Spotlight: Character Creation Cast

Today in a Terrible Warriors Podcast Spotlight, Justin connects with Ryan Boelter from the Character Creation Cast. Does What It Says On The Tin The Character Creation Cast is just what you think it’s gonna be but then goes to be much more than that. Designed to inspect and explore the character creation phase of TTRPGs it’s no surprise that we wanted to sit down with Ryan to talk about his show after we’ve just dipped our toe into this topic with our own Session Zero series. They break each game examination into three parts, creating character and learning the world and it’s rules, interviewing the creators of the game, and then writing fan fiction about the characters they have created but which they’ll never get a chance to actually play a game with. Character Creation Cast has been ongoing since 2018 and they’ve already explored more than 36 different games and along that way Ryan has picked up some common themes and best examples of what makes character creation in tabletop RPGS so interesting and unique an experience. Blending The Best Into A Puree Of Game So what’s one to do with all this collected knowledge? Why not make your tabletop RPG? And call it Chimera and take the best tools and styles of character creation and world building from the most successful games out there and craft a PbtA game that blends genres and character tropes into unique world building exercise? Ryan’s game is still in testing but he shares with us all about the process and thinking that’s been going into Chimera and what to expect from it and along the way Justin may have even helped him devise a wonderful mechanic to help randomize the character generation process! We’ll have to wait and see if his idea makes it past the testing phase. Safe To Play While Ryan is taking notes on the best games and systems available out there for players he’s also hoping that more and more games begin to include safety tools into the design process of the game itself and not just bootstrapped on after the game ships. We break down our thoughts on the importance of safety tools, offer some personal stories, and share some great examples of safety mechanics in action that can be done in a way that doesn’t just make your game safer but also will improve your story’s performance and the enjoyment of all the players at your table. Links As mentioned in the show you can check out Character Creation Cast at charactercreationcast.com Find out more about Chimera at chimerapbta.com Listen to his episode 8 Kinds of Fun with Jim McClure And follow Ryan on Twitter @lordneptune And check out Ryan’s sound design work on A Horror Borealis Music is licensed through Epidemic Sound Follow us on Twitter at @dicewarriors and you can support the show by becoming a patron at patreon.com/terriblewarriors