Tavern Tales allows you to play as virtually anything imaginable. Do you want to be a feral barbarian who charges into battle? How about a crafty rogue who uses stealth and deception? Your only limit is your imagination! But before you draw your magical sword and start slaying monsters, you first have to create your character. Follow the steps below to build your character, recording each decision on your character sheet.
Step 1: Come up with a Concept
The first step is the most important because it affects every other decision during character creation. You must come up with a core concept for your character. Here are a few things to consider:
- Where does your character come from?
- What is your character’s race and nationality?
- How does your character fight, explore, and socialize?
- What sets your character apart?
Tavern Tales accommodates virtually any character concept imaginable, so feel free to come up with something truly unique.
Dabney, a new player to Tavern Tales, talks to his GM about the upcoming game. The GM explains that the game will focus heavily on exploration, so Dabney decides that he wants to play as a ranger. A master woodsman would be the perfect character for charting the savage wilderness!
Step 2: Spend XP on Stats and Traits
All players start the game with experience (XP). The default starting XP is 10, but some GMs may want to change the starting value. You can spend XP on stats and/or traits.
Stats
Every character has four stats: Brawn, Finesse, Mind, and Spirit. Whenever you make a 3d20 roll, you assign the corresponding bonus or penalty from that stat. For example, a soldier has +3 Brawn, +2 Finesse, +1 Mind, and -1 Spirit. The soldier wants to climb a rock wall, which the GM decides is a Brawn roll. The player rolls 3d20 and adds +3 to the middle die to determine the final result.
Brawn
Brawn is a measure of physical fitness, might, bodily awareness, presence, athleticism, and strength.
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Finesse
Finesse relates to agility, grace, subtlety, precision, delicacy, and speed.
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Mind
Mind involves logic, knowledge, memory, perception, and intuition.
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Spirit
Spirit involves willpower, force of personality, morale, and fighting spirit.
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The GM will tell players what stat to use when they make a roll.
Buying Stats
To upgrade a stat, spend XP equal to the new value of that stat. All of your stats start at 0, and you can’t upgrade a stat beyond +3. For example, upgrading Brawn from 0 to +1 costs 1 XP. Then, upgrading it from +1 to +2 costs an additional 2 XP for a total of 3 XP.
Dabney decides that his ranger needs high Finesse to be an effective marksman. He also wants high Mind since rangers need to be perceptive. Rangers have a reputation for being gruff loners, so he places the least value on Spirit.
He spends 1 XP to bring Brawn to +1.
He spends 3 XP to bring Finesse to +2.
He spends 3 XP to bring Mind to +2.
He leaves Spirit at 0.
Dabney has spent 7 of his 10 starting XP, so he has 3 left over. He decides to save that XP for traits.
At character creation, you can reduce stats below 0 to gain extra XP. Putting a stat at -1 gives you 1 XP. Putting it at -2 gives you an additional 2 XP, and so on. You can’t reduce stats below -3. You can later remove these penalties by spending however much XP the penalties gave you. For example, increasing a stat from -2 to -1 costs 2 XP.
It may be difficult to represent your character through stats alone. You can easily round out your character with traits. For example, suppose you want to play a character who was raised by wolves. Your character should probably have low Mind to represent a poor education. However, wolves are excellent trackers, which typically uses Mind. Should you give your character low Mind or high Mind? In this case, you may want to give your character low Mind and purchase a trait to enhance your tracking ability. That way, your character will be uneducated and still be an excellent tracker.
Buying Traits
Traits are unique abilities that can imbue your character with life and personality. Traits are organized by themes to provide inspiration. Traits are further divided into three categories: combat, exploration, and interaction. To gain a new trait, spend XP equal to the new number of traits in that category. For example, buying your first combat trait costs 1 XP. Buying your second combat trait costs 2 XP. Buying your third combat trait costs 3 XP, for a total of 6 XP spent on combat traits. Then, buying your first exploration trait only costs 1 XP. There’s no limit to the number of traits you can have, and you can select traits from as many or as few themes as you like.
Dabney has 3 XP left over from buying stats. He decides to spend his XP has follows:
First, he spend 1 XP to buy Eagle Eye, a combat trait from the Tracking theme. He briefly considers spending his 2 remaining XP to buy another combat trait, but decides against it.
He spends 1 XP on Lay of the Land, an exploration trait from the Tracking theme.
Finally, he spends 1 XP on Beast Master, an interaction trait from the Beast theme.
10 XP Quickstart Arrays
These are common ways to spend 10 XP.
| Stat | Stat | Stat | Stat | Trait | Trait | Trait | Leftover XP |
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| +3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | |
| +3 | +1 | +1 | -2 | 2 | 1 | 1 | |
| +3 | +1 | +1 | -1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| +2 | +2 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | |
| +2 | +1 | 0 | -2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |
| +1 | +1 | +1 | +1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 3 |
Wiki Editor's Note: There are no recommendations for which stat or category of trait to spend these values on. These listings are merely to provide ways to define a character quickly without having to calculate experience spent. They have been slightly adapted from the source book to emphasis player ability to take traits as part of their character creation. It is entirely possible to swap numbers in each row to suit your tastes, so long as you follow the standard rules for character building (no higher than +3 in a stat, cannot take negative numbers of traits, etc)
Step 3: Select Starting Gear
Refer to the Items section for starting gear.
Step 4: Change Your Aesthetics
You are in complete control your character’s aesthetics (often called “flavor” or “fluff”). You can play whatever you want: a human, a dragon, a mechanical golem, or whatever else you please. You can also change the aesthetics of your traits. If a trait lets you shoot fireballs, you can rename it to “Ice ball” and shoot explosive blasts of ice instead. These aesthetic choices are acceptable as long as they don’t affect your capabilities. For example, you can’t say that you have huge muscles and therefore deserve a +1 bonus to Brawn. Similarly, saying that you’re a dragon doesn’t mean that you instantly gain the ability to fly. You might have wings, but you need a trait that lets you fly before you can use them.
Dabney decides that he wants to put a twist on his ranger by playing as a humanoid plant creature. Dabney describes his character’s bark skin and leafy hair to the other players.
Another player, Wesley, is playing as a frost mage. Wesley also rewrites some aspects of his character to match his frost wizard concept. For example, Wesley took the trait Barrier from the Arcane theme. He renames it “Ice Wall.”
Wait, where are the races?
In roleplaying games, players tend to think of their characters as a combination of race and training, such as a dwarven paladin, human wizard, or elven rogue. Tavern Tales doesn’t use this race-class duality.
Themes and traits are tools that allow you to build your race and your class. For example, elves are typically portrayed as nature lovers who wield bows. If you want to play as an elf, you could take traits from the Nature or Tracking themes to represent your elven heritage. If you’re playing in a setting where elves pursue the magical arts, you might take traits from the Arcane theme to represent your innate magical affinity.
Advancement
As you adventure in Tavern Tales, you will learn from your experiences and become stronger. The requirement for advancement is simple: do interesting things.
Of course, the definition of “interesting things” varies depending on the gaming group. One gaming group might prefer dungeon crawls and monster battles, while another gaming group might prefer political intrigue. For that reason, Tavern Tales doesn’t rigidly define character advancement. It’s up to your gaming group to work together to determine a character advancement option that works best for you. Here are some of the most popular advancement options:
- Combat: Kill a dangerous monster.
- Exploration: Explore a perilous dungeon.
- Interaction: Resolve an interpersonal conflict.
- Quest: Complete an adventure.
- Personal: Explore your backstory.
- Roleplay: Have in-character conversations.
- Sandbox: Go out into the world and find adventure.
- All of the above!
It’s important for the GM and the players to clearly communicate so that everybody knows the driving purpose of the game. Is it to kill monsters? The GM should reward players for running into battle. Is it political intrigue? The GM should reward players for attending a masquerade. Most gaming groups will use a combination of these factors, possibly even all of them. When the GM feels that the players have sufficiently advanced, the players each gain 1 XP.
Upgrading Traits
Instead of increasing your stats or buying a new trait, you can upgrade a trait you already have. Upgrading a trait costs the same as purchasing a new trait in that category. For example, suppose you have 3 exploration traits. You would need to spend 4 XP to upgrade an exploration trait. Then, if you wanted to acquire or upgrade another exploration trait, it would cost 5 XP.
Tavern Tales intentionally doesn’t offer clear instructions for upgrading traits. You and the GM should collaborate to create a balanced effect. In general, upgrades should enhance a trait’s existing capabilities, and they should be approximately as powerful as if you’d purchased a new trait. Also, your upgrade should follow Tavern Tales’ core principles: the most important is “think cinematically, not mathematically.” Try to avoid upgrades that give you bigger numbers. Here are a few examples of how you might upgrade a trait:
- Use the trait more frequently.
- Increase the trait’s duration, range, or area of effect.
- The trait’s drawbacks are less severe.
- The trait is more precise or flexible.
- You can use the trait much more quickly.
Earlier, Dabney acquired Gut Instinct, an exploration trait from the Savagery theme. He begins a conversation with the GM:
Dabney: I really love Gut Instinct and I want to get more use out of it. Can I upgrade it?
GM: Sure, what do you have in mind?
Dabney: Well, I like the idea of my character being so attuned to his instincts that it’s practically supernatural. I was hoping that I could get extra information when I use it.
GM: That sounds reasonable.
Dabney: How about I add this line of text: “Whenever you use Gut Instinct, the GM must tell you something important about what your instincts are sensing.”
GM: That sounds good to me! Write it on your character sheet. We’ll see how that upgrade plays out during this next session. Afterward, we’ll talk again to see if we both think it’s balanced. Sound fair?
Dabney: Yep!
Restricting Upgrades
By default, Tavern Tales doesn’t place any restriction on upgrades. Your gaming group may want to restrict upgrades to prevent players from creating overly specialized characters. For example, the GM might say that players can only have a maximum of 3 upgrades.
Retraining
You can change some aspects of your character by retraining. To retrain, your character simply needs to take a week off from the adventuring life and rest. It’s a good idea to retrain in between sessions so that it doesn’t disrupt gameplay. You can retrain the following:
Traits:
Replace one of your traits with a new trait. The new trait must be the same theme and category as the old trait. If you remove an Arcane combat trait, the new trait must also be Arcane combat. You can’t remove upgraded traits.
Upgrades:
If one of your traits is upgraded, you can change that upgrade to a different upgrade.
You can’t retrain stats.
Death and Ending Your Story
Every story must end. When you build your character, spend some time thinking about how you want your character’s story to end. You might initially think that dying is a bad thing, but is it really? Your PC dying gloriously can be a very memorable experience for you and your friends.
Typically, player death occurs when a player marks all of their boxes, and the situation logically warrants it. For example, if you mark all of your boxes in a fight against a ruthless dragon, it might be logical to say that the dragon destroys you. If you mark all of your boxes during a freezing blizzard when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, it might be logical to say that you freeze to death. In contrast, if you mark all of your boxes while chatting with people in a bar, it’s probably not fitting to say that you die. Why would that kill you? It’s probably more logical to say that you get banned from the bar, or that you get too drunk and unintentionally anger the wrong person.
This is where your game’s tone is important. Players in a dark and gritty game will be more vulnerable to death than players in a bright and heroic game. Some gaming groups like the constant, oppressive threat of player death because it keeps things tense and exciting. Other groups like games where players are hard to kill because they want to feel like larger-than-life heroes.
When death comes for you, it’s your right to decide how you die. You temporarily take control over the story to describe what happens. For example, suppose that a dragon slashes you with its claws and hurts you enough to kill you. It’s now up to you to decide how you die: perhaps the dragon devours you whole, incinerates you with fire breath, or delivers a fatal wound that will allow you to hold on for about 30 seconds after your companions rush to your side. You can’t use this rule to stay in the fight longer than you should, or hold out for extra healing. Death is coming for you, period. Use this opportunity to cough up blood, say goodbye to your companions, or reveal a huge secret.
You can’t use your death to perform excessively heroic acts. For example, if a dragon kills you, you can’t say that you take the dragon with you. If you want to do something dramatic when you die, consider taking the trait Death Throes from the Undeath theme
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