Dagamot the Hermit - Tarot and Tropes with Jordan Peacock (Coyote and Crow)

What do divination and character building have in common? How do you go beyond tropes? And how much do you know about Canadian TV? Hello friends welcome to characters without stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled. I'm star in this episode I'm joined by Jordan. Jordan is an independent game designer, founder of sacrilege and a near forever GM. He regularly runs non d&d games for people new to the hobby, and has an RPG narrative project coming out later this year. I Jordan, welcome. Oh, it's great to talk to you. Is there anything else you'd like listeners to know about yourself?

I think that's a good starting point. And we'll discover more as we go.

Awesome. We're doing something a little bit different with this episode. And that we're actually going to be building a character using a system that is kind of your own system. It's not it's not built into any particular RPG system. So why don't you tell me about your process?

Yeah. So running the variety and amount of games that I do, most of what I'm really trying to create is evocative non player characters that help draw players into the story. And one of the easiest ways to do that is with tropes. A lot of folks find that okay, you have the the friendly barkeep in a fantasy setting, or maybe you have the Sci Fi cyberpunk fixer who has a job for you. I mean, there's tropes in every genre that you can lean on. But there's a delicate balancing act, because tropes are familiar, but they're also cliches. And one of the tendencies that I find to kind of be a negative and draw me out of a story is when things become too cliche written. And also, there's just sometimes stereotypes with cliches that are unhelpful, or that you want to steer away from, or that you just aren't interested in. And so I developed using tarot and other kinds of divinatory, or divinatory decks and things like that, as a way to force myself out of the ruts of standard narrative tropes. And to get me to be surprised by the characters that I produced, and then hopefully, have those draw players into the world that I was building, because they were surprised and intrigued by these characters as well.

I love that you're talking about surprise as an element of your character building is actually something that I haven't had anybody say on any of my episodes? Can you talk a little bit more about that?

Yeah. So this applies to me both as a GM but also as a player is, I want to be excited about finding out what happens to me the whole joy of role playing games is the fact that you don't know what happens. And I'm very much of a prep situations, not plots, philosophy, Game Master, when I'm running games, I don't know what's going to happen. I don't have a preset plot thing, they're going to hit next, I'm creating a embroiled system that has its internal tensions that the players are going to do something with, and that'll that'll surprise and delight me. And when I'm playing, I'm trying to create characters that have a lot of latent potential that the game will draw things out of them that I don't know until those moments what that's going to be

interesting. Again, I really liked this idea of latent potential. Can you go into that a little bit more? Yeah. So

I think where you can get these reservoirs of potential for your characters, is some of it can kind of come from backstory, but more of it comes from motivations and what your character decides is important. So for example, I played a character briefly in my brother's d&d game, and I was a nobleman, I was basically like the right hand of the adjacent provinces leader. And as we kind of started interacting the other characters interacting with was very much a lower class mercenary had very strong anti authoritarian feelings. And the first session that we played together ended in player versus player conflict ended with my character, unconscious hanging from a tree because of what started out as my dismissive class attitudes as nobility. And just like they had given me something to review and I had basically accepted it in the spirit of fake you. It's now in the appropriate custodial hands and your part is done now and they didn't take that. But that dynamic was emergent Because I came in with, well, this is my class status. This is my goal. This is my attitude towards things. And it was very much that kind of hottie matter of fact, like, this isn't a challenge. This isn't a contest, like I am just expecting you to defer to my station. And when that doesn't happen, well, what happens. And so that was an example of, I wasn't planning for that conflict to happen. But it was latent in who our characters were. And we both were surprised by that encounter, and how things have kind of panned out since

today, we're going to build a character for coyote and Crow, can you share with my listeners a little bit about that game, what kind of system it is, what is kind of the theme of the game, in two words,

it's America Wakanda. And a few more than that, it's basically, the premise is that there were many illogical events that prevented oceanic travel from really going anywhere. And so as a result, the Americas have developed without contact from the other continents for the last 600 years. And so it's a parallel, it's kind of an alternative history of the Americas. There's some sci fi elements as well, that can be magical if you choose to be or you can treat them scientifically, or you can do what I'm doing and, and kind of leave that ambiguous as to you know, where that vibe is. And from my perspective, I'm from Canada, originally, and I'm currently living in Minnesota on the lands of the Dakota and Ojibwa. I've always been super interested in how the different nations of the Americas have worked and how they have navigated the actual history. But being able to take this setting and build out like what would alternative traditions, we kicked off the campaign with a funeral, but it was a party, it was a 10 day affair in which the person whose funeral it would be was alive at the start of the party. And you basically had like a family reunion and speeches and gifts. And reminisces, and then there was a basically like a ritual cleansing and assisted suicide, followed by awaken remembrances and mourning and departure. And so just being able to craft these alternative traditions, and then build that into this world, and, you know, giving the characters an evocative hook to connect to the story out of the gate has been really useful. But now they're on a journey. And we need some characters for them to meet. And so that's where I'm at today.

Let's talk through how you're going to do this. What is your Tarot Spread? Like,

before I get into that, I think the first thing that you really want, you want to know what kind of slot is this character that I'm creating going in? So if it's a player character, then then you know that, okay, I'm a player character in this game. But for when you're the GM, you're running a non player character, you're trying to create something like that. It's what kind of role are they trying to fill in this game? Is there like a specific position maybe that they're already in? Or they're supposed to be tied to a quest that you already had in mind? Or they're at a location that, you know, the players are going to like? What do you know about them already. So in my case, the characters have traveled down the Mississippi for a couple days. And they discovered a seven year old mute boy, who stowed away because he was really excited to see the mountains, and knew that they were heading west. And they discovered him. And they're like, Well, what do we do with this, and they were able to get word back to Cahokia. And they're currently waiting for him to get picked up. And so they're kind of hanging about. And I had decided that one of the groups of peoples in the central part of North America are aptitudes, who are basically nomadic, and I have a number of different ideas for what these groups would be like. But this particular group I was thinking is effectively the lower class version of them. And it's the going to be the equivalent of a traveling trailer park. And being from Canada, I'm also going to draw from some great Canadian TV. So I'm pulling from Trailer Park Boys, Letterkenny and shore Z for inspiration. So that was kind of my starting point is the characters are hanging out at the spot waiting for this kid to get picked up. And one of these nomadic groups is going to come around and basically set up camp around them, and there's going to be some interactions. So I don't have any specific interactions or quests in mind yet. What I would like to do first is create some evocative characters that are a part of this group and find out what they want. So that's what we're gonna do. And related to that. Have you seen any of those shows?

I have not. No, I don't have a much context for Canadian TV.

Fair enough. Canadian comedies have a certain dry sense of humor. Suffice it to say Trailer Park Boys, every season starts and ends with Julian and Ricky getting out of prison always ends with him going back. Letterkenny has the farmers and the Hicks bashing up against the hockey players and the skids and the dynamics of small town rural life. And shores, he is rural Canadian hockey league so so that those are kind of the vibes that we're playing off of just for the personalities and that kind of stuff. So then we'll get to method. So my preferred method is fairly simple, I keep it to three cards, I just do a three card spread. And the first card will be a key feature. And this might be like a physical feature or something where maybe it's a mannerism, you know, maybe it is a you know, it can be physical, or it can be something that's more of a mental or social thing, but it's something that will be noticed easily and distinctive about them. And this is the only thing that is harder to just be interchangeable. So most of the rest of the process, you can kind of skin, the characters however you want. But obviously, if you decide, hey, this person has a really noticeable, you know, maybe the whole left side of their body is burned. Okay, well, that's going to be a very specific appearance that isn't easy to translate, the other stuff can be easily re skinned. The second card, then is their goal. What does this character want, that really gives them the drive that gives them an opportunity where I can throw them into any scene? And I can translate like, how are they pursuing their goal in the scene? And maybe it's not a direct pursuit? Maybe it's something more indirect where, okay, well, they're trying to network in order to get leverage to get this thing. But it gives them an internal drive that is independent of what the characters are doing, the player characters are doing. It's independent of broader story concerns. And it really gives them some personhood. And then the third card represents what is preventing them from achieving that goal.

Interesting. Yeah. All right. Well, do you want to start drawing some cards?

Yeah. So for the very first card, I drew a major arcana card to hermit. Its upright. And we have associations like self reflection, introspection, withdrawal, solitude, contemplation, etc. I'm looking at the labyrinth, those meanings list here as well. And they give examples of a Seeker for the knowledge that comes from within a lonely wandering the path of the night. So this is actually intriguing to me, because I had started off thinking of this being a somewhat more boisterous community, and it can still be that, but at least one of the characters is they're taking some time to think about life, and they're journeying with this group, and they're not the most social, maybe they're sitting at the edge of the fire, maybe they're, you know, other characters in this traveling group, go to them for advice, but they don't really initiate things they're following along, maybe even quite literally, maybe they are lagging behind. And you know, they show up like a half day later. So those are some ideas, I'm also happy to solicit from you like, if you have thoughts do not hesitate to to share them.

So when you first talked about where this card is, in terms of what it aligns with, for the character, you kind of talked about this as outward physical, how do you think that would be reflected because to me, the Hermit card is so much about internal stuff, it's about seeking inward, looking inward and finding truths within rather than projecting any sort of outward appearance historically, for me, there's associations of, you know, living in a cave, and like, not bathing and not having any sort of luxuries or not having any comfort in their life.

So this is one of the things that I really enjoy about this process. Because yes, if I was taking the Hermit card alone, and just saying, Well, what Association systems have been, yes, maybe I would have the dude in the cave that's been there for years. But because we already before we drew any cards, we said, here's the slot that we're trying to fill. It makes these things that aren't clean fits, it forces you to think outside the box a little bit. So we've already determined this is a person that is traveling along with a small nomadic we already have some of these basic parameters. So given that, what does it mean to be a hermit and in this case, maybe it's they are a source of advice, but they will never offer it. You would have to seek it and kind of coax it out of them. Maybe they are a wealth of knowledge, but I've never proffer anything. Maybe they A will periodically disappear from the caravan, and come back a few days later and just not explain it.

When I think about translating that into a visual aspect or physical aspect, to me, I think of the hood, part of the face being obscured, whether that's like hair, or hat or something physical, like, what kind of physical things do you think of when you think of the hermit?

So from a physical perspective, I think the clarification that I'll offer is, these are things that can be noticed by the players the social add, or remove or being kind of aloof from the rest of the caravan that they're traveling with the disappearing and reappearing the social dynamics, those count, right? Like it doesn't have to be a literal physical feature of the body, although it certainly can be. But in my mind, for this character is much more of how do they approach these social interactions that denotes the the humaneness of them. I'm agnostic on any particular physical representation like this could be male, female, young, old. I'm kind of agnostic on that right now we can we can kind of decide that after.

Okay. Yeah, I was curious at what point that kind of physicality came into your process,

I'll usually defer that as long as I can. Sometimes that means sometimes that gets deferred all the way up until the moment that they get used. Let's draw the next card. Yeah, so I have the 10 of Swords reversed. As the next card. This is the goal card. And let's see. So with reversal, I mean, the 10 of swords generally is is powerful feelings, but also the idea of like the finality of defeat, which may be good, maybe bad, however, with a reverse 10 of Swords is a certain sense of hitting rock bottom, and the clarity that that gives like, there's a certain amount of liberatory value to just being so soundly defeated, that you go, okay, I can just move on. I remember, a I had a breakup at one point that was just so decisive, that it was actually freeing because it was like, well, there is nothing here to salvage like, I can just deal with it. And then and then move on, and have that it's sometimes it's with a job. So this might be something where, especially given the fact that the group that they're traveling with is sort of the lower class of the various groups that are in this area. This could be someone who wants was a person of means or a person of significance. And they just cratered. And this is, the goal is maybe using this as an opportunity for a new start. The goal, in this case wouldn't be a defeat, or being defeated, the goal might be well, what comes next after this, this is possibly a moment to pivot. And so the hermit essence, maybe that's intrinsic to the character, but maybe that's also just a relative to this moment in their lives, where it's like, I need to like step back and reflect on things.

Yeah. Next, would you draw the third card? And then kind of combine them and elaborate or do you elaborate more on each card,

I'll do the third card, and then we can, you know, finesse the pieces to see how they work. So I have the four of pentacles reversed. And this one is greediness, stinginess, haunted by fears of poverty, compelling you to be kind of materialistic, you get defensive about that kind of stuff. It can also the example that I'm looking at here can also be more positive, where you might be giving away too much of yourself or too much of things, how might that be a barrier, I think this might be connecting it to the 10 of swords. This might be something where they're trying to let go of some of those material concerns. And they really haven't been able to, and actually being in the situation with other people in the caravan who are very much like always hustling, you know, they're not, they're not lucrative situations. But but there's this constant hustle of, you know, new projects, new ideas in order to just kind of get by. And I think, maybe a certain amount of that ethos is just pervasive. And so they're trying to basically step away and have a kind of a meditative quality to life and say, well, I need to I need to pivot. I need to integrate my emotions, and I need to get my head cleared and maybe go on this more idealistic route. But all they can really think about is how am I getting to the next week? You're stuck in that sort of not quite poverty, but that I'm always two steps away from poverty and So I'm always having to navigate things always having to just be mindful, I have a bit of a scarcity mindset and having just suffered the loss that they seem to have suffered. I think that mindset of scarcity is probably the barrier.

So we have a person removed from society, who has recently suffered a great loss. And as they attempt to kind of bounce back and find a new path, they are challenged by their previous ideas, of dealing with scarcity and learning to kind of overcome how their mental situation should change in regards to their new situation, does that sound like a good sum up?

That sounds like a good sum up and given that I had set at the beginning, I'd set some of the pop culture tropes that I wanted to lean into a little bit, the character that I think relates to this a little bit, is actually the title character from shore Z, who's the hockey player who coaches, coaches like high school hockey, but he gets pulled in to basically save this failing rural Ontario Hockey team. And his whole goal is like, all I want is wins. Like, I just don't want to lose any more. And there's this very drive focus. And so this character, I think, does not yet have the will to be forward like that. But that's what's kind of in the back of their mind is they're probably thinking the way that this group is moving is not working. And we're stuck in that grind. And I'm trying to figure out how to get out of that. And I'm trying to escape that orbit. And I would love to bring these people with me, and I don't know that they'll come with me. And so there's a reticence I think to offer their perspective, because they recognize that their perspective and what they want to do conflicts with how this place has been operating for a while.

So you have a built in conflict within this group,

which then tells me if you're open to it, we'll do one more. Yeah. So which tells me then that we probably have a counterpoint someone who basically is driving the you know, what are the things they are doing today, and the things that are those day to day hustles that are just getting them by that this first character is kind of frustrated by so let's find out about them. All right. So I have the Emperor, which feels appropriate given that the sounds like this is a person in a leadership position. So yes, structures, stability, protection, authority, discipline, somewhat stoic, a strategic thinker who sets out plans, this sounds much bigger than it is. This I don't think of it as a as a grand thinker, because again, like these are people right at the margins of this particular society that are that are getting by, but not by a lot. But if you've ever seen some of those great heist movies, like lock stock, and two smoking barrels, these are the people who have to have their grand ideas. And the ideas don't quite fail, but they never work as well as they would want them to. This is like the Silicon Valley startup guy who's on his fifth startup and like, hasn't hasn't gone bankrupt yet. But somehow never quite clears the hump of like, you know, landing the amazing startup gig. So I think this is someone who talks a big game, their ideas are huge, they are setting that vision. And people are, for the most part, at least willing to entertain that, even though they're never successful on the terms that they set. But they're, they're successful enough to get to the next thing. So we have the second character is something of a de facto leader may or may not be a formal leader, but for sure is the one who has the ideas that people run with more often than not. And that's the Emperor. So for the gold card, we drew the seven of Pentacles and pentacles, as a suit generally relates to investment risk return, whether that's in relationships, or financially or materially, and the six of pentacles tends to be the end of financial or material hardship. The seven then is more of a progression or seeing returns on investment. I think this is something where the character recognizes that it's a bit of a grind, that they're constantly having to generate these new ideas, because none of their ideas are successful enough for them to really be able to coast on their success. And so they're constantly churning out these new ideas, but they're looking for that one idea, or a handful of ideas that really has eggs, and allows them to actually just sit back and enjoy the success. And that hasn't happened yet. And then because I'm using the Sephora deck, it actually has, I don't think this is a typical card. But they have two additional cards in the Major Arcana. And I drew one called the abyss. This is for the barrier to that goal. And it's, we often fear what is unknown or unseen. But in this case, some people are drawn to or drawn to the darkness, want to go deeper, understand what kind of lies below or beneath this is something where, in my game, I have a north south band across North America, that is by treaty dedicated. So there's no human settlements in this north south strip, that's slightly to the west of where the characters are, I had already thought about in my notes of some things that might be there, and also like what the treaty terms might be and what breaking them might include. I don't have any hard ideas locked in on that yet, but I have some just ballpark things. So when I'm seeing the Abyss here, I think what this character is torn by is that there is something in this no man's land area that is deeply intriguing, but feels like a greater risk, like these other ideas that they've had at least half the plausible pathway to that long term success that they're hoping for this one is, I have no idea. But I think there's enough of a draw there that it becomes a competing priority, where it's like, do I do the next hustle that I have a playbook for? Or that I at least have some sense of the relative risks and rewards of? Or do I go blindly into the unknown for this, you know, whatever this thing is that I'm interested in. And so I think the barrier in this case is a competing desire.

So we have kind of two characters established who are in conflict with each other, living within the same community. Do you think we're ready to start to flesh out more about them?

I think so. I would like to, if you would humor me, I would like to add one more character into the mix, and then we can do all three. Sure. So I would like a character that is something of comic relief. This is the character that is the butt of the jokes in this community. And they're good natured about it, or they own it, I think of in particularly to going back to those pop cultural touchstones. In Trailer Park Boys, you have bubbles, and everyone loves bubbles. But he's got the super thick coke bottle glasses. He's got all the cats. He steals grocery carts and knocks them down a hill and then repairs them and sells them back to the grocery store. He's he's an amazing character. I love him, you also have ensures you have Sanguinette, and just the constant refrain of shut the EFF up Sanguinette app every time. That's sort of the placeholder in my mind of what this third character could be. And so to that end, let's see here we have the ace of wands as a starting card, a promising future calling your creative forces to action. This is a moment in which anything can grow out of thin air, we can materialize something that will not stop till it's as vast as the world itself. Wow. For someone with kind of a comic relief. I think this is something where especially since both of our other two characters have clear aspirations for themselves in the community. This is someone I think, who has ludicrously big ideas that are completely disconnected from reality. And not in the sense of like they are literally impossible, but in the sense of there's no way that this is a success. But it will be interesting to see how it how it fails or muddles along,

that's a great thing to throw into a role playing game. But agent of chaos.

Yeah, I'm thinking back to Trailer Park Boys bubbles, has at one point tries to set up a pet cat daycare. And it's delightful and it's completely non viable as a business. But it's it's delightful. Right. And I think it's that kind of thing where, especially with a community that you're both the butt of the joke, but also Beloved. It's like yeah, he's got his thing. It doesn't work. We love it. We have as a goal. I have the reversed Page of Pentacles. So we have things like foolish, immature, irresponsible, lazy procrastinator, Miss chances. This is great. And I want to lean into the softer side where I think it's the person who isn't trying to like actively misuse their resource. is, but you know, they procrastinate, they aren't really keeping up with the day to day it's much more of a, I invest on things based off of how I'm feeling in the moment. And that doesn't work well for long term projects or, or businesses or what have you.

I think it's interesting that you've pulled so many pentacles, because it seems to have made so that all of the characters kind of revolve around some central concepts of work and investment and earning and surviving.

So this last card is an interesting conflict or barrier to the goal, because it's temperance. So balance, peace, patience, moderation, serenity, tranquility. I think this is something where, in contrast to our second character who's really driven to succeed, this is someone who for whom success is incidental. They're much more about being in the moment being present. This is one of the reasons why people like to be around them that they're a positive contribution to the community. But that's also there, they're failing, because they don't have the drive and the foresight and the hunger to fix the underlying issues of how they relate to the world. They're very satiated, that they are content with life. And so the things that they do, whether or not their actions are contributing to the long term success of their project, is kind of incidental to how things are going moment to moment. And so I think that, that contentment, and that tranquility is part of what underlies their repeated failures to launch. It's interesting

that you have this character who is content, opposed or in relationship to two characters who are striving, but both characters are striving for very different things.

Absolutely. So yes, so that gives us the core and with these pieces, you can easily, there's a random name generator that I have, I have usually a grab bag of some basic physical descriptions that I can just kind of pull from as a GM for random characters that get encountered. So with these kinds of situations, unless there's a compelling reason to make a character look a certain way or be a certain age, usually I leave that stuff undetermined. But we can go a little deeper into that you also wanted to talk about some of the stats and mechanical aspects of coyote and Crow in particular, and we can flesh that out as well. So what would be your preference,

I would like to talk about coyote and Crow and building these characters, or at least, maybe the first character, the hermit into the system.

Perfect. So we won't do the full player character because that's, I mean, we can do that. But that's completely overkill from from a GM perspective, what typically happens and I've done this more in Vampire the Masquerade, which mechanically is very, very similar. In both coyote and CRO and vampire, the masquerade, you have a dice pool system, and you're usually matching an attribute and a skill. And so you have in both games, you have like a physical, mental, and then social or spiritual categories. So I'm Coyote and Crow, you have three physical stats, three mental stats, three spiritual stats, but from a non player character perspective, you'll usually just have a flat number for each of those three categories. That's your pool for those things. And so you're going to be rolling D twelves. And there's a success number. So usually, that's eight. So anything that is an eight or above on any of the dice that you roll, is a success. And usually you only need one success at one is a negative success, and a 12 explodes and you get to roll another dice. That's a very high level, mechanically how the game works. So let's start by just building some stats. So physical, mental, and spiritual. Usually, those are on a scale of one to five, it can go above five that is very, very uncommon and needs some special explanation. So one to five is the normal range. But I would start by just ranking them and saying what's going to be strongest, to least strong for this character? So this is our our hermit character. What do you think? Are they primarily physical, mental or spiritual and how they're engaging with the world?

Looking at the card spirituality seems to be central to the idea of the hermit to go kind of back to the originator of the character. And then what would be next, this is maybe just vibe, more than anything else, but I feel like mental would be next.

Okay, excellent. So I am just making a couple random roles on my side. Most average folks will Have a two or three in most things, we're gonna set physical at two, we'll do mental at three and spiritual at four. So they're average in the bottom two and slightly above average, with spiritual. There's also a bunch of skills that are defined and skill ranks for things, again, taking what I've learned running Vampire the Masquerade as well, where you might just define one or two skills that are above average, and then you're using those base pools for everything else, we have a list of things. So like art, charm, cooking, crafting, deception, husbandry, herbalism, blah, blah, blah, we can also make up our own. What's something that you think this person is particularly good at? That will give them a little bump on you can pick one and then I have one that I'll add?

Yeah. So I always look at skills as a way to look at a backstory to think about how did they learn this? What was the situation that brought them in to where they are now. So to me, it seems like if they're coming from kind of this hustle culture and turning away from that, or having hit rock bottom and trying to move on from that, it seems like something that would be appropriate to that hustle, like, I think of them as being good at it. But that being good at it wasn't enough. So I'm not sure what would align with that from from like, the list of skills. But I think we're talking about somebody who's kind of sharp, who is good at kind of maybe planning a situation like a heist,

I like your idea. And I'll pair that with. So two of the player characters are healers, and playing around with some of the questions of how medicine is conducted, has been one of our internal through lines. And so I think that the industry that they have been most closely associated with, was medicine. And so we will give them a bump there. And I'm also going to give them a bump in basically like society. So like politics and etiquette, and things like that, for the higher class context that they are not currently in, that they had been ousted from. And this will actually pair nicely because one of my player characters is the equivalent of like an ER trauma nurse, who is currently on leave, as in, she has been told not to come into work, because of some issues that she has, it might not be the same kind of downfall, but there will at least be some shared experience there.

Well, looking at these skills, how do you think that the person came into being good at medicine?

So that's a good question. And I think, given the fact that they are in the Freelands, where you have a much broader diversity of societies with Cahokia, being kind of the mega city that a lot of things kind of jumped out from, I think that they probably started off doing the equivalent of rural medicine, you know, traveling around to smaller, more isolated communities, maybe on a path to great things in the city. And then having that door gets slammed in their face somehow. And so now they're now they're kind of back where they started in a sentence, traveling around being able to provide, and that's another great reason why, even if they might be a little reclusive, and disappear from time to time, you know, that disappearing might be going to nearby communities that they're passing and assisting with things, that would be a very good reason for them to stick around despite some of the conflicts because having someone who knows medicine well is always is always an asset to any community that might be where you could actually raise the tension higher and have more active conflict potentially without that social glue falling apart because they're too useful to just kick out. So the other two things that stand out to me, from a character generating perspective, most characters will have a path, there's a ritual that they often undergo, and they can potentially get some sci fi or or fantastical abilities from it based off of the path that they choose. So they have a number of different creatures here. Eagle bison, beaver Coyote, Fox, OWL badger deer, spider, Falcon, snake, crow, salmon, bear, Raccoon, any of those that you vibe with, we're just gonna go random with whatever you like this,

you know, I'm kind of leaning badger love it. Yeah, I feel like badgers. I mean, and I may be completely wrong about badgers because I don't know a lot you may know more from a more northern climate. But to me a badger is kind of an animal that likes to be alone. doesn't like to be bothered.

Okay, well, and I'm looking then so there's abilities that are connected to the status quo. Seated, and I'm taking a look at one of the abilities and they have spirits covenant, which given that spirit is the primary staff that we named for it, that seems to work really well. And it says the character is considered lucky, blessed or cursed depending on who you ask. Hmm. And it also says that this ability might be an indirect connection with the spirit world, or the black, which is, the way that I've been playing it in the game has been kind of agnostic, is it really the spirit world is a kind of a subconscious effect that people are generating. But that debate is at the heart of some of the party in your interactions, because I have two characters that are very, I guess, materialist in their worldview, and two characters that are very spiritual in their worldview, and one of the spiritual characters and one of the materialist characters, they both have very rich experiences that the other person would just explain very differently. And so having having this character also have those kinds of experiences, but where maybe for them, it has felt like a misfortune like it's maybe led them astray at a time would be interesting. It gives them some abilities to ignore their first failure during certain checks. And they can also do some additional abilities with it. But spirits covenant is what I will give them and path of the Badger is their path. So we now have, we have stats, we have some skills, we have a path, we have a special ability, and then I'll just pull from my list of names here. And let's see, I think Dagamot is the name is Dagamot. How old are they? Do you think they're old enough to have made some mistakes and fallen from some height? Are they like 30s? Are they more like 50s?

I'm thinking 40s, like mid 40s?

Okay, are they given the hermit? Did they just never find a partner never have children? Or did they abandon? Or were they abandoned by their family?

I'm going to make that the in character question a little bit, because that was the question I was thinking about. It relates to that. So I'll kind of push that. On to down the field a little bit.

Anything you want to add? Otherwise, we'll we'll consider that character, par baked.

We didn't talk about gender. I think we've kind of been talking about them. And he does that vibe with what you're thinking about, or

I generally had been trying to keep that ambiguous. I think I was leaning slightly in that direction, especially given the dynamics of our party, there are a number of issues around family and family that has disappeared or family that is found. And I have a majority female player characters. So I think yeah, I think we'll go male, for this particular month.

Dagamot, have you ever had your heart broken?

My heart was first broken, when my children refuse to acknowledge me. They said the shame was too great. And it deadened me so much that when, when my partner of 20 years moved out, I barely even noticed,

wow, it's very interesting the way that you're able to get some of that interiority or make a decision. As difficult as it is, I think sometimes to answer some of these questions for a character that's not as fleshed out. It's great to hear a thoughtful response to the question, because to me, that seems like it would be kind of difficult. So thank you.

That to me has been the value of this approach is, especially by having the inner generativity of the goal and barrier, it means that I have a context free engine for interiority. And so then when you drop that character in any given context, you at least have a couple of different hooks for how are they going to bounce off of the other people in the scene? How are they going to respond to the situation? And you can always add things into the mix. But it gives you something to run with, when you decide to put on the mask of that character, even if it's just for a moment.

Well, Jordan, thank you so much for coming on the show and for building dadgummit. today.

Thank you so much for the opportunity and for helping me with my session prep.

Happy to help. I'll put links in the description. But is there anything you'd like to share with my audience?

Yes, actually, I will be launching a paid newsletter on my site at sort of live shot online in the next week and a half. So it might actually be before this episode lands depending on your editing schedule.

Yeah, it definitely will be.

And we will be serializing a book that will be forthcoming in print, hoping to do a Kickstarter or similar later this year, but we're starting off by serializing it will be releasing the first book that way.

You can find me on Tik Tok at Star mama See, or on threads, Instagram and Facebook as characters without stories. You can also listen on YouTube at characters without stories or follow the link in the description. Please share the podcast with a friend. Word of mouth is the best way to find new listeners. Your recommendations helped me immensely. Thank you to all of my listeners spreading the word. I'm so grateful. I'm currently accepting submissions, particularly for non d&d characters. So if you'd like to share your character, you can go to the submission form at characters without stories.com. Thanks for listening, and may all your characters find their stories