Saturday 3 January 2015

D&D Old School RPG Fantasy Vikings Project: Creating Characters

As announced on the 'link-holder-page' I am working on getting some Old School Dungeons & Dragons going with my daughters.

I am creating a Fantasy Vikings setting, using as much historical stuff I can, while maintaining the structure and diversity of the D&D setting.

I let the girls roll 4 dice for each Ability (removing the lowest result), and roll 3 sets of Abilities. Then, based on the results, they could decide which profile they wanted, and which Class to play (they could choose from the 4 Human Classes).

Lea rolled quite well on her first profile, and ended up chosing to create a Magic-User. In this setting, she'll be the apprentice of the village's VĒ«lva.

When adjusting Intelligence, I allowed her to raise it to 19; although this is technically not permitted by the rules, I have done so in the past, and it doesn't upset balance (especially not when done for a weak Class like the Magic-User). She'll have a +4 adjustment, and +20% xp, thus probably being able to level up not too long after Anna's Shieldmaiden Fighter Character.

The girls ar filling in Character Sheets (and drawing Characters).
Note that Anna, to the right, is wearing her medieval linen dresses
(she does that a lot)!
I also allow magic-users to wear light leather armour, and, as this is a Viking setting, she was allowed to have a bow. I may allow non-magical one-handed swords/axes, too (Gandalf, after all, wielded Glamdring to great effect).

Anna rolled less well, but she ended up with a manageable +1 Fighter, so should be able to protect her younger sister from intrusive monsters.

As both my daughters are young (11 and 8), and completely new to role-playing, I let their characters start with a full Hit Point dice (+ bonus) worth of Hit Points PLUS a roll+bonus. They need some staying power, and as GM I can do what ever I want ;o)

Tomorrow, we'll choose some appropriate names for the characters, and find some nice minis to represent them on the table (oh, yes, there WILL be minis!).


6 comments:

  1. Looking forward to seeing the game

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    1. We have had a short session alreay, but I won't be sharing pics of in-game action until we have the minis on the board (awaiting shipments from Red Box and Hasslefree atm).

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  2. I'm curious as to how you've managed to get 2 young girls interested in *any* sort of gaming? My own daughter (9) is completely against playing "boy's" games, no matter how often I try to tell her that she might have fun as well.

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    1. Look at her interests, ans see if you can somehaow match them with some gaming stuff. Both my daughters like fantasy, and I have been reading a lot of that to especially the eldest one over the years (The Hobbit/LotR, Harry Potter, some Danish 'girl fantasy', Stewart/Riddell, Spiderwick, etc. - am currently reading The Chamber of Secrets to the youngest), I'm taking them to the movies (or buying DVDs) everytime some animated fantasy flick comes out (How to Train Your Dragon is a hit)... In short influencing their frame of reference as much as possible. They enjoy going to historical re-enactment fairs dressed up as viking or medieval girls, so the transistion into an RPG/tabletop mash-up wasn't so far fetched.
      Or, I have simply been lucky, sharing the right part of my gene-pool with my wife ;o)

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  3. Lovely idea, family projects are the best! :O)

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    1. This actually has been on hold for a while, because I got busy with a demo/participation game for a small convention, but now that I am back into the Dark Ages, I shall probably get the girls involved again.

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