Getting into the home stretch of the #CharacterCreationChallenge with the barbarian, Xabek of Volsk, built using Dungeon World.

If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, I direct you to the image above. I think you can tell who Xabek is at just a glance.

Coming from the harsh polar region, this guy had to be tough just to survive, and survive he did. Battling ice dragons and vampire penguins… ok, maybe not those… Xabek never backs down from a fight. Of course, there are many times he should have and he received a well-deserved whoopin – he’s not the wisest or smartest out there by any stretch. But he’s never short of courage nor a willingness to charm the folks around the fire with tales of his exploits.

Dungeon World

This RPG uses the Powered by the Apocalypse (PbtA) chassis to express a classic fantasy world. This means character creation is quite easy, starting with a playbook defined by the class.

It uses the common attributes we have come to know from properties like Dungeons & Dragons, namely: Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Wisdom, and Charisma. It also keeps concepts like Hit Points and Armor Class, though the latter is expressed a bit differently (damage reduction).

Moves are somewhat akin to the Feats used in some other RPGs and, well, that’s pretty much all you need to get going. Oddly enough, although I used the published playbooks, the barbarian isn’t described in the core rulebook. And yet it was still super easy to build.

The SRD is freely available online, though you can support the authors by purchasing it, and there are numerous playbooks and other assets available on sites like DriveThruRPG. I think you really need the right people to attempt these fiction-forward RPGs, which is an even smaller niche than the D&D and Pathfinder folks. But I’m still dying to develop that group.