Character Setup

Character Setup for "In the Barony"

General Notes

With regard to deciding on your characters:

Non-combat skills and abilities will not be wasted
Having a Face may help, everyone being dumb and unwise and all surly may be suboptimal
And a note, this adventure is going to have RP and investigating

Deciding Backstory and Relationships

So, I guess we'll start with a session 0.5, it would be good if you got your character mostly set up... There are two things I'd like to do together... The setup is that you're going to start out as being paid to escort a merchant caravan to a town of about 2,000 souls that is the seat of the Barony (I'll leave name out until we start). The Barony is far away from any major population centers and mostly is a seemingly unending string of rural hamlets and villages. It's mainly notable for copper mining. The point of this escort gig for you is that you want to go here anyway (or at least don't mind it as a destination)

It's a several days' trek from its starting town I want you all to decide what this starting town is, besides a place that makes finished goods to take to the destination. I also would like to do what's called a "phase trio" in Fate, which is an exercise to connect each of you to two other people in the party. This means you won't know or have had any impact on the story of one person in the party, but will with two others.

And when you get to the seat of the barony, the idea is that you'll be looking for more work, together

Fwiw the the barony isn't a known hotbed of danger, its not near any borderlands (not to say that it's truly not, just not known for it)

Some backstory is welcome but you should be okay with adjusting it at session zero to work with your connections with other characters. But having a base story will help

For relationships, I would like to do a modified version of this https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/phase-trio

The first phase is your character’s first true adventure—his first book, episode, case, movie, whatever—starring him. You need to think up and write down the basic details of this story for the phase’s summary....

I will let you hash out the caravan origin town and why you want to leave it

My first thought is that it is smaller than the destination and/or economically depressed/low opportunity and/or you already local-heroed whatever tension was there. Also the destination is on a significant river so could be a gateway to more cosmopolitan places, however you do want to be looking for a gig there when you arrive, not just literally in transit. Maybe you owe a lot of money, idk

The adventure starts with you all traveling on this caravan for 3+ days so far

Troubles

Instead of a Flaw, I would like your characters to have a Trouble. You can tie it to the phase trio or have it be stand alone https://fate-srd.com/fate-core/your-character-idea#trouble

For this exercise, when the Fate srd says "High Concept", in terms of reference to D&D here, your high concept is basically your race plus class and maybe a three word summary of your background and backstory. So a High Concept might be "Human Fighter, champion of Springfield" or whatever you are. So when you read this in the description of Trouble:

Troubles also shouldn’t be directly related to your high concept—if you have Lead Detective, saying your trouble is "The Criminal Underworld Hates Me" is a dull trouble, because it is already assumed with your high concept.

Questions and Answers

What level are we starting at?

Level one.

How are we creating characters?

Rolling, Dallas style. Roll 3 sets of 6 4d6, pick one set.

Please roll your character attributes and have your characters mostly ready before the session (I trust you).

Can use 5e defined racial adjustments or the generic one from Tasha's ("Custom lineage")

Any forbidden options? (i.e. starting feats you don't want us to use)

No angels, cats, bugs, robots, geniuses lineage, this setting is more typical, human centric

Xp leveling, to keep you hungry. Won treasure will count as XP!

No twilight clerics, that shi looks broken

How are we doing Hit Points?

Hp you will choose the fixed or choose to roll in advance, each level. First level is max (edited)

Are We Using Variant Encumbrance?

No. We thought about variant encumbrance, but it looks like too much work for little *fun*