Author: tophersg

Would it be weird to drop all mundane traits/rolls and only have the game system impact magical stuff?

Would it be weird to drop all mundane traits/rolls and only have the game system impact magical stuff? Like, nonmagical action would just be narrated by consensus but witchcraft would involve dice and mechanics.

Traits would be like:

Sword: Magic affecting the mind

Wand: Magic affecting the spirit

Cup: Magic affecting the heart

Coin: Magic affecting the body

Tower: Magic affecting the world via your elemental archetype (frex the Fire Witch causing something to combust)

You are the Wind Witch.

You are the Wind Witch. Your friends think of you as “the cerebral one,” but really your excellent academic performance is more about your passion for being correct. You have high standards for everyone, and even higher standards for yourself – and failure is unacceptable. Your giftedness mostly expresses itself in your mastery of words, and one of your core beliefs is that language is the ultimate human achievement. You idealistically believe that if only people worked harder to communicate with and understand one another, all conflicts could be resolved. Frustratingly, things often don’t work out that way in real life (sometimes people even get angry at you for trying to mediate!) and in your disappointment you may lash out. As might be expected, your weapons are your words – whether a scalpel probing for tender spots, a dagger in the back, or a devastating claymore blow.

Your magic is the magic of the whispering breeze, the cold gale that cuts like a blade, the playful dust devil, the sudden downburst out of a clear sky, and the destructive force of the hurricane. You can inhale someone else’s breath to instantly speak their language like a native – or to pluck deeply hidden secrets from their memory. Connecting the minds of your coven via the astral wind currents is easy for you, as is hearing the dissonant tones inherent in every lie. You wield your ritual blade with an uncanny swiftness and can be as difficult to strike as a dancing mist. When you invoke the guardians of the Watchtower of the East, your control over the air is absolute, letting you blow away a threat, withhold the air from someone’s lungs, temporarily control the weather, or even fly…for a little while, anyway.

Your name probably reflects your nature, directly or indirectly (Abel, Chinook, Cloud, Gale, Guthrie, Hayate, Shamal, Sherwyn, Sky, Tate, Vane, Zeph).

So my upcoming Tal series will start off in the Seven Kingdoms to keep things scaled down and reduce setting shock.

So my upcoming Tal series will start off in the Seven Kingdoms to keep things scaled down and reduce setting shock. I want to limit decision paralysis too by limiting the available races for PCs.

So obviously I’ll have Cymrilians, Gnomekin, Sindarans, Kasmirans, Muses, Thralls, and Ardua on the list.

Question for Tal fans: if I were to add 3 to 5 more races to that list, which ones do you think should make the cut?

(Early contenders for me include Danuvians, Jaka, and Zandir, but I would really love input!)