# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 02 - Grimwild - Jalen Ambo, Veteran Warrior tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/grimwild > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice Continuing down the path of Character Creation Challenge, today we get into a game that's actually not even fully out yet. Early access is usually only reserved for video games, but here we have the not quite complete text of a game which suggests that the full version will be released for free on January 7th, but managed to hit the streets a little bit early. It also managed to fall into my wiggly little squid tentacles exactly at that time. Funny how that happens. Let's talk about **[[Grimwild]]** for a minute before we get into things. ![[Grimwild - Free Edition (cover).jpg|400]] The CCC isn't intended to be any kind of overview or review, but I can't help actually looking at the book while I'm working on these characters. And sometimes, you just can't help making observations which are right there in front of you, whether you want to or not. I never thought that the next words would ever fall out of my face, but here we go: **Grimwild** is a *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]* [fantasy heartbreaker](http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/9/). We've talked about fantasy heartbreakers before and eventually I'm going to have to get down to writing an entire reference for them instead of continually pointing off to the Forge. But essentially, what I mean is that somebody found a system that they really like but then needed to patch it in certain ways to make it *“their perfect fantasy RPG.”* The results are less than perfect. It's a heartbreaker because you can always see what they wanted to get out of it on the other side, and they are almost always fantasy games. Because the 10,000 pound gorilla in the room just won't leave. **Grimwild** comes across as if someone really liked **D&D** from third edition onwards (but not fourth edition)^[I remain heretical on this point; this gives me pride.] and were introduced to **[[Blades in the Dark]]** but couldn't quite get entirely into the idea that the GM never makes rolls and that the vast part of the heavy lifting should be done by characters who have individual drives, wants, and goals, and not the GM pointing them from thing to thing. They loved **[[Dungeon World]]**, but thought that it was too attached to *[[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]]* retro aesthetics. They had *never heard* of **[[Fantasy World]]**. At some point they said to themselves: - *“You know what this needs? Another type of failure because partial success and straight-up failure wasn't enough. Let's add **disaster**!”* - *“I don't think the GM is throwing enough dice, nor is their power to determine position and likely effect sufficient power. So we're also going to give them the ability to throw some D8s to increase the difficulty of any particular roll and call it **thorns**! Edgy!"* - *"Position, effect, scale? Those terms are so dull and every FitD uses them. Let's make up new words for the exact same thing!"* There are some cool bits in this game. The reification of story arcs into mechanical entities has always been something I really enjoy. The magic system, despite feeling a little bit clunky, definitely has some bits in the division of cantrip spells/powerful spell/ritual that I really like and obviously is intended to spur the group as a whole to take collective action in order to pull off those more powerful spell effects. But in the main, it comes across as quite a bit of a mess when you start thinking about the actual implementation, with description that's not as procedurally clear as **Fantasy World** and systems which aren't as sleek as **[[Ironsworn]]**. Is it something I would suggest you pick up for free when it's available? Sure. You can even go pick up the early access version right now. Is it something I foresee being your favorite RPG or even your favorite *FitD* fantasy RPG? No, I don't. But enough of that. Let's get to character generation. ## Acts of Creation This is, after all, an *FitD* game, which means that the group itself is as much a character as any of the individual characters within it. During session zero, you put together the basics of what you expect to be doing for the rest of the campaign, including assembling the party, figuring out the group arc, and then actually making individual characters. We're going to blitz through these early stages pretty fast so we can get to character generation itself. I don't think anyone is going to mind. ### Theme-iscyra Let's lean heavily on the very classic **D&D** Forgotten Realms campaign since that's really what this game wants to do. Sure, we could do something way more exciting and way further afield, and I believe the system itself would handle it pretty well, as it is fiction-forward. But we know what they want to do. Let's stick with that. ### Party Time, Excellent Sensibly enough, we start to put together the adventuring party first. And like in some other games, we figure out why the party is together up front. The assumption is that everybody knows each other and have adventured together at least for a little bit before you start, which is great because way too many fantasy RPGs start with *“So you all meet in a bar”* and nobody has a reason to stay there after they finish their drink, except for the dictates of plot. We have a list of concepts that we need to choose two that we definitely see as our party and one that we definitely don't. I kind of like this as a means of determining what we are definitely going to do versus what we are definitely not going to do. - **Mercenaries** - **Explorers** - ~~Vassals~~ I really quite like the idea of a group of mercenary explorers who are out there slinging swords and spells in exchange for coin, pushing out the borders and the boundaries of the known world. I definitely am not interested in playing characters who are in service directly to some greater political power. It's just not my style, and I'm not here for it. ### The Arc of History You find one of the cool bits in this game on page 17, where **story arcs** are reified into a mechanical being. Essentially, a story arc is just another way of saying *“goal”* to the GM and a way of gaining **spark**, which is one of the narrative currencies found in the game. Make progress on an arc and you get some spark, no matter how big or small that progress is. Much like vows in **Ironsworn**, they give you a clear signpost of things you should be working on and toward both as a group and individually. To that end, I really like the idea of the party story arc at the beginning of the game being *“Feed my vices.”* Mercenary explorers looking for a good time, probably to their own detriment, just sounds like a great way to kick things off. In a sense, it's very Conan. While these guys might actually start by meeting in a bar, it's probably going to end very differently than expected. No guy wearing a hood sitting in a corner is going to be offering them a deal to go steal gold from a dragon. They'll probably just get thrown out. ### Forge the Hero And here we are, we know why we're here and we know what we're up to, so it's time to put together an awesome character. Or at least an *interesting* character. Again, like yesterday, I'm going to walk through my choices and at the end post the character sheet. It worked out pretty well before. #### Backgrounder We start off with things being a little bit messy. **Backgrounds** are really just touchstones for building out your story as you play. Not too detailed, not too complicated, just some hooks. Again, signposts for the GM and the other players for what kind of character this is and where they're from. Mechanically we have a bit of an issue up front. There are three kinds of background: *heritage*, *social class*, and *profession*. Each background comes with three *wises*, which are related phrases that flesh things out in a fictional way. However, despite there being three backgrounds, we only get to take two at character generation, which just seems weird. It actually rather feels like the heritage background is being soft-pedaled because the author doesn't want to actually establish something or anything about the setting, and the heritage background is literally all about doing that. Not the first or the last bit of schizophrenic design that we'll run into, I'm sure. Nonetheless, how about our backgrounds? - **Warrior**: wise in **battle plans**, **military contacts**, and **war stories**. - **Drifter**: wise in **chance meetings**, **faraway tales**, and **lay of the land**. I am already beginning to get a grasp on who this character is. And if you figure out the filmic motivation, then you win a No Prize! #### Traited Next up, we get to pick from a list of traits, much like those for the party as a whole, two which are very much us and one which very much isn't. There's a pretty substantial list here, so I'll just go in and figure out who we are. - **Persistent** - **Stubborn** - ~~Protective~~ We're going to play a bit of an old warhorse who once he gets locked in on an idea is not going to let go of it. You just can't shake him. But he's seen too many of his friends die to be happy protecting anyone else. They live or die on their own. That's not his lookout. #### Desiree Same thing with desires. Two we truly desire and one we definitely don't. Again, the list is pretty evocative, but I can certainly imagine adding to it if desired. - **Power** - **Wealth** - ~~Thrills~~ Our man here is the quintessential mercenary. Power and money, those things sound absolutely fantastic, but he's an old soldier. You may find an old soldier, and you may find a bold soldier, but you don't find too many old bold soldiers. We are not bold. You can keep all those thrills. We'll take the easy money first. #### Featuritis We have moved into a space where there's not even a checklist of things that we can choose from. We just need three distinctive features, words, or short phrases that others soon notice about us. Fair enough, quick, efficient characterization is key to communicating any kind of character. - Cold eyes - Disheveled hair and stubble - Well-worn chainmail Here's a man who's seen some shit. He has that thousand-yard stare of someone who has stood and watched a cavalry charge come down on them. He's unkempt and doesn't seem to care much about it. But that chain mail itself tells a story. #### A* Pathing Finally we pick our **path**, which is the **Grimwild** term for what in other places are called *classes* or *playbooks*. There's a pretty solid selection of 12 in the text itself, and I'm sure there will be plenty added on. I know every single one of you is expecting me to pick the sorcerer, warlock, or wizard just to subvert everything that's come before now — believe me, that is a real compulsion — but we are going to play true to form and stick right with the **fighter**. Though I will admit that cleric was also a bit of a temptation. Having picked fighter, there are a few other bits that we need to figure out #### Talents First, our core talent is **weapon mastery**, and we have to figure out what fighting style we have mastered from this list. The answer is two-handed weapons. We are experts in two-handed weapons. As a result, we get an extra mastery die when we fight in our style, which is quite all right. Now we need a second talent from either our paths list or a non-core talent from another path this could lead to all sorts of weird shenanigans. The berserker has an excellent choice for us: **overkill**. When we quit bringing violence, threats, or destruction to bear, we can cause an extra secondary effect because there is no kill like overkill. #### Weapon Origin Next, we need to figure out our weapon origin. Basically, we just need a couple of descriptive traits, which could come off of this table or we could just make them up to make our weapon our own. Because every RPG shortchanges the most popular battlefield weapon on the planet Earth, we are going to choose it as our particular preference: the spear. In our case, the spear is notched and marred with nicks and scratches from heavy use, but it seems almost ludicrously durable. #### Statistics Well, I'll bet you were wondering when we would get around to assigning numbers to actual stats. Well, this is when. There are four stats, each of which starts with one, and we assign four more points wherever we want to among them, except for a maximum of three points in any of them. - **Bravery:** +++ - **Agility:** + - **Wit:** ++ - **Presence:** ++ The old man doesn't get around like he used to, but he's seen enough that nothing is going to really perturb him, though it might not so much be bravery as it is proper caution and overpreparation. #### Arcs of the Covenant Like the party, each character gets one or two character arcs to explore. Nothing too heavy in terms of detail, just a sort of general nudge in some direction. Easy enough. - *Settle Debts* - *Doubt Convictions* I think it's safe to say the debts in question won't exactly be settled by handing over a pouch of gold coin. That would be far too easy. And doubting his convictions, pushing him to wonder if his current devotion toward accruing wealth and power is really for the best, could lead to some interesting character evolution. #### Of Human Bondage For this step, I would need to have other players who were playing other characters. But if they existed, we would describe our characters in detail and then mark two bonds that we have toward each other, either strong feelings or “the opposite.” The opposite of a strong feeling would be no feeling, but we'll leave minor issues of editing aside. Since there are no other players, I'm not going to worry about it too much. But when putting together a real party, this can lead to some interesting ideas for counterplay off of one another, and that is just exciting. #### Review Yeah, it's *fine.* ### You Gotta Have a Montage I actually quite appreciate that Session Zero is designed to end with a montage of the last adventure that you went on together using the group montage mechanics to see how the whole adventure went, sort of like a *“On the Last Episode,”* but just to kick off the beginning. I really quite like that. So what were we up to last time this group was out rampaging about in the world? Let's set the scene: The party *did*, in fact, meet up in an inn. But not to meet anyone for a job, instead it was just a hedonistic blow off of the *previous* adventure's well-earned pay. Unfortunately, the locals did not take well to rowdy adventurer mercenaries getting handsy with the barmaids and bragging about having seen a manticore (even if it was true). Things got ugly, and no matter how big a badass you are, being driven out of town in front of pitchforks and torches by angry townspeople is always a bit of a downer. Plus they lost all the treasure they were going to pay for the next couple of months' revelry with. Flashed through hitting various town squares and talking to various people in different small towns just trying to find enough funding to keep the party rolling. A swamp hag here, a chupacabra there, taking out a nest of bandits along the road in the middle of nowhere and wondering why they are even bothering. All in a week's work. We roll 2d6 and read the result to figure out how that turned out. > 2d6 = [1, 5] Well, that's not great. The outcome is **Messy**. That means that the GM gets to make an *Impact Move* to introduce a complication or a counter. In this case, we will go with the classic Conan side effect that even at the other end of a week's worth of taking whatever scut they could find, the party didn't actually make any money and aren't really particularly appreciated in the local area. Word didn't just get out that they were short on cash, which is bad enough. But people figured out they could take advantage of the situation. That's where we will start in session one… ![[Character Creation Challenge 2025 - Day 02 - Grimwild - Jalen Ambo, Veteran Warrior.webp]] ## Exunt You know, taken as a whole, I am not entirely unhappy with this. I'm not thrilled with it; it's certainly not my favorite fantasy game or my favorite *FitD* fantasy game. But it does have a certain charm, even though the writing is a little bit rough and the early access version doesn't have any actual examples, which I think are critical to writing any kind of game and should be one of the first things that you actually have done. However, there's definitely enough here to play the game and even some discussion of things like story kits which are effectively story seeds with setups. The whole thing ends with an ad for the stuff being released on January 7th, which includes the Artificer Path, the Psion Path, more gameplay tweaks, difficulty adjustments, solo and duet play (which is really the only thing I'm interested in), West Marches style gameplay, an example campaign, and some other stuff. Is it a game that I really see as worth picking up for $20 on day one? No, I can't really say that. You can pick up **[[Fantasy World]]** for free and have as complete, if not a more complete game which is better written and explained. However, this is totally worth keeping an eye on in the future, in case it does drop in price. $10? I'd be willing to pay that for it. That may be generosity on my part, but I would. As always, you guys get to make up your own minds, but I hope one of the things in them is that you're looking forward to tomorrow's Character Creation Challenge entry.