back in part two picking up right where we left off.
Ryan Boelter 56:28
Character Creation Cast is a production of the one shot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot Character Creation Cast calm head 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 Character Creation cast.com i one of your hosts Ryan Boelter and I can be found on twitter at Lord Neptune or online at lordan dot com are other hosts Amelia Antrim can be found on twitter at ginger recommend. 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 remixed by Steve combs. And it's 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 preview 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 58:14
Now we got to read some show blurbs
Unknown Speaker 58:16
show blurbs
Unknown Speaker 58:18
show show bad
Unknown Speaker 58:20
show blurbs.
Ryan Boelter 58:22
Character Creation Cast is hosted by the one shot Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one trap podcast comm where you will find other great shows like a woman with hollow eyes. A
Amelia Antrim 58:33
woman with hollow eyes as a podcast adaptation of one shots livestream dramatic invisible sun actual play, discover a world of magic secrets and supernatural civic disputes in our unique take on Saturn. In the first season, James d'amato cool and SNL writer Alan linic our lead on a mind bending adventure by GM Darcy Ross. Even if you already saw the streams, you want to listen to this podcast for the incredible sound track, composed and edited by wil Leventhal get it by searching for a woman with hollow eyes or Darcy Ross on iTunes Google Play or your favorite podcast app.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai