# Character Creation Challenge 2024: Day 11 - Zoic:: Voss, Tribal Keeper tags: #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 #game/rpg/zoic > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] I have an affection for strange little games. This should probably come as a surprise to no one at this point, and yet… If you have a game with an interesting and unique setting, something that pushes buttons in a weird direction or takes up an RPG setting which is rarely, if ever, explored, I will be terribly tempted to give you money in exchange for your work. If you come to me and say, *"I have a game where you play as a caveman on a volcanic island which is about to erupt, and the whole goal is to gather resources, explore the island, and find a way to get your entire tribe off the island before it explodes – oh yes, and you have a psychically bonded dinosaur companion…"* Shut up and take my money. Kenneth Stein shut up and took my money. In exchange for **[[Zoic]]**. ![[Zoic (cover).jpg]] That very well may be one of the *most* metal covers of all time. If you don't immediately want to grab that book and start flipping through it, I'm not sure I even want to know you. Mechanically it uses a very, very cut down version of the *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]* mechanics combined with just the lightest sprinkling of hex crawl, which I wasn't entirely expecting up front. Procedurally generated hex crawl, at that! You're already sold. Let's go make a character. ## Chargen > [!quote] **[[Zoic]]** > > The events of Zoic take place on Gonneblö island, your tribeʼs home for several generations. Dangerous as it is, Gonneblö would normally be unfit for human habitation. Fortunately Eeba, your tribeʼs elder, is the oldest living Bonded–a human who can spiritually link with dinosaurs. Her dinosaur companion, called the Gigasaur, is an enormous brontosaurus capable of carrying the entire village on its back. Swaying with each step, your village safely navigates the coast; the Gigasuarʼs imposing presence makes meek the few predators that would venture there. > > Unfortunately, Eeba and the Gigasaur are respectively too frail and ponderous to venture into the far more dangerous island interior. Thatʼs where you come in. You play as the next generation of Bonded, trained by Eeba to brave the island proper. For years, you and your bonded dinosaur have ventured into the island interior but ominous quaking has Eeba on edge. Then one day, after an incredibly deep rumble, Eeba gathered the whole tribe. And with that you're introduced to the setting. We are one of the Bonded, rare members of the tribe who were connected to a dinosaur still in its egg. As a result we are more adept and the dinosaur is more intelligent. ### Tribal Role We get to pick one of the five roles available to the Bonded: *Gatherer*, *Hunter*, *Keeper*, *Delver* (your shaman who can take on aspects of their dinosaur at the cost of their humanity), or *Drumbum* (it's the Bard, only they get one instrument). We've done a lot of mages lately so I'm taking Delver off the table. Each of the roles has a thing that they are particularly good at and get extra dice to achieve, usually associated with an action taken on the hex map. It also determines an aspect of your connection to the dinosaur in your care. Finally, one of the things that you need to acquire from the island is a mystic totem, and every role has a different effect that it receives once that totem is found. Let's take a *Keeper*, a guardian of the tribe. A protector. > **Keeper:** The tribeʼs guardians, their protective instincts have bled through the bond meaning both human and beast will risk it all to defend their friends. ![[Zoic Keeper.jpg]] His name is Voss, a lean, lanky young man who keeps his hair cut short and shaggy with a sharp bone knife. ### Choose Your Dinosaur There are hundreds of species of extinct, non-avian dinosaurs and the author is wise enough not to try and create detailed stats for any of them. Instead, you pick one of the five descriptors, each of which comes with a special effect, then describe the dinosaur however you like. Some contrast would certainly do us good, so while Voss is deeply protective of the members of his tribe and life in general, his dinosaur, Slash, is far more aggressive and unforgiving. As a *Therizinosaurus* should be.^[[And yet, they're herbivores.](https://museum.wa.gov.au/explore/dinosaur-discovery/therizinosaurus) I may be a damn geek knowing that, though.] > *Vicious:* Typically applied to fierce predators. When expending Roar!, your dino inflicts an additional Harm upon a full success. ![[Slash, Vicious Herbivore.jpg]] ### Aaaaaaaaand - done That's it. That's all of character generation. There are no individual stats beyond the things listed on your role sheet and your dinosaur descriptor. You've got it all. In a more traditional *FITD* game, your dice pool is made out of your stats, but not here. You're looking for sixes for complete successes, fours and fives for partials, and everything else is a fail. In **Zoic**… > When you make a roll, build a dice pool by involving one or all of the following elements in the description of your action: > > - +1d if a human is involved in the action > - +1d if a dino is involved in the action > - +1d if a human or dino is using a crafted tool or weapon > - +1d if a dino is applying its primal strength with Roar! This is complicated by the fact that if you have a partial success (you *Prevail*, in the language of the game), the GM (or you if you're playing solo) picks one of the venture dice to receive a *consequence*. This is interesting because if you narrate action that doesn't involve your human character, you take no chance that your human character can be injured or exhausted. If you don't use a crafted tool or weapon, it can't be damaged or lost. It introduces a tactical component to what would normally just be fiction-first narration, and I like it. ## Character Sheet *Voss, Tribal Keeper* > **Keeper:** The tribe's guardian, his protective instincts have bled through the bond meaning both human and beast will risk it all to defend their friends. *Slash, Deadly Therizinosaurus* > *Vicious:* Typically applied to fierce predators. When expending Roar!, your dino inflicts an additional Harm upon a full success. ![[Voss, Tribal Keeper, With Slash.jpg]] ## Exunt You might think that this is just a lightweight, silly little game about cavemen and dinosaurs – and that's only partially correct. It is *extremely* lightweight, though the Camp Moves, resource and crafting system, and hex crawl add some implicit mechanical heft which I haven't gotten into here. But more importantly, *if you have kids* you would like to get into tabletop role-playing, and they love dinosaurs, this would be an excellent starter game to bring them on board. Unlike many TTRPGs, there is a definite endgame and clear definitions of both success and failure in the long term. - If you take so long and get so unlucky that the volcano erupts, killing you and your entire tribe, that's a failure. - If you bring enough resources along with the tribal totem back to the giant dinosaur that the entire tribe lives on, you can all leave the island together before it blows. That's it. That's the game. Determining what dice go into actions is so straightforward and so reasonable that it's extremely easy to translate fictional description into mechanical reification. Unlike many games in its family, **Zoic** makes it very easy to figure out what kind of complication you should be looking at imposing when you have partial successes. You could go so far as to introduce a different colored die for each narrative aspect and look specifically at which ones had other than a six in a test. If you're looking for something small, cheap, and fun, if you like the idea of being a caveman with a pet dinosaur, you're not going to find anything that scratches the itch quite as directly as **Zoic**. I've got to go feed my pterodactyl. Out. ## Post Scriptum: 2024-08-10 > [!note] Editor's Note > > Due to strange circumstances, I had a reason to come back and look at this particular entry, and — holy shit, how did I let all of those typos and structural issues fall through the cracks? > > They're cleaned up now because there was no way I was going to let that stay once I saw it. > > I'm shocked, shocked, I tell you, that such would ever make it through my personal editing sweeps. The page also uses the cover as the image associated when you link to the page from anywhere else. So that's a step forward too. > > One of the great things about digital gardens is that you can go back and fix things anytime you want to. I really wanted to.