Tuesday, January 07, 2014

Sentences for Traits in Five by FIve

One of my players has volunteered to take a turn in my current Five by Five campaign to be the GM. This is pretty awesome as it gives me a chance to participate as a player and see Five by Five from the other side of the dice. The characters are currently in a high fantasy setting (hence, I suppose all the emphasis on trying to create fantasy trappings for the game) so, I made a character appropriate for the high fantasy genre (but with a bit of a silly anachronistic twist ... our game tends to genre hop. We started in a zombie apocalypse that turned space invasion that turned high fantasy.

I found that as I was jotting down ideas for character traits that each was a simple sentence. I ended up keeping the sentences themselves and just putting the product values beside each one to complete the character. Here is what I have:

Richrath Rilenon
- Elf Prince and Adventuring Rock-Bard

I rock out with magic spell songs! (6)
My mythril guitar is a deadly weapon! (5)
I charm the masses with my exotic elf beauty! (4)
My lithe elf body gives me speed, agility, and grace! (3)
I possess enhanced elf senses like infra-vision and pointy ears! (2)
My weakness is saying, "no" to the ladies! (D)

I really like the idea of using full sentences to define traits over restricting character descriptors to only one or two words. It helps to give each trait context and adds a bit of flavor. Future versions of Five by Five will incorporate "sentence trait" examples over "word trait" examples.

Richrath's first game should be tonight. I will let you know how it goes. (Oh, and a special prize to the first person who can correctly guess where my name, "Richrath" comes from!)

Regards,


Jeff Moore


3 comments:

  1. Hey Richrath,this is Keiko! You have the same name as REO Speedwagons former lead guitarist and songwriter! Im sure you dont know who that is but hes an amazing guitarist where I come from. If we got your namesake together with my guitar mentor we would have something!

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0VNqxw2XHZ8

    Rock on Richrath! Looking forward to our future jam sessions!

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  2. LOL ... Yep. This Five by Five character is based on a 1st Ed AD&D elf fighter/magic-user that I played in high school. And when I was in growing up REO Speedwagon were the kings of rock until the 80's turned them into a girl band ... LOL. Decade of Rock and Roll was a compilation album of their music from 1970 to 1980 and I wore two copies of the double-album completely out.

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  3. Awesome! I won the Special Prize!!! Yaaa
    *Dances*
    Maybe the special prize is a horse resurrection spell?

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