Transcript
WEBVTT
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The dad voice and the dad look, the glare you can give to your kid that only they know, like, Oh, I'm in trouble, especially in LARP situations.
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It's like, Hey, anything goes, man, this is as real as it gets just stay in character.
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Just take it in character and you'll be okay.
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And nobody thought about the bleed.
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He's constantly buying this white powder and he mixes it with his tea every morning.
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And he's like, that dude's on drugs.
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It's like, no, it's for my knees.
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No whining.
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Deal with it.
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You can whine when you're dead
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Hello friends, welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled.
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I'm Star.
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This episode I am joined by Jeffrey Baker, a dad, LARPer, and game designer.
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Jeffrey has been playing TTRPGs ever since his older brothers would allow him to join.
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His creative well consists of using his personal life, theater training, and LARP background to make fully realized characters.
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Jeffrey, I'll give you a chance to plug your projects at the end, but right now, do you want to tell listeners a little bit about yourself?
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You kind of said it all.
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A lot of who I am is based in theater and acting and translating that into TTRPGs and LARPing.
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And when they would tell people when I would go LARPing, it was like, well, yeah, it's a three day improvisational theater camp.
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You go camping for the weekend and you just try to improvise this one character and stay in it as long as you can and true to that character.
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And that's a good training ground for GMs and, and just playing characters at a table as well.
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And just trying to stay in the moment as best you can.
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And then of course these days I, I'm getting new inspiration from my children, my two kids, watching them develop stories and watching their little brains function and, and try to interpret the world.
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And how they take that interpretation and then manifest it into reality and how they see things.
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Really cool.
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Yeah, that's really sweet.
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So tell me, Jeffrey, who are you bringing to the table today?
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I am bringing, at this time, an unnamed soldier.
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It's a concept that's been pinging around in my head for a very long time.
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It was a D& D character, even though these days I don't really play D& D anymore.
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I still love the concept and something I want to probably take into another system.
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And the reason why he's unnamed is because it's just, the character is there right now.
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And essentially it is getting away from the lovable sexpot bard and really trying to wrench it the other way.
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And this is a bard who leans more into oration and speeches and to that end I was like, he should be a soldier.
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Uh, older soldier, maybe has seen a few battles here and there, and is kind of a little weathered by it, and so a little gruff.
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And I think that comes down to is, I'm now 40, so the older I'm getting, I find myself wanting to play older characters that have a little bit more life experience.
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And what does that mean when you're running around in these very strange, adventurous Settings, and how does someone of that age and life experience react?
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So, the manifestation then of this bard character is, the characters get hurt and the party members, Hey, just rub some dirt in it, you'll be fine.
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Slap some, you're fine.
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Healing word.
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Uh, you know.
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Finding the fun ways of taking all the bardic spells and reflavoring them to be gruff and that dad like care.
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Standoffish dad, maybe.
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Yeah, that kind of traditional stoic dad.
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Yeah, that maybe is stoic because they've got a lot of trauma in their past.
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What good D& D character doesn't have trauma?
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This is an older character and personally, I love, I've been trying to play more older characters because I feel they're not well represented.
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There's often a lot of characters that are teenagers that are, you know, just in their early twenties.
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And so I love to see that variety.
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How do you think this character's experiences have shaped him?
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I think it's, it would come down to a lot of loss, right?
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Especially when you're talking about a soldier of a certain age, you're dealing with somebody that has fought alongside probably, you know, if he's been a soldier for that long, from a young age.
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And has been that idealistic kid is going out with his buddies or fighting for the kingdom or, or doing the right thing and slowly seeing the reality getting peeled away and maybe realizing, like, I'm depending on the story of the, the situation, maybe the kingdom I'm fighting for isn't the good guy that Mitchell and Webb skit, are we the baddies?
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Yeah, insert meme here,
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We could go that angle with it.
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But yeah, losing friends constantly despite having gifts, you know, if you're a bard you're gonna have special gifts, right?
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You have special abilities and powers and maybe just not having the right one at the right time and feeling that guilt You have survivor's guilt.
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So you have a lot of this stuff and that's a lot of heavy life experience To bring to the table, which I think a person their 20s doesn't have right?
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Yeah
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They're idealistic They're gung ho, which is great for an adventuring party.
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Really Makes most sense when you're level one.
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It's harder to justify a level one bard who's 40.
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Well, and even a 40 year old soldier, that's a little old, I think, for most fantasy setting.
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Yeah, and that's where I would, you know, maybe peel it back to the 30s, especially if you're talking about medieval fantasy.
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If you're talking about in your 30s, you're ancient.
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With that technological time period, but I'd still bring that level of mentality to it.
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Even though the age is a little bit younger, still bring all that with it.
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And you can also, you know, say, Hey, well, you know, maybe they only fought in one campaign, got hurt, which could be good for the bard.
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You know, inspiration, they're a drill sergeant.
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And so kind of going that drill sergeant route.
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I'm screaming and yelling at you to get you ready for what we're about to face.
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You don't understand what looking down the mouth of a dragon really means.
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And if you can't handle me yelling at you while we're just standing around camp, you're not going to be able to handle a beholder or, you know, whatever.
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Even a Grick, like you don't understand what we're about to run into.
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Well, yeah, and it goes back to what you're saying about not having the right skill at the right time.
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I think if that had been your experience training others, that I think would be something you'd want to instill.
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Yeah, you need to make sure you've got the right thing at the right time, because you never know when you're going to need it.
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You need to be at your tip top, because you don't know what we're about to go into.
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Kind of that Boy Scout mentality, maybe, right?
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The, uh, always be prepared.
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Yeah.
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Which would go into, in a way, to do that, and I got this from an older player, who we played a one shot one time, and he played, you know, OD& D.
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And When we sat down to make characters, you know, this was 3.0 days, 3.5, something like that.
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And we'd all, one shot, we'd all make our characters and we'd go to the equipment section and kind of, oh, sure, rations, a bag or whatever.
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He was like, how much money do I have?
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And he spent it all on adventuring equipment.
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Just crazy stuff.
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But when they got into the dungeon and they were doing things, he had a tool for every problem they ran into.
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Oh, I've got a portable battering ram.
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Well, I've got a ladder.
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Oh, I've got a collapsible pole.
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Oh, I've got enough rope for that.
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And the GM is just like, I'm not prepared.
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I'm not prepared for someone this prepared.
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That is something that has stuck with me for that long.
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And I, and I think that goes to show wisdom, right?
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The ability to be tactical and think that far ahead, not just think in the moment.
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Like, okay, I need to make sure here's all the eventualities that we could come across.
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I need to be ready.
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And so that's just a big part, I think, bringing over into that character.
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You're talking about a soldier.
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Most people would make that build as a fighter, perhaps a paladin.
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Bard is an unusual choice.
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Why did you make that choice?
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Specifically to buck the trend.
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So I know it's not probably the most mechanically advantageous or the right thing to do, but I just saw how most bards are depicted and played and I was just like, there's other ways to do this that are just as fun, probably more interesting.
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And so like, hey, let's take a bard and put them in this situation.
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Because what I like to do is really take abilities.
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And reflavor them towards the character.
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And that was going to be a great challenge and a great lot of fun.
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Okay.
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Take all these bardic powers, but how do they look when it's just your run of the mill soldier?
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Doesn't have a lute, doesn't have a flute, doesn't have a lyre, you know, whatever.
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It's just pure personality.
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It's pure charisma that pushes you through.
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And also playing with the idea that charisma is not a stat that represents how good looking somebody is, right?
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There are people that are insanely charismatic, but are not traditionally good looking.
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And I'm going to put this out there, Jack Black is not your traditionally Hollywood guy.
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Yet he's been a leading man in a romantic comedy because he has the charisma.
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And I think that's something that's really not looked into.
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When you look at games like D& D, I think there's a lot of surface level play going on there, when you can take those mechanics and go much deeper and have a lot more fun with them.
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Absolutely.
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Yeah, I love a bard that is non traditional, that doesn't use an instrument, for example.
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I was playing a bard who was a cheerleader, and so all of her bardic inspirations, all of her bardic abilities were based on leading a cheer squad.
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That's amazing.
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Give us an S.
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Give us a T.
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Yeah, all of her bardic inspiration was a cheer to the other player, like making up a cheer about them.
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That's great.
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That's so good.
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And that's what's fun.
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Take things that are very traditional and go a different direction with them.
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See how far you can pull it before it breaks.
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I often start with the flavor.
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And then figure out how to build the mechanics into it would you say that this is kind of where the character started for you or was there a different spark?
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In this particular case it definitely was I don't like what's happening with the bard I'm gonna do something different but for the most part
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here's the personality, here's the flavor, here's the emotion I want to pull out with them, and the feeling to get with them.
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Okay, how do I find mechanics that support that going forward?
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And then build from there.
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So yeah, definitely character first.
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Yeah, that's kind of a system agnostic approach, too.
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Like you said, this was for D& D and you don't play D& D anymore, so you could put this kind of character in a different system because it's not built around that bard class, necessarily.
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Exactly.
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So that's what's nice.
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You know, I know several systems I could pull this character into and have just the same kind of fun with.
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The only sadness is not telling people what the class is.
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Until we get at the table and get into the first fight and do something, you know, somebody falls on the ground and like, I go, you know, and I pick them up by their shoulder and I shake them a little bit and be like, you don't fall on my watch, did I say you had the right to fall, you get back in there.
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Bardic inspiration, D6, like that kind of thing, trying to make it to where.
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Eventually, the bardic inspiration is more that they don't want to disappoint the character.
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They don't want to disappoint daddy soldier.
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I just don't want him to be disappointed in me.
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If he believes in me, I can do anything.
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That kind of thing.
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So, that's how I saw that playing out.
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Would it have played out that way?
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Probably not.
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Well You never know.
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It depends, I suppose.
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You mentioned that this was not necessarily an optimal build for D& D in particular.
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How important is the optimal build to you, or having a character that exploits mechanics?
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Not generally.
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The caveat to that is the group and the setting.
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Yeah.
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And maybe the module potentially.
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If it's a game system like Cypher System or Quest or, you know, kind of one of these lighter narrative things.
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Definitely not worried about any kind of system mastery.
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Because I know what we're going into.
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We're going in there to really focus on the narrative.
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But trad games like D& D, I think, push you to have to be a little bit more system optimal.
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They can be a little bit more punishing if not.
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Mm hmm.
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And then you can have groups of players where they're expecting everybody to come to the table with a very optimal build and we all want to synergize and we want to make sure that no matter what fight we get into, we're going to win.
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And we know we're going to, but there's no question.
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So you gotta have to feel things out.
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I mean, I don't mind doing that.
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If I were to play a Pathfinder 2 E game.
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I would probably focus on a really optimal thing because I think that's a part of the system that makes sense.
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I think that's what it wants you to do and is going to help you make or get the most enjoyment out of that system is if you do that, because it's on that crunchier side, so.
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Hey man, get in there and tweak and have fun and try to make something just dumb that's gonna make your GM go, what?
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What are you doing?
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Hold on.
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Wait.
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Stop.
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Let me see that little book.
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Yeah.
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I had a wizard character I played in a campaign that ran for 10 years, so I played one wizard character for 10 years.
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We went from 3.
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5 to 4 E to Pathfinder during that time span.
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There was just things I was doing, even in 4E, that made the GM just have to stop.
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I'm like, hold on.
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Yeah, I can do 2d10 damage to myself, put that in as an area effect on these creatures, whatever damage I roll is now on them, and they take that much damage for every 5 feet of movement that they traverse.
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And now I cast a spell that pulls them towards me.
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20 feet.
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And it was like, okay.
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Like, what am I gonna do with that?
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Like we did that to some, some gargoyles are on the other side of the room.
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I was like, oh yeah, I do 2D tests.
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I think I did like 12 points of damage to myself.
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And of course they're dumb gargoyles.
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So they get up and they fly towards us and the GM's like, okay, so they're fly 12, 24, 32, that one drops dead.
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Those are fun moments with those types of games because it was fun to optimize and see it play out the table, but I don't have to.
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There's a player in my current game who is a College of Swords bard.
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And I was running a kraken against him, and he pushed the kraken, and I was like, there's no way you can push a kraken.
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There's just, it does not make any sense, and he's like, look at the rules.
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Oh my gosh.
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I was like, okay.
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You built your character specifically to do this, so I have to let it fly.
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You bring up a good point.
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I almost had that knee jerk reaction that, well, as a GM, you can rule that that doesn't work that way.
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Because of blah, blah, blah.
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But then you had the right comment.
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You built that character to do this thing.
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And.
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Who am I to take away that moment?
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Especially if you build it so narrow to do that one thing, let them have it.
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You know, what does it matter?
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It was hard.
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I would say I struggled with that.
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It was a struggle.
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Yeah.
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If it's a big bad, it's like, grrrr
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Yeah, and it was clutch.
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I have to say it was a clutch skill to have at that moment.
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But yeah, I am not the kind of person, I'm not the kind of player that exploits mechanics like that, so whenever somebody does it, I'm actually kind of impressed.
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When we end up in Pathfinder, one of the players was four classes in total.
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He started as a bard, but then he was like, became this leader thing.
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And then he warlord, and then a fighter, and then a cleric.
00:17:08.865 --> 00:17:27.095
So, he was nutty, but because of his leadership skill, he was able to have NPCs join us, so he had, effectively, a second character he was running, which was a cleric, that was two levels lower than the rest of the party, but we didn't have a healer.
00:17:27.404 --> 00:17:43.075
And that's how we shored up having a healer as a part of the group, instead of getting an actual person to play the character, he's like, well, I'll just have this NPC and that NPC became such a part of the group that when these assassins killed him, the party stopped everything in their tracks, where I think we're level 17 at this point or 18.
00:17:43.204 --> 00:17:50.204
And we were trying to deal with like end of the world stuff and we were on the go and these assassins for reasons killed him.
00:17:50.644 --> 00:17:57.994
We're like, well, we got to stop everything we do and to go kill all these assassins where you don't mess with our cleric.
00:17:58.624 --> 00:18:04.034
Speaking of having the right skills, what kind of skills does this character have?
00:18:04.034 --> 00:18:04.773
What are they good at?
00:18:05.023 --> 00:18:19.769
What I see them being good at is leadership and Despite the gruffness, getting a group of people that shouldn't be able to work together, working together, tactically, and then trying to spend that downtime, almost like a football coach.
00:18:20.009 --> 00:18:22.029
Alright, let's talk about that last fight.
00:18:22.308 --> 00:18:22.789
What did you do?
00:18:23.490 --> 00:18:24.420
What could you have done better?
00:18:25.759 --> 00:18:27.269
Do you remember when you went this way?
