Welcome to the second part of our Nova/Lumen series, everyone! This series we have Spencer Campbell joining us to showcase his fast-paced, action heavy RPG, Nova, a rules-lite tabletop RPG in a world where the sun exploded, and humanity struggles to hold onto what little light they have left. In this episode, finish our characters and find out a lot more about our world with some collaborative world building!
Welcome to the second part of our Nova/Lumen series, everyone! This series we have Spencer Campbell joining us to showcase his fast-paced, action heavy RPG, Nova, a rules-lite tabletop RPG in a world where the sun exploded, and humanity struggles to hold onto what little light they have left. In this episode, finish our characters and find out a lot more about our world with some collaborative world building!
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Amelia Antrim 0:01
Welcome to the second episode of Series 53 Everyone. This episode we get to take our deep dive into Nova character and world creation. As we are joined again by Spencer Campbell to discuss this twice any nominated RPG. Perhaps by the time this comes out, we will know if it's a winner or not. Yeah, absolutely.
Ryan Boelter 0:22
Well, it's a winner in my heart, cuz I love this case. But we really don't have any announcements right now for today's episode, just check back with us and the call to action to hear about our latest Patreon updates, including some shout outs, and even a new review. Yeah, enjoy the show everybody.
Ryan Boelter 1:20
On the last episode of Character Creation Cast, Spencer was created a plague draining pox, Amelia was creating a necromantic grip. And I was created a blood thirsty same gwede We're picking up right where we left off last time, enjoy.
Spencer Campbell 1:41
So those are those are our starting attributes. And like I said, you can eventually get some boosts of those from mods later on in play. But that's where we begin. The other thing that we need to program with our Spark is the starting health and fuel that we have. We each character starts at a baseline of two health and two fuel. So you can take two it's before you supernova, and you can spend two, you knew two powers before you're out of fuel. And now we have eight points to distribute those as we see fit. So if you want to be very tanky, you can throw a bunch of points into health so that you're not worried about maybe dropping at the at an inopportune time. If you're worried about spending out fuel, add a bunch of points to your fuel column and truly Dialight delta at your supernovas helping you when it does. And, or you know, kind of a blend of both however you want, you can spend eight more points between them.
Ryan Boelter 2:37
So what what does happen when you when you run out of fuel?
Spencer Campbell 2:41
Yeah, so that's, that's the one tricky thing is when you run out of fuel, you can't activate your powers and you kind of have two, two options in play. One is you technically can use your attributes at any time during the game to describe doing something so you can still describe like picking up a giant rock and throwing it that's muddy and you know, use sun to roll it. There's no harm that's mechanically associated with it. But as a table, you can get to decide like, Oh yeah, that rock would do one harm or to harm or something like that. Or you can be doing other things in the environment that are going to be helping your friends by doing some attribute roles to like change the environment or things like that. The other thing is, whenever enemies die, the GM is going to roll a d six for each, each body and on a three through five, that enemy produces a fuel that any spark can pick up. And so you can go okay, I might not be able to use the power of this term. But let's take out some tools and then I'm gonna I get first dibs on some of that fuel so that I'm back in in play. Oh, so part of that drops is the group thinking like what do we like who needs to distribute health right now and health only drops on sixes so you don't get health back a lot. And so thinking, Well thankfully we have a vampire healer that will help us. But you know, you're thinking, if I do run out of fuel, I'm waiting for an enemy to dive by one of my friend's hands so that I can steal their precious fuel that falls out of their body or you're trying to contribute through the app, the attribute rolls and things like that. Okay,
Amelia Antrim 4:19
I put three more on health and then five and a fuel so seven, five and seven.
Ryan Boelter 4:26
That's what I did to what I went to five health and what seven seven fuel. So
Spencer Campbell 4:35
exactly. I put I put six into health into into fuel because pox is supernova benefits from having a lot of people infected and so I don't want to drop right away. I want my my my my plague to spread before I dropped so my goal is unlike many sparks I don't want to supernova all the time. I want to wait until I truly spread out my influence. I'm going to buff my character up a little bounce I went six more into health and two more into fuel.
Ryan Boelter 5:05
Nice. How much? Like how much health does a typical enemy have that yeah,
Spencer Campbell 5:11
typically an enemy is going to die in one or two powers, they oftentimes will have maybe two or three harm is pretty typical seen on on enemies. So one good strong power or a back to back sort of effect will will knock out most foes. And then the GM will try to throw in some some beefier ones that will slow you down. But my I've always been of the mind set that an interesting combat isn't made interesting by adding more hit points to the enemies, it's by adding either just more enemies or enemies that do weird and funky things that maybe you know, in the gym is fully within their power to just be like, this one has adapted to your strain and just not taking the Do you know, the DoT effect on your pox strain. So now I'm like, oh, okay, I need my good buddy, you know, grim to stab this thing to death with it, or something like that, because my my strain isn't working here. And so I keep health levels low on enemies so that you can really wipe them out to get those resource drops, but also gives the GM like more opportunities for them to play with interesting variations in the enemies instead. So we've got our sparks all programmed up, we've got our Spark, we've got the attributes and the health and fuel going on. Now this we enter that space of the bill. Like I said, we are lower level 20. So now we're starting to customize our how we want to act on the field. The flare is just the word that we use as a catch all for your complete suite of mods that you have access to. And so we're going to choose two mods that we're going to bring with us as starting characters. And just sort of to explain the the mods again, the persistent mods up top are generally like just ongoing bonuses. So these can be things like increasing any of your attributes, or maybe your health or fuel. You also have persistent persistent mods that are designed specifically to change the way your passive works. So that's typically how they are designed. There's some variations in that. But so your persistent mods are very much in that realm of passively changing the way that your character works either just by making them stronger, or by slightly tweaking some things like your password or something like that. The power mods are plugged directly into powers. So you assign them to a specific power. So for example, if a power mod like finder gives you plus one range, I take that plus one range and put it on a specific power that I want to increase the range of. So if my you know my power hits everybody at near, now I can do near and far with that particular. But also in the power mods, there are four of them that are each one is very specifically designed for your for power. So each power has its own key cool power that changes the way or really amplifies that power. So cool. You're thinking like, do I really want to, like dive deep into what these powers are designed to do by amplifying them? Or do I want to craft them and modify them in a way that is my own doing through like the range changes and the harm changes and things like that? So this I, you know, I said that choosing a spark is the hardest part. But I think this is it's not the hardest, this is the second hardest part because there's a lot to choose from and thinking about which ones you want to do is it can be tricky. Yeah, I highly recommend players, you know, you take take some mods out for a test run, and then you know, change it up. I'm not there to say your mods are set in stone for life sort of thing, if you come back from mission and you actually that mod didn't do what I wanted. I say switch them off and find the mod that helps you with what you want to try to accomplish. So yeah, now we have the very difficult task of trying to pick two mods that we want to bring with us out onto the field.
Ryan Boelter 9:05
Is it two months total between persistent and power?
Spencer Campbell 9:08
It is two total so that makes it even harder.
Ryan Boelter 9:15
Well, I got two persistent rods in mind now if I do know,
Spencer Campbell 9:20
it become settled. Yeah. You gotta go on submissions, saying we really get into the weird blood binding or bending.
Ryan Boelter 9:29
Oh, these are so good. Because I was thinking of, I've got two persistent mods in here that look really interesting. Reborn and mobile grave combined would be amazing, like reborn makes it so when you supernova, your siphon hits all close enemies. And then mobile grave means you can resurrect anywhere within near of where you died. So you can hop into a group of nearby enemies and just do a supernova. psiphon all around you, and just be at full health or whatever.
Spencer Campbell 10:04
Yeah. And so like, you look at that, and then you think like, maybe I want to go back and decrease my starting health so that you do die a lot. So they use like, you activate that supernova more often. Because you're like, yeah, maybe, maybe I will have three health. Right? I'm a mean coffin who flies around? Exactly.
Ryan Boelter 10:23
I mean, that sounds like an amazing group. Yeah, like killing machine there. Can you go above your starting health? When you you gain more help? In there? I
Spencer Campbell 10:35
would say no, but I mean, I suppose you could change it at the table if you want it. But no, the intent is that your starting health is where is your like your cap right now? And that you can't you have to get more mods that would change that with time.
Ryan Boelter 10:50
Okay. Oh, yeah. So like plus one, for Hertie? And so on and so forth. Yeah. And that makes sense. Yeah. So you
Spencer Campbell 10:57
can you can change your your, your health and fuel with time a little bit through mods, and then, you know, maybe eventually, as a group, you go, Okay, we want to go specifically out on a mission that finds more hardy mods, because we've used them and we want more health. And then you as the GM can think, like, Okay, how do I? What does that look like to go on a mission to find a mod that's maybe not listed here in the system?
Ryan Boelter 11:20
Yeah. Oh, that's, that's so good. I think with that, I'm gonna go down to four, Max, and push my fuel up a little bit. Because that sounds amazing to just supernova all over the place. That sounds pretty great. But I kind of look at the power.
Amelia Antrim 11:39
Like all my powers, I just really liked them. I really, really liked them.
Ryan Boelter 11:44
I could do, I could do plus one range. Nice syphon and hit all
Amelia Antrim 11:55
that you're like, oh, plus one range. Like, I'm like, I'm gonna take the things that are like, you know, like, flavorful, you know, like, not a plus one. Right? And Ryan's like, oh, range. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 12:08
But if I if I do plus one range on my siphon, then I affect all enemies that are close to near right. Yeah, oh, Lord,
Amelia Antrim 12:20
you're such a power gamer.
Ryan Boelter 12:21
But that then I don't have to jump to them.
Amelia Antrim 12:23
I know. I know. It's so great, buddy. That is one
Spencer Campbell 12:27
of the things that I'm really happy about with Nova that, you know, plus one range can oftentimes look like Well, that's not very exciting, like you read all these other powers and mods that I like, and it will hold the honest. Plus one range unlocked as a way to play this character. Right, right, which I was really happy that I, like I said, trying to capture that sense of, of builds, rather than increasing power, it's more just like, Okay, I just want to be the weird moving coffin that dies a lot but steals people's blood, or I want to be the person who just is just pulling in all the blood to me where I am, where I stand sort of thing. Or, or I reach out like is, you know, sanguine can also turn their blood into blades and attack people. And you can increase that range up, like I'm literally just a whirling storm of blood blades as I walk around the battlefield.
Unknown Speaker 13:21
It's so good. No.
Ryan Boelter 13:26
Okay, so I guess my question is, do these power mods hook on to a specific power or is it all powers.
Spencer Campbell 13:34
So on the character sheet, you'll see that there's an option for installed mods under each of your four powers. So if you were to like fill out the sheet where you're writing your powers, there's a spot under each power for installed mods. And you can always swap them out between missions. So you might have the plus one range on one of your powers during a mission. And then the next one, you go, actually, I want a little more range on this one. Instead, you just uninstall it from one and move it over to the other one you always saw are like this pool of mods that you access and unlock over time is meant to be that a pool that you can change between missions, once you're in the mission, this is what you've what you've equipped your spark to do. Between them, you might learn to adapt or change depending on the briefing of the mission where you realize who you're fighting against, or how your experience was in the last mission. So yeah, so you'll you'll hook it on to a power for now, but know that it's not necessarily a permanent choice that it will always be on that power.
Amelia Antrim 14:29
Okay, in which case, you just move it down to that section of the power. Exactly. It takes at the bottom right, yeah,
Spencer Campbell 14:33
exactly.
Amelia Antrim 14:34
You know, that's like your little like your little
Spencer Campbell 14:37
you know, some of those mods are obviously links to a very specific powers and that they can go anywhere else. But all those ones in the left column are very intentionally designed to be mobile mods to go around to the to whatever place you want to put them at the moment.
Ryan Boelter 14:50
Awesome. Okay. Okay, so I see. I see I've got the list of my persistent mods in total, and then my assistant mod one is the one that I have installed right around the pool. So I am installing reborn because I want to be a nightmare if I die. And then plus one range to my siphon. Very good. So that may that way I have all enemies near and close to me will just get they will fuel me basically
Amelia Antrim 15:29
their hate fuels you right? Uh huh.
Ryan Boelter 15:34
And their blood mostly their blood but maybe a little mostly their blood I agree.
Amelia Antrim 15:39
Oh, that is so proud of you right now.
Ryan Boelter 15:43
Just want to be a nightmare on the battlefield. I
Spencer Campbell 15:45
love that. I love that for you.
Ryan Boelter 15:49
Like I can see I can see my advancement options like around this sort of build, like the mobile grave adding on there even more destroy,
Amelia Antrim 15:59
hard to pick, like where I go next. Like it's like, do I want to like like, do I want to take one thing and be like really good at that thing? Or do I want to like slowly build it out and then up.
Ryan Boelter 16:11
And then there's this refreshing power mod. If you kill a siphon, you may immediately activate another power. But you still have to pay a fuel for that. Yeah, so like, that's so good to
Amelia Antrim 16:27
Ryan, you can't have all of them and you want to know the worst part, Ryan? You're never gonna get all of them because we're not going to play this
Ryan Boelter 16:37
dream. I can dream. Alright, I'll say
Amelia Antrim 16:41
that's true evil. It's fine.
Unknown Speaker 16:43
It's fine. It's fine.
Ryan Boelter 16:47
I'll have I'll have daydreams of my my saying between Mac just tearing up the battlefield.
Amelia Antrim 16:54
So should we go through like what we have and what was yours to go with it? Because we've talked a little bit about like what each of these do, but we didn't really talk specifics of powers that we have.
Spencer Campbell 17:04
Oh, yeah, like the powers that are Mecca or Mexico generally. Yeah. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 17:09
Yeah. For those what we what we went with Ryan, do you want to go first, since you seem to be like the most excited about your choice?
Ryan Boelter 17:19
All right, yeah, so I've got the same Buin spark. And they come with the passive Bloodborne. So I could spend a health to activate the blood effect of my powers. And then the active powers I have our transfusion. So I pick two targets that are close to each other. And I transfer one health from one to the other. And if I spend a health I can transfer health equal to my son which is three so I can pull three health from one enemy and give it to one of us not that which is amazing or I'm assuming I can pick myself and give it to somebody else and pull myself quite literally right into zero health and just and just just go
Spencer Campbell 18:12
you have the game perfectly exactly what I want you to be able to do
Ryan Boelter 18:19
because because I've got four max health oops, I use a health to make it make it all my son damage going in there. So that takes the way the last three health I've got so even if I meant man, I can activate my supernova at anytime just look
Spencer Campbell 18:35
at one of your teammates and say Here hold on to this you just had them all your blood meal turned into a coffin. Yeah, that's pretty much what a difficult novice session looks like.
Unknown Speaker 18:46
Oh, it's so good.
Ryan Boelter 18:48
And then siphon is apparently my core ability now that does one harm to an enemy within close range and then I gain one health but if I activate it with one health, it affects all close enemies or plus one range now so it affects all close and near enemies. Which give me give me more range for this thing.
Amelia Antrim 19:16
No, no.
Ryan Boelter 19:19
And then blood blade I lash out with worldleading talons made of your own blood which is just metal as heck you lose one health and do one harm to every enemy in close range. And if I used another health to activate the blood effect, ideal harm equal to my shade instead which is two and then Cauldron is the Affer mentioned burst into a swarm of bats and move to any location within fire range. And then you deal one harm to all close enemies at that location. And then the blood effect This deal harm equal to your moon instead. And of course, the supernova the beautiful supernova of the San green is you get surrounded by a steel coffin and at the start of your next round you you just get up and and siphon everybody around wide uses
Amelia Antrim 20:25
your kill you
Unknown Speaker 20:28
don't want to hurt me You sure
Ryan Boelter 20:32
you don't all right well I'm gonna hurt myself and anyway
Spencer Campbell 20:38
to bat truly excited and truly I came together in my mind the fastest of all the sparks were like the second airlines blood vampire robot, it just it came out of me it was like this all makes sense to me. More so than anything else in the world.
Ryan Boelter 20:56
I am so excited for this character. All right. What do you got? Amelia?
Amelia Antrim 21:02
Okay, so I went with the grim I know we're all shocked my passive ability raise dead once per round when an enemy dies you may immediately make them your Thrall they revived with one health and act with your powers. They can't move unless you have mods that allow it you have a number of thrills equal to your shade which I put mine at three yeah three active powers pull strings commander thralls lash out targets for all attacks a close enemy dealing it's harm siphon which sacrifice a Thrall within close range it creates drops of health or fuel equal to its maximum health an ally may claim them that is vaguely I get to be vaguely helpful something yeah and
Spencer Campbell 21:54
that that kind of helps what Ryan had asked earlier about like what happens if I have no fuel Well, grim just kills one of their puppets and now there's a big pile of fuel on the ground for you to vacuum up Yeah, so good.
Amelia Antrim 22:08
I'm possessed steel to harm to an enemy with a near range and give them a single command they must obey and haunt all for all streak into the air and the enemies within close range to them recoil and fear and cannot act during the GMs turn.
Unknown Speaker 22:25
Wow.
Amelia Antrim 22:27
So I also for that one did a persistent mod whenever a Thrall dies for any reason they activate the haunt effect at their location. Oh wow, the
Spencer Campbell 22:36
true true death scream that haunts everybody around
Ryan Boelter 22:42
Oh, that's that's a good one for a siphon as well. Huh?
Spencer Campbell 22:46
Exactly. Exactly. Right. You cite you you sacrifice whatever your own thralls it screams out No. Why did you do is to me.
Amelia Antrim 22:56
I forgot that I also did the power mod for pull strings, which is Weaver number of thralls equal to your shade or fewer may act with pull strings. So I get three of them. Nice second, a true puppet master stuff. Yeah. And then my supernova death curse, your thralls detonate with their death curse each deals to harm to all enemies within close range.
Spencer Campbell 23:23
So how I imagined grim typically playing is as a puppet master your goal is actually to get puppets all over the battlefield rather than like being surrounded by your minions you kind of want them all over so that you can activate those like haunts just like a big group over there. And we're like those people over there bombarding us. Well, thankfully,
Amelia Antrim 23:43
they can't move right so like basically it's like as long as you have them kind of like nearby or close not near close to other people are telling your other enemies they can
Spencer Campbell 23:56
cause lots of problems. Yeah, so that's that's the fun that you get to play is like have one
Amelia Antrim 24:00
behind everybody.
Spencer Campbell 24:01
Yeah, all right. You just kind of want to like choose where you want your little like ticking bombs essentially to be placed around your zombie bomb shriek out in fear and pain with a
Unknown Speaker 24:15
whole little army of spooky fields.
Ryan Boelter 24:17
I can I just from these abilities alone I'm picturing like the three of us versus and marmi like like what is that? The dynamic honesty warriors. Yeah, you just go in and just wreck everything
Amelia Antrim 24:37
Yeah, and and because you can just do them like so we're not it's not even like we're rolling to find out if we can we can just do these things. These are this is a list of things that I 100% of time can do.
Ryan Boelter 24:48
Yep. I need to please.
Amelia Antrim 24:53
Can you can you tell us about your stuff that
Spencer Campbell 24:55
Yes. So I chose pox. The plague bear sparks So box's passive is virulence which at the start, I basically get my play going, I choose one enemy, and that person is infected. And they, they lose one arm every turn. And my goal is to try and spread the plague from that patient zero essentially, throughout the whole thing to get as many enemies as possible infected before I start activating the the worst parts of the disease. So that's my passive, my active infect, where I just throw a plague bomb. And I infect any one enemy within near range. So this is just a way for me to start getting the plague going spread, I compel the plague to spread far and wide, I choose somebody who's already infected, who's up to near range, and then I infect every enemy that's close to them. So kind of similarly, I'm trying to be picky and choosey about getting my infection spread in a bunch of different places so that I can activate pockets of rapid spreading on the field. And then once so I'm kind of focusing on those things in the very beginning of a fight, typically as a pox. Once I've just got my stuff spreading, I'm starting to think more about these other actives. So symptomatic is I decide the fate of the infected, I choose one effect for all infected enemies this round, and it can be minus one harm dealt, so I kind of weaken them, plus one harm taken. So I make them vulnerable to harm, or I just lock them up and they can't move. So again, like I'm hoping to activate symptomatic after I've gotten like five, six, slowly withering people out there. And I just say, and you all can't move now. And now they're stuck in place for us to just do whatever we want after that. And my last act of power is fight or flight. disease can cause unpredictable behavior. Every infected enemy either immediately deals their harm to the closest enemy or runs away from you for one round the GMs choice. So now you've just got chaos that happens, the enemies either turn against each other, or they start fleeing from me. And as the GM you can kind of have some fun with it where some people are fleeing, some people are fighting. But truly just pandemonium breaks out. As I as I spread things around. I specifically chose to persistent mods that kind of kick off that virulence strain. So I chose plague Bringer. So instead of injecting one person at the start of combat, I want to start with three people getting infected. So I really want to start spreading things around really quickly. And then I also chose vector which is once per round a infected enemy within close range, so I can just walk around and anybody who's near me, I just go and you also have it and you also have it so I chose persistent mods that would really lean into that ability for me to spread as fast as possible so that we can capitalize on those other active powers that will either lock them up or let us really ruin their day or whatever it is that we need to do. So that's my that's my character that's pox.
Unknown Speaker 27:54
So good. Oh,
Amelia Antrim 27:55
this is dangerous, like extremely dangerous I mean between you like just like slowly killing people and then I can bring them all back
Ryan Boelter 28:07
just like hey, then
Amelia Antrim 28:09
you're like we can get help from them.
Unknown Speaker 28:10
Haha look at all the blood on that battlefield just waiting man.
Spencer Campbell 28:15
I wish there are a few people away weaken them up with sanguine comes in and just steals all the whatever blood they have left and they're all dead. And then grim goes, I'll take one of us now. And then we just do that again and again until we win.
Amelia Antrim 28:34
That's so good.
Spencer Campbell 28:36
So that's, you know, that's the that's the very the bulk of character creation. The last part is to think about your pilot, the person who's inside this because we are using word robot a lot but really, it's more like an exosuit like thinking about a mech there's a pilot inside who you are when you're back in the city. So you know, I usually take a think about like, what your callsign is or what do people call you out there what is your pilot look like back in the city and also write your name and pronouns on your sheet as sort of a final note and that takes us through character creation so we can we can do that. There is another thing that I typically do but I figured we should talk about our pilots first.
Ryan Boelter 29:19
Yeah. Oh, what's a good callsign
Amelia Antrim 29:23
I picked impropriety Oh, I was just like random nouns impropriety what a good now
Ryan Boelter 29:31
I have an idea brewing. I just need to check something real quick.
Spencer Campbell 29:35
Anybody who's ever played a role playing game with me where I get to be a player which is not very often I'm often I'm the other forever GM but when I do get to play, my character name in every game is rasp. And I think grass feels very appropriate for that actually feels really correct. I will stay as rasp as my character's name for for this character creation process.
Amelia Antrim 30:00
Okay, you could like person name though people named Yeah, people
Spencer Campbell 30:03
names are harder, right? Ross is fun.
Amelia Antrim 30:08
You listen to our show, you know, I don't do well.
Spencer Campbell 30:10
This is the I keep changing what is the hardest part of the iteration? This is not the hardest part. It's going over their human name. I think I'm Isaac. I think I like Isaac is a name for weird plague scientist.
Unknown Speaker 30:27
It's tricky.
Amelia Antrim 30:30
I also always think too hard about it. Like, like, it's it doesn't need to be. Okay, honestly. I just want to name my character Hades. Very good. Oh, what do you think and Ryan?
Ryan Boelter 30:42
Thinking? It'd be like crimson Lilia, for My callsign Ooh. Which is kind of a an adjacent way of saying blood flower.
Unknown Speaker 30:53
Very good.
Ryan Boelter 30:54
I didn't want to go with like just blood in my callsign name because that's blood.
Amelia Antrim 31:00
Oh, like the time I made a vampire named sanguine. Tempus blood time.
Unknown Speaker 31:07
blood is blood.
Amelia Antrim 31:18
Look, some things are on the nose. Some are not it's okay.
Unknown Speaker 31:21
Totally good. To do we have our pile. So it was just like looking up
Amelia Antrim 31:25
random nouns to just like trying to think of call signs and this like random noun generator just like lawyer necktie.
Unknown Speaker 31:34
Cool, cool. neck tie,
Amelia Antrim 31:37
neck tie, Armadillo appetite.
Spencer Campbell 31:39
Appetite is a good name for a call sign. Actually. I mean, I,
Unknown Speaker 31:44
I kind of Yeah. All right. After works for a lot of things. That's good. I'm gonna go with appetite. It would also work very well for Ryan. But also, this list also includes sick. I'm sick. But I think
Amelia Antrim 32:02
I'm gonna go with appetite.
Ryan Boelter 32:04
Interesting. All right. All right. Are we doing last names for?
Spencer Campbell 32:09
No way? No, you asked too much. Too much.
Ryan Boelter 32:13
All right. So I'll just stick with the first day and for my character. I was just wondering if there's any sort of trend anybody was doing from last names? Since we're in the we're in the future of my imagine Earth. Right? Yeah. Did Earth go flying off in the
Spencer Campbell 32:34
desert? You gotta have to hand wave away where you're like, Well, wait a minute. Why? Why is the planet still like not swinging? What's the origin?
Ryan Boelter 32:44
What I mean, who is it still already knows the quest. Right? And who would know unless the stars are changing?
Amelia Antrim 32:52
I mean, I feel like we'd all kind of feel oh, well, sick. Well queasy. If we weren't turning.
Ryan Boelter 32:57
No, we'd still be revolving or rotating. Maybe we just wouldn't be
Spencer Campbell 33:01
flung out into the Yeah, the Catholics I think
Ryan Boelter 33:04
we'd just be we just
Amelia Antrim 33:07
are you know, we wouldn't you right. We wouldn't notice though, because our moon would come with us.
Spencer Campbell 33:10
Yeah, our good friend the moon. That's definitely not cursed. It would be Horsham gross group
Ryan Boelter 33:15
of cultists, we'd be on the largest spaceship in the in the world. Yeah. Or in the solar system or galaxy.
Amelia Antrim 33:22
Yeah. Well, where are all the other planets? Yeah, they would just directions. Yep.
Spencer Campbell 33:29
future expansion is Nova Mars and what's going on on Mars at the time? Oh,
Ryan Boelter 33:34
and are they on a collision course?
Unknown Speaker 33:38
Oh, my God. Well, so
Amelia Antrim 33:39
the question then, though, is like what did Mars look like before the sun went out to right? Oh, we don't know. This the next time I'm Character Creation Cast.
Spencer Campbell 33:54
I am writing down just the words Nova Mars. Because that's gonna haunt me for the rest of the day.
Ryan Boelter 34:03
I can imagine like the sun exploding at a very specific, like, time, and then it's like the orbits are just at the right point. So they're actually gonna read up. And now you've got two planets kind of like dancing as they fly through the galaxy.
Amelia Antrim 34:24
Oh, and then we get into a space war with Mars.
Spencer Campbell 34:27
Exactly. Because we started to run out of Sun charts and they've got precious son charts over there. On charge.
Amelia Antrim 34:36
Did you pick a name Ryan?
Ryan Boelter 34:37
Yeah, Liliana is my pilot name. Okay. Cool. Question Lily.
Amelia Antrim 34:43
Is that it? Did we make character we did.
Spencer Campbell 34:45
And so
Ryan Boelter 34:47
I do you see some nice little optional things in the session zero. Yeah.
Spencer Campbell 34:52
So I think character creation I say a couple things. One, you're ready to hop into a mission. Technically you can generate one and get going too, there's an example of Michigan in the book that you can use if you don't want to make one. But three, I laid out some more like world building stuff that happens in session zero, specifically around like learning more about your pilots and also the city so that you have a little bit more context context to like, the sun shard and what what is our son Charlottetown look like compared to maybe others and so that's that's sort of a continued optional path that you can go with the character creation so you can learn more about your pilots, how they got to be who they are, and what this city is like that we've all we all work
Ryan Boelter 35:34
out. I really am. Yeah. Here on Character Creation Cast.
Spencer Campbell 35:41
I was gonna say what I'd like to do.
Amelia Antrim 35:44
This is the one time that we're not going to do
Spencer Campbell 35:48
I mean, my blood vampire robot
Ryan Boelter 35:57
Yeah, but what what sort of person inhibits this monstrosity?
Spencer Campbell 36:01
Yes. So if you're looking at the rulebook, it's page 31 in the rulebook for, for readers at home, there's, you know, before that, there's some stuff about session zero, setting up safety tools and things like that, which is very important for a game about spooky haunted worlds in combat and things like that. And then once you once you've done that, let's learn a little bit about your, your, your pilots, and the people who are inside of it. So I have some questions that I've used as example questions to ask each other as we think about our pilots. The first one being how long you've been a pilot thinking about, you know, are you an old vet? Is this your first mission out? Some, you know, anywhere in between? So how long do you think you've been doing this whole thing?
Unknown Speaker 36:52
Um,
Amelia Antrim 36:54
I feel like a medium amount. Okay. I'm like, I don't think I'm like veteran veteran, but I think I because I kind of going into the next question that you have here, just have you always used a spark or have you tried other models? I think you have to work your way up to something like this. Like you can't, you can't start out controlling other creatures and stuff. I think that that's like a higher level rather than just like learning to control your own spark first. So I think you have to like, work your way up to
Spencer Campbell 37:28
which which spark did you use before your work grim? Did you go through like a bunch of them? Or was it like you spend most time with a particular one and then you were like, Okay, I think I'm ready. I've got a handle with you. Sparks feel like I'm ready to do some Yeah, necromancy?
Amelia Antrim 37:41
I feel like scorch would be like, personally where I would want to be and I think makes sense.
Spencer Campbell 37:49
Yeah, Giscours has those like story tentacles with the sudden shards on them. And then you kind of have tentacle swords that used to have.
Amelia Antrim 37:58
Right, and it has some of the same look sort of like Magic II kind of feel to it, too. So I think that would be where I started. And then if you're, if you're good enough at that, you can kind of choose something else from
Spencer Campbell 38:11
what what drew you then to to Grimm. So you know, you have to like you said, you have to advance to that point. So what what was the thing that made you want to go like, Okay, I've I've done my time with scorch, but I've had my eye on that.
Amelia Antrim 38:24
Yeah, yeah, I want to be grim. Um, I feel like, maybe I have like a mind for tactics, because I definitely put more more points into shade too. So I think I just have like a better mind for tactics in this like, requires a little bit more thought that way and a little bit more like mindfulness of the battlefield, which just sort of appeals to me, personally,
Spencer Campbell 38:52
and what's the thing that makes your grim spark? Unique? And this is actually a question that I oftentimes expand when I sit down with people is, you know, there's sort of the assumption that there are multiple Grimms and there's multiple purposes and things like that, but we could also work with the assumption that there's just one you are grid. And so you can kind of this question is designed on the assumption that there are multiple Grimms and it's how did you set yours apart from all of the others so that when people go by they go like, Ah, I know that grim compared to another one?
Unknown Speaker 39:25
Yeah. Mmm hmm. We have to think about that a little bit. Cool. Welcome back.
Spencer Campbell 39:34
So right, how long has your character been a pilot?
Ryan Boelter 39:37
I want to say my character is kind of a veteran pilot in this but like, just barely like six years of, of active use of the sparks.
Spencer Campbell 39:52
How much of those six years have been with the sanguine or have you did you build up to it or were you always in on that? Blood bot? Um,
Ryan Boelter 40:00
I think like, it was, like, I think like Amelia said, you have to start off with something more basic to kind of get used to things and whatnot. Before you, you jump into the more advanced stuff. But I think my first one was probably like a Voyager, right. And I think, like, I advanced to the same queen, like, faster than anyone else had previously. Like, for for whatever reason, like it was, like, less than a year, I dropped the Voyager and I was able to go into the same green because some sort of circumstance kinda pushed me into that direction. I almost want to say, like, maybe we were attacked or something. And I hopped into the nearest Oh, one near me. And it was a sanguine, and like,
Amelia Antrim 41:01
did something happen? Like during admission to the previous sanguine and you had to? Yeah,
Ryan Boelter 41:08
it was also thinking like, you know, maybe I was on a mission with a sanguine and something happened and that they had to get out of their out of their smart. And for whatever reason now, and now now they're gone. And because they got out No,
Amelia Antrim 41:31
teach you is like never not? Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 41:36
Uh huh. Yeah, I Okay. I like that. I think I like that better. Like, we're, we're out there on the battlefield together. And like, they had to get out of their spark for some reason, like, hyper specific reason. And I was scouting the area to for threat. And then when I got back, they were dead. And there's the same week, and then I can see a threat on the horizon. Like, that was tailing me on my way back. And I'm like, I can't handle this threat. In a voyager alone. I'm gonna hop out given that sanguine and get out of here. Super
Amelia Antrim 42:21
cool. Are you supposed to do that? Or definitely not supposed to do that? I don't think you're supposed to. But I was wondering like, were you authorized to use that one?
Ryan Boelter 42:31
I don't think so. Not at that point. But like, I think I handled myself. I think I handled myself like so well with it, that I
Amelia Antrim 42:40
actually move the ending, they're like, We could punch you but we're not gonna Yeah, congratulations,
Ryan Boelter 42:46
you saved a lot more lives, then then you rest pilot in this advanced spark. So
Amelia Antrim 42:54
give me an emotion that'll teach you not to do it again. Right.
Spencer Campbell 42:57
Well, then I also imagined, like, if you know if we started working on the assumption that cities oftentimes have multiple voyagers because it's important to have lots of scouts that patrol but like they might only have like one or two of some of these more advanced ones, like the sanguine Spark is deemed more valuable or precious. And so losing it in the field is costly to the city by comparison. And so sacrificing a voyagers suit for sanguine suit is like a trade that Oh, wow, like that. The fact that you did that makes it so that the city is not as mad at you about it when they're like, oh, yeah, at least you're brought back. Right? That's supposed to do. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 43:37
Absolutely. And I think like the callsign of the previous owner was crimson, you know, something else. So I just took the the Crimson moniker from that in memory, and applied that to my name. Who am I got my new callsign for that way?
Spencer Campbell 43:58
Well, so we kind of understand that like, What drew you to the spark because it was, it was the moment it was it was necessary. So now you've you've been in the sanguine suit for for a few years now. How have you sort of made it your own because like you said, you've sort of done the honoring of the moniker and things like that, but you still want to make the spark your own. So what have you
Ryan Boelter 44:17
done? Yeah, I'm a like, like, real deep. Black and red iridescent came in. Oh,
Amelia Antrim 44:29
no capes?
Ryan Boelter 44:30
No, this one this one's kind of keep
Amelia Antrim 44:35
like, Yeah, good point. Good point. Good point.
Ryan Boelter 44:38
But it flows in the wind like it has like almost that. It almost looks like blood is flowing on it as it whips in the wind. Some
Amelia Antrim 44:47
spooky. Cool. Yeah, that's
Unknown Speaker 44:50
very good. I love that. Cool, cool, cool.
Spencer Campbell 44:56
Have you thought about what your what separates your Grimm from From other Grimms
Amelia Antrim 45:02
I mean I have but I still really struggle. I think it has something to do with like how it looks when I use it not so much like the suit itself, but like what that sort of like, our looks like the Thrall and I'm. Yeah, yeah, I mean, and I'm open to workshopping it too, because I feel like I want it to be something about how it works not just like the paint job or something like that.
Spencer Campbell 45:27
Yeah, because like, you know, the Eddie Eddie drew the art for grim in such that you there's sort of these big Sun shard fuse blades that you sort of stab in, and then use that but like, you can imagine that there are other ways that grim does this, like some maybe like sending out like a swarm or like nanobots that like inject themselves throughout the system, like the system of the corpse and like, animate it through like electrical jolts.
Amelia Antrim 45:52
I want it to almost be the like, when, when something becomes throat like it becomes actually like dark. So it's like, even harder to see. Good, you know, like, everything around us was already dark because there's no sun but I imagine like obviously, there has to be some lights right? Kind of see what we're doing. But yeah, that like things become even like black or like,
Ryan Boelter 46:13
it's like it's pulling in the ambient light around it to power this thrall.
Amelia Antrim 46:17
Like it's almost like a black hole. Kind of yeah,
Spencer Campbell 46:19
you're like shades these these singularities of Oh, that's really gnarly. And cool.
Unknown Speaker 46:26
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's what I cool. Sweet.
Ryan Boelter 46:30
I like that. All right, who's who's Spencer's? How long? How long has spent years pilot? How long have you been
Spencer Campbell 46:38
not very long at all. In fact, Isaac is not supposed to be doing this. Oh, so there's sort of a there's a little bit of overlap with with our sanguine spark here. So Isaac works in one of the labs at the city has been working on, you know, play play technology, because I don't know, I guess that's what we do here. And then I think I have like a lab partner who is like, they do the field research. So they they are the POCs of the team. And I'm the in in the lab researcher. And so I think they like by partner came back from a mission. And like, they didn't die right away. But they came back and like there was something wrong with them. And they, they died. But like, I think it came through like from an infection. And so I've tried to keep this like, sealed away from the rest of the city. And like under wraps while I'm trying to figuring trying to figure it out. But also the city expects pucks to go out for missions. And so I'm going out there as Rask. But I'm not Rast. I'm just Isaac, the scientist who is like, similarly like piloting a spark that I'm not supposed to. And I think it's, you know, instead of going through that training of, yeah, you know, I did my time as a pioneer. And now I feel ready to be a pox. Like, I think I'm really new to this. And I'm really struggling out there to like, try and pass as, as my, my, my partner, essentially, during this process. So I think I'm, I'm pretty new. And what drew me to being this spark is necessity to try and somebody has to do it. And I'm still trying to figure out what went wrong with this person who's come back,
Amelia Antrim 48:25
is there a concern that it is the shard that there's some kind of like leak or, like, I think, you know, something like that, that it is like you couldn't get this virus to.
Spencer Campbell 48:35
So I think I think it's that I don't want our Shard to get infected. I think it's more so like, it's like an overcaution towards protecting the shard at all costs. And so like, to me, sealing away my partner and not revealing their death to the city and pretending to be them out in the field is a greater cause than possible possibly causing this whatever and they have brought back from the field, I think, I think for sure that they came back from a mission against the lunar cult. So I think this is definitely like weird cult influence like yes, people do not like our Sun chart. And so like I think I'm especially hesitant to try and tell people about this because once there's called corruption in a city, like we've probably heard rumors of cities falling apart because of the cult, like finding a hole and getting their way in and so I'm trying
Amelia Antrim 49:29
to if a city is like powered by a shark there's like obviously like a limited radius to So like any kind of like mass hysteria is going to be trapped. Deadly like there's nowhere else to go.
Spencer Campbell 49:40
Because there's, there's monsters waiting for you out there and so so yeah, I think I'm like desperately trying to play the role of rasp out in the field and trying to figure out what the lunar cult is doing in this situation. So to To set like my spark, I guess different than other sparks. I think I, I What I've done is I've taken my partner's lab coat and I've, like taken off like the patch and the name. And I found a way to like, weave them into like the the fabric of my suit so that nobody can really see it. It's not there to be like, Oh, that's that person's name and that's their path. But clearly it's still I think it's a way for me to feel connected with my lab partner while I'm out there as like a small like, Okay, I'm not alone out here. I'm not the only one in this POC suit not knowing what I'm doing I've got this person with me in spirit while I'm out here trying to do whatever it is I'm doing out here.
Ryan Boelter 50:49
Very cool. Did did the the old pilot have like a modulator on the voice so as the whoever's piloting this sounds the same regard still
Spencer Campbell 50:58
right? I think there's like, there's I think was with pox in particular, there's a like a lot of like rebreather tech and stuff like that because pox has to be around dangerous stuff so that there's no you don't hear the person for who they are. And you definitely hear this. Oh, you know, like Darth not like Darth Vader, but like how different Darth Vader is compared to Anakin underneath sort of thing. Like, yeah, it's meant to mask us. I'm I'm trying to filter out all this gnarly stuff that I am messing with out in the field.
Unknown Speaker 51:28
Yeah, yeah.
Amelia Antrim 51:28
So now you sound like you've
Spencer Campbell 51:30
always been my goal. And so
Amelia Antrim 51:34
what else would any of us want
Spencer Campbell 51:36
character creation that I feel like I can retire happily now.
Unknown Speaker 51:41
Oh, that's amazing.
Spencer Campbell 51:42
So So now we know a little bit more about our characters, our pilots and who's in them. And the next step I like to do this sort of like last step before we we get ready to, to think about like going into the desk admissions is think about our city for a little bit the city that we are a part of. Because the sun bringing down the sun shards, and I imagine the sun shards come in various sizes, and like a bigger the shard, the bigger the city that can kind of be built around it because it can power more things that like tiny little shards might have really small settlements in towns and then there might be like big, urban sprawls almost next to like the huge shards. So what kind of like towns have settlement do we think we want to be in? Is it like a real small thing where everybody kind of knows everybody? Is it a massive place? What what do we think?
Amelia Antrim 52:31
I feel like it's bigger. Like if we have like these more advanced kind of shards, like I feel like it needs to be a bigger settler,
Ryan Boelter 52:40
or, or is it? We've got only a couple of the more advanced sparks.
Amelia Antrim 52:46
I don't know. I feel like even in a bigger city, you would still only have a couple. Okay, you know, because I feel like it's easy to get like to sort of, you know, like wasted like the Voyagers on the you know, that kind of stuff. But, um, you know, this is like we were sort of the elite like, Okay, I think I think there are other scouting missions that go out and then when they find something we get to go I don't think we are the ones doing the regular like basic like we go out when there we know there's already something there we don't go to find the things
Ryan Boelter 53:20
I'm I'm picturing then, like a almost traditional cyberpunk mega city. Like an end the aesthetic of seeing that from the darkness in the distance. Yeah, just sounds amazing with like, the heart of the sunshine. Yeah, and glowing in the middle of the city. I think that that's, to me, like skyscrapers, neon lights, you know, like the the seedy underbelly of the city sort of sort of deal. Like lot, a lot of metal and sort of punk aesthetic sort of stuff. I like it.
Spencer Campbell 54:02
I mean, I'm sold, I'm sold when I present and that sounds great to me,
Amelia Antrim 54:06
sold city robots. Like we said, Son chart in the first like, two minutes of recording there. So
Spencer Campbell 54:15
it's pretty, more the so So we've established that it is sort of a big place, which means we want to start populating a little bit. So part of that is thinking about some of like the big players in the city. So who are like some of the factions or organizations or VIPs that, you know, we may work for or work with or against, or just generally are the lifeblood of the city outside of us as the sparks.
Amelia Antrim 54:47
So from what you're talking about as like trying to hide the death of your lab partner and all that kind of stuff. I'm gathering that there's some kind of like corruption happening here that like that. And maybe the best interests of people aren't always the top priority. So I feel like there's definitely some like, you know, look, there's room for me to be anti capitalist. Here's what
Spencer Campbell 55:12
I was about to say. Cyberpunk city is full of corruption
Amelia Antrim 55:18
okay, it's not just aesthetics This is my big argument about cyberpunk. It's not just cool neon stuff
Ryan Boelter 55:27
No, I do like that, that there's like at least a couple of factions or you know, the governing
Amelia Antrim 55:37
really sort of it's sort of expansion at all costs. And we don't necessarily care a what we have to do to get there or be if we've really done it all the way to get there like Did we really get rid of all of the monsters in that area? Or is it like close enough because the people that live that far on the edge they get eaten? Yeah. Important people live closer to the center and then the people out on the edges if they get eaten sometimes it happens.
Ryan Boelter 56:05
I can i i know I'm picturing like, a big spider and middle and then smaller spires as it comes out. Kind of Yeah, like domes. So like, there's like this central spire that that is around the the central
Amelia Antrim 56:22
shard? Yeah. Yeah. Is there some kind of like fancy like building that sort of like spirals up around
Ryan Boelter 56:28
it? I think so. I think Oh, yeah.
Amelia Antrim 56:31
Like it's an actual, like, suns.
Spencer Campbell 56:33
Yeah, I think like so many Sun shards are like practically encased in like, it's just like it's there for a purely survival. But this shard is so big. And we've used it for so long that we have now started to truly play with this technology. I think more so than other places
Ryan Boelter 56:48
conduct around. Yeah,
Spencer Campbell 56:49
so we've I think our city has generally move past the like, we need to establish survival place and now we are in the Okay, we're surviving.
Amelia Antrim 56:59
But like we can get ready to now. Yeah, like we've moved past just like brutalist market. Right?
Spencer Campbell 57:05
If this is our reality, let us begin to play with it. And so yeah,
Ryan Boelter 57:10
cool. I can almost see like, closer to the center to like, almost a solar punk sort of vibe to it with the with like greenery and beautiful flowers and like urban trees and all that sort of stuff, blend it in with the architecture. And then as you get further away from the source of all that, that sun
Amelia Antrim 57:32
energy, like darker, it's
Ryan Boelter 57:34
darker ground, or more metallic and artificial.
Spencer Campbell 57:39
I love that idea that there is sort of this idyllic central core to it that is like
Amelia Antrim 57:45
Yeah, I think on top of that spine like there has to be like a beautiful garden. Oh,
Spencer Campbell 57:49
yes, it is called Babylon. And it's what yeah. Is that's Oh my god. That's so good. That is so good.
Amelia Antrim 58:00
I love this. I love it. Yeah, I think you're right Ryan like it gets more metallic and artificial and darker and all that kind of stuff as you go out. But the central part is just bright and lit and I think the other thing too is that it's lit all the time. So it's always daylight in the central part of Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 58:19
And then they have no date night cycles the further out you go, right because they gotta conserve the energy a little bit in the series just been expanding too much outward, that they've been pushing the limits a little too much
Amelia Antrim 58:35
more and further out. You don't get as much sunlight during the day either. Yeah.
Spencer Campbell 58:40
Districts they're like sorry for the next month you don't get the sun like we need.
Amelia Antrim 58:44
You only get it two hours a day or something like that. Yeah.
Spencer Campbell 58:47
Oh, this is gnarly. I imagine since there are sort of these like these degrees of power and wealth and resources now that I mentioned like there are definitely people in organizations that have sparks just as their own personal sparks like rather than like yes like no just like the sparks is like a force that is there to like help with whatever the city needs but there are definitely people who have like commissioned their own sparks and hire out their own personal sparks that do things for them and
Amelia Antrim 59:16
imagine the amount of wealth so like to own our own Yeah. Oh,
Ryan Boelter 59:23
like parading themselves around like look how amazing I am not even going out to fight but the spark just like
Amelia Antrim 59:29
the grocery store in my sparks you go get some some wheat flour
Spencer Campbell 59:35
all this is said it gets we like no you could do so much in the city itself just for our missions for what we're doing like yeah, there's monsters outside but it sounds like there's a lot of monsters I think we need our blood vampire to go in there and take some blood. Here rich blood is especially tasty. So somebody
Ryan Boelter 59:59
called For a donation.
Spencer Campbell 1:00:02
I dig. Yeah, they
Amelia Antrim 1:00:03
did just like a couple hours ago they were Yeah.
Spencer Campbell 1:00:08
I'm even imagining then like with the sort of descent that would have never started to emerge from the outer rings of the city that I can even imagine then that there are small but like, very hidden factions of people who are like in line with some of the enemy factions, like the Orvis Dominion are a highly advanced alien species that are on our planet. And I think there are people who would try to be like, working with them to sabotage things further into the city or to like, you know, they're like,
Amelia Antrim 1:00:38
I mean, I could totally see like Moon cult, sect, things popping up, because this is what the Sun is no one that, you know, like, what have they ever done for me,
Spencer Campbell 1:00:47
right? Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:00:50
I was thinking like this Corvus these aliens. What if there's also a sect of them that are wanting to help humanity? So like, now you've got sects within the city that are on the good alien side and sect?
Amelia Antrim 1:01:10
Good bad aliens and bad good aliens?
Spencer Campbell 1:01:12
Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's cool. That's cool.
Ryan Boelter 1:01:16
Like once trying to destroy the city from within and like, help that that resistance and be like, really antagonistic, and once trying to better the city by taking the government down in a way where the people will have more power? And like, not cause just chaos and destruction?
Amelia Antrim 1:01:39
Yeah,
Spencer Campbell 1:01:40
that's so good. That's so good. I'm now even imagining in the inner circles that because one of the other enemy factions are the haze dwellers, which are the beasts of the planet, the, you know, the animals that have changed. And those are things that are probably constantly terrorizing the outer rim. But I imagine that like the ultra wealthy have like almost like in a gladiator arena where they like capture these things for entertainments. They do.
Ryan Boelter 1:02:07
A hate them so much.
Spencer Campbell 1:02:11
Yeah, exactly. I need to keep leaning into that.
Ryan Boelter 1:02:16
Yeah, this has like, like Robin views, or Yeah, vibes going with it. It's so good.
Spencer Campbell 1:02:26
So I think we've set up a pretty,
Amelia Antrim 1:02:29
pretty horrible place. Now let's talk about the outside where it's really,
Spencer Campbell 1:02:35
really bad. Yeah, so the last thing we do is to consider the outside world, the dusk itself. So the dusk is sort of a catch all term for anything that is outside of the cities that the sun shards are built around. And the dusk is an ever shifting place. It changes things not only like how animals behave, but also it literally shifts in moves to the point where it becomes unpredictable to move through the dusk, all the more reason why anybody who's not in this park should never go out there. And so one last thing that we do is consider a recent experience or memory that each of us have had in the past to sort of contextualize a little bit of it. And then we can wrap up by just thinking about, like, what out in the dusk is the stuff that we as a group are interested in doing, now that we have the context of the city that we work out of? So we should start with, like a recent experience that has like stuck with us or to define a bit of what the dusk is like.
Ryan Boelter 1:03:39
Alright, I got one. Okay. The our big city is close enough to the coast, like so if you're on the upper levels of the sunspire like deer Babylon, you can see the like the coastline to the ocean, right, like far off on the over the horizon. And on a mission near the coast. I remember there was a thunderstorm brewing over the ocean, which is not, you know, unusual or anything like that. But I remember looking out at the storm, just kind of admiring it during a lull in the action and seeing a dark mass in the middle of the ocean. Not like okay, maybe it could have been a wave or whatever. But then you could see like dark tendrils reaching up to the lightning like lightning striking these dark tendrils and then the energy crackling down. And it's like, Did I see what I thought I saw? I'm
Amelia Antrim 1:04:51
like, wiping off the screen like yeah,
Spencer Campbell 1:04:56
get a little blood on the screen. You're like is that?
Ryan Boelter 1:04:58
Yeah Oh,
Spencer Campbell 1:05:00
oh, good. That's very good. So great. The ocean is also very haunted. And that makes it even worse than it already. Yeah.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:09
Yeah. Which is good. Because what I was gonna say is that I think the things that are outside in the dusk are slowly leaning more toward that, like bottom of the ocean kind of creatures that are like, just really weird. Yeah, like,
Ryan Boelter 1:05:28
like the angler fish.
Amelia Antrim 1:05:30
Like those things, you know, like, it's like plants that don't photosynthesize, and like animals that don't need sunlight and like they don't need light to see. And I think that, you know, the things that used to be in the ocean maybe are not so much in the ocean anymore, because it is dark enough everywhere for those things that were down on the bottom to like, slowly evolve their way up to obviously, like the pressure level isn't the same. But like, so you start need some like real creepy stuff up here. Oh, yeah.
Spencer Campbell 1:05:58
Excellent. I love it. I think one of my most recent because I'm relatively new, I haven't been going out very much. And I think I made the mistake on a mission going out by myself, because I was especially nervous about getting caught. So I was like, I'm just gonna go solo, I need to do some field tests with Steph and I went out there. And I think there used to be like another small settlement that was kind of close to ours, like to the point where like, ours was eventually going to just absorb it. And it would be, we would take their shard, and they would be part of the outer ring sort of thing. And I was out there working on some, some new strains that I've been developing in the lab and I saw the shard like I saw a flicker on the horizon where I knew this location was and then I you hear this like horrible screeching not of an animal with of metal twisting. And I see the entire place like curl into like a sphere of metal and like I watched the shards slowly get snuffed out as the city seems to like curl in on itself on the outside, and I know, oh, something is going on out there. That is apparently powerful enough to start to like, like it was a real small shard. So it's been drawn to the small Charlotte is like curled up. So
Ryan Boelter 1:07:11
that happened, don't want that happening to our city. So see that the bigger the city, the bigger the crunch.
Spencer Campbell 1:07:21
Delicious, you know. And so yeah, like the last thing we kind of consider here as we think about the dusk, and we think about the city is like what are the, you know, sort of the missions that we would typically be thinking about or prioritizing as sparks here, and I'm, I'm so conflicted, because there's it sounds like there's just so many horrible things going on in this city that I almost feel like, like, working in the city, you would be? Well, I don't know, are we revolutionaries? Like, are we like, are we or are we like, we're here to like, help whatever the city needs, and like what the mission like who tells us our missions, right? And so like, where do we where do we decide, like, our priorities?
Unknown Speaker 1:08:01
And all of this?
Amelia Antrim 1:08:02
I mean, I feel like we as players, like I think, I think we start by working for the city. I think that's where we start. And then I think, you know, as a campaign might progress, which it won't obviously, you know, like we would have to, that's the kind of stuff that I as player like to grapple with is like, okay, am I the good guy or no. And so having to kind of grapple with like, okay, you can actually do the mission that you were given, or here's all these other details of things that are going on, what are you doing about them?
Ryan Boelter 1:08:32
Yeah, I do. Like the thought of the organization that we're a part of, is almost like a mercenary sort of organization that is neutral. So like, people can hire them or, but we get a lot of contracts from the city itself, right. So like, the the most, the most stuff that we have to do is like buy the building of the city. And for the most part, it's like, you know, stuff that seems innocuous or like, yeah, this makes sense that we're doing this. But like every now and then we get sent on missions are like why are we the ones like doing this? Yeah. And like, why did they send out both saying greens and both Grimms two different areas, and leaving none left in the city? Like that seems a little weird
Amelia Antrim 1:09:22
there. But they don't want us to be in there. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 1:09:25
I think exactly.
Spencer Campbell 1:09:26
That's a fun space to where we are like we were hired out which naturally lends itself to the way the wealthiest people would hire us to do their gross stuff. And I think they still do try. I also like to think that our organization is sort of like pushed back like we don't have to say yes to missions and so that's, that has become the impetus for why there are personal sparks amongst the wealth. They're like well, if they won't do it, we will make our own sparks to do the things that we want die and then that really after
Ryan Boelter 1:09:55
like Butler's pilot the sparks missions and you And then then they they personally gallivant around at it.
Amelia Antrim 1:10:04
Yeah but then there's the question too of like if these are the ultra wealthy and we choose not to take the job what are the consequences of that? Yeah, you know, which I think is also a fun space to play around in
Spencer Campbell 1:10:14
and I know that Jim particularly will like enjoy the path of moving towards the sort of more resistance or questioning the thing because already I'm super nervous about telling people what's like that I'm not a pilot so I think I wouldn't trust the organization to tell them but if we start to like splinter off or or deviate like being around fellow deviance, then I would start to go okay, so I have a secret. Yeah, so I
Amelia Antrim 1:10:41
also think there's a lack of trust there because like if your partner did die, like what you know what happened? Why did that happen?
Ryan Boelter 1:10:49
irresponsibility? Yeah. And I really like thought of starting off not having the full picture but then like uncovering a secret, right? Yeah. So yeah, I think like the these like random sorts of missions or quote unquote, random sorts of missions, culminating into revolution. Sounds really fun.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:12
Yeah, I'm for it.
Spencer Campbell 1:11:13
We did it. We did it. We made some very cool characters in a very cool world for them to play it.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:20
That was awesome.
Unknown Speaker 1:11:21
This is I want to play this like so bad.
Amelia Antrim 1:11:25
I know. Why did we make this podcast Ryan like? Damn idea for a podcast. Well, thank you so much for joining us for our character creation for Nova. This was phenomenal. I had so much fun.
Spencer Campbell 1:11:42
I had so much fun in my fun. I absorbed by emotion, osmosis through your fun. I'm so glad that you had fun like, for me, you know, the listeners can see it. But I'm grinning from ear to ear like the whole time watching you ramble. Like what your characters can do and
Amelia Antrim 1:12:01
being so excited. Truly. So I love watching Ryan's faces. He's like picking things. He's like, Oh, no, oh, no. Oh, no. Do you want to go ahead and remind everybody what kind of stuff you're working on and where they can find you?
Spencer Campbell 1:12:15
Absolutely. So my name is Spencer Campbell. You can find me online at Gila RPGs G il a rpgs.com. As my website it has links to my eto store where you can get all my games as PDFs, it has links to my Shopify where you can get printed copies of my stuff, including Nova that we played today. It's also my Twitter handle, that's always a good place to keep the most up to date with what I'm up to is just following me on Twitter. I'm brewing up. I've never I never stopped and they're just constantly brewing. Soon to release or maybe released as of when this comes out will be slayers 1.5 update which is a new rules update to my game slayers with new art and layout and fun cool rule changes. And I am launching in August maybe September my next Kickstarter which is for rune it is a solo tabletop role playing game inspired by the souls like or SoulsBorne genre. So it combines narrative and environmental storytelling with tactical grid combat all done by yourself. It's been a lot of fun playing it and play testing so I'm excited to launch that a little bit later.
Unknown Speaker 1:13:30
was very cool. So just like a couple of things that you're doing. Oh,
Spencer Campbell 1:13:35
I really truly it's it haunts me
Ryan Boelter 1:13:42
Well, thank you again, Spencer. And thank you to everyone for listening. Please join us on our next episode for a discussion block and I think probably some very nice fanfic
Unknown Speaker 1:13:54
Yes. Call to watch. Yeah, like that.
Ryan Boelter 1:14:03
Alright, so I am I am dying to hear your, your after takes.
Amelia Antrim 1:14:08
Yeah. So I am on record as being like, I don't love combat games, right? Like, I don't like the way it sort of grinds everything to a halt. And now there's distinct turns and we
Ryan Boelter 1:14:21
feel different than the actual like, other gameplay. Right. Right.
Amelia Antrim 1:14:26
Right. And I love Spencer's take on this as like it being like a puzzle solving, like optimizing combinations of things like tickles my brain, because it isn't that challenge. Kind of fun. It is, you know, it's like a problem solving puzzle.
Ryan Boelter 1:14:47
Was it kind of a different type of challenge. Right?
Amelia Antrim 1:14:50
Right, right. Yeah, it's not just like overcoming the Yeah, the back you know, it's not pure brute force. It is finesse and and Just I really like that sort of critical thinking aspect of like, how do I optimize this situation with the people that I have here, the, you know, like mods that I have all of that kind of stuff. I just thought that was really cool. And because there's no dice rolls, I could see it kind of being really snappy.
Ryan Boelter 1:15:20
Yeah, absolutely. And then like later on, when you get more mods, and now you have all this open to you, you get to have that sort of thought process before you go on a mission even.
Amelia Antrim 1:15:31
Right, right. And like, oh, having to like pick which Yeah, which things you put on?
Ryan Boelter 1:15:37
You know, no, I have five amazing mods, and I can only use four of them. Right? It is cruel. It is cruel. It is but but I love it. And goodness gracious. The discussion that we have next week is fantastic.
Amelia Antrim 1:15:52
Yeah, I feel like we got to have a really a lot of great design discussion. Yeah, these episodes, even in the first two, but the third one gets gets really in depth. And I just love our designer episodes. They're great. They're so good. And Spencer was so much fun to talk to.
Ryan Boelter 1:16:06
Absolutely. Well, before we let you go, we do have a few announcements. And first up if you haven't checked out our Patreon lately. We do have our video actual play posted of Amelia and I try now to broken by Ben Wallace. When we got together in person in my studio a couple of weeks ago. It turned out great, and it was a great experience getting to play the game together. You can find that video and a lot more by becoming a patron at patreon.com/character creation cast.
Amelia Antrim 1:16:47
Speaking of Patreon perks, one of the perks is us personally thanking you each and every episode, until the list gets big enough that we have to split it between episodes but for now, without further ado, drumroll. Thank you to our first patron, Lieutenant for your continued support.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:08
Eric balance thank you as well for your support.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:12
David aka to grant a source and former guest Thank you,
Ryan Boelter 1:17:16
Matt Newton. Thank you as well.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:20
Darryl Holliday, the second thank you for your support, as well as all of the great comments on our Patreon posts. We really appreciate those
Ryan Boelter 1:17:28
because a lot a lot of good stuff there. Should even come out. Thank you.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:33
Caleb aka the shyest barbarian. Thank you so much for your support.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:38
Benjamin Sweeney. Thank you as well,
Amelia Antrim 1:17:41
Larkin McGinnis. Thank you so much,
Ryan Boelter 1:17:44
Rob Fletcher. Thank you.
Amelia Antrim 1:17:47
And Kevin Brown. Thank you.
Ryan Boelter 1:17:49
And thank you to all of our future patrons, we wouldn't be able to make this show as easily without your assistance. And we truly appreciate your generosity. Time for review, I believe so.
Amelia Antrim 1:18:02
I believe it's time for a review. If you would like to hear your review, read on the show. You can always leave one for us at Apple podcasts pod chaser podcast addict or on our Facebook page. But here is one from P Hopkins or Hopkins I guess if you want to pronounce your pH with an F sound up to you. That's what I do from from the United States of America on iTunes, titled lovely, insightful show. I love learning about new games from the show because they take the time to really talk about the character creation process and how it fits in with the game. Amelia and Ryan are a treat to listen to and have a warm dynamic. That's so inviting to hear. Thank you.
Ryan Boelter 1:18:42
Thank you so much. Absolutely. I love her warm say that we
Amelia Antrim 1:18:45
that we have chemistry. Yeah, we got lucky. We are.
Ryan Boelter 1:18:53
Well, that is all that we have for today's episode. Join us next episode for some phenomenal discussion and some great fanfic.
Amelia Antrim 1:19:02
Oh, the fanfic. Oh, yeah. Yeah.
Ryan Boelter 1:19:07
Until then, stay safe everyone. Take care, drink some water, and take some breaths and keep making those amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Amelia Antrim 1:19:39
Character Creation Cast is a production of the One Shot Podcast Network and can be found online at www dot character creation cast.com. Head to the website to get more information on our hosts this show and even our press kit. Character Creation Cast can be found on twitter at creation cast or on our Discord server. At discord dot character creation cast.com And one of your hosts Amelia Antrim and I can be found on twitter at ginger reckoning, or on my other podcast garbage of the five rings. Our other host Ryan boelter can be found on twitter at Lord Neptune or online at Lord neptune.com. Music for this episode is used with a Creative Commons license or with permission from the podcast it 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 the absolutely fantastic Ryan boelter. Further information for the game system used in today's guests can also be found in the show notes. If you'd like to support our show, find us on Patreon. Get access to bonus episodes, extra outtakes and much much more at patreon.com/character creation cast. Thanks for joining us. And remember, we find the best part of any role playing game is character creation. So go out there and create some amazing people. We'll see you next time.
Unknown Speaker 1:21:25
Now we got to read some show blurbs show blurbs. Sjoberg show nerves.
Amelia Antrim 1:21:33
Character Creation Cast is hosted by the One Shot Podcast Network. If you enjoyed our show, visit one shot podcast.com We'll find other great shows like
Ryan Boelter 1:21:42
mystery county Monster Hunters club, check out mystery county Monster Hunters Club, an actual play podcast where the heroes are teens and the teens are a mess. Join a group of impulsive but well meaning after school monster hunters in the year 2006 doing their best to protect a weird little town in the 51st state of superior. Through the game monster of the week, this cast of improvisers confronts cryptids magic and the biggest monster of all feelings. Find mystery county Monster Hunters club at mystery county.com or your favorite podcast app
Transcribed by https://otter.ai