Party Leader verse Player Leader Part I

My eyes swept over the walls. I had steady reports and knew the situation, but now that I had returned to my command post I instinctively looked for myself. The battle raged and we were being pressed, but still we held.


I looked down calling “Tevian!” although it did not register until I said his name that the boy might not have returned. I felt a small measure of relief when he appeared beside me, covered in soot and blood looking much I must have looked.


The enemy had breached the wall nearby and I had lead the command staff and guard contingent into the fray to push them back. The boys, doing their duty, had followed to run messages and maintain the communication with the other sections.


“My compliments to Captain Arian and Lord Woolsack. Ask them to report at once.” Without a moment's hesitation the boy was gone. For a moment, I envied his youth and energy, and then wearily returned to battle.


“Gentlemen, the enemy breached our defenses. Although they could not maintain their foothold, it is a victory that will embolden them. Their next thrust will be devastating.”


Woolsack was an old man of many years experience, this news came as no surprise to him. Arian was younger, but a competent officer. Both shifted their eyes to the enemy.


“They prepare to pull back, my lord, …” observed Arian seeing the same thing I had seen.


“With enough daylight left to reform and come at us again.” Finished Woolsack, echoing my thoughts.


It did not matter that they assessed the situation the same way I did, nor did it matter what else they were thinking. I did not call them here to seek their advice. What could they give? My men were spent. If the enemy came again today, we would loose the wall. I knew it and they knew it. No I did not seek advice. I called them to issue orders.


“Woolsack, call up the Reserves and Rear Guard. I want every man and every bow on the wall.” I could see in his eyes the resolve to fight to the end, he approved of staying on the wall and not falling back.


“Arian, rig the catapults for maximum range. I want them loaded with the fire oil. All of it. When the enemy blows their recall, unleash hell. We pin them between arrow and fire.”


Woolsack and Arian looked confused. Both understood the orders, but could not see the purpose. Breaking a forward charge they could see, but hitting an enemy pulling out was just wasting our own time to rest and re-group.


“You have your orders gentlemen. Everything. Hit them hard.”


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The men huddled and were afraid. Their horse’s pawed nervously on the ground, sensing their riders’ unease. ‘Suicide’ moaned Kron. They were beaten and they knew it. Falling back to the keep made sense, what the name of the Seven where they doing in the marshalling yard? The entire Calvary was there, and Kron could see only one reason for it.


Five minutes ago, the enemy had blown their recall, the walls above singed with bows and the heavy catapults crashed near by, the heat of their destructive payloads could be felt even here. It would be hell on the other side of the gates.


The clink of a bit, the rub of leather and quite muttering of five thousand men silenced between two heartbeats. Lord Erland entered the yard. Kron watched him as did every man there. Watched as he mounted a charger and moved to the front of the formation.


The terror of knowing that they were going to sally out into the madness on the other side of the wall was gone. The King was coming with them.


“Riders! Stay with me! Hold the line! Our archers support us on either side. The enemy stands before us. Our catapults have blocked their orderly retreat. With horse and steel and courage ... We will drive them into the flames.” He spoke in a normal voice, almost quite it seemed. But every man in the yard heard his words.


The gate swung open and the sally ramps dropped with a crash.


“Let us go among them.” He said calmly and spurred his horse forward.


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Woolsack stood on the wall. The catapults lay still. Eighty thousand men cheered. He shook his head as he watched the riders return. Beyond them the enemy fled. Woolsack looked down and saw his King, bearing a wounded man across his lap back into the city and felt a flush a pride, honor, and most of all hope.


An hour ago, he was sure all would be lost. The enemy had the advantage; they had captured a section of wall. They would have taken it had they come again. First the wall, then the city, and then the keep.


His King had snatched that from them. As the enemy withdrew to regroup for another charge, he had mauled them. Throwing fire into their path and peppering them with arrows, then the charge. That is what had done it. An orderly withdrawal had been turned into a route.


No army who’s moral had broken like that could be made to fight again!


 It would be days before the enemy commanders could reform their troops. 


Days. 


By then the armies of the East would arrive.


They had not survived this day ...


They had won.

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It has been a long while sense I posted, the Holidays at work are brutal. But that doesn't mean I haven't been devoting some time to my blog. The short 'story' and I use the term loosely, is an introduction to a concept I've been thinking about: The Party Leader and Player Leader. The next two parts of this entry (coming in a few days) will deal with each in turn.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that the reason I've been thinking about these issues is that Jean-Baptiste has been elected Party Leader in the All For One game.

Till part two, Keep Rolling My Friends.

Great Character Revisited

Two sessions of All For One down and one 'episode' or adventure in the can. It is time to revisit the Great Character concept for Jean Baptiste de La Pointe. Unfortunately it is already apparent that my character is somewhat flawed. Jean Baptiste was designed to be a socialite/high-skill character. The first adventure proved that the All For One skill system is almost totally unforgiving in making successful skill checks when a character doesn't actually have the skill required. Despite the initial character design of spending all starting experience on skill, Jean Baptiste is still seriously lacking.

In order to make a skill check in All For One, a player rolls a number of dice equal to their skill rating. Each die rolled is either a success or failure. The number of dice that are successes are counted up and compared to the difficultly assigned to the skill check. Exceeding that difficulty is a success, coming in under is a failure. If a player doesn't have the skill in question, their skill rating defaults to the associated Primary Attribute minus two. With all of Jean Baptiste's Primary Attributes being twos and threes, that means any skill check with a skill he doesn't possess starts with at best one and at worst zero dice!

Now, having read the rules several times, I knew this going in. It is possible to gain additional dice by using style points on a one for one basis. It was my plan to make up for any lack of skill in this manner. However, I quickly discovered this works once. Given our limited play time (3-4 hours) blowing through all starting style points on the first roll gives a chance to make that particular roll, but style points are not awarded fast enough to be useful again in this fashion (i.e. they won't be flowing like water which the rulebook seemed to indicate would be the case). With 30 skills in the game, odds are good that a player will have to make several skill checks with skills they do not have. Jean Baptiste started with ten skills. More than any other player, but still only one third of the total number of skills.

Fortunately, the skills are quite varied and many of them are not likely to come up as a necessary skill challenged very often. And many of them will not be something that every player will have to make. Some of them however, are skills that most if not all players will have to make. In the adventure we just finished, several of the combats required either an Athletics or Acrobatics roll. Jean Baptiste had neither and, at the time, didn't have any style points to spend making them automatic failures. Not good for a Musketeer. Also, the second part of the adventure started off in a chase with Jean Baptiste driving a carriage. Not a problem I thought, driving a carriage is a Ride skill check and I was driving because I had the most skill in Ride. The second roll however in the chase wasn't a Ride challenge, it was a Survival Check! The road forked and navigation falls under Survival, a check was needed to take the correct fork in the road. Despite having lived in Paris for nine years according to his established background, it appears the Jean Baptiste (mechanically anyway) has no clue how to get around in the city because he doesn't have any ranks in Survival. While that's an stretch, clearly Jean Baptiste knows how to get to places he's already been, but without Survival, in a pinch he cannot figure out where he is or where he is heading.

So, right off the bat, Jean Baptiste has proven flawed. The GM awarded a full fifteen experience points after the adventure for character improvement and indicated that this would be the norm. Also a departure from the indications in the rule book where three to five was recommended. While this made my original plan of banking two points to help with my first planned character improvement, the Talent Parry, totally obsolete, it definitely would help with correcting the flaws I see in Jean Baptiste. There are two ways in which I could about correcting these flaws.

The first is by utilizing a Talent I thought about during Character Creation, Jack of all Trades. This Talent eliminates the negative two penalty for using a skill you are not trained in. It also gives you access to all of the specialty skills that cannot be used at all, unless you are trained in them, by letting you use them at a negative two penalty. While this is a Talent that makes a great deal of sense for what type of character I wanted Jean Baptiste to be, I shied away from it during character creation because it's a feat/talent available in a lot of systems that I have used often in Min/Max builds. Looking back, that may have been a mistake on my part. At the moment, I cannot purchase that Talent for Jean Baptiste because, while I have the experience points to buy it (fifteen being the requirement for a new Talent) I don't have the prerequisite of a three intelligence stat met. I could boost Jean Baptiste's intelligence to three (again, fifteen being the requirement for that, new score times five) with his current experience, go through one more adventure with the skill flaws I see and buy Jack of all Trades after the next experience award. Doing so would however, in my mind anyway, kind of waste all the starting experience I spent at Character Creation on skills. I could also petition the GM for a retcon (thanks to my brother there is precedence for retcons in our games) and switch out Jean Baptiste's purchased skills and intelligence stat and buy Jack of all Trades with starting experience points, then use the awarded experience to buy it again (the Talent can be purchased up to three times, each after the first giving a plus one bonus) which would put him right where I wanted him to be at this point.

The second method would be spending all of the awarded experience points and one of my banked points to purchase eight new skills at level one (two points each to improve a skill from zero to one and no more than a one point increase at a time by rule). By using this method, I would go from ten of thirty skills to eighteen of thirty skills with most of the ones Jean Baptiste not being trained in being the less often used or obscured skills. I say that now, but just you watch, in the next adventure we will have to fire cannons and I'll be sitting there going, "yup, ten years as a French Army officer and I've got no idea how to fire a cannon because I'm not trained in Gunnery". This method does however put him very close to what I imaged him to be and doesn't require wasting his starting experience points or asking for a retcon and being teased by my brother for doing so.

At this point I've done up a version of Jean Baptiste using the second method. I plan to also make up a retcon version for comparison. After our post game web hangout next Monday where we discuss the game, I will make a choice on where to go from here. The retcon clearly needs GM approval and that may require some lobbying, but in truth, he reads this Blog and the whole thing is already laid out. And truth be told, without seeing a copy of a retcon version, I'm not unhappy with the second method except it's kind of sort of the long way around to do what I didn't do because I was trying too hard to stay away from Min/Maxing. In either case, the object, as all ways is the Great Character, so my decision will be based upon whichever method brings me closer to that.

I think that the entire issue actually has to do with perception. I based my perception on what Jean Baptiste was and will be on the background created for him. We didn't want to start off as newly recruited Musketeers. So Jean Baptiste is a man of 19 plus years experience. While only 36 years of age, which is still fairly young by modern standards, in 1636 France, he'd be middle-aged and at the peak of his professional career. Joining the Army at age 17 and spending ten years as a military officer then nine years as a Musketeer it was easy to picture him as a contemporary of Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Unfortunately, while we decided that the characters wouldn't be newly recruited Musketeers, the game system for creating characters is designed for beginning characters who have room to grow. It wasn't possible to roll up the character using the rules and make him actually fit the background as a man with 19 plus years of experience. When it's all said and done, despite what we planned on, creating established Musketeers, we were still rolling up the equivalent of first level characters. I lost track of that and so my character didn't meet my perception of him.

Until next time... Keep Rolling My Friends.

Thunk! Message for you Sir!

One of the more interesting features of the All for One game is how resources work. Each is purchased for the character using experience points. In this game, things like Wealth are transformed into story material rather than goals. It's the player, not the GM who decides, how wealthy the character is going to be. For example, two character buy Wealth 1, they each get, at the end of the month after expenses 50 extra livres. Are they both as wealthy as each other? Not necessary. Character One is a Noble (he has Status 2) and Character Two is an Army Sergeant (he has Rank 2). Each has spent the same number of experience points on resources and each ends up with the same amount of cash at the end of the month. But the Noble eats fine food, has many expensive and stylish cloths, lives in a large house with servants and throws balls and parties. The Sergeant lives in a barracks, eats at the mess hall and likely owns only one or two sets of clothing other than his uniform. Disposable income after expenses are paid is the same. Neither wants for anything outside of their normal life style which is defined by what the player purchases for their character. Of course, in the case of the Noble, it may be assumed he has a large estate in which to throw parties and live and what not, but to actually use it in the game, it has to be purchased as a Refuge.

Resources are story materials, but they also have a mechanical impact in the game. In this way, the game eliminates one of the classical reasons for adventuring, money. It's not important in All For One, the game doesn't revolve around treasure, rather it revolves around the story. The reason for seeking adventure in All For One is adventure!

One of the most interesting Resource available in the game is the Lackey. Given as a freebie, every Musketeer gets a personal man servant in the form of a level 0 Follower Resource. This is Alfred to Bruce Wayne. Not a main character, but important enough to the story to require special note. While the Follower Resource may be purchased by any character, this one (given for free, but improvable) is unique. This lackey is NOT an NPC. Rather, in a neat bit of game mechanics, this lackey is created and played by another player at the table. Think Monty Python's Holy Grail movie. Just about everyone played more than one role in the movie. In All For One each player gets to play two characters; their main Musketeer character and another character's lackey!

The game states "In addition, a Musketeer is a gentleman, and all gentlemen have servants, better known as lackeys". This is a very important distinction between the lackey and other followers. The lackey is a paid employee of the Musketeer (although they don't actually have to worry about paying them as the game assumes the lackey salary is part of normal expenses) and serves at very least as the characters valet. Traditionally this means that the valet does things like laying out their masters clothes, taking care of personal items, drawing baths and shaving their master. Valets were also responsible for making travel arrangements, dealing with bills and handling money matters concerning his master's household. Valets answered messengers and managed their master's schedules. In short, they did all manner of things for their masters. While some of these things might be considered beneath a gentleman, most gentleman employed valets to save themselves time by not having to personally deal with tedious tasks.

I had none of this in mind when I asked the player whose Lackey I'll be making and playing what he wanted for his Lackey. While I was flattered by his response that he trusted me to come up with something awesome, something else he said was the inspiration for this post. He said in real life he wouldn't have any say in the matter. The more I thought about it the more I thought 'no, that's not entirely true'. A lackey is a paid employee. His Musketeer hired this person, after presumably looking for someone to hire. He would have hired someone he likes, with skills and abilities useful and desirable.

Now that doesn't mean I cannot as a player makeup whatever I like that fits the mold. After all it is going to be my secondary character. Why shouldn't I make up just what I like and what will be fun to play? But consideration needs to be paid to who and why the other player's character would hire this lackey to be their servant. The game also states that the lackey should have some skill that complements the Musketeer and the group in general. So asking for input from the other player makes perfect sense.

To that end, it makes sense to figure out what my character Jean Baptiste would want in his own lackey. As a noble, Jean Baptiste would want a lackey that fits in properly with the other upper class servants. Someone who is socially acceptable and a good fit. As far as skills go, Jean Baptiste doesn't have any sneaky or underhanded type abilities, so something like that might balance out the character. Alternately, some sort of herald like skills might complement the character. A lackey who is an encyclopedia of Paris nobles and houses would be an invaluable assistant and great complement.

Now all I need to do is make up my second All For One character.

All for one, and more for me.

Keep rolling my friends...
(FYI - it is inappropriate to allow your lackey to roll for you!)

Names have Power

Amber is dead. The game that replaced it dead. Characters got almost made, but the GM couldn't get the high level of outside interest in the game he wanted. Now we will be playing (or more specifically are playing as we already had a partial session) Pathfinder, the Kingmaker line of adventures. Meh.

It's D&D. Granted it's not 4e (and thank god for that), but it's D&D. Basically improved 3rd edition. Or improved 3.5 or 3.75 or 3 and seven eighths or wherever the hell they left off before they bastardized it for 4e. Don't get me wrong, now that I'm ranting a little, 4e is an alright system. It's just not D&D. Don't look at me like that. It's not. It's table top MMO. Everything is equal and balanced and vanilla. It's too easy to look right through the fluff and see the system.  

3rd edition was deceit. So Pathfinder. My friend who is running it is a big fan. I was not thrilled with going back to multiple book, crunchy system, fantasy. Not that there is anything wrong with crunchy systems or fantasy (there is something wrong with multiple book, but that was a rant last month). I just wasn't in the mood for it.

So I decide on the front line fighter. Sword and Shield. That way I don't have to invest in the whole spell or special ability thing and can just play it simple. Have fun with my friends at the table was my goal for this game. The whole 'great character thing' kind of went out the window when planning for this game. Again, my attitude on the approach was 'meh'. I do take my gaming seriously, and while I didn't make the time for this game the way I was doing for All For One, when I had the time I did my due diligence and came up with the basic character concept. I also reviewed the rules and Kingmaker setting.

When we sat down at the table, to 'make characters' and play the first session, I had just about everything I need to play. A human fighter. Long sword and shield. Out came a character sheet and pencil to transfer everything over and fill in the details.

First on every character sheet ever made (alright, maybe not every, but 99% of them at least) is a spot for CHARACTER NAME. I thought for a second and skipped over it, writing instead everything I already had. While I was doing so, I looked back up at the NAME line. A borrowed rule book to look up tables and buy equipment and a glance back at the NAME line. I borrowed an Advanced Player's Guide to look up traits (the GM decided to play with them) and I glanced again back at the NAME line. I went outside to smoke (yes, I smoke, sue me) and thought about the NAME line. When I sat back down I wrote Cyrus in on the Character Name line.

And like that I wasn't playing a Fighter. I was playing Cyrus. A former student of the cloth who didn't have the calling. Not a soldier, but a leader, a warrior, a future general. Strong, tough, charismatic. A swordsmen he, no mere brawler. Tall, blonde and handsome. Friendly and loyal. A man of his word. Someone who enjoyed the simpler things in life. I began to wonder and make up more about him. Thinking of what his plans will be, how he will fight. Suddenly I began thinking I might want Cyrus to become the King of the lands we were out to conquer.  

All of that because of a name. Names have power. Names define things, make them real. It's why many older civilizations attached so much important to a name. Even to the point of naming ceremonies for new born children or the taking of an adult name when a child reaches the proper age. My own interest in the game didn't get sparked until my character was born. And that didn't happen until he had a name. Before that he was stats on a piece of paper. The information needed to play the game with my friends. Now, with a Cyrus, I will be in the game with my friends not just playing it.

Names have power.

Of course such inspirations don't work for everybody. Sometimes a rose is just a rose. While my character was being born, all of my friends were creating their own characters. One of them, before the game started, announced the name of his own character, a total and blatant rip off of a character's name from a novel. This drew and incredulous response of 'Really?' from one of my other friends while several of us just snickered. The friend with the stolen character name responded without missing a beat, hey I changed it, I added an apostrophe in the spelling. Too which I lost it and almost fell out of my chair laughing. I assume there was additional conversation, but honestly, I didn't hear any of it.

All of which wasn't totally fair. Names have power. If that name, or the character it represents, speaks to my friend and tells him something about his own character, then so be it. It's not like we are writing a novel here and are going to be sued for plagiarism or anything. Of course he is our friend, so we have been merciless in our ridicule of him. But none of us are totally innocent of doing the same thing, we are just not as blatant about it. I fully expect one day to be playing a futuristic space game with my own character escaping from the bad guys next to Han So'lo.

"What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." 
William Shakespeare 

Keep rolling my friends.

He who has the most dice in their die pool wins!

My last post, where I posted Jean Baptiste de La Pointe and my thought process in creating him, inspired a bit of discussion. Not here, in fact, I'm not even sure how many people beyond the three that have admitted it even read this, rather in an e-mail thread. The first point in that discussion was the GM clearing up how he intended to deal with heavy combat orientated characters. Basically he intends to take advantage the rules pertaining to multiple attackers in a single round by having a large portion of the bad guys team up on the killing machine characters. The second point in that discussion was about Melee skill versus the Fencing skill. Fortunately we will have a definitive answer on that soon. Bonus when the GM knows Paul "Wiggy" Wade-Williams (author of the game) personally.

In that discussion, one of my fellow players made a comment that inspired me to think a little more about Min/Maxed characters in this game. As previously noted, I am a recovering Min/Max player and to be honest, did do a little Min/Maxing with Jean Baptiste as far as his combat skill goes. I am hopeful that the GM's strategy will be effective should my fear of 'killing machine' characters become a reality. Thus I plan on tweaking my character a little to bring down his Melee skill some, and possibly replace it with Fencing depending on Wiggy's answer.

I do feel that, especially looking at the pre-generated characters in the book, Jean Baptiste was not overly done combat wise as currently devised. I decided to actually build a Min/Maxed killing machine character, just to see how far it could actually be taken. Sort of as a this is what would have made before and how does what I did make compare.

So, Mousier Hinny-Punter (a bad French name for Mr. Ass-Kicker) was born. To start I chose an Archetype of Swordsman and Motivation of Fame because Swordsman and Badass wasn't available. With 15 points available for Primary Attributes and Hinny-Punter being a pure melee fighter killing machine type (I could have done ranged version as well, but didn't feel it necessary) I decided on Body, Charisma, Dexterity, Intelligence and Willpower of 2 for a total of 10 points and a Strength of 5. That gives him all average stats but an excellent strength. Good because all melee combat goes off of strength. Secondary Attributes worked out to be: Initiative 4, Perception 4, Move 7, Size 0, Defense 4, Stun 2 and Health 4. As a pure fighting machine, I'm a little worried about the low Defense and Health ratings. I might consider lowering Charisma to 1 and raising Body to 3 just because that helps add one to both.

Skills are next. Well, that would be 4.5 of 15 points right into Fencing because you may not purchase more than five skill levels in any one skill during character creation and Fencing is the big one for this type of character. With Fencing you have to choose a school, which will be Spanish Style. Why? +1 to Thrust and Slash. He will have to take a -1 to Disarm and Feint, but those are not killing moves, so who cares. It's not like he will be Feinting and the only Disarming he will be doing will be in removing arms with his blade. Additionally, Hinny-Punter will specialize in the Spanish Style for another .5 points gaining him one extra die. The game only allows that once during character creation so for the moment his attack is Strength 5 + Fencing 5 + specialized 1 for 11 dice and any attack will be either a thrust or slash so 12 dice. Nice.

At this point I'll expend another .5 points in each Firearms and Ride will and have spent 6 of 15 skill points. I get one more skill for free at 0 and it will cost .5 to make that a one. For that skill I choose Melee. Why when I already have Fencing? Because I will spend the .5 and 3 more points to get Melee 4 and can now use Skill Synergy giving Hinny-Punter +2 dice to Fencing attacks. I've spent 9.5 of 15 points and will be rolling 14 dice to thrust and slash attacks without adding in the weapon or any talents! Next comes Brawl 5 and something to be determined later at 0.

With Talents and Resources next, I am going to skip any thought of Resources and also use the 15 experience points at the end of character creation to take two talents. I have a couple of choices here to add to my kill-e-ness ability.

I could go with Skill Aptitude Fencing and Strong. That would bump my Strength to 6, Fencing to 7 and move to 8. Take Great Sword as his weapon (because I'm Maxing here) and I'm rolling 22 dice (6 for strength, 5 for Fencing, 2 for Synergy with Melee, 1 for specialized in Fencing, 2 for Aptitude in Fencing, 1 for thrust/slash in the Spanish Style and 5 for the Great Sword) and it's just like playing Shadowrun!

Of course with a Defense of 4 and Health of 4, when the GM throws a group of melee enemies or a couple of guys with pistols at Mousier Hinny-Punter, he's toast. So, I look at another option for Talents. Taking Parry and Riposte he can substitute his Fencing Rating (13 in this case) for his Defense, doing so as a reflex action Parry against all melee or brawl attacks. Additionally, any time he beats his attack with a parry, and with 13 dice that should be often, he deals out damage with the Riposte! Sick.

He is still vulnerable against ranged attacks, but then so is almost everyone in this game. Oh, and he's almost totally useless unless he's fighting someone. And unless fighting lots of really good someone's he's pointless. But isn't that what Min/Maxing is all about?

Now that I've disgusted myself with this exercise... keep rolling my friends.

Character - One for All!

I have gone through a lot of what's has already happened in making up Jean Baptiste de La Pointe. Here is, the first draft so to speak of the character. Unless something dramatic happens, I expect this is the character I will be playing in the next few weeks.

I took Archetype Noble. It seemed like a no brainier with the free resource of Status 2 given by the GM. Two other choices here would have been soldier, given his background, or one of the concepts I was toying with in the back of my head was a doctor of divinity and medicine. Common given the time period and not likely to be something anyone else would have come up. Given that I decided to make him a full out Noble, doctor more or less was no longer a choice. That was a layman's profession in the time period. Historically, it did happen very rarely and this is a fantasy game, I didn't feel as a player that I'd want to combine the two.

With a Noble Archetype duty or honor seemed a strong motivation that would work within his background. I went with honor because it's more fun than duty.

The character's stats are a good strong mix of 2's and 3's. I wanted an even mix and strong skills for this character so pushing for a 4 in there would have been an issue. Besides, the cost versus the return in a die pool game like All For One just isn't worth even that little bit of Min/Maxing. Secondary Attributes calculated right off the primary.

Skills came next. All For One give Musketeers Melee (or Fencing), Firearms, Ride and one other skill for free starting at 0 with only a half point needed to buy them up. I took Warfare as the free bee as it made sense given his soldier background. A skill rating (die pool) in All For One of 4-5 is average, 6-7 is good and 8-9 is great. Given that Jean Baptists attributes are all 2's and 3's, expending 2 points on any skill puts him into the average range, which, theoretically should be good especially seeing how style points can be used to boost things. I took firearms, ride and warfare up to 2's by expending 1.5 points on each giving him a solid average in each. I spent 4.5 to bring his melee skill up to 5 (the maximum allowed for starting character) giving him a rating of 8. More on why later. I went ahead and purchased Bureaucracy, Diplomacy, Perform and Brawl to round out his starting skills. Bureaucracy because he's a noble and soldier, helps deal with the administrations and organizations of the world. Diplomacy because that handles leadership (he was an officer) and etiquette (he's also a gentlemen). Preform because that covers dancing (a lively tune, I'm inspired to dance). And Brawl because I learned very early in the test combat that if you want to hit someone, strength alone isn't going to do the job!

I don't see Jean Baptiste as a master swordsman, and with a rapier in his hands, his starting die pool would be 10 dice. That is above good and rated as excellent. During the play testing, 10 dice against an average opponents 5 dice was a bit of overkill. So why do it? Some of what I've heard from my fellow players and the GM has lead me to believe that I can expect a certain amount of Min/Maxing in the game and to be frank, I was worried that in combat situation designed to be challenging for those Min/Maxed characters, Jean would be left behind. So I maxed a little to give him a better chance to be just one cut below the killing machines. I expect to see players stepping into combat with die pools of 14-18. As I stated before, against an average opponent (5 dice) this is waaaayyyy overkill and a total waste of points that could have gone somewhere else. On the other hand, somewhere along the lines, the GM is likely to throw that right back at us to provide 'a challenge' and with 10 dice, Jean might at least be able to defend himself.

Resources and Talents came next. You get one or the other. Jean already had rank 0 Rank and Follower for being a Musketeer, and the free Rank 2 Status that comes with a +1 bonus resource. I chose wealth for the bonus so I could live a little. A man's got to have some standards in Paris. I decided during the background creation phase, that I wanted Jean to have a home outside of the Barracks so I took a Refuge resource rather than a talent.

A character flaw was next. I decided to go with Merciful as nothing else really fit my vision for Jean Baptiste and I wanted a flaw for him. So despite his great melee score, he is not a man who is willing to kill lightly. Plus I figure it will make for great role playing dealing with the other musketeers, who shouldn't be killing either.

Finally, some experience points to spend. These are suppose to represent the character's development from being an experienced Musketeer. I could have gotten a talent or another resource with these, but looking him over, I felt he was lacking some Musketeer like skills. I boosted his Brawl up because if he's not a killer, he has to have some way to deal nonlethal damage. Then I got investigation and streetwise to represent some experience with life on the streets of Paris. Done.

Keep rolling my friends.

The devil is in the details.

The GM has released some information pertaining to character background, mainly, a free (randomly generated) level two resource and an NPC that has to somehow be linked with the character. For me, the resource was Status and the NPC was the Madam of Whispers from Engine Publishing NPC book MASKS. 

I struggled with this for a while, firstly because I didn't want to do any work on the character without knowing this information. I was worried I would come up with something and then the resource wouldn't fit. Second, because I got Status. Working noble into many backgrounds I was considering would have been a bit tough. Alright, no it wouldn't have, it's easy to say, oh yeah and he's a Count, but he ignores his titles and lands and wants nothing to do with them. That however squanders a perfectly good free resource and smacks too much of Athos from the Disney version of the movie. Embracing Status of noble does, by default, define something of the character. While a lot of that is still my choice, it is still a minor limiting factor as far as I'm concerned. But as I didn't come up with much of the character before hand, I decided it's not a major issue.   

Here then is the background for Jean Baptist de La Pointe

de La Pointe is an ancient Nobel French family that, like most aristocracy of the time, can trace their line to the Throne. A certain percentage of the nobility of Europe would have to die before a de La Pointe would sit on the French Throne (and oddly enough, in that case, they would be able to claim the Austrian Throne before the French one), they are, none the less, related to Louis XIII.

The de La Pointe family is not however known for its ties to French Royalty (most nobles can do that), rather the de La Pointes are famous for their military contributions to France. The families ancestors include many heroes of past wars, a long line of generals and even a few admirals. Holding a Dukedom in North Western France, the family has been in decline for several years.

The Current Duc Aubry de La Pointe has no surviving brothers and only two male cousins. He is an elderly man but is still in good health. A retired General himself, The Duc married late in life. He sired three boys and two girls. The eldest boy, Galien was a sickly child who has grown into a sickly man. Galien, unable to participate in physical pastimes has become something of a scholar. The youngest boy, Renier, has just finished his schooling and joined the Army in accordance with family tradition. The girls Ameline and Bonassias both still live at home, although they have many suitors and are of prime marrying age.

The middle boy, Jean Baptiste, born right after Galien and before Ameline, Bonassias and Renier (in that order) also followed in the family tradition and joined the army. Both his name and natural ability severed him well moving up through the ranks till he held the post of Major in the infantry. Although it was possible for his father to just purchase this, or even a higher rank, for his son, Jean Baptiste insisted upon earning his own way up. At least to the point that it was possible.

Jean Baptiste, although his personal career was strong and positive, quickly became disillusioned with the overall stupidity and laziness inherent in the French Army. Most intolerable to him was superior officers who obtained their rank through favor or money and where poor leaders and worse military men. 

After ten years of service, Jean was considering leaving the military. His father had recently elevated him with additional lands and titles clearly expecting that he, not Galien would one day succeed him as Duc. Jean knew that although he was now a Vicomte, with his father still ruling, there was no need for him to visit or manage his new lands.

He was debating what to do about his future when the question was answered at a party in Paris. A young woman, beautiful, intelligent and charming became the target of ridicule when her low birth was reviled. Jean stepped in to defend the girls honor. His opponent did not know he was the son of a Duc and a skilled military officer and he did not know that the fop he was facing in a duel was a Musketeer. Jean won quickly scoring first blood much to the dismay of Guiber Hamund, his opponent. Guiber was, if nothing else, a gentlemen and offered his apologies to the woman.

Considering the matter closed, Jean Baptiste was surprised when a few days later, he was summoned to the office of M. de Trèville who heard of the duel. M. de Trèville was investigating allegations against Guiber which he had already proven to be false, but was being thorough. During the interview talk quickly became less about Guiber and more about Jean Baptiste's background. When it concluded, de La Pointe began preparing to return to the field as his leave was almost at an end. Before he could leave Paris, M. de Trèville offered him a position in the Kings Musketeers.

Jean Baptiste did not need to considered the offer before accepting. He would have to surrender his commission, but he was considering doing that anyway. He wasn't needed at home and enjoyed Paris immensely. Plus no member of the family had ever been a Musketeer.

Duc Aubry de La Pointe owned property in Paris near the Musketeer headquarters and the palace. A large Hotel and several attached townhouses. Writing to his father, Jean Baptiste obtained a letter of introduction to the manager of the properties, a woman named Sybille la Fère (the Madam of Whispers) who still runs one of the more prestigious brothels in Paris, the House of Whispers. Jean took one of the townhouses as his residency and began his new career as a Musketeer. 

Keep rolling my friends.