Casting Shadows

The fifth day of #RPGaDay2026 gives us the prompt Burden under sunny skies and an in an ongoing heat wave of annoying persistence and potency. The character creation methods and conceits we are exploring in stages this week are from the Old School meets Less Old School meets Newer School heroic fantasy RPG called Vagabonds of Dyfed by Ben Dutter. This response is still influenced by the weekly and daily filters, those being Intellect and Woe respectively. As none of my dogs are named woe or any of the other filters for the week, you will sadly be deprived of a dog picture… until next week. Several of my dogs do participate in my RPG activities, so their inclusion in this event is not a complete surprise. Anyway, none of them are going to show up today, so let’s get on with today’s response.

The first two people around the campfire we have looked at were envisioned as starting characters. They have a certain amount of competence, and have a nice mixture of mundane skills they bring from their concept with limited magical abilities which they can use automatically in normal circumstances or which might require a roll in tougher ones.

As we hit this point in the week, let’s involve dice in determining the experience of the next character and bring some ideas from the Vagabonds Cyclopedia into the open. The Cyclopedia has its own random tables for chargen, so with the addition of a roll to randomly apply a level, we are all ready to be random for this response. Once we have those items, we may or not have some degree of challenge fitting what we get into the effect of today’s prompt of Burden, and the daily filter of Woe.

The level of experience allowed today’s character to have benefitted from two past improvements, meaning access to more Techniques and HP, improved speed, and some new tags from past activities.

A roll of snake eyes saddles the character with a meticulous pursuit of perfection as their approach to conflict. A roll of 4 and 5 unite to give the character the answer to the prompt and the Wednesday filter in one go: restoring their family’s pride and glory. Their gimmick is delivered by a roll of 1 and 6, resulting in a habit and seemingly endless stock of horrific war stories to relate to whatever situation. Not just a child of woe, but this character has woe on tap. Are you starting to get an image of them?

Next are the rolls for Foreground and Background. For Background, the result of 2 and 3 delivers something too reminiscent of a popular movie, so I kept the spirit of it but changed the details. In this revised foreground, the character had been raised from childhood by those who destroyed his family legacy intending to keep him subservient and powerless in servitude. Obviously, that service came to an end, but vengeance has not yet been meted out… the other side of the burden carried by this woeful and intelligent character.

For Foreground the dice delivered something easy to work with, but which also needed a change of description. In this case, the character, once free of their servitude, found their way into the Temple Guard where they have survived and in some ways prospered for many years. That life, however, both being cruelly raised by the murderers of one’s own family and then taken into the service of a warlike priesthood, has deepened the Weakness and Core Flaw of this troubled person. For weakness, the dice have given us a thrill or exultation when surrounded by death. For Core Flaw they have chosen the understanding that whatever the character does is in some way justified. They aren’t evil, they are simply doing what they must to right the wrongs wrought on their family.

Who then is this character? The Cyclopedia has additional tools for establishing further traits and looks for the PCs it helps generate, but let’s save them for the rest of the week. Instead, let’s work with what we have here to identify the concept and capabilities of this one.

Obviously, we are working with a warrior of some sort, so to begin we will assign the Technique called Armorborn which mitigates speed penalties from Armor. As this character has done little but survive childhood abuse and then survive ongoing wars prior to this point, let’s stick with violence as a theme. We can assign two more Techniques, so let’s take the next stage of Armorborn which is Armorbound and spice things up by taking Fanatic which increases damage when the conditions of that fanaticism are met amd violence ensues. This sort of thing is a poor choice in a general campaign of random characters thrown together by whim as there is a good chance it might never matter – particularly if the implementation of the campaign also relies on random generation of the challenges within it. However, in a situation where the campaign is being shaped by the discussions and decisions made in group character creation, these things shift into more character defining roles that matter both to the player and those they play with. If it this situation were one in which it did not make sense to choose something like Fanatic or a very specific type of ‘favored terrain’ or ‘favored opponent’ etc. I would go with Favored Weapon to represent the military from which his training comes, or Momentous Melee to represent the character’s ability to coordinate with other soldiers. In this case, however, where experiencing empathy for the character itself is the goal, I choose Fanatic. It ties neatly to everything else and makes the road between sin and virtue so very hard to see.

One key point that this process has enforced on its own is that there are many routes to make the revenge sought by this character seem justified. We could have made them a Human Paragon, for example and used that to flesh out a nobility of bloodline and purpose which the perfidy of others has nearly undone. As more and more of those were not delivered by the dice, I began to resonate with that idea for this woeful person. They are not special. They are not justified. The villainy perpetrated upon them was awful and they naturally want to punish those who did it, but nothing and no one is waiting in the wings with fate to ensure it happens. Is it wrong to murder the murderer? Is it right? Is it somewhere in between.

Those with the capacity to think understand these questions. Those who have been broken by their own suffering might refuse to think through it and simply believe that they are in the right – right or wrong.

I think the subconscious has a lot to mutter about in such situations, and those mutterings bring sadness.

Who is this character? He hasn’t shared his name, yet. He is a figure of obvious stereotypes, that others feel more comfortable referring to by occupation or by habit than by name. He’s not the sort of person you want to spend too much time with if you want to remember what smiling feels like. At the same time, you cannot help but appreciate his profession when violence comes.

What is his name?

You’ll have to ask him.

Or just call him Soldier. It’s easier.

Tomorrow is Thursday, August 6th and our prompt is Reach. Also somewhat suitably for that prompt, in that way that suggests that someone most likely planned it, Thursday is that day of the week that tells us children born on it have far to go. Our weekly filter of intellect will influence this response as well. Another combination that works well with Vagabonds of Dyfed!

Anyway, see you tomorrow!