# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 10 - Swords of the Light tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/swords-of-the-light > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice We've really spent a lot of time down in the depths of human misery and depravity. So let's go the other direction for a little bit. I know it's unusual for me to have anything in my collection which is slightly less dark than midnight, but there are a few things here and there. One of them that I really quite like because of its straightforward simplicity is **[[Swords of the Light]]**. ![[Swords of the Light (cover).jpg|400]] As you can tell from the cover, this is *not* a high production value expensive tome. It's 16 pages, and the entire text doubles as your character sheets and workbook for actually playing the game. That's really quite charming, in my opinion. Make the most of what you have. In this case, what they have is a *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]* system. If you've been reading much of what I write, you know that I quite like *FitD*, focusing the running of the game to an intense understanding of fictional position and effectiveness and using that to determine how the rules go is just this side of brilliant. **Swords of the Light** takes that architecture and simplifies a whole lot of things around it, turning the original **[[Blades in the Dark]]** into a fairly wholesome game about running your own inn and hiring adventurers to go on quests, then finding out what happens when they do so. It's designed for solo play, which is always a plus in my mind, and the mechanics are probably even lighter than you think they are. Let's get stuck in and find out ## Acts of Creation This is going to go pretty ridiculously quick, so hang on to your hats. Also, I can look out my window and see snow, and that doesn't really encourage me to take forever at this. Though the snow is disappearing at quite a pleasing rate, we shall see. ### Where are we again?? We are an ex-adventurer who has set up a tavern in some town. **Insert name here:** Aarendale Ah yes, lovely Aarendale. Adventurers are accumulating there because we know what they need, and it's become a local hub for quest seekers. ### Cull the Herd, Make the Beds The town leaders recognized we have some expertise in the field and appointed us as their liaison for hiring adventurers and choosing what quests they take. We put out the call that we were looking for some adventurers and providing beds for them, and six people showed up the very next week. Unfortunately for them, we only have four beds. This is where the actual mechanics kick in. What we do is roll 6d6, assigning 1d6 to each of the prospects as we interview them. They reveal a skill from among bravery, intellect, and versatility. If we roll above a 3, any skill revealed will be plus one. When we decide which four to hire, we roll 1d6 for each of the stats they didn't reveal. Rolling 1-3 will be +0, 4-5 will be +1, and 6 will be +2. We have an occupancy list sheet on page four of the book, and when we do hire them, we need to write something that describes their fighting style, like Fire Magic or Big Sword or whatever we think is fun and uses their stats well. We can name their characters, though they may keep their names to themselves for the moment. Right, so, 6d6. > [6, 5, 2, 5, 4, 4] That's a lot of guys with good stats. A Versatility (VERS) +1, two Intellect (INT) +1s, and two Bravery (BRV) +1s. The other two are trash and get unceremoniously tossed out on their asses. Scrubs. We'll keep the Versatility, one of the Intellects, and two Braveries. Sorry, brain guy. We may have more beds later. (We'll certainly have more beds later; expanding the inn is a downtime activity.) Okay, let's see who we ended up with: - **BRV:** +1 - **INT:** +0 - **VERS:** +1 - **Style:** Cat Burglar - **Name:** "Finn" We'll get to what the stats actually do here in a bit, but for the moment it suffices to say that versatility generally is associated with agility, ingenuity, and wit. Bravery is associated with melee strategy and agility. Intellect is associated with strategy, study, and ingenuity. Yes, there are a lot of words repeated there, and there's a good reason for that. Which brings us to Finn, who has one pip in bravery and one in versatility. That strikes me as a man who's good at second story work: get in, get out, be quiet, maybe even a bit of pickpocketing along the way. Your traditional thief, but with more emphasis on getting in and out of places people would rather he didn't. - **BRV:** +0 - **INT:** +1 - **VERS:** +0 - **Style:** Road Scholar - **Name:** Marcus Aelienus Vettanus Poor Marcus here got the short end of the stick. The only thing he brought to the table is a +1 in his Intellect. He's a Road Scholar, a sort of traveling scribe who hires out his ability to do things like write letters and scribe documents to the common people who sometimes have need of such things. Also on his work list is reading letters and documents sent to those who can't read them themselves. It's not the best living, but it keeps food in his belly and sometimes a roof over his head. Mostly it's a good excuse to keep moving from town to town. - **BRV:** +0 - **INT:** +1 - **VERS:** +1 - **Style:** Flamenwuffer - **Name:** "Pie" "Pie" - most assuredly not her real name - is one of those rare individuals who spends her time alternately using her obsessive focus in Fire Magic to go quest on a regular basis and spending every coin she has on high living. Thanks to the economics of adventuring, the first ends up occupying far more time than the second, which is probably how she ended up here. - **BRV:** +1 - **INT:** +1 - **VERS:** +0 - **Style:** Fighter. Just "Fighter." - **Name:** Kelvin the Younger I suppose there had to be one in every group, a tall white guy, blonde, wearing some decent leather armor and carrying a sword: Generic Adventure Protagonist Number 375. Something seems a little different about Kelvin, though. Maybe just a little more light in his eyes, like there's something going on upstairs. Maybe it's how thoroughly he avoids the usual adventurer tropes of drinking too much and being too loud. If anything, he seems a little paranoid. Probably for the best.^[Not a necromancer in sight. Believe me, it was a challenge.] ![[Swords of the Light - CCC2025 - Beds.webp]] ### What - is your quest? It does no good to have adventurers without giving them a quest. They tend to get surly and a little bit rowdy, which is the last thing any good inn needs. So let's go to the job board and see what is posted. We roll 2d6 and take the lower in order to find the difficulty, the amount paid, and the type of person looking for help. Given who's running this inn, I imagine the kind of person looking for help might not be the most savory. I'm not saying that I attract unsavory types. I'm just saying there are preferences. > [1, 5] Oh, look, it's the most basic kind of quest that can be offered: a peasant has come with what's possibly his entire life savings of one coin in order to ask for something to be done. We know that the quest requires six clock segments to be filled up, and by default, it's one clock of two segments followed by one clock of four segments. Clocks are effectively the same as you find in other *Forged in the Dark* games, essentially a timer that has to be filled by effectively executing actions. When the clock is full, that scene is done. The text is clear that we can change the size of the scenes as much as we want, but in this case I really quite like two scenes for this very basic quest. One should be basically a brief introduction followed by probably a bit of stabbing, but it remains to be seen what it actually is. In order to figure that out, we need to roll 3d6 on the table, which tells us what the mission is and the main dilemma. > [1, 3, 5] Conquer. Artifact. Moral. A moral dilemma where we need to *"conquer an artifact"* given to us by a peasant with a potential reward of one coin. That's an interesting idea. How shall we interpret this? I've got it: the peasant, Michael, would like us to approach his brother about a small inheritance that their parents left to them. Michael argues that he has a better claim to the back field of the adjoining plot of land that was split between them on his parents' death. He has no legal papers or official proof, but he's quite adamant. --- In case we don't like that one, we need to add two more quests to the board. > [5, 3] Small Faction / 3 Coins / 2-4-4 (10) > [1, 4, 5] Conquer. Creature. Moral. Guess we need to roll up the faction. > [5, 6, 3] - **Focus:** Espionage. - **Main Resource:** Wisdom. - **Allies:** Peasants. Well, *that's* weird. Plus they get a goal clock that can advance during downtime. I think I'm going to actually make this faction the Road Scholars. Their overarching purpose is to aid the people of the kingdom and those nearby by spreading literacy and the fruits thereof, and only incidentally learning every secret anyone wants to pass via writing. They are currently sitting on a vast amount of information about what's going on pretty much everywhere. Suddenly, Marcus doesn't appear so useless, does he? Their current faction goal is to figure out what the mayor has planned because they've heard he might not be on the up and up. Thus, their goal clock is *"Infiltrate a Road Scholar into the mayor's inner circle."* Having figured *that* out, we still need to work this not insignificant quest. The challenge is really inserting another moral dilemma here. I've got it: one of the local temples venerates swamp oxen, which is generally not much of a problem, even though the town lies on the edge of a swamp. However, the season has been particularly good for the oxen, and they are notoriously cranky at the best of times when they're overcrowded and their feeding area is running low on food. They become positively aggressive, which is a real problem for people who are engaged in travel and trade. The scholars want us to clear the way somehow and make the passage through the swamp and neighboring fields safer. However, the obvious solution of thinning out the herd would not particularly go over well with the oxen cult. Someone's going to have to figure out a solution. --- All right, time for a third mission to go up on the board. > [6, 4] Noble / 4 coins / 2-4-6 (12) > [1, 6, 1] Conquer. Faction. Barrier. As much as it pains me, I think we're going to need another new faction for this one, even though I could make this one work with the scholars. I think we need a little more diversity in the area. > [4, 2, 4] - **Focus:** History. - **Main Resource:** Influence. - **Allies:** Monsters. Honestly, I'm not sure what to do with this. A faction whose focus is history, whose resource is influence, and whose allies are monsters that a noble wants to take something from, but there's a barrier keeping him from doing so. The Blood Court, a faction within the local nobility who "serve" a group of vampires who have lived here for thousands of years. Are they the same vampires, or are they a group which is turning over on a regular basis? No one knows except for the Blood Court. Our noble doesn't want to take something from the Court — he wants into it. The problem for him is that he has never been selected by one of the vampires to share its blood. Because somewhere in his last several generations, one of his ancestors took a common wife and the Blood Court doesn't consider anything but the purest blood to be worth being part of their particular conspiracy. That's the barrier. Figuring out how to solve this little conundrum would be up to any adventurers dumb enough to take the quest. ### Party Up Now that there are quests on the board, we need to pick one of them and form a party to deal with it. I don't know about you, but looking at the poor schmucks we have to choose from and the options on the table, I think we'll work out the border dispute. Let's start with the peasantry and move our way up. Since we've picked a quest, we need to decide which party members we want to take for it. We can only take three. Technically, they fulfill the roles of Brains, Brawn, and Bravo, but their position doesn't really have to have anything to do with their skills. We'll put them on the party sheet along with their top two of the three character stats, and then we can draw a line from the stats they bring to a relevant party stat, of which there are six. We'll just see to that. ![[Swords of the Light - CCC2025 - Party Sheet.webp]] I'll be the first to admit this party has a little bit of a strange setup. No one has decided to step up and be the one that smacks people around, and despite the fact that we involve a cat burglar, we have no particular ability with agility. But what we do have is long-term strategic thinking, a knowledge of history, quick wits, and the intelligence to apply them, which will probably go a long way when it comes to dealing with the peasantry here. It would probably be a bad idea to go out and just start killing to solve the problem, though. There isn't a problem that ever existed that can't be solved with sufficient amounts of killing. It just seems a little misplaced. Marcus is staying back at the end because he's just not looking all that awesome right now. Maybe one day in the future. ## Exunt That's it. That's character generation. Not only have we done character generation, but we have created some quests for the quest board, which have accidentally revealed more about the setting. We've put the party together, which really communicates how they can and will solve problems going forward. All that would be left is to start getting involved with the first scene/obstacle in that quest. Along the way, with successful rolls, we'll make progress, and with unsuccessful rolls, we will see complications take form, which threaten our ability to accomplish our ends. This game is completely playable solo and I could definitely keep going, but I'd like to leave you a little hungry. As a short, tightly designed game, **[[Swords of the Light]]** succeeds at what it sets out to do. We haven't covered what you do during downtime, which includes leveling up your characters, healing, adding on to the blueprint of the inn, and so on. But in the course of just a few pages, it's well explained. Looking for a tidbit of a game that won't hurt your pocketbook but still give you that sweet taste of quest running with quite a dollop of creativity? Looking for something which can be entirely upbeat, depending on how you want to run it? This could be your jam. Did I mention it's Pay What You Want?