Beyond the Wall: It Takes a Crowd to Source a Village

One of the best parts of Flatland Games' Beyond the Wall & Other Adventures neoclone is the way that its character playbooks seamlessly merge character creation and setting creation: as the players generate their YA-fantasy heroes, they simultaneously build and populate the heroes' home village. I thought it would be interesting to go through this process publicly, and so I asked for some partners-in-crime over at the Google+ OSR community.

Our premise is that the participants' blogs are actually players sitting at a table and going through Beyond the Wall character creation. Each blog is "seated" to the right of another blog, so the character it creates will take part in another character's backstory (as per chart 6 in each Beyond the Wall playbook). In addition, the locations and NPCs generated by each blog will be combined into a single village map and NPC key.

Here's the list of participants, blogs, and playbook choices in the order in which they're seated at the virtual table:

+Rob Barrett of Vargold: The Wolf-Time is creating a Dwarven Adventurer.
+Brett Slocum of The Eye of Joyful Sitting Amongst Friends is creating a Would-Be Knight.
+Henry Wong of The Campaign Expanse is creating a Self-Taught Mage.
+Pearce Shea of games with others is creating a Witch's Prentice.
+Anthony Simeone of Once More Unto the Breach is creating a Young Woodsman.
+Mike Lizardi of Fear No Darkness is creating a Halfling Outrider.

Brett is to my right, Henry is to Brett's right, Pearce is to Henry's right, Anthony is to Pearce's right, Mike is to Anthony's right, and I'm to Mike's right. Playbooks were selected in reverse order (i.e., Mike got first choice, Anthony second, and so on).

Before we begin, I'd like to thank the others for agreeing to take part in this exercise. Look for the first character post soon!