Hiya folks! As a preface, my last attempt at a BW Solo Game floundered a little - the situation was interesting, but the beliefs weren’t tied to an immediate situation in any way that made sense, so it struggled to get off the ground. I’ve scrapped that situation, and for my next attempt, plan to do something a little different.
Rather than exploring the world with a single character, I’d like to do 3 - all young people (3 LPs, rough 17-19 years of age at the end) who set out on their own to make their respective fortunes come their name days. Think Ged from Earthsea, or Allanna from the Lioness novels by Tamora Pierce. Having 3 characters means if I ever get bored or stuck, I can bounce to another character and see how they’re doing. The schema I came up with: One Became a Mage, One a Soldier, and One Stayed Behind. 3 LPs feels solid, and a trait or two to get them into trouble feels good from a Drama standpoint.
Except it’s kind of hard to make a mage on 3 LP’s.
The Soldier was easy: Born Peasant > Farmer > Woodcutter, and drop my Trait Points into Gloryhound for “Chivalrous Reasons”
The One Who Stayed Behind was trickier: Born Peasant > Peasant Pilgrim > Fisherman (I didn’t have a faithful character and thought it might be interesting if things ever go that way) with trait dips of Loyal and Dutiful to explain why they stayed behind. I’m still not completely happy with this - if head of household didn’t add 25 years to your life, I’d take that instead fictionally.
The Mage is the hardest: I love my dumb BW lifepath skills, and so I"m being a little picky with my choices here - Born Peasant > Aurgur > Shepeard is the dream, because Augur has such interesting traits in Touch of Ages and Dreamer, but without a way to get Gifted I might be shafting myself in the long run.
Now, I am being somehwat picky here - everyone is Born Peasant, and if I can, I’d like to grab the Touch of Ages trait to play with it. I’d also rather not take Apt Pupil if I can help it - that fictionally to me seems to establish you already have someone teaching you, and finding someone to teach this girl how to be a wizard is the whole point of her as an excersise - dramatically, trying to convince someone to teach you sorcery is more interesting than having it already. Maybe it’s better not to have gifted, and earn it through a trait “vote” or something? (Sill not sure how I plan to do trait votes on my lonesome yet)
I could lower the requirements for magic in the setting (I was thinking about using Art Magic primarily) but I still want that Earthsea feel that wizards are special. Burning up Interesting Young People in burning wheel (I tried to make a 3 LP Joan of Arc and it was kinda a pain to pull off). What do y’all think I should do? This is more a general brainstorming thread as I work through the initial setup of this solo game.