Now that Sasha had his race and class selected, it was time to do the rest of his program. “Alright.” He turned back to Abeona, a twinkle in his eyes. “Next is the name.” He’d been thinking about this for nearly an hour as he fiddled with his face to make it feel right. “Call me Coney, C O N E Y.” He said with a grin.
“Oh, any reason why?” She asked, waving a hand at the machine. The top selection panel was replaced with the new name at her gesture.
“Several.” He turned to the red dot, knowing he’d cut to third person rather than POV here. “First, Coney is another word for rabbit, used throughout the British isles. Second, as my viewers at home know, I am from Brooklyn, where Coney Island is one of our most historically significant neighborhoods.” He grinned and looked back at her. “And, well, it’s cute.”
Abeona nodded, smiling. “It is, I do like cute things.” The goddess sighed, leaning against the mirror. “So, all you have left is your background, your attributes, and your trait.”
“And can you tell all the folks at home what those mean?” He said in a slightly teasing tone.
Abeona rolled her eyes but started quickly. “Yes I can, you silly bunny. Background is where you’re from, your general background. Now that you’ve chosen race, class, and sex I can show you the backgrounds you have available.” She gestured at the selection button. “Simply put, backgrounds come in a wide variety, and are entirely based on your choices. Your starting location, circumstances, and equipment all are based on background.”
Sasha nodded, starting to flick through the backgrounds on the list. Noble, tribesman, enslaved. He was shocked that the last one was an option, who in their right mind would pick to be enslaved. His face flushed a little as he thought about it but he shook his head to make sure he could hear his host speak.
“Traits are equally varied.” She said with a twinkle in her eye. “Traits are unique gameplay features, and are the main way to make your character feel different. Traits have both good and bad aspects, and often become defining features of a character.”
Sasha’s eyes were drawn back to the backgrounds, and he began to flick through a few more. He supposed it’d be annoying to his audience, but he could always set the camera to not follow his POV here. Street Urchin, Student, Wildling.
“Finally there are your attributes. Attributes become much more important later in the game, but at the start of Plastikos you have a total of 42 points that you can put between any of your seven attributes.” She smiled as he glanced over. “I think I’ll save telling you how they work until after you pick the background, otherwise you’ll be far too .”
Sasha laughed nervously at getting caught. “Heh, right.” He said, looking back and scrolling through more. Cultist Initiate, Shaman in training, Monastic Novice. “Well that last one’s interesting.” He muttered. Looking back at the goddess he smiled shamelessly. “So, as a cleric, I’d be dealing with the gods and religious stuff right?” He asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“Yeah, that’s right.” Abeona smiled. “You didn’t ask, but I know you want to know, I can see it in your eyes. There are dozens of gods, maybe hundreds, in the world of Plastikos. Every culture has their own gods. Some gods are tied to race, while others are tied to kingdoms, but in the end the farther you are from their center of power the weaker their voices are.”
A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.
“Okay, so, if I was to want to learn about the gods, what would be the best thing to do?”
“Other than asking one?” She grinned. “I’d say becoming a student of some sort. For example, starting within a cult might give you access to some deep lore, which would be considered heretical to others. If you pick the Monestary background, it might give you access to a large library, depending on where you are.”
Sasha nodded. “And as much as I’d like to, I doubt being a shaman would make learning easy. They tend to use oration to teach, rather than texts.” He sighed, deciding to pick the Novice path. That should start him at least somewhere near a religious location. He leaned forward and flipped it’s switch to confirm it.
“Now, would you like to do points or Traits?”
“Let me see the traits.” There were a lot on the list. “Huh, I’m not sure what to pick out of these. Four Eyes, Hoarder, Stoic?” He turned back to her. “Can you help me tidy this up?”
“Well, yes and no. The reason there are so many traits is because it’s how you begin your journey with something special. For example, the Latent Vampiric Curse trait makes you weaker in the day and stronger at night.”
“Does it actually make you a vampire?”
“Not really.” She booped his nose, which he felt was a little rude. “It does make you have an easier time becoming one during gameplay, should you take the right steps.”
“So traits can be nearly anything?” He tapped his foot. “Is there a lucky trait? I know that’s always been fun. Or something like the Wild Wasteland trait from the old Fallout games?”
“Yup, almost whatever you want, helping to pick what you are going to be like.” She frowned. “As for luck, there are a few luck based traits. What you should know about luck is that, as a stat, luck isn’t as broken as it is in other games. Luck doesn’t just make you more likely to do cool stuff, it makes you more likely to find interesting parts of the game. The gods watch you the more luck you have, if you want to look at it that way.”
“So a lucky trait would be like Wild Wasteland afterall.” Sasha said with a grin. “I can find secrets with enough luck… Okay, so what kind of lucky traits are there.”
“As a Rabbit-Folk you have access to a unique one, Lucky Paws. It makes you clumsier, but whenever you trip or fall you are likely to find something interesting. There is also Loaded Dice, which makes all your gambling checks double in effectiveness, at the cost of being banned from gambling dens should you win more than 70 percent of the time, lowered from the usual 90 percent. A good one could be intuition, which is a knowledge based luck check that gives you random information that can be useful, but is often not.”
Sasha nodded, sighing, he already knew what he wanted to take. It was easy enough. “I’ll take Lucky Paws.I guess I’m going to double down on my race.” She nodded as she put it in, watching him smile softly. “So… Attributes?”
“The rest of the attributes are pretty simple if you’ve played DnD or most games inspired by it. Strength is how strong you are, your carry weight, that sort of thing. Dexterity includes both speed and ability to move precisely.” Abeona seemed hesitant. “Constitution is how many hits you can take and how fast you heal. Intelligence is how quick you can learn things and memory, the casting stat for wizards. Clerics have a wisdom casting stat, which can also help against mental intrusion. Charisma is how easy it is for you to sway people, it’s not as simple as being your looks but includes force of personality and things, it’s one of the hardest ones to quantify effect due to being tied to player action so much. Finally, there’s luck, as I told you.”
Sasha decided to start out by placing a whopping thirteen in his Luck score. “I want this game to be interesting. I’ll leave the others in the dust.” He said out loud, but mostly just to his audience. The rest took him a few minutes “Wisdom of six, agility of six, intelligence of five, charisma of four, and strength of four, and constitution of four...” He nodded. “That looks good. I guess that’s it for character creation.” He smiled as he looked back at Aebona.
“Yup, you’ll be leaving the nest real soon.” She said with a smile. “Do you want a hug?” Silently Sasha, now Coney, nodded. He walked over and hugged the goddess, it was a really good hug. She seemed to know how to hug people much smaller than her too.