Transcript
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Something that is hard for me, and has been hard for me, is having a fantasy dad.
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Because, I mean obviously I miss my own dad, and it feels like a strange attempt at replacing him.
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I thought I wasn't afraid of death, so having a character who is, in this time where I'm at now, is very close to home now.
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As real as death has become for me, it's also, facing it is cathartic.
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Or when all else fails, you know, magic, BS.
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Due to a mic mishap, the sound quality isn't up to my usual standards.
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I'd like to give a special shout out to Nathan from the Advanced Age Roleplaying Gamers podcast for his editing guidance.
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More on his podcast at the end.
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Hello, friends.
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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'm joined by Chriss Knight.
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Chriss is a lifelong creative who found her calling with D& D in college, where she earned a degree in theater.
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After a winding road of various career paths, she TTRPGs and now runs her own podcast all about them.
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Alongside running and playing in several games herself.
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She is a passionate advocate of TTRPGs as a means of expression and exploration, as well as a way to process and heal.
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And her personal goal is to spread happiness by sharing what she loves about tabletop gaming with as many people as she can.
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Chriss, I also have a degree in theater.
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Yay!
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I think that is so, it's funny how common that is amongst TTRPG players.
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I'm, I'm learning that more and more.
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My GM for my, not my very first campaign ever, but my longest running campaign, I met him in the theater program.
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So it's a big, small world.
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If that makes any sense.
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Yeah, definitely.
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So, uh, do you have anything you want to share with listeners about yourself?
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Just that I'm a big nerd.
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I just love sharing the things that I love with everyone.
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And that is me.
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My way of making people happy and that has been the goal behind all of my different projects and everything And so the fact that I get to share something with you guys here is just the best
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Well, welcome to the show Chriss.
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Who are you bringing to the table today?
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I am bringing Rhan Halvard to the table.
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Rhan is spelled R H A N.
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I believe it's a Welsh name.
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What are Rhan's pronouns?
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She/her.
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So you say it's a Welsh name.
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Did you look it up in a book or how'd you find it?
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I probably googled Welsh names to be honest.
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Or like Celtic names or something.
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I have a very strong Celtic background and it's something that I, it heavily influences my character creation.
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A lot of my characters have like green eyes and red hair, just cause it's an aesthetic that I really like and like, you know, pale skin because I happen to have pale skin and I can sort of relate to that more.
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I like to be able to relate to my characters in some way or another, but especially around the time that I made Rhan, I was very, very into that Celtic stuff, very into it.
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So does Rhan have a particular meaning that drew you in?
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I'm sure it did.
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You know, I went back and looked through all of my notes for this character, which I have a lot, and I never wrote down what it meant.
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But when I name characters, I love to make sure that their names have meanings.
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So I'm sure it means something.
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Welsh people, get at me.
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If I have any Welsh listeners, feel free, email me or email Chriss and let us know what it means.
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So what system is Rhan built for?
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Rhan is built for D& D 5e.
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This was before I had branched out to other systems.
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I find weirdly that most of the characters I make still tend to be for 5e.
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And I don't know why that is, because I've played Many wonderful wonderful systems, but there's something about 5e that I just keep coming back to it.
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I think it fulfills Some level of deep fantasy nerdiness in me that I just don't get in in real life, you know
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Yeah, I get that.
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I think D& D also has a kind of character creation system that I mean personally I I kind of feel a little bit the same way as when I have character ideas, maybe because D& D was the first system I played.
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I feel like sometimes I just kind of revert back to D& D as a way of expressing a character concept rather than saying, okay, well, this character could be built in Monster of the Week or Troika or something like that.
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So what class is Rhan?
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That is actually a really cool thing.
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Rhan has a history.
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Rhan used to be a wizard, but she is now a paladin.
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And that ties into her backstory, actually.
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All right, well, then I think we need to start talking about backstory then.
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So, where did Rhan start?
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As a wizard?
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Rhan started as a level 10 wizard.
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She was part of a long, winding campaign.
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And at the end of this campaign, the big bad evil guy made it their goal to destroy something that each party member loved.
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So they targeted Rhan's hometown, basically, and Rhan rushed to the town just in time to see the earth, basically, open up.
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below it, and it was about to fall into the abyss, essentially, and she didn't know what to do.
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She'd heard of a spell that could maybe keep it locked in time, or something, but she didn't know the components, or the words, or the motions, but she had to do something.
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She basically channeled all of her magic into this last hope, kind of Hail Mary spell, and her wand was splintering with how much magic was being channeled through it, and were, in a way, instead of kind of taking the town out of space and time, it trapped the town in a reality loop, replaying the day of its doom over and over and over again.
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And what Rhan didn't anticipate was that this huge outpouring of magic and, and power obliterated her physical form and her soul was shunted to the astral plane.
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But because she had messed with the fates of so many people, she was noticed by Istus.
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Who is, uh, the goddess of fate and destiny.
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Istus came to her and said, You meddled in the fates of this entire town, and you don't get to get away with it that easy, basically.
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I am going to bring you back to life, and you are going to serve me as a paladin, and enforce fate until you can undo what you did.
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So Rhan is now a paladin of Istus, and it's her job to make sure that destiny is fulfilled, no matter how hard that is.
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I'm curious, you said that the DM had the BBEG take away something that you loved.
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Did you play out a campaign where this happened and then the character essentially died and you never got to play her as the new character?
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Or was this something that happened in the backstory to give your character motivation?
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All backstory for motivation.
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This is probably one of the most fleshed out backstories I've ever given a character.
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I had the whole sequence in my head at one point.
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I had given her, um, scars and mapped out, like, where they were and what caused them.
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And I had, like, four phases of her development and, like, The colors of her armor and her clothes change during each phase to sort of show her development as this paladin and how she hardened over time and going back over it the last couple days, I sort of simplified it because it was a little convoluted, but it's definitely incredibly in depth compared to what I normally give most of my characters, especially my, you know, back pocket characters.
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So why do you think it is that you made so much more of an effort with this particular character?
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Is that coming from the DM's prompt that you have to have something taken away from you or was this just something where you were so inspired by the character that you wanted to have a really strong backstory?
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I had been really fascinated by the idea of fate and the inexorability of the passage of time and how everything has to go in the end, and shall we connect to that emotionally?
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And it actually was the fact that there was a goddess of fate that inspired me to be like, okay, how can I explore the concept of fate?
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So the concept really came before the character, but once I figured out who the character was, I was like, well, there needs to be a reason why she is enforcing fate.
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That is more than just, oh, I discovered this God and I really like her philosophy.
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Because that didn't feel like the right approach.
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Yeah, it's a little heavy to enforce fate.
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It's a big job.
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What's interesting to me is that in D& D, concepts like fate.
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And the gods and the afterlife are knowable.
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We don't, in our lives, don't know what happens to us after we die.
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And some people have different ideas about that, but nobody actually knows.
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And the gods cannot be proven.
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And fate is just a concept.
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So it's very interesting to me to play with that in a world where all of that is a lot more concrete.
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How do you think that kind of plays into the choices you made with this character?
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I knew that it was going to be a hard and long road for Rhan to get used to being like, this is what's written, this is what I know.
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Because Istus is also, um, listed as the goddess of divination, which makes sense.
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So, to be the one going, "Hey, your life kind of has to suck for a minute." It's not a power that you, A, wield lightly.
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And it's a very, even as a player, it's something like, I don't want to be mean, but I have this power that I know what has to happen.
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And my goddess tells me that if it doesn't happen, Things will get even worse and I know that that's basically true because I have dealt with this power before and people who try to dodge their fates or one analogy that I actually read in one of the wikis on Istus was that in that world there is something called the web of fate, and it is made of all of the strings, the metaphorical strings of fate, which I guess are real in this world, and most of them are taut and mostly inflexible, but some of them are loose enough that you can wiggle a strand here or manipulate it there to try to change your fate a little bit, but Rhan's job would be to, you know, find the ones that are trying to cut their strings or, or tie them in knots or, or make them Some sort of fancy thing to get around what they're trying to avoid and Rhan is there to say, Hey, you can't avoid this.
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This kind of conflict often plays out in media as, as a conflict between a personal desire, whether that's a personal desire to save people as Rhan as a wizard messed with fate, but also not wanting to punish people or kill people even for trying to change their own fate.
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Okay.
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Is this something that Rhan struggles with?
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I think for sure, and especially, she has to basically try to reason with herself why she would let something bad happen to someone who doesn't deserve it, and so, and that, that definitely echoes for her too, personally.
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Because ultimately, she has to let her town meet its demise, regardless of if it deserves it, which it doesn't, but that is what has to happen.
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And in a way, it is almost blind faith, but I think Istus has demonstrated enough of her power to Rhan that Rhan knows the consequences.
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I think Rhan has probably encountered instances where people have defied their fate and things have gotten worse and she would have to go and ensure that is, it is set right.
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Is Rhan paying some sort of penance?
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Is there a point at which she won't have to be a paladin of Istus anymore, like when she's paid off a debt?
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Rhan's deal with Istus was that she had to undo what she did.
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So basically, find a way to take the town out of its doom loop, basically.
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And the catch is also that, so mechanically, Rhan originally started as a Revenant.
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I wanted to play her as a Revenant because the Reborn class hadn't been released yet.
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I made Rhan years ago.
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And even if I play her as a Reborn, I really like this mechanic of, when Rhan completes her deal and releases the town, she dies too.
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It's that aspect of the Revenant contract where it's like, once you complete your task, your soul is free.
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And you can be at peace again, or for the first time.
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So it's definitely, it's a struggle for Rhan too because she doesn't necessarily want to die either.
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Even though she's already basically undead.
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Does she have any qualities from being undead?
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Is she, does she have any special abilities, any vulnerabilities or immunities or anything like that from being dead?
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There's the standard reborn stuff, like, you know, resistance against poison and, you know, not needing to eat, sleep or breathe.
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So reborns have advantage on death saves.
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But a mechanic that I really wanted to play with, with whatever GM ends up letting me play this character, is I don't want her to be able to die until she finishes her task.
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And I would want to balance that with some mechanic, like when she dies, she can't come back for a certain amount of time, or maybe things start to go haywire while she's gone or something, like I don't just want, you know, no death for free.
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That's no fun.
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Right.
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I also really like that aspect of tweaking mechanics to make the situation a little more dire.
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Sometimes people play D& D even, even though there are a lot of games where death isn't really on the table or the game doesn't really deal with combat or death.
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D& D obviously very much deals with combat and has mechanics for saving yourself from death.
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It has spells like revivify and resurrection, but.
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That's a choice that each table makes.
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It sounds like for you, having death on the table is really important.
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Why is that?
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We don't remember originally, but now for me, for me now, death has become something very prevalent to my life, personal history.
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My father passed a little over a year ago.
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When someone you're very close to passes away.
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In my experience, death becomes a very different thing in your mind.
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Your perspective on it changes drastically and you don't see it the way you used to see it at all.
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So in a way, it's an exploration of my naivety in my understanding of death when I created her and my much deeper experience with it now and kind of processing it a little bit more.
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As much as, you know, I haven't gotten to play Rhan, but there's a way that you can just expand a character's story in your head, even.
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And, you know, solo play is a thing, and I think just writing backstories can really help you process things like grief and profound gray area things, feelings, concepts.
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That's the word I was looking for.
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So the idea of running from death or death coming before you're ready is kind of scary and it's something I thought I wasn't afraid of death.
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So having a character who is in this time where I'm at now is very close to home now.
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First off, I'm so sorry for your loss.
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I understand, you know, that's a life-changing experience.
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I appreciate it.
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Is it difficult for you to touch on death and games to me, not not having gone through that, I would wonder if I'd even want to get that close to dealing with that topic, or if it would be difficult.
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And I suppose if you're if you're not actually at a table dealing with it, that's a very different experience.
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Weirdly for me, it's actually been harder to have fictional parents as real as death has become for me.
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It's also, facing it is cathartic.
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As scary as it is, it helps process things.
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Something that is hard for me and has been hard for me is having a fantasy dad.
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Because, I mean, obviously I miss my own dad.
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And it feels like a strange attempt at replacing him.
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And I don't want to, like, insult his legacy or anything.
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And I know that's not actually what's happening.
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But having a pretend dad feels so weird now.
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I don't know.
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When you're building characters now, then, is that something you avoid?
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Do you build characters that don't have fathers, or do you still do it?
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I still do it.
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I actually, I play a character right now who, um, is very close with her dad, and that was something I actually struggled with.
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I didn't necessarily tell my DM that I was struggling with it because I wanted to see where my boundaries were before I told her how I felt.
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And it's been uncomfortable, but it's been a way to appreciate my dad, not that I didn't appreciate him before, but, you know, and it's almost a weird roundabout way of honoring his memory is, you know, treating my fantasy dad with, you know, the love and respect that I treated my own dad.
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That's interesting.
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I think so many characters, especially in D& D, are orphans.
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It's like they don't want to have ties to anyone.
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And you started this character with a strong tie.
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And maybe not to parents specifically, but to a town, to a hometown, to the people.
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That she grew up with or the people that she loves that were in that town and that's a very powerful loss, but it is still a character that doesn't have that background of having a family or having ties that bind no longer.
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You've given yourself an opportunity to maintain that, but still knowing the entire time that you're going to have to give that up.
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It's a really sad, bittersweet form of closure that never feels good.
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Mm hmm.
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And in a way, in a way, I don't feel like I got a lot of closure when my dad passed because it was really sudden.
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Mm hmm.
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So I think as much as it sucks to have to let go of somebody, Rhan being able to do it on her terms, in a way is also a little comforting as much as it's awful.
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Like I said, having as much control over awful things is nice.
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And I think that's part of what Rhan does in enforcing fate.
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She goes to these people and says, Hey, this has to happen, but I'm going to help you have as much control over it as you can.
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Yeah.
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I'm not a therapist.
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I'm not going to speak for therapists or for people who do therapy within the community.
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the realm of tabletop role playing games.
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But I know that people do use it as a form of therapy, as a form, a way to deal with trauma.
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And you're dealing with, within this contained space of play where you can just say, Hey, the session's over.
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Let's not do this part.
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It's too close to home, or I'm going to set boundaries around this feeling so that I can experience it without letting it kind of slide or bleed into other parts of my life.
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I know that still bleed happens, but is that something that you kind of explore at your tables or is that something that you've done?
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Something that I'm more open to now than I was when I started playing TT RPGs, I started with it as a way to escape because I was not confident.
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in myself or the way my life was at the time and I just needed any way out that, you know, wasn't harmful.
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But as I've sort of settled into my own identity and everything, being able to admit that I'm feeling certain ways and allow myself to feel them in a more controlled environment with other people who, you know, are my friends and I know won't judge me and everything.
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And in a way, that is by proxy.
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So you don't have to tell people that you're mourning the loss of a loved one, but if a really important NPC dies, You can mourn them in character, and it is valid, and your other players will support you, the other party members will support your character, and that's so validating, and it is absolutely a part of the experience that I didn't get in the beginning, because I kind of dove in headfirst and didn't really know what I was doing, but I've learned matured a lot since then.
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And as life progresses, our characters progress and our play style progresses and we learn what we need.
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And sometimes what I need is that, that release and that communal, I, what would be the word?
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Immunocatharsis, I guess is a good, a good word or a good term.
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The stories we're telling aren't real, but the feelings we feel about them, that NPC isn't real, but.
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The feeling of warning that NPC is very real.
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Absolutely.
00:23:56.554 --> 00:24:06.724
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There's something interesting to me in the concept of fate and agency, obviously giving yourself up to fate takes away some of your agency, but there's, to me, and maybe not to you, there's something that feels a little bit freeing about abandoning yourself to fate, about knowing that there is a path laid out for you and you just need to follow that path.
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And the questioning.
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that you have when you don't know your fate is taken off the table.
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It's definitely something that depending on your approach can be really like a release to be like, Oh, I just have to do what feels right.
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Or, you know, I see this really obvious thing, I think I should go forward with that.
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It's that whole, you know, my life is in God's hands or I'm in God's hands kind of concept.
00:25:42.045 --> 00:25:56.255
And Zynga really depends on how much you want to be in control of your life and how much influence you want to have on it, how much you want to be able to say, I made this or this is.
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my doing and I made these decisions and I found these opportunities and stuff.
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And I, I like to find a middle ground of like, I think these opportunities may have been laid before me somehow, but I'm the one who chose to take them and stuff like that.
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And going back to Run, and uh, it's sort of a similar philosophy of how she, How she would say, hey, you know, cause fate doesn't always have to be negative.
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Fate can be positive as well.
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So Rhan might go to someone who is having trouble making a decision or who doesn't seem to be seeing the signs and might have to give them a little nudge or something.
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So it's really, it's not a 100 percent negative philosophy.
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Do you think Rhan will try to avoid her fate, knowing that her fate is to destroy her hometown and herself in the process?
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Oh, absolutely.
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It's, it's in my notes.
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She definitely sometimes falls to temptation and stalls her, her progress because she can't face that.
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She can't process it.
