TWILIGHT SWORD: My First Champion

As promised in my last news update on the upcoming Twilight Sword RPG, using the recently released (to backers) character creation document, I have made my first Champion: Elean Starlight, daughter of former Champion Staghind Starlight.

I've long thought that Twilight Sword sounds like the perfect way to pool all my memorable characters - and previous adventures - from a lifetime of gaming into one place. And this is my first attempt to do that.

I'd originally thought I'd opt for someone with an isekai-style origin, but this seemed too good an opportunity to tie my old D&D character Staghind into this new world.

Now to go through the character creation steps:

NAME & ORIGIN: Elean Starlight, Heir.

"You are the heir of an ancient Champion or a hero of legend. You had no choice in your own destiny, and you always felt different."

KIN: Huma - the predominant humanoid lifeform in Radia, the huma are superficially elves.
KIN FEAT: Reroll a single failed Ability roll. This Feat can only be used again after a Rest or a Quick Rest.
DISTRIBUTE ABILITY SCORES: Either through points allocation or use of a standard array. I opted for the latter as this was my first run-through of the system.* 

• STRENGTH: 7 
• AGILITY: 9
• VITALITY: 7
• PERCEPTION: 8
• WILL: 8
• KNOWLEDGE: 6
• CHARISMA: 5
• STEALTH: 6

HEARTS & STAMINA: 17 ❤️ and 3 🔷
WAY: Way of The Wild

FEAT: Aim (Can use her reaction to aim. Gains Advantage to the next attack she makes this Turn using a ranged or thrown weapon).
STARTING GEAR: An old bow, an old short sword, padded armor, 12 arrows, and a torch. 3D6 (I rolled 9) Green gems (?).

Obviously, there are still bits and bobs that need to be clarified, such as the damage weapons cause, what difference do "old" weapons make, how much damage armour absorbs, what form does the currency take, how does Advantage/Disadvantage work in this game and so on.

But this introductory, early look at Twilight Sword has filled me with a great deal of optimism. I may have spotted three or four typos in the text, but these looked like they were probably down to translation issues and will hopefully be picked up in future edits.

And, personally, I felt there needed to be some consistency in the breaks between paragraphs (although that might just be the old sub-editor in me), but otherwise - at first look - it appears as though Twilight Sword will be a thing of great beauty.

The character creation process was quick and simple. In fact, it would have been even quicker with a print copy of the rules to hand, as then I wouldn't have had to keep switching - like a bumbling, technology-challenged old man - between the PDF and the document I was writing in.

Even with my own incompetence, it only took, maybe, 10 or 15 minutes... as I already had my mini-backstory in mind. 

I'm eagerly looking forward to the full beta PDF release at the end of this month. 

* As I understand it most tests - including combat - involve rolling a d12 and scoring under (or equal?) the relevant statistic. 

Elean Starlight

THROWBACK THURSDAY: My Life and Humanoid Ducks In Roleplaying Games

Part of the reason for my passionate support for Darcy Perry's wonderful DuckQuest roleplaying game - and why I backed several of his anthropomorphic duck-related miniatures Kickstarters - stretches right back to my earliest days of gaming.

In the late '70s and early '80s the bulk of my long-form (rather than random one-shot) gaming was with Gublin, a friend who lived five doors down the road from me.

Although created for a specific Dungeons & Dragons adventure at our local gaming club, my enduring character from those days was a female half-elf fighter/cleric/magic-user called Staghind, who enjoyed a storied adventuring career, before becoming a queen of her own nation and retiring.

At some stage in her life she adopted an anthropomorphic duck called Quincy as one of her many children and he taught her Quack Fu. Or she was taught Quack-Fu by a master and then she adopted Quincy. My memory from those days is like Swiss Cheese!

My ideas about humanoid ducks were entirely shaped by reading Steve Gerber's bonkers Howard The Duck comics, rather than RuneQuest (which officially introduced ducks into the roleplaying consciousness).

This is also why I have a copy of this issue framed and hanging on the wall in our lounge with other key comics from my years of collecting and reading. 

Not just because of the incredible impact it had on me as a nascent comic book reader, exposing me to the gonzo possibilities of the medium, but also for the influence it had on me as a fledgling gamer.

Whilst my anthropomorphic duck gaming ended rather abruptly with Staghind's retirement, the concept endured with the help of one of my mum's delightfully random fandoms.

Once I was of working age (and writing nonsense for the local paper), my mum somehow became a massive fan of the late '80s kids cartoon Count Duckula, so I used my salary to ensure she had an extensive collection of VHS tapes and annuals (as that was the only merch available at the time).

These days duck characters can be found roleplayng games such as Dragonbane (from Free League Publishing), where they are called "mallards", and Twilight Sword (yes, this was a deciding factor in me backing this game).

In the latter game the duck kin are also known as "mallards" and were available, in print form (as a set of cards), as an early bird sweetener to entice backers to get the ball rolling on the crowdfunding campaign.

I hesitated and missed out on this bonus "kin", but understand it will still be available to all backers as a PDF. I can't NOT have ducks as a playable race in my version of Twilight Sword!

THROWBACK THURSDAY: Gublin

Andrew 'Gublin' Patterson with Matt at Adrian's wedding about 35 years ago

As I reflect on the early days of my gaming life in the occasional Throwback Thursday piece, the name Gublin will pop up every so often.

I guess my old Pembury pal Andrew "Gublin" Patterson represents all the people I played RPGs in my youth that I no longer have any contact with.

When I was at Pembury Primary School I - and another kid - won a scholarship to the prestigious Tonbridge School (the local equivalent of Hogwarts), although first we would have to attend prep school.

It turned out that this 'other kid' was Andy and he lived five doors down the road from me and was born a week before me.

Although we both went to different prep schools, Andy (who acquired the nickname Gublin at Holmewood House School because of his alleged similarity to the puppet creatures of that name!) and I became fast friends and soon developed a mutual interest in Dungeons & Dragons.

We used to play epic games of D&D, almost all centring around his character, Egghead Aramioc, and mine, Staghind Starlight, and all pretty much of the "kick down door, kill monster, take treasure" school of hack'n'slash.

Deep characterisation was not our thing - although I do remember a particularly heated in-character argument about Staghind's plans to change her hairstyle! A misunderstanding had led Egghead to think she was going for the Princess Leia-style buns on the side of the head ... when she just wanted pigtails!

To be fair, we did take the games out of the dungeon, exploring (and conquering) whole worlds on massive sheets of paper that were like rolls of wallpaper spread across the floor of his parents' house.

But Egghead and Staghind eventually grew apart and began to adventure with other people...

After prep school, we both went to Skinners' in Tunbridge Wells - instead of Tonbridge School - and soon met Matt and Nick and became a 'gang of four'.

Eventually, especially when he went off to university, we drifted apart - as young friends do - because he was of the more "work hard, play hard" ethos and I was just plain lazy.

He also tried to shake the 'Gublin' nickname and return to the more 'mature' Andy... which, of course, we ignored.

Time moved on and the last we saw of Gublin was about 35 years ago. It was Matt and Nick's brother Adrian's wedding reception and Andy announced that he was going next door to check out the other reception going on in the hotel!

Over the years I heard tales from my parents - who met his mum in the village occasionally - that he got married, had a kid, worked for a big City bank, had given it all up, bought a yacht and sailed round the world.

I seem to remember, although it's all a bit of a blur these days, that he sent me a get well card when I was in hospital, but I haven't heard anything since dad passed away. Mum moved out of Pembury and so didn't see Andy's mum anymore.

We tried to track Andy down when Matt died in 2022, but to no avail.

Gublin is just one of many gamers who have come and gone out of my life; for instance, whatever happened to Tom Edwards, who introduced me to the Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy radio series and then ran a wild D&D game based on it? Or Guy Huckle and his coterie of gaming buddies that I befriended at Skinners?

More importantly, are they still gaming?

THROWBACK THURSDAY: The Dark Tower

Image by Darren Vannoy from Pixabay

My first gaming store was Tunbridge Wells' only dedicated roleplaying shop and club, The Dark Tower, in Victoria Road.

Through rose-tinted glasses, the vague wisps of memory I have about the place make it appear as iconic as Weird Pete Ashton's Games Pit in Knights Of The Dinner Table.

Sadly the shop was demolished long ago and has now been redeveloped for housing.

I seem to recall The Dark Tower was next to - or near - a small scrapyard, as one Sunday as we queued up patiently outside, waiting for the shop to open its doors for a regular club meeting, this line of innocent proto-geeks was harangued by the clearly drunk scrapmerchant on his front step complaining that we were disturbing his rest.

Decades later Clare and I shared a house just a stone's throw away from the site of the old Dark Tower - how brilliant would it have been if the shop (and club) was still there?

I do think it's a bit of a shame that, as far as I am aware (and I have looked) there's no mention of Tunbridge Wells' old game shop anywhere on the Interwebz.

It was such a formative part of my tween and early teenage years.

As well as the site of my earliest recorded character death - poor old Gordok (well out of his depth in Tegel Manor) - it was also where I purchased my first gaming product and, subsequently, began to pick up regular gaming magazines: which, for me, in those days meant White Dwarf.

I remember 11-year-old me striding into The Dark Tower clutching my pocket money and asking for the cheapest edition of Dungeons & Dragons they had. I came out a little while later with the Holmes blue book (pictured above).

This was edition I used when I tried to explain roleplaying games to my poor dad. He rolled up a dwarf who walked down a corridor under the Tower of Zenopus (the example adventure in the book), got attacked by a spider, died and never played Dungeons & Dragons again.

The shop wasn't the only place to host our nascent "gaming club"; after a while a nearby church hall was hired for regular gatherings (possibly St Barnabus' Church Hall in Quarry Road, but, as you may have gathered, my memory is rather Swiss cheesed these days).

This venue is where Staghind had her first adventure (ie. The Crypte of The Courageous).

I also have a strong memory of sitting in the waiting room of a podiatrist in Lime Hill Road, Tunbridge Wells, reading White Dwarf issue 11.

I suspect mum had let me buy it, from The Dark Tower, to take my mind off the fact that was I was about to have a verruca carved out of my left heel.

Later, I recall cutting out the pieces of the "D&D Bar-Room Brawl" game, 'laminating' them with Sellotape, and playing it repeatedly (on my own, of course).

The Life & Times of Staghind Starlight Aramioc-Blacksword

Lengthy "Tell Me About Your Character" Alert...

Last week's piece about my early RPG characters got me thinking about my most successful and enduring Dungeons & Dragons character: Staghind Starlight Aramioc-Blacksword The First.

By mid-1979, the club side of The Dark Tower had outgrown the rooms above the shop and relocated to a community hall a short distance away in a more suburban area of Tunbridge Wells.

As well as all the normal campaigns being run, one Dungeon Master (I don't recall his name) was running a "competition" dungeon, known as The Crypte Of The Courageous. He told me to create a third level character, so I turned for advice to the best source of reliable information I knew... the counter monkey at The Dark Tower.

His immediate suggestion was a half-elf magic-user/fighter/cleric (I had embraced Advanced Dungeons & Dragons by this time)... and so was born Staghind.

Staghind's first character sheet - from her run through The Crypte Of The Courageous

Not only did she (and her fellow adventurer whose name has faded into obscurity) become the first team to conquer The Crypte Of The Courageous in July 1979, but she would eventually become my longest surviving and, beyond a shadow of a doubt, favourite Dungeons & Dragons character.

Among her other achievements in her illustrious career - before settling down as Queen Of Norll, Jalla and Elfland - she rescued a fellow party member from boiling mud in White Plume Mountain (admittedly she'd knocked him in there first); liberated the Simarils from Morgoth; gained storm giant strength for 10 years from a raid on a giant's lair; and - most impressively - was taught martial arts by a duck master of Quack Fu!

Oh yes, she also met the legendary White Dwarf and her own god, Niffle. Apparently his mission is to seek out those who are worthy enough to worship him (he doesn't actively court worshippers). As it says on her character sheet below she has only ever actually met one other Nifflite - the high-priest of the faith, a gentleman by the name of Thor.

She was married twice; first to Gublin's main character Egghead Aramioc and then to Guy Huckle's Glorfindel Blacksword. She had seven children and adopted one (a duck by the name of Quincy).

Her eldest daughter, Elean, made an appearance in the first few sessions of  the first campaign I ran for the Tuesday Knights as a pirate leader (Staghind herself was masquerading as queen of the Amazonian island of Zenn).

I had always had a very definite idea of what Staghind looked like, but it wasn't until issue 24 of White Dwarf came out that I actually had a visual representation of my vision (see picture above).

However, in recent years I've begun to reimagine her as resembling Sandahl Bergman's Valeria from the 1980's Conan The Barbarian movie.

 

 

The final page of Staghind's "retirement" character sheet (immediately above) details her subterranean 'castle' (the former Halls Of The Elf King; a dungeon she took over), her fleet of ships, her magic horse and her small orc army.

Ahh, those were the days!

There was no set game world when we played, Staghind moved from campaign to campaign, Dungeon Master to Dungeon Master and no one questioned her ever-increasing wealth or powers. This goes a long way towards explaining the bizarre diversity of her travels and treasures - from obvious Tolkienesque material to Howard The Duck-inspired martial arts skills.

I'd like to point out that at some stage I deducted the "bonus experience points" she was gifted to start at 3rd level, so the experience points you see on her sheet were all earned by her own sweat and blood.

I certainly wouldn't be adverse, one day, to bringing her out of retirement, but - on the other hand - I'm quite content to leave her, safe and sound, on her throne, surrounded by all her wonderful acquisitions and memories.

Most likely though is I'll use either the map of her castle or of The Crypte Of The Courageous as a dungeon in a future campaign, with Staghind's numerous magic items and plentiful finances as the treasure.

Afterall, who could resist the chance to own the delightfully-named "vorpal sword of everlasting flame of disintegration"?