# Day 13: Sword, Sorcery & 2d6 - Lathan'ide the Sly, Necromancer on the Run tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/sword-sorcery-2d6 > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] Time to stop dicking around this morning, I suppose. After discovering that I didn't actually post the last two *CCC 2026* entries, I'm feeling a little disgusted at myself. I mean, that's a pretty easy thing to blow right there. But let's get on to things that are actually working and not the things that we've forgotten to do. ## Game of Choice I have a real affinity for pay-what-you-want or free games. As much as I enjoy spending hundreds of dollars on collector's editions and special printings of things, there is a joy to finding something that you can simply point out to someone else as a thing that they can tuck in their pocket right now. All of those people that tell you that they wish they could play a game but they can't afford something are just full of crap. There are hundreds, thousands, ten thousands of games out there which are free and ready to be played, begging to be played, and worth being played. We're going to bust out a little something from Italy, which is pay what you want, simple, straightforward, and to the point. ![[Sword, Sorcery n 2d6 (cover).png|400]] It's *Swords, Sorcery & 2D6.* Which is very much exactly what it says on the tin. The introduction tells you up front that it's inspired simultaneously by *[[Powered by the Apocalypse]]* and *OSR* games, which is sort of like mating a monkey and a rhinoceros. As hybrids go, it sort of breaks the brain, but you know what? If it works, it works. This is a level-based RPG with hit points (everyone starts with six) and not a lot of hit point scaling as levels go up. Resolution is just a little bit strange with 2d6 plus attribute, with 6− being a **failure**, 7–8 a **partial success**, and 10+ a **complete success**. I love trinary outcome mechanics, and I can see where this is going to be both kind of emotionally rewarding and strange. Like most *PBTA* games, SS2D6 generally avoids having the GM roll dice, except in a few situations like random encounters, morale checks, and reaction checks. Yes, I did say this game has a GM, but it also has a little booklet on how to run it GM-lessly, which is kind of cool. Setting-wise, there is no setting. This is kitchen sink fantasy of the old and classic form where you bring your own fantasy. Frankly, I think you probably get more traction and long-term joy out of such a thing, but we shall see what we shall see. ## Acts of Creation Character creation is straightforward, so let's get stuck in. When I say it's straightforward, I mean it is about as bang on as it gets. ### Name We're back to picking names up front. We haven't even picked a class or race yet! - **Name:** Lathan'ide the Sly Yeah, we're going there. ### Class/Race For the record, there are no races listed in this book. Classes are very lightly like playbooks found in more typical PBTA. Mind you, there are only four classes: Warrior, Archer, Sorcerer, and Healer. When we talk about old-school retro vibes, the only way they could make that more old-school retro is to cut that down to three classes. In this case, I'll bet you saw this coming. We're going with Sorcerer and human, because that's what seems like a good idea. - **Class/Race:** Sorcerer/Human > Skilled in [offensive sorcery]. Main attribute: [INTELLIGENCE]. Pick a starting type of sorcery: fire, ice, water, earth, wind, light, darkness, illusion, control, etc. (check random table at p. 26). Cannot be wearing armor or shields when using sorcery. Come on, you knew it was going to be **necromancy** when I walked in the door. ### Objective You probably weren't expecting a swerve into narrative design, but here we are. Your objective is one initial personal goal, something that your character wants to do, achieve, be, accomplish, etc. You probably know the drill on this one already. There are no actual mechanics for it. It's just a narrative and fictive element of character creation, which is kind of nice. I'm impressed to see it here at all. - **Objective:** To destroy the Church of Eden, whom he blames for the death of his parents. I figured we'd go for something very old school in terms of fantasy motivations, but leave the wording wide enough so that almost anything could fall out of it. Who are the Church of Eden, and did they really kill his parents? I don't know. I guess we'll play to find out. ### Relationship Another purely fictive and narrative construct. This is an optional bit of character creation, but essentially you define a relationship with another character or characters. Again, no mechanical manifestation. It doesn't affect things. It's just a fictive positioning element. - **Relationship:** - Alba Hyde, gung-ho younger brother (14) - Teribitha Goodkind, underground necromancer and mentor You know what? Let's go totally in on this one. If you're going to be avenging your parents, you might as well have a younger sibling and a gung-ho younger brother who's probably more bloodthirsty than he is. Fits just fine. Also, a good mentor never hurts, and a necromancer with the name Terabitha Goodkind tickles me in all the right places. I'm imagining the good witch from *The Wizard of Oz*, but secretly a necromancer. ### Specialty Would you believe that this is a mundane job or field of knowledge or other expertise that can act as an advantage when you make checks in its penumbra of fiction? Because that's exactly what it is. But also, it's a thing that can allow your character to bend the rules in ways that are unusual. For example, mages can't usually wear armor at all. What if your sorcerer wants to wear light armor? Well, take a specialty in it. Suddenly, you can wear light armor. You want a warrior who can use basic magic? Make it a specialty. You want an archer who can use a two-handed sword? Make it a specialty. You'll get additional specialties as you level up, which is kind of cool. You can put it onto wider knowledges, or you can bend the rules more often in your direction. I think that is a nice trade-off, subtly telling the GM what it is that you want at the table. - **Specialty:** Shield Use Normally, a sorcerer can't use armor or a shield when throwing spells, but I kind of like the idea of a mage with a ball of fire in one hand and a shield on the opposite arm. Visually, it appeals, so that's what we're doing. ### Weakness Exactly what you think it is. It's a weak spot, a flaw, a shortcoming, a fear, a need, an addiction, etc., according to the text. However, this does have a rather interesting mechanical effect. When a player brings up a weakness in a relevant moment causing a complication, they get XP. The more trouble you make for yourself, the more XP you get. When we talk about using incentives to shape the form of your game design, this is exactly what we're talking about. - **Weakness:** Hunted by the Church of Eden I kind of want to lean into this outlaw/on the run thing because it leads to interesting storytelling. I can imagine an entire group of fantasy players whose characters all have one thing in common: they're on the run from someone or something, which keeps them from settling down in one place. That sounds kind of fun. ### Appearance Your usual shenanigans when it comes to appearance. - **Appearance:** A short stocky man (34) with tired grey eyes and disheveled straw-colored hair. He wears well-worn traveling clothes and always sits with his back to a wall and his eyes on the door. ### Background I like that in the text it specifies that your background should be short and concise, three lines maximum. That's a bold limitation, and I appreciate it for this particular style of game. - **Background:** Lath grew up in the southern reaches of the southernmost human kingdom, raised by loving parents but with an inclination toward dark magic. They died only five years ago, after which he went on the run with his much younger brother. There we go. That goes in pretty well. Yes, that means his younger brother is 20 years younger than he is, and that his parents were killed when he was in his late 20s, which is considerably later than most fantasy heroes go on a roaring rampage of revenge. So many plot hooks. ### Starting Attributes Given the mention earlier that attributes exist, it probably comes as no surprise that we have to allocate some, and it's using one of my favorite scales across the board. For Strength, Agility, Resistance, Intelligence, and Charisma, we have to allocate a +2, +1, 0, 0, and -1. No math, no juggling of points, just straight, simple decision allocation. | Attribute | Value | | ------------ | ----: | | Strength | 0 | | Agility | -1 | | Resistance | 0 | | Intelligence | +2 | | Charisma | +1 | I thought I'd go in an unusual direction this time and make his weakest attribute agility. He's a short, stocky man who doesn't spend a lot of time concentrating on his physical accomplishments. He's definitely not the fastest, and he's not going to be vaulting tables anytime soon. But he's smart, as you would have to be, and has a little bit of a gift of gab, which never hurts when you're on the run. ### Corruption SS2D6 has an interesting sorcery system. It's surprisingly freeform, but it does come with an inherent cost. Corruption starts at zero, and you have a maximum of ten points during your entire lifetime, plus a maximum of three points between long rests in a safe place. If you blow either of those, you lose your character. Are there ways to reduce corruption, you ask? Yes, there are. Several of them are given in the expanded rules in the back of the book. Mind you, the back of the book is really close since there's only 37 pages in total and at least three of those are devoted to consolidating lookup tables, so there's not a whole lot to memorize here. - **Corruption:** 0 Just starting out, so we've got a big goose egg there. ### Maximum Slots (Weight) Rather than track your encumbrance by strict poundage, which always seemed a little bit weird and overcomplicated, here we simply count how many slots are taken up of your total carrying capacity and simply go off that. Typically, one item takes up one slot. Two-handed items take up two slots. 50 gold takes up a slot. 10 ammunition takes up a slot. Small items can take up a third of a slot, while fragile items take up one slot, and armor and shields take up one to five slots based on their initial defense value. Since our resistance is zero, that just means we have ten slots maximum to allocate. ### Equipment At the beginning of the game, there's no sitting around for an hour poking at the shop. We get 1d6 starting gold, and our class sheet has random tables to generate our starting equipment. - **Gold:** 3 - **Weapon:** Short bow (2/1) + 10x arrows - **Uncommon Item:** Random Spell Scroll (1) - **Adventuring Item:** Catnip (1) - **Adventuring Item II:** Wolfsbane (1) Look, man, I don't know what to tell you. I'm not entirely unhappy about having a shortbow and some arrows. That's some standoff distance. An extra spell scroll? Sure, I'm down for that. Let's figure out what it is by flipping back to page 37 at the magic item properties. It's a D66 table for extra joy. > [5], [1] **Open.** A spell scroll of Open. I can live with this. But why am I carrying both catnip and wolfsbane? Is it raining cats and dogs? I'll have to figure that out later. That's just a little strange. On the other hand, we now have six of our ten carrying slots full. Though I will be looking to ditch the bow and arrows for a dagger or a short sword and shield at some point. ### HP As much as I dislike HP as a mechanic in general, as it's normally implemented, it's tolerable here and there. All starting characters begin with six of both maximum and current HP. - **Max HP:** 6 - **Current HP:** 6 ## Exunt One last bit that is tucked away in the sorcery mechanics and not in character generation is figuring out what your sorcery power is. Basically, it gauges how much damage or general effect you can accomplish with any particular spell cast. In our case, it's Level plus Intelligence plus one for every three Corruption. Here at the beginning, that means three. Being able to do three damage with a spell cast is not too bad. That's it. We're done. That's the whole thing. Straightforward, simple, deliberately minimalist. You can have a character up and together in minutes if you're ready to play. --- - **Name:** Lathan'ide the Sly - **Appearance:** > A short stocky man (34) with tired grey eyes and disheveled straw-colored hair. He wears well-worn traveling clothes and always sits with his back to a wall and his eyes on the door. - **Background:** > Lath grew up in the southern reaches of the southernmost human kingdom, raised by loving parents but with an inclination toward dark magic. They died only five years ago, after which he went on the run with his much younger brother. - **Class/Race:** Sorcerer/Human > Skilled in [offensive sorcery]. Main attribute: [INTELLIGENCE]. Pick a starting type of sorcery: fire, ice, water, earth, wind, light, darkness, illusion, control, etc. (check random table at p. 26). Cannot be wearing armor or shields when using sorcery. - **Objective:** > To destroy the Church of Eden, whom he blames for the death of his parents. - **Relationship:** - *Alba Hyde*, gung-ho younger brother (14) - *Teribitha Goodkind*, underground necromancer and mentor - **Specialty:** Shield Use - **Weakness:** Hunted by the Church of Eden | Attribute | Value | | ------------ | ----: | | Strength | 0 | | Agility | -1 | | Resistance | 0 | | Intelligence | +2 | | Charisma | +1 | - **Corruption:** 0 - **Sorcery Power:** 3 - **Max Weight:** 10 - **Equipment (6):** - **Gold:** 3 - **Weapon:** Short bow (2/1) + 10x arrows - **Uncommon Item:** Random Spell Scroll (1) - **Adventuring Item:** Catnip (1) - **Adventuring Item II:** Wolfsbane (1) - **Max HP:** 6 - **Current HP:** 6 --- Mechanically, everything is straightforward with a 2D6 plus attribute check. Advantage and disadvantage are handled by rolling 3D6 and taking the two best or two worst, depending. When you cast magic, you make a sorcery check, which is obviously versus intelligence, and if you get a proper partial success, you can either have the effect go off with reduced effectiveness or a complication, like taking extra corruption or you can just have a minor sorcery failure from the table. In the back is possibly one of the best one-page guides for running games I've ever seen for a traditional kitchen sink fantasy, and maybe for most indie games in general. It's simple, straightforward, clearly phrased, and puts all the important stuff up front. Present situations and challenges for the characters. Don't try to tell a story. Don't prepare stories. Prepare situations. Don't overprepare. Be transparent with your players. Ensure that character decisions have meaningful impact. Improvise and be prepared to improvise. Be fair and impartial, and when in doubt, rule in favor of the players. That's all good meaty stuff, and I wish more games leaned into it. Glorious. And that's us. Tomorrow? Well, tomorrow we take up a character that it would be hard to be lower than. I'll see you then.