CC25 Character 5: Finndorr Silverfife (Dragonbane)

For 2025, I’m participating in the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The idea is to create one RPG character per day for each day in January, for a total of 31 characters. You can find new characters as they're created here.

Character 5: Dragonbane

Inspired by yesterday’s Call of Cthulhu character and my current non-D&D fixation, today I’m going to present a character for Free League’s Dragonbane RPG.

If you aren’t familiar with Dragonbane allow me to give the briefest of explanations. When roleplaying games came to Sweden back in the 1980s, it wasn’t Dungeons & Dragons that made the most lasting impression on Scandinavian gamers. Instead, it was a game based on Chaosium’s house system, the same rules that powered Call of Cthulhu, Stormbringer, and other games.

Called Drakar och Demoner (Dragons and Demons), this game was, for thousands of Swedish kids, what that other D&D was to those of us growing up in the United States. In that way, it’s kind of like an alternative universe Dungeons & Dragons. A sort of What If? re-imagining of the same fantasy tropes that informed the world’s most famous RPG.

I find this idea fascinating. It helps that this version of Dragonbane is a well-written, streamlined, and highly imaginative game. I have no idea how it compares to the classic versions of Drakar och Demoner, were like, but Dragonbane reminds me of the best parts of OSR-style gaming (deadly, non-restrictive rules) mixed with a modern approach (clean design, great art, consistent mechanics).

Of all the characters I’ve made so far for this blog challenge, this is the one I’d most like to use in a game ASAP.

Process

The Dragonbane rules make it possible to roll up a character entirely randomly, using dice to determine everything from character occupation to starting equipment. I did just that, using these dice from the Dragonbane boxed set.

 

I rolled the dice inside the boxed set lid

The Character: Finndorr Silverfife

Finndorr’s trained as a battlefield musician, as part of the dwarven Fife and Drum Corps. When the armies of the dwarves march into battle, it’s the Fifers who play the shrill marching tunes that quicken the soldiers’ steps and fill their hearts with courage and resolve.

Alas, Finndorr himself never made a great soldier. He’s not particularly fit or physical, and he is more fond of ale and song than of axes and armor. As soon as he finished his enlistment, Finndorr left the army to seek a life of leisure and ease. He carries an old copper coin that supposedly belonged to an old dragon horde, and he hopes to eventually track down the rest of the riches and retire. 

Finndorr is very much at home in a roadside tavern, spinning tales for the locals (accompanied by his fife) and can always charm his way to a hot meal. While he’s not one for combat, Finndorr absolutely loves the vagabond life of the adventurer. He's impulsive, hates to overly plan things, and loves to follow his instincts...which time and again lead him into otherwise avoidable trouble.

Click to Embiggen

CC25 Character 4: Dr. Milton T. Blair (Call of Cthulhu)

For 2025, I’m participating in the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The idea is to create one RPG character per day for each day in January, for a total of 31 characters. You can find new characters as they're created here.

Character 4: Call of Cthlulhu

 

Today character is in honor of my most-read-post here at Retreat Forward. It’s a character for one of the world’s most enduring tabletop RPGs: Call of Cthulhu.

My Most Popular Post

My blog gets very little traffic. I’m absolutely fine with that. The purpose of this site is to give me somewhere to publish some of my small RPG musings. In many ways, it’s like a public notebook of finished and half-finished ideas that I might want to reference in the future.

That said, the posting that has the most views on this entire site is this one, in which I complain about the price of the Call of Chtulhu PDFs. It’s kind of embarrassing because, re-reading that post, I don’t know that I still agree with it. For one thing, $27.95 feels more reasonable in 2025 than it did in 2011. Plus, if you buy the physical book, you get the PDF for free. It probably helps that I have worked a convention booth across from the Chaosium folks a couple of times since I wrote that. It’s hard to be grumpy at some nice guys you’ve met vs. some faceless company.

So, I take it all back, friendly Call of Cthulhu publishers! Now I think your PDF is only modestly overpriced (lol).

Process

For Milton, I rolled stats exactly as described in the 7th Edition Call of Cthulhu Rulebook. I also made use of a spreadsheet to help spend skill points, as well as and excellent auto-calculating character sheet from Chaosium.

The Character: Dr. Milton T. Blair

Born to a prominent journalist and author, Dr. Milton Blair’s family moved to England when he was 10 years old. Blair excelled in school, eventually receiving degrees from the Wilhelm University in Berlin, Chappon University in England, and Harvard University in the United States. He currently works as a Professor of Anthropology at a small private university in Chicago.

A prominent academic writer in his own right, Blair enjoys a certain level of economic freedom beyond what his university position might might otherwise provide. He uses this freedom to pursue his personal passion for history and anthropology, particularly as it relates to pre-colonial settlements in the United States. He spends time each year traveling around the Midwest researching these interests. He’s also a fairly accomplished amateur archaeologist.

Dr. Blair is an unwavering skeptic, well-read in many subjects, and he puts little stock in anything supernatural. However, he doesn’t particularly like conflict, and would will often back down to a more assertive person in order to avoid an argument. 

Click to Embiggen

Notes

The character picture is courtesy of a useful little archive of 1920s yearbook photographs put together by Rolling Boxcars. It's of a man named Theodus LaFayette Gunn who, in 1936, was the Librarian and Assistant Professor of Bibliography at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, NC. What a great name!
 

Also, proper credit to biographical information on the lives of Alain LeRoy Locke and W.E.B. Du Bois, who both inspired my (very brief) write-up of this character's educational background.

CC25 Character 3: Oliver (Mausritter)

For 2025, I’m participating in the 2025 Character Creation Challenge. The idea is to create one RPG character per day for each day in January, for a total of 31 characters. You can find new characters as they're created here.

Character 3: Mausritter

For today's character, I've decided to go paper-and-pencil instead of digital. Mausritter is a delightful little OSR-adjacant game in which you play a mouse adventurer facing the dangers of the wild world. I got to play it at Gamehole Con in 2023 and was greatly charmed by it.

Part of what I like about the game is the way it handles inventory. The boxed set comes with little square equipment cards that you have to fit on a grid on your character sheet, much like a video game. The illustrations on each card really reinforce the flavor of being a tiny mouse in a big world. The weapons and armor are made of things like needles, buttons, and thimbles.

You can see the item cards in the photograph of this character (below).

The Character: Oliver

 

Pictured: Proof I'm not an artist

Oliver was born to a large family of woodcutter mice. His nine siblings are all woodcutters, as was his father, and his father's father before that. The one exception to the family business was Oliver's Great-Uncle Ruben. A ranger by trade, Uncle Ruben was a hero who fought in the war against the Spiders of the Black Stump. Though he died before Oliver was born, Great-Uncle Ruben is the mouse who inspired young Oliver to trade the life of the woodcutter for one of daring and adventure. Whenever he ventures into the wild, Oliver wears his Great-Uncles ranger-coat, an overstuffed wool coat imported from the distant Kingdom of Mish.