Here goes - a few quick, rambling notes:
I didn't have any specific character ideas when we sat down at the table -
I'd read through the HQ Voices and Ian's earlier posts, but that was it. My
only thought was that I would like our group to be more bound together than
in our last few games, which have been more "traditionally" party-based.
When Ben suggested he wanted to play a shaman, we had a discussion about
power levels and how that could affect the game. I came up with playing the
elder grandmother of the clan/den, someone who equally to Ben's shaman could
be involved in making important decisions. Ian then suggested another
concept, a guardian-in-waiting, not fully a guarding yet (in game terms,
hasn't learnt the Rathor secret) who is the only (or one of the very few)
who didn't go mad during the Great Winter, as he was asleep. I liked this
concept, as it was even more linked with the backstory, and decided to go
for it.
I have always found it difficult to come up with a cool narrative, it takes
me hours and hours of slaving over sentences on my own, and for that reason,
what I think is extremely helpful with a character generation session is the
ability to bounce ideas and suggestions around. Ben for example, came up
with "slept fitfully during the Great Winter" as a cool Ambiguous Reference
for my guy, and Ian suggested that one of the mad guardians was my mentor,
both of which I liked. It also made sense making my mentor also be my uncle,
so we established that too. All of this will be a great help when I sit down
and write the narrative before the next session.
Normally, I'd have prepped some leaders of the community, at this
> stage one or two lines. In this case, because I had none, we actually
> generated them as part of character generation.
This might actually have been the reason for us ending up with more "powerful" starting characters - at least it was something we discussed at the table, the fact that as there were no NPC "leaders" pregenerated, we then ended up choosing to play the leaders ourselves. Ben pointed out that this was entirely in line with starting where the story is, focussing on the clan leaders and what needs to be done to prevent a disaster.
That's it for now, more as the sessions progress.
Cheers,
Erik N
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