SPEAKER_01 0:00

Let's build a candela character. And there's the opening crack. It is time for another episode of Barbs and Barrels. I'm Ross Drews, along with me for the Ryan today. Phil Phil, how's it going? I felt great, Ross. I'm super excited for this. This is part four of our 10-part deep dive into Darrington Press's horror system Candela Obscura. Uh, so far in this little section, we've really talked about character building, uh, and then we got into like actually showing you how a character is built, where we did uh like a screen grab of like us going through the entire process. And today is time for the podcast part where we're just gonna talk uh a little bit about some of the minutiae in character building. Is that how you would say that film?

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Yeah, absolutely. I think it is important for us to maybe still kind of walk through the process a little bit in case someone doesn't want to watch the actual like screen scrape video or screen walkthrough video, just so everyone kind of knows what that process looks like. That makes sense to kick us off. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. So if we kind of revisit that process a little bit, right? I think it's a seven-step-ish uh style of character creation. Um and it starts with you know the basis of your characters. So we're gonna start with a role and a specialty. When I think of this like through the DD lens, right, that most of the time we kind of approach this through. Um, this would be like picking a class. And then in essence, when your class hits that level milestone where you're picking like maybe a path or a circle, right? Um that's gonna be your specialty. Sure. So that's the first component in this. Um, from there, once you've determined what your role and your specialty are gonna be, then it's your action ratings. So this in essence would be similar to assigning your stats in D D. Sure. Your um your skill points.

SPEAKER_01 1:49

Yeah, and I I think the the most important thing to really realize um is that there's no dice rolling involved in the creation, character creation in Candela Obscura. So if you're moving from DD or really most systems to over here, it's gonna be kind of unusual. And and honestly, like at first I thought it was really weird because like I want to like roll stats, I want there to be a little bit of fate in this. But but the more we've done it, like playing and then the doing it for this series, I really feel like there's something really nice about it though, to where like you're telling me where to put these things, it still gives you a little bit of leeway. So it's like there's specific things that you're assigning because of your role. And then typically, depending on what type of role that you have or whatever you're building, uh, it's gonna give you like three action points that you can assign wherever you want.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Sure, gives you a little bit of freedom to kind of cast that flavor, right? In the in your distribution of your points. Um, but your base character, right, in general has your your role, your specialty. There's things you're good at right intentionally, right? That is the goal of your character. Um, once we've got our action ratings determined, then we're headed to determine our drives, which once again are basically kind of um some of it's predetermined based on what your role specialty are, and then you have some freedom there once again to continue to flavor your character. So, hey, where does it make the most sense to have drives? Um, you know, probably somewhere where I have some action ratings so that way I could, you know, use my drives to perform those actions.

SPEAKER_01 3:20

And and really in Candela, yeah, probably even more than DD, like the character creation process is very collaborative. So we'll we'll talk about a little bit about this when we talk about optimizing your character or the inability to optimize your character in Candela. But part of that process is you're likely building your character with your fellow players. That's the whole point of this. And so where you lack, other people could make up. So it's like you your instinct is gonna be, I want to spread this out and I want to be at least a little bit good at something. But at the end of the day, probably not.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

No, and so Ross and I have kind of we've been through this process a couple times, and we've been moving some characters from DD into Candela to play. And part of that was okay, well, you know, what's we're not gonna round these characters out. Like this character would play this way, and then the party kind of offsets that. There's still some gaps, I feel like, to be truthful, but I think that that's gonna play appropriately and make a more fun, like group storytelling experience. Totally. I agree 100%. Once we've got those drives in there, next up are our resistances. So we just go in and we fill those out based on what our um basically where our res our our drive points are, right? So every three drive you have, you get to fill out a resistance. So you go in and fill those out. Uh, then we get to guild some actions. So you'll guild one based on what your role is um or your specialty, and then your second one you actually get to pick. So it does make sense to probably guild an action where you have some drive, so that way you could regain your drive.

SPEAKER_01 4:51

Yeah. And we talked about this a little bit in, I think, both the the introduction to character building and when we were actually building a character where uh drive is probably the mechanic that, or not drive, but gilding is the is the the mechanic that's gonna be kind of confusing to some people in a lot of ways.

SPEAKER_00 5:10

It's because it it in your mind you think of like, oh, I have a gilded dice, I should add a die. And that's not actually the way that it works. It's like, hey, no, I have two action points in there. I'm gonna roll two dice. One of them is gilded. If I happen to choose that one as my role, then I can gain a drive back. Right. It's not the actual addition of an extra die. And I think that's where it gets a little bit confusing. Yeah, 100%. Um, once we've gilded our actions, then we're gonna choose abilities. So they have role abilities and special abilities. And if you do go back and you kind of watch um our character build process that we did on the screen, the pre-generated character sheets that they actually have available on Deryton Press's website have those options listed for you. So if you just print out one of their pre-generated character sheets, you can actually pick the items right off of there. It has the descriptions and everything. Um, super easy to follow. And there's a lot of uh there's a lot of flavor, I feel like, too, in those abilities. Yes. Well you can really uh you don't min-max characters in this game, right? But you definitely could say, oh, my occultist is going to be more of like a ritualist, right? Or they're going to be more of like this other style of a character.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 6:16

And those really add to that.

SPEAKER_01 6:18

I think the coolest thing about this, and this is just a general thought about DD, is like there's so much involved in the character creation process in DD that it's like you get to a point where like, yep, I'll take that. And if you're a magic user in DD, you're like, I really don't want to look through 50 spells right now to decide what I want. The the nice thing about Candela, and that we we created a weird character in that last episode, and it it spells out those abilities so nicely. So you have like you have special abilities and then you have abilities that are that are part of your role. And so it's like it's three things. Like your first your first choice is three things, and they keep it pretty short, so it's very easy, but they intent I feel like they intentionally did that to get you to read through that and really think, wow, how can I utilize this for my character?

SPEAKER_00 7:06

And there's a blank character sheet in there too, right? So it's not like you are you know just limited to what is listed there, but I mean there's some pretty great options. Yeah, I mean, most of the things we looked through were were excellent options, so yeah. I agree. So once we've got um your ability, or those aren't abilities, yeah, they are your abilities locked in, then we're gonna head over um and we're actually going to fill in some character details. Yeah. So mainly flavor.

SPEAKER_01 7:38

Right. So so it's like and I think the funny thing is when when we when we were filling out the character sheet, we actually talked about something that you probably don't want to do because at the the top of that section is where your scars go, which we'll talk about here in a second. Um, but we had discussed in that, like, you know, maybe flavor-wise, it would make sense for your character to take a scar. And I do still kind of stand behind that because if you want to play like a veteran investigator, maybe you do have a scar. The key thing is knowing and 100% understanding that once you have four scars, your character has died. And you're probably retiring with three. You should be. So if you're coming in with one, this character may you may not be playing this character a long time. Um, but going back to like the the things you're filling in, this is gonna be where like you're coming up with a name, you're talking about pronouns, you're talking about um the reasons why you're part of Candela. These are things that you're just gonna come up with very narrative-based things.

SPEAKER_00 8:38

It is. It's I mean, if you're thinking about it from the DD lens, right? It's kind of backstory, but don't go right in the whole backstory, right? Do this, do this collaboratively. You do have a catalyst that Ross hit on, right? So, like, why did you join Candela Obscura? What was the spark? And then the next is the question. So, as your character is going out on assignment, as you're working through a campaign potentially, what question are you hoping to answer for your character?

SPEAKER_01 9:00

And and I think that's kind of again going back to like the ease of character building in Candela, like just when we were talking about assigning um um drive and and things like that and action points and stuff like that, it's like they kind of spell that out for you. You put it here, right? And so that was super nice. And then, but even when you get to like background, think to think about background in DD. Like it's very daunting for new players to be like, God, I don't know what to put for background. I just want to play the game. Like, how do I get by that? Whereas in Candela, it's specific questions, yeah. And it's like, yeah, this is your background, but it's like all I really want to know is why are you here? Yes. And why are you a part of this? And what are you getting from it? If you can tell me that, that's essentially your background in Candela.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

And I was thinking we're seven steps, it's because I forget about the eighth, because it's really the group part of the process, right? It's forming relationships, right? You've done all this work on your character, ideally with the rest of your party, but at that same time, now it's like, okay, well, individually, right? Like person to person within your circle, what relationship do you have? And you literally go around the table, right, and be like, oh, hey, my character and your character are what? Are we just coworkers? Um, are we workplace rivals? Right? Like, yeah, is your character a bully? Or wanted the character to be a bully? That's one of the options they actually list in the book.

SPEAKER_01 10:20

And this is really replacing that you meet in a tavern, true. Yeah, oh yeah. And and don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with that. And your players in Candela could still be meeting in a tavern to figure this out. And they but they just know each other, and they're very it's like a level one DD character. I I really don't know why my DD characters ever got into the positions they were. Was it complete happenstance that they happen to walk into a tavern and then here's somebody needing help, and you, you're the person, like you're gonna be the one to help me, and here we go. We're off to become heroes of the realm. In Candela, I I love the fact that it's intentional that before you ever play a minute, before you go out on an assignment, before I mean, really in a lot of ways, before you're an investigator, why do you know each other? Yeah, like are you friends, rivals, bully is an option that you can explore? Like, there's lots of soulmates, lovers.

SPEAKER_00 11:12

Oh, yeah. There the book has a whole bunch of different options, and you can make up your own too, right? But it has a plethora of options you choose from. Totally. I think once you finish forming your relationships, the character creation part is done, right? And then from there, we're still meeting as a group, and we're gonna go ahead and create our circle, right? That's gonna be the next component of the process.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

Yeah, and this is a this is a place where uh very few DD groups. I feel like maybe there's more out there that name their groups, but immediately I think of like Vox Machina, and and most groups just don't name their party effectively. Right. We've been playing a DD campaign, started as a pre-written novel, it's now in Homebrew World that's also gonna be playing some Candela Obscura. We've been playing that for four years. Yes, and we do not have a name for our party. There probably should be a name for our party.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

We're gonna have to make one.

SPEAKER_01 12:06

Yeah, I think we need one. Yeah, but this is this is this is uh something uh before we move on to circle creation really quick. I think these are like little pieces where, like, if you're not ready to dive into Candela that you can take back to DD. You know, if you're starting new, you know, it it would help with shared background and understanding to have your characters know each other. This is not something that's explicitly spelled out in any DD book, but you know, if they know each other, that's fantastic. If you have a name for your group and you have all of that coming in, it it feels like it flows better narratively.

SPEAKER_00 12:39

I mean it almost changes your lens of DD, right? Like you are approaching DD as a group storytelling game, which is what it's designed to be as well. Yeah, instead of just hey, everybody showed up to a help wanted ad. Right. Yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. Exactly. Yeah. Okay, let's talk about circle creation a little bit. So circle creation, um, you start out by answering a couple questions just like about your circle, but I I call that the boring part of circle creation. It's not really right, but the fun parts of circle creation, like Ross already hit on naming your circle. In Candela, names have power, right? So your name should have some kind of a significance. So whether it's um, you know, is it related to maybe like the first phenomena that you guys faced, or maybe a shared tragedy that the group has, or even like a you know, a political event or something that maybe happened in the area. Sure. So something that is going to give it purpose.

SPEAKER_01 13:31

Yeah, I and I love that. And it goes back to and we've talked about this throughout all of these parts so far about Candela Obscure is like it leans heavily into make things matter. It's like nothing you're gonna decide is arbitrary, right? It all connects back somewhere. So names having meaning, even the name of your group, there's a reason for that. And once you have that, how do you play that in the assignment while you're out investigating?

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Your name even could tie into your like chapter house location. I that's the next part is you actually, you know, what does your chapter house look like for your circle and where is it located? Like, is it in an you know, a speakeasy hidden behind one of the pubs? Or um is do you literally is your lightkeeper literally in a lighthouse, right? And that is your chapter house. You know, what does that look like? Um, and I think that's a cool part and offers like a ton of room for embellishment.

SPEAKER_01 14:26

Totally. And and I think uh DD started to lean into that when they introduced bastions. Bastions, yeah. And but but even Bastions, so it's like your chapter house is where you come together to meet. Yes. So it's like when you're out and about and you get the call from your lightkeeper, you know, somebody knocks on your door and says, Well, you know, uh Candelor requests your your presence or your assistance, you go to your chapter house. Like everybody has that place where they meet. Bastions in DD were built a lot in a lot of ways for a player to have a home, not a party to have a home. Now, your party could absolutely use one bastion, but really when you read the rules behind it, it's meant for a player to do that. Uh now my guess would be if you tried a bastion out there, you probably did it as a party. Um, but again, Candela's doing this very intentionally because they want this to be the gathering place for your group.

SPEAKER_00 15:16

This is like in DCC where they can link their personal spaces together.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. For their guilds, their guild halls.

SPEAKER_00 15:22

Yeah, absolutely. Um I I always picture like it might mind like a Masonic temple as a guild house, potentially. I feel like would be a cool place, but like hashtag real life example. Uh once you've got your house location picked, uh, then you have some circle abilities that you can choose. So, you know, your group, right, as a whole, has its own set of like boons and things that you can earn as you get further on into the game. Um, so as you complete assignments, all right, you level up as a character, but your circle also levels up, which gives you access to more resources. Right.

SPEAKER_01 15:58

And and and I really love that feature. That's the fact that you know, if you're going to be a team and play as a team, then then then here are some bonuses for being that team and completing tasks and doing things like that. And I think it just it behooves you to to act that way in the game. Again, going back to how intentional Darrington Press was when they wrote this this uh TTRPG.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah. So uh and then your last step in there is to actually assign your resource points. So, hey, where are we going to put points into stitch, refresh, or train? And those are ways that you in essence can heal up or get better at skills or things, recover drives um during or yeah, drives and resistances. I was thinking resistances, but it's drives and resistances um between assignments, right? So, hey, how am I actually gonna refresh some of this stuff? Because there is no such thing, right, as a true like long rest right in candela.

SPEAKER_01 16:51

Yes, in this game.

SPEAKER_00 16:52

So it works a little bit differently, but that's achieved through your circle.

SPEAKER_01 16:55

You know, honest to God, if if we for you dungeon crawler Carl fans out there, if we if we ever get a chance to to talk to Matt Dinneman, we we need to ask him if the the idea behind the guild halls was possibly influenced by Candela. Because it feels like as you're describing that, it feels very similar, like it's a place for you to train and restore yourself, which is exact and and I'm trying to remember what year he wrote that book. Oh, did it date Candela?

SPEAKER_00 17:24

Was it or was it not? Correct. Yeah, that's a good point.

SPEAKER_01 17:27

I don't I don't know, but but it's it just seems ironically close right now as we talk about this. So, anyway, so shout out to all the dungeon crawler Carl fans out there. Love you guys. So uh the next thing we want to talk about here is not really necessarily, and we hit it a little bit, is not necessarily part of the character creation, but it's going back and talking about scars a little bit. And scars are one of those mechanics that really show like the physical manifestation of you almost dying, more or less. Correct. And eventually you get so many scars, you die, you get so many scars you could retire. Um, but but I think the thing, and we and we've talked about this before, Phil, is like, you know, you you take so many bleed, you dropped in this assignment, uh, you didn't die because you don't have that many scars. But now, because you have taken a scar, like, how does that manifest for you as a character is what we're talking about here.

SPEAKER_00 18:19

Sure. And so there's there's a mechanical change, right? But then more so than that, too, like there is a change in how you play that character. So, sure, let's say um you took you got your fourth mark in body, right? So then you take a body scar. So in the body section of my character sheet, I'm gonna have to erase one of my ability points, and I need to move it somewhere else that would make sense for what happened. So maybe I'm erasing one out of probably let's say move, maybe I injured a foot or something, right? So I'm gonna be a little bit slower. Yep. So I'm gonna take one out of move, but because I'm slower, maybe I'm more perceptive, right? Yep. Or something along those lines. So I'd have to look at you know where I should drop that point in, but I feel like it would make sense that you know I'm paying much more attention to my surroundings now because I'm not as fast to get out of there. Yeah, I love that.

SPEAKER_01 19:10

And so here's here's the the cool thing about this. I think this is another opportunity where if you're not ready to dive into candela and play candela, this could be something you take back to your DD game. This would be very easy to adapt. Like if you drop, if you drop down to zero HP and have to be revived, maybe at your table you roll a table and or maybe you have multiple tables depending on how how you go.

SPEAKER_00 19:34

Yeah, how many death saves you failed.

SPEAKER_01 19:35

Yeah. Oh, that's a good idea. Yes. And it becomes more, oh my gosh, it becomes more and more intense the more you fail. Oh, I love that idea. Yeah, too. But but then but then you know, you roll whatever that would be for your character, they now have this thing, but then uh kind of like in uh uh candela, where it's like, you know, if you you're slower, but now you're more perceptive, you could still do something like that in DD. So it's like you're not able to do this, so your walking speed drops, but I'm gonna give you a plus one to your perception or something.

SPEAKER_00 20:03

It is interesting though, because I like in DD, there are certain monsters that you'll come up against that have the ability to like leech off your constitution, right? Or leech off of different skills. We've never talked about that in the aspect of like going down. Yeah, yeah, totally sense.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Yeah, gosh, though. We don't do that, but we may be doing here very soon. Uh so the one of the last things here we want to talk about is players coming from DD. So you're actually getting into Candel Obscurity, you're creating characters, those people out there who are struggling to optimize their character. And honestly, Phil, I think the best advice for somebody who's struggling to optimize their character is quit trying to optimize your character. I was gonna say stop. Yeah, I literally that is the first thing you should do.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

It's it's not designed to be that, it just isn't, right? You're playing a perfectly imperfect character, and that's how they're supposed to be played, with room to change. Because if you do take a scar, right, you're not you're not gonna be playing that character the same way you did originally. And you're, you know, as a group, right? You have a common goal, you are a small piece of that. So you don't have to be the hero, right? Of the group or of the realm, right? You're just on the front lines doing the best you can.

SPEAKER_01 21:14

Yeah, I I think how you just talked about being the hero is is a good illustration of that. So when you're you're thinking of like min-maxing and DD, you're trying to create that perfect uh Thor-esque character that is the hero in DD. But whereas in Candela, you are literally a flawed human being, like most people are in real life. You're not perfect at everything. And and because of that, it lends itself really well to the narrative focus of Candela Obscure.

SPEAKER_00 21:44

I think about it too, right? Your goal is not to become the best character that you can, your goal is to answer your question. Yeah, whatever it was that you wrote, right? And continue to help, you know, uh stop phenomenon or bleed from leaking into the world, right, as best you can. But your goal personally is a character. Character is to answer your question.

SPEAKER_01 22:01

I I think we talked about it in the the podcast, the introduction podcast, which would have been episode two or part two that we did, where we talked about how most investigators in Candela do what they do in anonymity. Yeah. Oh, yeah, absolutely. So you don't don't you don't need to be perfect because it's not like you're a very visible type of character here. If anything, you probably don't want to draw a lot of attention. Yeah, absolutely. I would agree with that. Yeah. Okay, Phil, what are your your final thoughts just generally on character creation?

SPEAKER_00 22:34

Um, I enjoy this character creation process. I feel like um creatively, it really gets me kind of in a good spot where I'm not into that. Well, hey, you know, this role wasn't the greatest. Where am I gonna put that dump stat? You know, I don't really have to worry about that. Uh, this is much more like, oh, okay, you know, do I want to play like a soldier character? So obviously I'm gonna be, you know, probably pretty good in the move area, but where are my shortcomings gonna be? Right. And just kind of like thinking through the components of how to build out the character that I want to play, and even you know, what is I know they're called roles, but thinking through like, okay, what is my character's role in the circle? And it may change like based on what other people are playing too. Totally. So I I don't know. I like I love that.

SPEAKER_01 23:17

You know, I I think back to the very first time I built a DD character and how daunting and intimidating it was to create a character. And and given I I approached Candela after having played DD, so it's like the whole thing was a little less intimidating than the verse for very first time you pick up any TT RPG, but I like the simplicity of it. Like it character creation is not a barrier to playing the game here. It's like you're still able to kind of build what you want to build while adding the simplicity of not having to roll dice, it really guiding you through the process and keeping your choices relatively minimal. Something we didn't mention was that equipment, you don't really pick equipment for your character until you go out on assignment. Whereas in DD, like you have all of these starting equipment things that you kind of have to shuffle through right from the get-go before you've ever even started an adventure to try to decide what you need because who knows when you're gonna get to shop for more. Whereas in Candela, it's like, well, what do you need for this thing? Which is really cool too, because that's kind of like, oh, here's your here's your mission. What do you need to? It's like a Q James Bond type thing. It's like, what do you need to to accomplish your goal in this one? So yeah, uh, I think that's really cool. So I I I love the character creation process here. Don't get me wrong, I still love the character creation process in DD too. It's fantastic. Uh, but I can see where for particularly for a new player, where this would be very appealing.

SPEAKER_00 24:38

Yeah, so absolutely.

SPEAKER_01 24:39

It's it's time not consuming.

SPEAKER_00 24:42

Yeah, time.

SPEAKER_01 24:42

I would agree with that. Time lean. It like I said, it's it's a it's a it's a non-barrier for getting into the game. Yes. Like if it was long and convoid, nobody's gonna want to do it. Why take the time to do it? Right. Kind of thing. So anyway, uh, that's gonna do it for this episode of Bards and Barrels. We'll be back next week for the next part where we dive a little deeper uh into some other things, Candela Obscura. Don't forget to like and subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can follow us on our social media channels, Facebook, Threads, Instagram, at Bards and Barrels. Until next time, may your dice be hot and your beer be cold.