Tag Archives: Wyrd Street Iconic Characters

Wyrd Street Tease: Five Snow Blossom, the Dreamer

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As the launch of Wyrd Street’s IndieGoGo rapidly approaches, I continue my look at some of the Iconic Characters with the Iconic Dreamer, Five Snow Blossom.

A title banner for Wyrd Street, an upcoming tabletop RPG by Tyler F.M. Edwards.Five is one of the Bala, a race who trace their lineage back to the sylvan powers of the forest. The Bala are each named after the day of their birth in the Bala calendar, but since Five was abandoned as a baby, her name is taken from the day she was found and taken in by an orphanage: the fifth day of the month of Snow, in the year of Blossom.

Despite her lonely origin, Five has grown into a cheerful, optimistic teenager who tries to see the best in everyone. Though she never had a true family, the tightly knit community of Morhold’s Bala Enclave ensured she was safe and fed.

Now that she is beginning to find her own way in the world, she’s discovered a kind of surrogate family in the Wyrd Street community. Doctor Zuberi Mbogo (himself a playable Iconic Character) has taken her in as a kind of protege, and Five has developed a budding romance with his daughter, Subira.

Five is a Dreamer, a class that draws its inspiration from both druid and bard archetypes. Dreamers are those who escaped the struggles of poverty through tales of far off times and places, and their imagination burns so brightly that they can alter reality around them, to a limited degree.

Dreamer was one of the most fun classes to design. Their abilities are drawn from legends and myth, so it allowed me to flesh out the cultures of the setting in a very unique way. For example, Lash of the Cloud Shepherd, a lightning whip ability drawn from a Plainsfolk myth about a cosmic shepherd who guides the clouds across the sky.

Mechanically, Dreamers are primarily a support class. However, they have a very unique take on the role.

In most games, support tends to be a very reactive role. Someone gets hurt, and you heal them. In contrast to that, Dreamers have almost no capacity to directly heal allies. Instead, they must proactively use abilities to buff, protect, and restore their friends.

A prominent example of this playstyle comes at level one, with the Blossom of Life ability. Drawn from a Holder fairy-tale, Blossom of Life grows a spectral flower on the battlefield. Your allies can then touch the flower to receive a small amount of immediate healing and the Renewal Boon, a long-term heal over time effect.

Blossom of Life has the potential to heal a tremendous amount of damage across your party for a very low cost, but it requires forethought and team coordination to use effectively.

If you’re the sort of player who enjoys planning ahead and coordinating with the rest of your party, a support Dreamer is right up your ally.

But if you don’t feel like playing support, Dreamers do have another option. Like many nature-themed classes in RPGs, Dreamers have the ability to shapeshift… but because they live in the inner city, with little contact with actual wildlife, they can do so only imperfectly.

At level one, they gain access to the Chimera Form ability, which allows them to gain some animalistic traits and enhance their aptitude for melee combat. As they level up, they have access to many upgrades to Chimera Form, allowing them to transform from fragile ranged supports into exceptionally resilient melee brawlers.

Since Wyrd Street largely lacks distinct subclasses, you don’t need to fully commit one way or the other, either. You can dabble with Chimera Form to gain a bit more resilience while still offering support to your allies, or vice versa.

Optimistic and unflinching, the Dreamer is the ideal class for the eternally positive Five Snow Blossom, but if you’d like to play a more traditional support, her backstory could also fit Street Preacher well, or perhaps she could learn some tricks from Dr. Mbogo and adventure as a Quack. If you want to eschew support entirely, her keen mind and eye toward the future could even justify her as a Fortune Teller, one of the game’s must destructive damage classes.

Five is one of the first characters I commissioned art for. If you’ve already clicked on our pre-launch IndieGoGo page, you’ve caught a glimpse of her, but if not, here she is again:

Five Snow Blossom, Wyrd Street's Iconic Dreamer.Wyrd Street’s crowdfunding begins March 29th. Sign up on IndieGoGo to be notified by email when the campaign goes live.

Wyrd Street Tease: Ji Wensdottir, the Street Preacher

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In my last preview for Wyrd Street, I highlighted the Iconic Character Blue Rose, the Vigilante. Today, let’s look at another Iconic: Ji Wensdottir, the Street Preacher

A title banner for Wyrd Street, an upcoming tabletop RPG by Tyler F.M. Edwards.At the heart of Wyrd Street’s story is a single refugee family. The Holder herbalist Karl Vinnarson; the retired Tiahnese soldier Na Wen; and their adult children, Ji and Lo. As war breaks out between the Free Holds and Tiahn, they find themselves torn between the two sides, distrusted by both.

The younger child, Ji Wensdottir is in many ways the heart of the family. Full of the optimism of youth and with a strong connection to the world of spirits, Ji tries to bring comfort to all she meets, be they the destitute of the slums or the fae spirits who still linger in the forgotten corners of the Holds.

Ji is the first character in the story I had a clear image of, and in my mind she’s become something of a mascot for Wyrd Street. Similarly, Street Preacher was one of the first class concepts I had, and when I finally started actually designing the game, Street Preacher was the very first part I wrote out. The class has had some revisions since then, but the general concepts remain the same.

Street Preacher is of course Wyrd Street’s answer to the traditional cleric archetype, though there’s also a touch of wizards and sorcerers to them.

With plentiful healing and buffing abilities, Street Preachers are an ideal fit for the support role, and they are also one of the best classes in the game for dealing AoE damage, capable of devastating hordes of foes by summoning mischievous Flame Imps and deafening Divine Bells. Lest you fear getting caught in the crossfire, they can also take the passive ability Shelter the Faithful to prevent their allies being harmed by their massive AoE bombardments.

That said, Street Preachers are perhaps the most versatile class in the game, so they can be built to fill virtually any role to at least some degree. With heavy armour and mastery of polearms, they can make resilient front-liners, or they can take up bows and magic charms to fight from a distance. Their only major blindspot is a lack of efficient damage options against strong singular enemies, and of course a jack of all trades does risk becoming a master of none.

At level ten, Street Preachers gain access to rituals, incredibly powerful abilities with high focus costs that often require multiple actions spread out over more than one turn to fully activate.

Each ritual emphasizes a different aspect of the Street Preacher identity. Ritual of Flame calls down the wrath of the heavens to deliver devastating and precise multi-target damage. Ritual of Glory blankets your party with a variety of powerful buffs. And Ritual of the Ancestors provides the ultimate expression of a Street Preacher’s versatility, allowing you to temporarily gain the use of a level ten ability from any other class.

Versatile, supportive, and eternally helpful, a Street Preacher can be the heart of any party, just as Ji is the heart of her family.

Of course, if you don’t want to be a Street Preacher, you can always ask your GM to let you change her class. The optimistic Dreamer class is also a natural fit for her, or if you want to take her in a more physical direction, you could make her a Vigilante, allowing her to follow in her mother’s martial footsteps while still wielding divine magic.

Before I go, I would like to provide one more little tease. I recently received the finished cover art for the core rulebook, and as the game’s mascot, Ji has a central role. I’m not going to reveal the full cover today, but I would like to offer you a glimpse of our inspiring Street Preacher in action.

Art of Ji Wensdottir, the Iconic Street Preacher in Wyrd Street.Wyrd Street’s IndieGoGo campaign is scheduled to launch March 29th.