A couple of quick notes…a bit on a minor deity in our campaign and homemade Rune Bennies.
One of the characters in the game, Cuðbert (played by Jamie), is a priest of a minor god (spirit?). In the Hellfrost Player’s Guide, rules and guidelines for creating minor gods are provided and the various Region Guides provide lots of wonderful examples of minor gods in the setting. These minor gods are great for GMs They add more variety and allow the GM to “personalize” stuff in the game without worrying about the canon of the established (i.e., written about) major deities. They are also great for players that want to come up with a character concept that doesn’t quite fit with any of the major deities.
Cuðbert is exactly one such character. Jamie had a basic character concept and he and I bounced ideas back and forth to “actualize” his concept in the game. At first, we worked on coming up with a new Arcane Background but, eventually, we settled on using the rules for minor deities…something, in retrospect, we should have just done in the first place. Below is the stat block for Gaupa…we haven’t written up any fluff yet.
Gaupa
Titles: Spirit of the Forest Lynx
Aspects: Arboreal Lynx
Affiliations: Eostre Animalmother, Ullr
Symbol: Stylized Lynx face
Priesthood: Host (priest), no paladins
Herald: None
Holy Days: First Day of Spring, first and last days of Huntianmonan
Duties: Protect the health of the forest, honor the Lynx, hunt regularly
Sins: (Minor) Mistreating a feline, overhunting a forest area, allowing a wounded mundane animal to suffer (Major) Mistreating a Lynx, Wasting significant portions of prey from a hunt, Purposefully setting a forest fire (Mortal) Killing a feline for anything other than self-defense, hunting forest creatures for sport
Signature Power: Boost Trait (Strength, Vigor, Agility, Fighting, Notice, Intimidation, Guts, Swimming, Climbing, Tracking, Stealth, Survival)*
Powers: Speed*, Altered Senses*, Environmental Protection*, Growth/Shrink*, Quickness*, Shape Change*.
Trappings: Take on Lynx (or other feline predator) physical traits (e.g., Boost Trait (Climbing) causes ghostly feline claws to protrude from hands and feet).
Special: Spells marked with “*” only function on Gaupa’s Host (i.e., the caster). Gaupa’s Host has retractable claws (Str+d4 damage, always considered armed for purposes of the Unarmed Defender rule).
Rune Bennies
One of the optional rules (provided free at the Triple Ace Games website) is for Rune Bennies. These rules basically add some nice “nordic” flavor to Bennies in Hellfrost. Each of the twenty-four major deities has a rune assigned to it and thus a Rune Benny assigned to it. The Rune Benny can be spent to modify a specific Trait test or to gain a non-trait benefit of some sort (e.g., the Dargar Rune Benny allows the character to go Berserk). It can also be used just like a normal Benny. The rules add a nice touch of flavor, in my opinion, to a Hellfrost campaign. We’re going to start using these rules in our campaign (although slightly modified…with eight players, there aren’t enough Rune Bennies to go around and still let the GM Wild Cards have some).
So I went out to a craft store today, broke out my Dremel rotary tool and started to make some homemade Rune Bennies. I rubbed in some white primer to help the rune stand out a bit more than with just the etching. They may not be quite as nice as these or these but they only cost me like $6 and some time (with a bunch of spare “stones” left over).
A quarter and a Hellfrost Bennie included for scale.
