Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Hello, friends, and welcome to another single serving tabletop adventure. It's not really an adventure.
It's a character creation. Yeah. From Queen's court games.
You all know me. I'm vy, and I am joined today by one incredibly special guest member. I've got Dee from Onyx path Publishing sitting right across from me.
[00:00:27] Speaker B: Yes, metaphorically speaking.
[00:00:29] Speaker A: Metaphorically. I mean, I'm here. My computer is there. Ergo, you are across from me.
[00:00:36] Speaker B: Logic checks out.
[00:00:37] Speaker A: The logic checks out.
Today we are doing a very, very special character creation is going to be available for everybody and not just patrons, which, like, is a really special thing because we're doing a character creation for none other than Curseborn. And I promise you, I promise you, you'll understand why I've said this, but I did not pay off d to give me this lineage ahead of time.
But we're all going to get a good laugh once we dive into it. So all of Dee's information, we can go over that at the end or any of Onyx past stuff. We'll go over all that at the end, and, of course, all of that will be in all of the information, all the show notes, the description below.
So I guess I'll just toss it over to Dee and we'll dive into character creation.
[00:01:36] Speaker B: All right, great. So I am running you through character creation for Curseborn. And so normally, if you were making a character for Curseborn, part of the pick process would be like, the first thing you would pick would be which lineage do you want to be? But we've already kind of picked that.
So I'll start with character creation, and we'll just kind of go down through the steps. But some of those things have already been picked for you, and that thing is specifically your lineage.
Everything else is your pick. So let's get into it. So the very first thing that we want to do is decide on a concept.
And this could be anything. It doesn't have to be tied to your lineage. You could be, you know, I'm a broke college student or I'm, you know, an exhausted barista or a, you know, kind of anything.
You know, you can be thinking about the kind of the lineage you're going to be playing to help you decide on the concept.
But for the most part, it is kind of just the essence of what it is you're looking to play. And I, like, personally, I tell people, like, you don't have to decide the concept right away because sometimes making your picks helps you kind of decide what you want to do.
And sometimes you just have an idea already. And so if you do, we can go with it.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: Now, question all of these. The lineages are these things that are present, like, since birth. It's not the kind of thing where, like, they. They appear when you hit 18 or something like that.
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Some of them might be present since birth, and some of them might have happened to you later in life or even in the case of the dead, post mortem.
[00:03:39] Speaker A: Okay. All right, cool, cool, cool.
Then I think I'm looking for something that's kind of like a childhood runaway, I guess, somebody that doesn't have family ties, somebody that escaped a bad situation and has kind of had to grow up fending for herself and finding solace in places that were open to folks who found themselves without a home for a period of time.
[00:04:15] Speaker B: Okay, great.
So that's your concept. And so now we're going to talk about the next step, which is starting your paths. And we're going to do lineage path first because your lineage path dictates your family paths. So you're going to be playing a hungry.
Hungry are individuals who straddle a world between life and death and must feed on the living to survive. Now, the, you know, the common kind of, like, vampire trope is that they eat, drink blood, but our hungry can't have a variety of appetites that they must satiate. So some of them drink blood, some of them eat ghosts, some of them eat souls. Some of them eat emotions. So that is kind of. But they all kind of take from people to survive.
So that's. That's the hungry.
So we're gonna go look at the hungry, and we're gonna talk about all the things you get from being a hungry. And then you're going to decide if you want this path to be your major path or your minor path. And, like, I know you kind of already know which family you want. So be thinking about, like, is it the. The group that you have come to be with or the. Your state of being that you identify the most with? That one will be your major path. So let's get into talking about what you get as a hungry.
So the first is that you must feed on a type of prey in some way. So you have a prey of choice. So what it is you take from that person is dictated by your family, but who you target is 100% dictated by you.
So if you, whenever you take whatever it is you need to take from a person, you will gain a cursed eye. And I'll explain cursed eye later, but this is, this is like you can do this freely as you choose, or you can, or you may have to do it because you have run out of Kurstai. I will explain the damnation in a little bit, but you should pick the kind of people that you want to prey on, for lack of a better term.
[00:07:08] Speaker A: Yeah, I think. Kind of sticking with the childhood runaway concept, I think I would like to focus on people who are well off. It can be new money, it can be old money, but, like, the. The people who have wealth and. And, you know, there's a. There's a certain amount of, like, if you are. If you. If you have an amount of money, there's. There's a hoarding sort of thing involved, and this is not a thing that my character's ever really been able to do because she hasn't owned things. The property of ownership is very, uh, kind of open to her.
So I think if you drive a really nice car, you're probably a target. If you have a really nice watch, you're probably a target. If your suit costs more than, like, $200, you're probably a target.
[00:08:04] Speaker B: All right, so people with wealth, but not necessarily a discrimination between, like, people who are kind of middle to upper middle class and people who are, like, uber rich.
[00:08:17] Speaker A: Yeah, I think if she saw two on the street and there was one who was very obviously more well off than another, then she would choose that person just on principle. Right.
[00:08:32] Speaker B: Yeah, that makes sense.
So that's cool. So the wealthy well to do are your preferred meals, as it were.
So the next thing you have as a hungry is you have strength. So the hungry are kind of. They're one of those lineages that aren't born this way. Someone actively curses them to become this kind of half alive, half dead creature that is constantly hungry for human sustenance.
Like, not what humans eat, but humans.
[00:09:13] Speaker A: So, important distinction.
[00:09:16] Speaker B: Important distinction. So you probably lived your life for most of.
Until an age, and then somebody, whoever cursed you, is kind of now your parental figure, uh, within your family.
Even if you don't like them, even if you don't care for them, they're still kind of your. Your hungry parent, as it were.
Um, this gives you this kind of strength that comes as a benefit for being hungry. It's called undead strength. And when you use it. So you can use it at any time, activate it by spending a curse die.
And when you do, it activates for a scene, and you get one of the following benefits.
You can either, and it's all plus one enhancement to attributes in a specific arena.
So it's essentially any action you make with attributes in the physical arena gain plus one enhancement. Or you can choose the mental arena, or you can choose the social arena. You can activate as many instances of this undead strength as you want.
So you can activate, you know, I want to get enhancement on my physical arena and my social arena, etcetera. You could also activate it to essentially regenerate damage. So one damage every round for the rest of the scene you will just regenerate.
But every time you activate your undead strength, it comes with a bane.
Your banes are pretty common vampire trope banes. You pick one when you, either you, or the story guide picks one when you activate your undead strength. So you get the benefit, and then you also suffer a moderate complication to any action you take while in this bane's presence. So, you know, running water, fire, garlic, silver, sunlight, white animals, faith, objects of faith, garlic, mirrors, paper money, that kind of thing, you pick one, and if you're in the presence of it, anytime you take an action you have to do take, you suffer a moderate complication. It will just deal damage to you. If you don't buy that off, it may also create a status effect. Um, so if you just do one instance of undead strength, actually it doesn't cost anything. I'm sorry. Just takes an action to up your undead strength so you can just beef yourself up really high. But when you do, you have a bunch of veins and it's way more likely they're gonna come into effect.
Okay, so it's kind of this risk reward situation.
[00:12:30] Speaker A: Okay. And then you spend your cursed eye to buy those off.
[00:12:35] Speaker B: Uh, no. So if it, so complications work when you roll to do an action.
[00:12:44] Speaker A: Got it, got it, got it.
[00:12:44] Speaker B: Any extra hits that you get, you can use to buy off complications?
[00:12:49] Speaker A: Sure, sure. Okay. Story path system.
[00:12:52] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
[00:12:53] Speaker A: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, cool.
[00:12:56] Speaker B: Yeah, so, so that's just a feature for being hungry, and then you have a damnation. Your damnation is if you run out of cursed dice.
So dice are, I'll explain this really quickly. Cursed dice are a, you start with one at the beginning of the session. If you eat somebody or eat your meal from somebody, you get one. If you, there's a bunch of other things you could do. Like anytime everybody in the group comes together to solve a problem, everybody in the group gets an additional curse die to kind of buff them up.
And there's some other things that you do throughout the game that can give you curse die you can only hold right now. Because we're going to start at the lowest power level. You can only hold five of them, so if you would get any more, you just don't get them.
And anytime you make an action, you, when you're forming your dice pull for that action, you start with your cursed dice, and then you fill in the rest of the dice with non, with just regular dice. So maybe they're a different color or, you know, you roll them separately on a. On a dice roller or something like that to differentiate what's a normal die and what's a cursed eye, and you can get rid of them out of your dice pool to fuel your powers, your spells, and there's some other things that you can spend your cursed dice for. So if you actively choose to spend the last of your cursed dice, then you essentially, your hunger overcomes you and you have to consume a meal as soon as possible, regardless of who your preferred victim is.
And you can't cast spells or use your undead strength at all until you have done this.
Once you.
Yeah, once you have had a meal, you get a cursed eye back. And if feeding makes things inconvenience for your, your friends, then you can either get a second cursed eye or a momentum.
If the feeding, whatever you wind up doing happens to be in line with your family's traditional means of feeding, you'll get both a memento and a curse die.
So if you just. Yeah, so if you're a ghost eater and there happens to be a ghost nearby, and you get real hungry and eat one, get a momentum in a cursed eye.
Sad for the ghost, but, you know. Well, you know, you know, sometimes you got to do what you got to do.
[00:15:49] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. You win some, you lose some.
[00:15:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
So the next thing that you get, and every lineage gets a damnation and every lineage gets these torments. And these torments are kind of things that your lineage kind of impulsively make you do. And when you do them, it's 100% your choice to do them, but when you do them, they generate momentum. So they're mostly roleplay burdens that make you do a thing so that you can get some momentum and add some kind of drama and flavor to what it is that you're doing and your character. So you're going to get a lineage. So you have two options between a lineage, kind of designated torment, and then you're going to pick a personal trigger, uh, for the. For the torment that essentially is personal to you.
So your options for the lineage torment. So I'll kind of read them to you. And then usually that helps people decide what their personal trigger is going to be.
Boundless hunger.
Hunger defines the hungry. It's right there in the name. Despite the appellation, most hungry eventually find satisfaction. But not a character with this torment. When she succumbs, no amount of feeding fills her. She must continue to feed for the rest of the scene, even if it would provide no further nourishment or mechanical benefit, especially if it would cause harm to her friends or other close associates.
The other one is take what's mine. The hungry rule by birthright, their nobility, one and all. Regardless of whether or not the rest of the world acknowledges this fact, a character with this torment recognizes that everything is hers. When she succumbs, there is no item good or service that she believes she cannot have. She demands the attention and service of others and takes anything she should own. It's not stealing. It's claiming one's royal due. The authorities may feel differently.
[00:17:59] Speaker A: I think that based on how I'm building her so far, take what's mine makes sense because property, you know, property is inherently theft. Right? So especially if she's, if she's targeting people who are wealthy, who, especially those who hoard excessive wealth, I don't think she's ever going to feel bad about taking something from those people. They're not going to miss it. After all, look at everything else that they have.
[00:18:28] Speaker B: Yes, exactly.
[00:18:29] Speaker A: I think. I think take what's mine. 100% the way to go here.
[00:18:36] Speaker B: Cool.
Okay, so now we have all the, like, set things.
So now we are going to apply the lineage paths, like skills, attributes, etcetera. So do you know yet whether you, you want this character to identify more with their family or more with the, like aspect of being a hungry in general?
[00:19:00] Speaker A: Ooh. Um, I.
So the, the family that I'm, I'm looking at is the ascetics. And the reason for this is because in my head, one of the places that she spent a lot of time being an unhoused individual was the public library.
[00:19:24] Speaker B: Okay.
[00:19:25] Speaker A: So I think there's probably some element of, like, familial and, like, I mean, because it's not a thing that she ever had growing up, there might be that desire to have that sort of connection with her family person.
So.
Yeah. Um. Hmm.
Yeah, I think.
Oh, gosh, this is such a crazy question because I don't know. Now. I don't know.
Um.
Yeah, I think maybe going the family route.
[00:20:16] Speaker B: That sounds. That sounds like where you're going with it.
[00:20:19] Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds reasonable.
[00:20:23] Speaker B: Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah, that sounds reasonable. You know, if we get into it and you're like, you know what? No, I think I wanted.
I don't think I want the ascetic, like, as my major path. We can always change it. So, like, let's. Let's call your lineage path your minor path for right now, and then your family path will be your major. So you get three path skills you get from being a hungry empathy, medicine and persuasion.
[00:20:51] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:20:53] Speaker B: And you're gonna get four skill dots to distribute among those three skills.
[00:20:59] Speaker A: Oh, okay.
And is there a max number that I can put into any one skillet at this time?
[00:21:07] Speaker B: Um, let me double check. I think you have to have at least one dot in each of them. But I don't remember now because I.
I literally did this yesterday.
[00:21:22] Speaker A: But that was yesterday. Today is a brand new day with whole new information.
[00:21:28] Speaker B: There is no there. Yeah, no, there is no.
There is no maximum or minimum for these skill dots. Only the major path has a maximum or minimum.
[00:21:42] Speaker A: Okay. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Then I think I'm gonna go with two empathy, two persuasion.
Medicine doesn't. Well. Oh, gosh.
All right. Two persuasion, one empathy, one medicine. She has to know at least enough to keep herself safe, and then she has to be persuasive. Growing up, she had to be a little bit of a charmer.
[00:22:11] Speaker B: Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. All right, cool. And now, so you're at. Now we're going to talk about your attributes. All nine of your attributes start at rating one.
[00:22:25] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:26] Speaker B: And your minor path is going to give you four dots to distribute. So you're going to get one mental attribute dot that you could put in any of the three.
[00:22:34] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:35] Speaker B: You're gonna get one physical.
[00:22:37] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:22:38] Speaker B: And two social.
[00:22:39] Speaker A: Okay.
Then I think we're gonna go with three manipulation total. So one presence, three manipulation, one composure.
We are going to make her slightly more dexterous, because running away from law enforcement makes sense. Yeah. And I think.
Ooh.
I think cunning feels right. But if we're leaning into the family, like intellect feels correct also.
[00:23:22] Speaker B: Well, you're gonna get more dots from the family path, so.
[00:23:24] Speaker A: Okay. All right, then. Yeah. So one. One int, two cunning, one resolve, I think is the.
[00:23:32] Speaker B: All right, um, so let's. I'm gonna talk about the families. Um, you've chosen the ascetics, which is perfect, but I'm gonna talk about the other options that you could have had just for the listeners, viewers, whatever, uh, so that everybody's kind of aware what you had to choose from.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:23:52] Speaker B: So, uh, and. And who they are. So I'm gonna start past the ascetics, and then we'll come back to the ascetics because that's the one you're picking.
So you have the black hearts, and the black hearts are a.
They're kind of the anomaly group. They're a found family of people who have broken away from their creators, the people who made them hungry because they, for whatever reason, they did not follow their normal family's feeding restrictions and instead are hungry for people's emotions.
They are. Because of that, they are kind of mercenary. They. They kind of feel like they've been a little fucked over because either they were considered black sheep or they were exiled, or they. They were treated so poorly, they left.
So they kind of work a little mercenary for the other families to keep any respect from the families that they can.
And they're a little anarchic as far as, like, how they treat the rest of the hungry, but they are absolutely. They care a whole lot about the people that they interact with, because one of the things about feeding on people is that you kind of have to.
It has to be somewhat consensual. The person who is that you're feeding off of kind of has to give you.
At least, they have to kind of want you to take what you're taking from them. Now, it doesn't have to be a conscious want, but they kind of have to want it. So if you're taking somebody's emotions, they have to be freely giving you those emotions. And so they're very protective of the people because they make very strong bonds with them.
If you. If any of you are familiar with the that.
What is it, the survey, the quiz, like, what kind of accursed are you? Quiz?
The ones that were called damp here.
That is a moniker that this group uses because they're more human like than their brethren.
Then we have the gaki, and Gaki are.
[00:26:38] Speaker A: I just have to laugh looking at the doc that you sent over with all of the information on the hungry for the black hearts, just because nobody else could see this. It says, others call us damp here, and some assholes call us crybabies. Fuck them in particular. And that just makes me laugh. So I thought everybody else would get a kick out of it.
[00:27:01] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:27:02] Speaker A: Yes. It's great.
[00:27:05] Speaker B: All right. Yes, absolutely.
They're a little pissy.
Reasonably so.
So then we have the Gaki, and the Gaki are.
They're kind of ghost necromancers. I would call them straight up necromancers. They. They have a lot of ability to interact with ghosts and to sway ghosts, and they kind of claim a dominion over the ghosts because they eat them.
And so they can summon them, and they make deals with the ghosts because, you know, they, it's a little like, I don't, I don't want every ghost to run from me every time they see me because they think I'm going to eat them.
And so we can summon ghosts and we promise, like, hey, you're my friend. I'm never gonna eat you, kind of thing.
Then we have heirs. And heirs are kind of the nobility of the, of, of a group of people who kind of think of themselves as, you know, elite humans or the rulers.
The heirs are like, we rule the rulers kind of thing.
They, you know, they try to run cities. They invest in mortal institutions so that they can have control over entire towns. And they're kind of like, they foster human and mortal communities, but they also use them as much as they can.
They're also really rich.
Then we have the house back.
[00:28:54] Speaker A: The line that I love from this one is others call us influencers, moguls, or usually things like that fucking bitch. But they're just jealous. And that's beautiful. Just like, like Abe. Like ten out of ten. No notes on the writing in this, doc. It's. It's great. It's great.
[00:29:12] Speaker B: Good.
I don't know who wrote it, but good.
House Bathory.
House Bathory is. They're kind of hedonists.
They claim they come from Erzbet Bathory, and that she literally bathed in virgin blood.
If that's true or not, they don't necessarily know, but they do know that they engage in blood bathing in her name.
So they are. They claim they're her descendants, but none of them really interact with her. In fact, they are afraid of her if she's around.
They are a little.
They're. They're a little bloody and a little fighty because you can't bathe in a bath full of blood without spilling some blood to get there.
[00:30:16] Speaker A: Weird that.
[00:30:18] Speaker B: Weird that.
Uh, so, you know, they do kind of find themselves kind of feeling a little pretentious, but they're not. They don't claim rulership the way the heirs do. They're mostly just kind of hedonistic, falling into this desire to kind of bathe in the blood of their enemies kind of thing.
[00:30:44] Speaker A: I mean, it's a vibe like, let's be honest, 100% a vibe.
[00:30:49] Speaker B: Yes.
And we have the iscariotes. The iscariotes claim that they are descended, and by descended I mean, they come from a line where the first hungry in their line was Judas Iscariot. And he was cursed because of his betrayal.
And he has passed his curse down all the way to them.
There are plenty of them, though, that are like, Judas is scary. It wasn't a real person, or he was, but, like, there was no cursing that happened because Jesus wasn't like anybody special. He was just a dude.
So they, they have some other people who they believe their progenitor was, but they view this betrayal as a noble act of rebellion.
They're maybe a little delusional, but that's okay because now they, they are rebels. They say, you know, we're here to fight. We're rebels with a cause, any cause will do. We fight for justice, equality, and freedom. We're. We make good trouble. We topple tyrants, raise up the oppressed, and we happily burn the city down rather than let injustice stand.
They're kind of, people call them firebrands, and they're kind of scrappy in the sense that they're trying to kind of make a good name for themselves, even though inherently they are betrayers, every one of them, and they will happily betray somebody if they think it's for the good, the good of their cause.
[00:32:47] Speaker A: Sure.
[00:32:48] Speaker B: Yeah. And then finally we have the Vorare. The Vorare are infernalists.
They have made a pact with demons, learned how to feed on people's souls rather than their blood or their flesh, and have demonic powers in the.
In the vein of flames that they can kind of summon and conjure.
They did all this because they were they originally their person. The person who created them was trying to break their curse and struck a deal with the demon.
Unfortunately, they kind of went from one curse to another. So they have to kind of do this, this demons bidding to keep their powers, or at least they think they do.
And they are driven to make the world a better place to destroy the curse if they possibly could. They don't know how to go about that, but they, you know, they think making the world a better place may make it less fucked, which may mean that less people get cursed.
Who knows?
Some of them just kind of really like being slightly demonic and, you know, maybe that's a bit of a problem, but, you know, a few black sheep here and there doesn't matter. They're revolutionaries.
They work for change, for the good through demonic cleansing. It's a whole thing.
[00:34:38] Speaker A: I mean, you know, if you've heard it once, you've heard it a thousand times, right?
[00:34:44] Speaker B: Just yes.
And then now let's talk about the ascetics. So the ascetics are knowledgeable keepers, knowledge takers, knowledge hoarders. So a little bit of that is that they know knowledge, information is currency, and so they have been using it ever since the beginning.
It's a little bit of a pyramid scheme. So they.
Anytime they get new information, they have to tithe it to their. The people above them. But the people above them never give them knowledge in return.
[00:35:32] Speaker A: I need everybody watching and listening to not say a word. Don't.
Don't talk in the comments.
Don't call me out on discord.
I did not know that going into this, but here we are. Just don't.
Just don't say it. We all know it. We're all thinking it. Don't say it.
[00:35:56] Speaker B: Yeah, we don't say those words out loud, but I will say that it is. It's not a structure. It's not structured like a pyramid. It just is kind of a pyramid scheme in the sense of how they have to kind of. It's a mlm.
[00:36:11] Speaker A: It's an mlm, yeah. No, I was going to say it's great. Yeah, you just. You have your downline and, you know, you just. You have to keep recruiting more for your downline. But the problem is you can only do that 13 times before, you know, you run out of people in the world. So.
[00:36:28] Speaker B: That's not true, but, yes, it's.
[00:36:32] Speaker A: Well, what is it? What is it? I mean, with. With mlms, they say, oh, if you recruit five people, and then they recruit five people, then it's 13 phases, and then you're out of people in the world. So.
[00:36:41] Speaker B: Yes, yes.
[00:36:42] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:36:45] Speaker B: All right, so.
So as an ascetic, this is your major path. So your path skills are going to be culture, enigmas and science.
And you're going to get six dots to distribute among them, and each of those must have at least one dot.
[00:37:12] Speaker A: Now, when we talk about science, okay, I see science and technology are totally different things. So science is like your chemistry, biologies, things like that.
[00:37:21] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:37:22] Speaker A: Okay. All right, cool, cool, cool. Then I think. I think we're gonna go.
We're gonna do two culture, three enigmas, one science.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Okay.
And now you have five dots to distribute among your mental attributes.
Two dots for your physical and three dots for your social.
[00:37:59] Speaker A: Okay.
And I did not hit this before I started doing it mentally. You said five.
[00:38:06] Speaker B: Five for mental. Yes.
[00:38:08] Speaker A: Great, great, great, great. Then we're gonna go definitely two for intellect.
I might do another two in cunning. And then one in resolve. So that gives me three, four, two in that order. Sounds pretty good.
[00:38:29] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:38:32] Speaker A: Let'S see. Yeah, I think we'll just, we'll add one to might because, you know, if you have to climb a fence or something, you need a little bit of upper body strength. And then another one for stamina, because if you gotta run, you gotta run.
And then for social.
Hmm.
Oh, gosh, that's such a good question.
I think.
I think we're gonna do like one for presence, one for manipulation, and then.
Sorry. So add zero to presence, add one to manipulation, and then two to composure. So have a one, four, three spread there because I like the idea that she can kind of like, easily blend into a crowd and be somebody that nobody notices.
[00:39:34] Speaker B: Yeah. But she's not necessarily good at, like, talking face to face with people. I like that.
[00:39:40] Speaker A: Yeah, exactly.
[00:39:42] Speaker B: Okay, cool. So because this is your major path, you're going to get a major path inheritance.
So the major path inheritance for the ascetics is once you've learned something, you don't forget it. Once per session, you may describe a story element in a scene as though you had spent a momentum. So one of the things you can do with momentum is kind of dramatically edit a story element. So you can just do that in a scene without spending any momentum.
And then when you activate your undead strength, you gain plus two enhancement to your mental arena instead of one.
Oh, love that rad. And then you're going to get a motif. And a motif is kind of a modifier to how you cast your spells that give your family a little more flavor towards the practices that all hungry know.
Okay, so you have three options. You're gonna pick one. If we were doing more than a one shot, you would be able to buy the others with experience points in the future. So.
But just kind of think about this. So when casting a spell with the elemental attunement, you'll bleed one fewer curse die to a minimum of zero. So normally you bleed cursed, die to two to kind of activate powerful spells. This lets you bleed one fewer when casting a spell with the ethereal attunement. So this is stuff like dealing with super, like, purely supernatural things. Bleed one additional curse die to apply the unlucky status effect to the target. The unlucky status effect is kind of like a little baby curse.
Something bad will happen to them because they're fucking unlucky.
And then when casting a spell with the psychic attunement, bleed one additional curse die to apply the confused status effect to the target.
[00:41:53] Speaker A: I'm leaning towards, when casting a spell with a psychic attunement, bleed one to leave them defused.
[00:42:01] Speaker B: That's great. Yeah.
[00:42:04] Speaker A: Just fits the vibe.
[00:42:05] Speaker B: Yeah, totally. Right. All right, so that's it for your family path. So now we're going to go back, and we'll pick our last path, which is your role path.
So your role is kind of your. Your. Your. The thing that you do right now in the world. So it's maybe you. Your. The center, you know, it's your lifestyle, it's your profession. It's, you know, kind of helps define your drives and influences how you react to things and how you pursue your goals. So these are all kind of written in a way that says, like, you're, you know, either it's kind of the. They're all, like, action type roles in the sense of, like, you're a. You're an activist, or you're a criminal, or you're a, you know, you're an influencer, things like that. So.
And if there's something on this list that.
Or if there's something that you're thinking that isn't on the list that I sent you, we can maybe just make one up, because turns out you can just make up your own paths in story path. It's super easy to do, especially for role paths.
[00:43:28] Speaker A: Oh, gosh.
I'm thinking. Cause she's not an academic, right?
That's not her thing.
She's not a caregiver. She's not creative.
Maybe criminal.
[00:43:49] Speaker B: I think for this character, just throwing this out here, I think either criminal or investigator.
[00:43:56] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:43:57] Speaker B: Would work. If you want her to be a little more, I would say fighty, I would pick criminal. And if you want her to be a little more thinky, I would pick investigator. And I think both fit, though, as far as, like, the things they're gonna give you.
[00:44:18] Speaker A: Yeah. Looking at investigator, I think you're. I think you're right on that.
And, you know, ideally, she's. She's got access to things that give her information, which, of course, is what the ascetics are all about.
Yeah, I think. I think investigators are a really good call there.
[00:44:37] Speaker B: Cool.
So your path skills are empathy, enigmas, and pilot.
[00:44:44] Speaker A: Perfect.
[00:44:46] Speaker B: And you. I think you already have empathy and enigmas, or at least. Yeah. Which, you know, whatever.
And you're gonna get four dots to distribute among those. And there's no. You don't have to put a dot in every single one like you did with the family path.
[00:45:04] Speaker A: Okay.
Now, for pilot. What is that? Is that for planes. Is it for, is it for everything?
[00:45:13] Speaker B: Yeah, it's literally everything that you would need to navigate with. Okay. And it also kind of includes, like, navigating through spaces, even if you're just walking.
It's called pilot because that's kind of the most active form of the skill, but it's also, you know, navigating your way through a city street kind of thing.
[00:45:38] Speaker A: Okay, cool. Then I think we're gonna go with two for pilot and then an extra one in empathy and an extra one in enigma and just kinda beef all those up a little bit.
[00:45:52] Speaker B: Sounds good. And then for your path attributes, you're gonna get two mental, one physical, and one social.
All those mental dots.
[00:46:04] Speaker A: I know, so just, it's so nice.
Yeah. Then I think we're gonna go one more in intellect, one more in cunning. So four and five respectively.
For physical, we'll just go with dexterity again.
And then for social.
Oh, yeah, I mean, manipulation, like gotta lie to find information sometimes. Let's go, let's go.
[00:46:31] Speaker B: All right, perfect. All right, so now we're going to finalize statistics. So this is, you're going to get four additional skill dots to distribute to any skills. They don't have to be path skills, they can be path skills. If you have a path skill you want to bump up a little, or they can be, you know, anything you feel your character should have that a path didn't give you. This is where you can kind of round out the character with those. So you get four skill dots.
[00:47:05] Speaker A: And when we talk athletics, we're talking, I mean, any, anything that requires, like, I mean, climbing a wall or anything like that. That's all athletics.
[00:47:13] Speaker B: Yes. So, yeah, if you're, if you're doing a break in, inner athletics is going to be helpful.
[00:47:20] Speaker A: Okay. Okay.
I'm thinking two athletics and then a point in larceny and then a point in technology.
[00:47:28] Speaker B: Okay.
And then you're going to get contacts. And contacts are people that, you know, they can be normal humans, they can be other supernaturals, they can be anybody. You're going to get one from each of your paths, and you're going to have five dots to spend on them. And the way that that works so that you understand is that contacts kind of take the place of like allies and contacts for, from other story games, story X games.
And they are able to do things for you at your request.
Anything that they would need to make a roll for. They have eight dice and they get an enhancement in specific areas, uh, based on their dot ratings. So the enhancement only comes if it is an arena that you have given them a tag for. And they get tags. One tag for each dot you give them. Um, essentially, those are the things they're best at. And so they'll get their dot rating as enhancement to do those things for you. The tags are things like an archive who has access to ancient and esoteric lore, someone who's dangerous, who, you know, can do violent things for you. A mentor who can give you story guide information, an investigator who can find evidence, an informant who can provide you with, like, spying and information and things like that. Somebody who's moneyed, who can give you money, security, who can give. Somebody who can give you a place to stay or sanctuary, somebody who's sneaky. They can get in and out of places. A fence who can sell things on, you know, in the underground for you, or somebody who's influential, who can get. Get you into, like, places you wouldn't normally be able to get yourself in.
So the way that works is you get one contact from each path and then five dots to distribute among them. So essentially, you'll spend one, two, three dots picking up each of the contacts, and then distribute two more dots to kind of bring one or more of them up to have a little more, I guess, areas that they're good at.
[00:50:03] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. So we can spend up to three dots on each of them. Up to a total of five dots. Right?
[00:50:10] Speaker B: Up to a total of five. Right. So, essentially, really? And I, you know, this is. You have five dots worth of contacts that can be distributed among at least three different contacts.
So that means that three of those dots are used just getting the contacts in the first place. And then two of the dots will be used to kind of bump some of them up.
[00:50:33] Speaker A: Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. Okay, okay, okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah. Because I'm like, it would make sense if, like, my sneaky contact was also my fence. Right. Like, totally got it. All right. And then I think librarian with access to an archive, obviously, that. That kind of makes sense to me.
[00:50:56] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:50:58] Speaker A: And then I guess I will have a third one who. I will wait. Cause I am out of points at that point.
[00:51:07] Speaker B: So you have somebody who's sneaky who is also a fence. So that's two dots.
[00:51:13] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:51:15] Speaker B: And then you have a librarian who has an archive.
That's one dot. Each dot gives them a tag.
[00:51:22] Speaker A: Yeah. I thought that you had said that it was five. Five dots. You have to spend a dot to get the contact, and then you spend additional dots.
[00:51:29] Speaker B: Yeah. So you do spend a dot to get the contact, but that.com gives them a tag.
[00:51:35] Speaker A: Okay, I'm right here. I'm I'm. I'm finally on the same page. It took me forever, but I'm here. I am here. Okay, awesome. Awesome.
Then, yeah. I think having an informant would be good, especially if I'm looking for information.
And then.
Ooh, now, would it be weird to have an informant, investigator be the same person? Probably.
[00:52:08] Speaker B: No, not at all. Yeah.
[00:52:09] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:52:10] Speaker B: Yeah. And in general, we tie those to your paths. So you probably informant investigator probably comes from your investigator path.
Your archive probably comes from your ascetic path.
And then your sneaky fence is probably a hungry that you met or another lineage character that you met from your hungry path.
[00:52:42] Speaker A: And I think all of that makes a ton of sense. Yep.
[00:52:48] Speaker B: Great.
And now we are moving to probably the hardest step for everybody is you're going to get five edge dots.
And edges are like right here in this step section.
So there's edges are just like in story path where they give you little bonuses. They're always on. Sometimes you may need to spend a momentum for them, but mostly they're over there. They trigger when you take an action. Right. Like specific actions trigger them. And mostly mundane things. But there are a couple of supernatural edges. A lot of those supernatural edges are restricted by lineage. So you should check which lineage you like. If you see one you like, you need to check which lineage. I think for you, you can do allure and expanded palette. Are the two supernatural that are. That are the hungry lineage ones?
[00:53:56] Speaker A: Yeah. Neither of those are really standing out for, for this character, I think. Yeah.
[00:54:01] Speaker B: Which is totally fine.
[00:54:02] Speaker A: Yeah, yeah. I love, I love this part of character creation where you're like, alright, cool. What are some cool things that my character can do? And then you're just overwhelmed because there's so many cool things.
[00:54:15] Speaker B: Yes, exactly. That's why I say this one's kind of hard because people are like, oh, there's so many good things. I only get five dots.
[00:54:21] Speaker A: I know.
Ooh. Okay.
The first one that stands out to me is actually anonymity.
[00:54:31] Speaker B: I was thinking that you might pick that.
[00:54:33] Speaker A: Yeah, we're on the same page, you and me. Do you understand this character very, very well?
Yeah. I will determine the dots based on other things that stand out to me. But I like the idea that she's very much an unknown entity. She just kind of exists. She fades into the background really easily. Nobody pays her any mind. And that comes in handy really, really well.
And then, of course, if she's got the confusion thing and she uses that on, on her victims like, it just, like who? Nobody knows what happened to this person. Everybody around was like, I, I don't remember. I have no idea. I'm loving this character I'm having. Sorry. It's all coming to me and I'm really excited about it. Oh, this is great. This is great.
Okay, let's see.
Hmm, hmm, hmm.
Ooh, hands on the wheel. Feels like a good one.
[00:55:39] Speaker B: I was thinking. I was literally just reading that because I was checking the pilot prerequisite for it to see if you qualified, which you do.
[00:55:47] Speaker A: I do. I do.
Yeah. Being able to get away from anybody or to, you know, not have to worry about the danger on the road.
I mean. Yeah, that sounds right up her alley.
Let's see, let's see. Let's see.
[00:56:15] Speaker B: If I'm gonna.
I think well read is also good. Like a good one for you.
[00:56:24] Speaker A: Okay, let's see.
Oh, yeah. Hundred percent.
Hundred percent.
[00:56:33] Speaker B: And this one is for, you know, viewers. You're a regular bookworm. There's nothing you haven't devoured in a Tome somewhere. When you make a culture enigmas action during a procedural scene, you automatically gain an extra piece of evidence based on having known all this stuff.
[00:56:50] Speaker A: And I think that is, that is really, really great.
So then with one dot from well read, two for hands on the wheel, if there's anything else that stands out.
Let's see. I'm.
Hmm.
The, the only other thing that I'm looking at, I think, is either logical leap or it's a feature.
[00:57:20] Speaker B: So I will say that some of the other folks who've made characters have picked up logical leap. So, not saying that y'all can't all just get a bunch of leads.
[00:57:32] Speaker A: No, but life.
Right?
[00:57:35] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:57:36] Speaker A: You wanna. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Cause I think. I think it's a feature also makes sense for her. Like, she can dig stuff out of the trash and just, like, make stuff work because she's had to. So that would put anonymity at one. Then if I do that, which means your character's kept a low social profile, attempts to track and identify her increased difficulty by one.
And I think that's pretty good. I don't think that she would be able to erase herself from records, but, like, keeping a low profile is totally in line with.
[00:58:13] Speaker B: Oh, yeah, absolutely.
[00:58:14] Speaker A: With who she is. So.
So, yes. Then it's a feature.
One dot there.
[00:58:22] Speaker B: Cool. All right, so now you get, now we get to the more fun part. So that's fun. But then here's more fun. So if you go back to the hungry document, at the very bottom of it are the hungry practices. And it's a little description of what you have three practices that essentially kind of COVID different arenas that the hungry are good at. And there's five spells within each practice. You have access to getting any of these spells. So there's 15 options, and you get three of them.
[00:59:00] Speaker A: Oh, my. Oh, my gosh. Now, do all of the spells have to be within a specific practice, or can I?
[00:59:05] Speaker B: Nope.
[00:59:05] Speaker A: Choose between all of them. Okay.
[00:59:07] Speaker B: You can pick and choose between all of them.
[00:59:11] Speaker A: Oh, how fun. How. How fun. Okay, I love all of these. This is great. Uh, uh. Tabula rasa.
[00:59:26] Speaker B: Oh, yeah. Perfect.
[00:59:29] Speaker A: First out the gate, make someone forget about you for a short time. Duh. Like, obviously her favorite thing.
You never saw me here.
[00:59:41] Speaker B: No. Yes.
[00:59:44] Speaker A: I also think dark embrace, if she gets caught, she can get away really easily, or she can use it to sneak up on people to watch, to do whatever.
[00:59:54] Speaker B: Yep.
[00:59:55] Speaker A: And then I think tenebrous sight. See clearly even in magical darkness.
[01:00:05] Speaker B: Yes.
[01:00:06] Speaker A: I think that is the. Those are the ways to go here.
[01:00:11] Speaker B: Cool. And for folks, that dark embrace allows her to become one with the shadows. So essentially she can kind of blend into the shadows.
[01:00:23] Speaker A: And that, I think, is great.
[01:00:26] Speaker B: And then let me really quickly, I'm gonna read, like, kind of the more, I would say, detailed mechanics of each of these just to give people kind of an idea of what they do. So, tabula rasa, you essentially, you have to bleed a cursed eye for it. You can edit information, so choose a target to change their memories of the scene.
So you could do it at the end of a scene and change their memories of the entire scene.
You can. It's a psychic ability. So you can also choose to leave them confused after you do it.
You can edit information out of their memories, but can't replace it with anything or change memories into something different. So you're just pulling the information out.
It happens selectively and naturally. So, for instance, if you choose to edit yourself out of someone's memories, they'll automatically fill the blank space with someone, either someone from previous or later memories, or just forget that there was a person there in the first place.
If you do this to somebody who's supernatural, you'll have to do a clash on them. But mortals, you just do it.
Then for embraced by darkness, we have.
When you activate this sepal, you become like a shadow and are invisible to the naked eye. If someone is using magic to reveal you, that provokes a clash. Otherwise people just can't see you.
And this one doesn't require you to bleed cursed ice. Instead, you just have to have two cursed dice available in your pool.
And then tenebrous sight is, uh, you have to have three cursed dice in your pool. So it's a little. A little more like, I have to have done stuff to, to get some cursed dice.
But you can activate this spell, and anything that is hidden or concealed to you in your area is revealed. So here is that magical see things power that could see somebody in embrace by darkness. This doesn't negate.
It doesn't negate spells that keep something invisible, but it will provoke a clash.
So you still essentially, you get a clash. You don't necessarily automatically negate it, and you just, if something is mundanely hidden, you know exactly where it is and how to get to it.
[01:03:06] Speaker A: Oh, that's so cool. That's exciting.
[01:03:14] Speaker B: Ugh.
[01:03:15] Speaker A: Love everything about this. This is so fun.
[01:03:22] Speaker B: Cool.
And then so really quickly. So that's pretty much it for the, for the main things. The next thing we're gonna do is. So we're gonna skip creating character bonds because we'll do that at the very beginning of the actual play session.
So the very last thing you do when creating a character is decide character aspirations. And these are the things that you want your character to do or accomplish, or essentially, actions you want them to take in the session.
If you have some ideas for them, you can tell me now or write them down. Otherwise, we'll do this. Like, you can think about this between now and when we do the actual play session. You get two short term and one long term. And there's stuff like, you know, steal a book from somebody, learn something new. Right. They're prompts for me to help you, like, get a thing done in the game or have a scene that you're interested in having with your character in the game.
[01:04:36] Speaker A: Okay, cool, cool, cool. Yeah, I think I'm gonna sit on it for a little bit because obviously there's like a, there's a whole bunch of stuff, a whole bunch of different ways to go, and these tend to take me just a little bit longer to figure out, so.
[01:04:52] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:04:53] Speaker A: But I will have them ready for the ep, so.
[01:04:58] Speaker B: Perfect.
Are you excited?
[01:05:03] Speaker A: I'm legitimately so excited. This character, I've never played a character with this sort of stuff style of, like, background or anything like that.
You know, I haven't played.
There is a certain vampire game out there that everybody knows that I love, but this character, even though we kind of have there are some similarities, like, very, very different, which is important.
And also, like, there's so much fun stuff here.
I'm really, really. I'm just. I'm so flippin excited about this, having.
[01:05:44] Speaker B: Having created characters with it so far, three other of the lineages. And I have one more with the sorcerers that I'm gonna be doing next week with rolling nomads. And so far, we have a very social dead.
[01:06:01] Speaker A: Okay.
[01:06:03] Speaker B: Like a walking red flags manipulative jerk.
[01:06:09] Speaker A: Love this. Love this energy.
[01:06:11] Speaker B: Yeah.
We have a primal who's also kind of weirdly social.
And we have a kind of fighty outcast, because a lot of the outcasts tend to be fighty.
It's just who they are, who also has a little bit of social acumen because devil's deals and all that kind of stuff. And now we have your character, who's very not social other than a little bit of manipulation and very focused on learning and that kind of thing. So I'm really interested to see the sorcerer character, how that rounds this group out, because I have a feeling. I have a feeling sorcerers tend to be a little on the more mental side just because, you know, they're sorcerers and they do a little learning, but that's not necessarily the case. They're absolutely families within the sorcerers who are pretty punchy.
So I'm interested to see what, what the sorcerer turns out to be and how this group ends up. I'm super excited also.
[01:07:26] Speaker A: I personally can't wait. I think this is really, really exciting.
I'm glad that we have as many faces as we do in the group, because sometimes you have that one group where it's just like, nope, there's one designated face, and it's just that person doing the same stuff over and over and over again.
So it's nice to have a kind of well rounded group in that way, even if other folks, like, aren't manipulative, like, cool. Maybe that's a thing that my character can hop in and do. I.
And, you know.
[01:08:01] Speaker B: Right. Yeah. I think there's, you know, there's, like, the. We need somebody to be sleazy here, so this person's gonna do it. But here we need somebody who's, like, can instill confidence and, like, friendliness. We're. Did sleazeball go away?
[01:08:14] Speaker A: Exactly.
[01:08:15] Speaker B: We need somebody else to come and do that.
[01:08:18] Speaker A: Go around the corner, they can't even see you. They're going to know something's up.
[01:08:22] Speaker B: Right?
Yeah. So I'm excited about this. I'm excited to see where it goes.
[01:08:30] Speaker A: Now because this is an exciting thing and obviously we haven't talked about it because it's like a super, super secret thing. When is this ap? So everybody listening and watching knows when to tune in. And we'll definitely make an event on our discord. So folks know, but only after this comes out. So we don't want to spoil anything.
But.
[01:08:56] Speaker B: So we will be airing the actual play at OpPCon. So the first viewing of it will be immediately after opening ceremonies. We. I I'm, I'm running the tech on opening ceremonies, and as soon as opening ceremonies end, I'm hit and play on that ap.
[01:09:18] Speaker A: So exciting. Oh, that is so, so, so exciting. Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. Cannot wait. Everybody here needs to, needs to be excited for Oppcon. Uh, you know, last year we had some of our friends on a few games over there. They were all really, really great. So super excited that QCG gets to be a part of OppCon this year. Thank you so much for the invite. I'm really excited about this character.
[01:09:46] Speaker B: Well, I mean, we love your work and we love your actual plays. So, you know, so of course we invited you.
[01:09:55] Speaker A: I mean, well, okay. Be nice, I guess that's fine.
[01:10:00] Speaker B: Yeah.
All right, great.
[01:10:03] Speaker A: Awesome. Well, thank you. Thank you so much. If people want to find out more information either about you, the things that you do over at OPP, or any, just any more information on Curseborn, where should they go to see little tidbits as they are being dribbled out?
[01:10:24] Speaker B: So if you want to talk to me personally, I do spend a lot of time on the OPP discord, which I can get you an invite link. So it'll be in the show notes.
[01:10:33] Speaker A: Yep. Perfect.
[01:10:34] Speaker B: And there is not currently a channel for talking about Curseborn. You're welcome, honestly, to talk about it in the general chat, some people may tell you, oh, there's a thread, there is a thread in the general chat for Curseborn. So if you like, go in the general chat and look in the threads, there's a curseborn thread there.
But honestly, at this point, please talk about it in the general chat. Get everybody hype. Talk about the fact that we're going to be doing, we're going to be airing this actual pay at OPPCon and people will be able to see their actually second look at Curseborn because the very first look at Curseborn was at OpPcon last year.
But I'm not going to say anything more about that.
There is a Curseborn website which is curseborn.com. And you can, I think, click around there. There may be some of these character creation sessions there.
If they're not there already, they may show up in the next week or so. And there's also the little quiz I talked about earlier and some other links that are in the moths.
[01:12:01] Speaker A: Yeah, I know that my good friend Matthew Dawkins, friend of the court, has shared the curseborn quiz in the QCG discord. And for a while, everybody was freaking out about it and sharing their results because they're so strange and they're so wonderful. And the whole thing was just really, really fun.
So we'll obviously be posting more about that. We'll probably get people doing that again this week. Probably. Why not?
[01:12:34] Speaker B: Yeah.
[01:12:35] Speaker A: So, yeah, super, super fun. How exciting. Thank you, dee, so, so much for, for joining me for this. This has been great. I'm really hyped for this and I can't wait for, for Opp Con. I can't wait for, for our, for our AP. It's going to be amazing.
[01:12:53] Speaker B: It's going to be so good. All right. Excellent. Well, thank you for having me here.
I hope you have a good time.
[01:13:01] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, me, too. To be honest. I think that's the whole point of games, right? Is to have a good time and have fun.
[01:13:06] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[01:13:08] Speaker A: I can't, I can't imagine knowing the folks that are, that are also in the AP with me. I can't imagine it's going to be a bad time. Everybody there is there. They are fantastic people. So thank you to all of our listeners, thank you to our patrons who make all of this stuff possible.
And I guess I, I guess that's it. You all know me. I'm v.
And until next time, bye for now. Bye.
