Wyverns & Warrens Preview: Paths & Edges (Patreon)

(This article is not covered under the OGL 1.0a.)

Wyverns & Warrens (or "WyvWar") is my current ongoing attempt to design a short, easy, fantasy ttRPG that still had a depth of options. I'm doing previews of concepts for my Patrons, and open to your feedback.

Paths & Edges

I've mentioned the concepts of Paths & Edges in WyvWar before, and people who follow some of my previous projects (such as the "Talented" line of Genius Guides) are going to have some inkling on how these things work, but I want to go into specifics on how I see these things working, and how the game distinguishes between (for example) a Dwarf Stone-Touched Summoner and a Noble Summoner Envoy

(Art © Brett Neufeld)

Paths

So, every starting character is defined by three Paths. Potential Paths include things like your ancestry (such as elf, dragon, dwarf, human, gelatinous cube), your background (such acolyte, apprentice, baker, chosen one, royalty, squire, street urchin, undergoing transformation, stranded starship away team crewmember), and your theme (such as adventurer, archer, champion, disciple of death, fire-touched, mercenary, sidekick, warrior, wizard, godling).

A lot of people will choose one ancestry, one background, and one theme. That's fine, perfectly reasonable choice. 

But it's not mandatory.

If you want your Paths to be elf, human, and orc because you are the firstborn daughter of a half-elf and a half-orc, that's fine. If you want them to be dwarf, royalty, street urchin because you were raise Prince of the Basalt Mountains but then deposed and barely survived on the streets, that's fine too.

Your Paths give you access to beginning Path Edges, and note what Universal Edges (see below) are typical for them. But taking those aren't mandatory either. Just options that most characters with those Paths have. But you can be different. You're a heroic character, you already ARE different.

(Insert here: my rant against people who claim to be fans of Old Skool fantasy, but complain about people wanting nontypical PCs. In Lord of the Rings, Hobbits are SO atypical Sauron hadn't ever *heard* of them when Bilbo got the ring. The heroes are OFTEN atypical.)

Your Paths all act like classes from Adventure Hole & Adversarial Lizard-derived class/level games. You begin with one Level in each Path. You gain bonuses to various attributes (Defense, Hit Points, health, and so on) as you gain more levels. 

Some Paths are Origins. Normally you can only take an Origin Path if you do so at 1st level -- if you don't star as a Dwarf, you can't become a Dwarf later. However, this is not a rule designed for game balance, and the player and GM can make exceptions that make sense within their game. If your Chosen-One Human Warrior ends up carrying the Hammer of the Dworrow Kings at 5th level, and it infused him with Dwarven essence, it might well make sense to pick up the Dwarf Path even thought the character is well-established.

Edges

At first level, you character gains six edges. These can be selected from the Path Edges for any of your Paths, from Universal Edges anyone can pick from anytime they gain an Edge (as you pick them up as you gain levels as well), or from Story Edges the GM agrees are appropriate for this moment in the campaign. That last one is VERY GM-dependent - it might well not make sense for 1st level characters to have the National Heroes Story Edges available to them when the game begins, but after they Save the Royal Family, it might be opened up as an option.

Each set of Path Edges are tightly linked to the core, indelible concept of that path. The Dwarf Path has Edges such as Fire Resistance, Lightless Sight and Stonespeech, because those are core to the physical and supernatural essence of being a Dwarf. It doesn't have things about brewing, or being grumpy, or being a good blacksmith, or even being generally physical hardy, because those aren't things specific linked to the core nature of being a dwarf. A Dwarf could choose to take the Crafter, Dwarf, and Stalwart paths... but a character that is a member of the Dwarf ancestry who is a reincarnated elf and raised by wizards could also choose to take the Elf, Scholar, Wizard paths. 

(Art by Jeshields)

Multipathing & Edges

You can, of course, stop taking levels in one of your starting Paths to gain levels in a new Path. However, that doesn't automatically give you more Path Edges. When you gain new Edges at higher level (let's say one at 3rd, 6th, and 9th just for discussions' sake), you can only gain them from Paths you have a minimum number of levels in. At 3rd, you must have at least 2 levels in a Path to take one of its Path Edges, at 6th at least 4, and at 9th at least 5. So if you started with the Dwarf path, took a Dwarf Path Edge at 1st level, then switched to Chosen One for 2nd and 3rd level, when you gained a new Edge at 3rd, you could pick a new Chosen One Path edge, but not a new Dwarven Path edge.

Obviously that's just the basics, but its designed to create a system that allows a ton of flexibility without a ton of complexity.