Transcript
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As a person who lives in the real world and not only as a father, but as a Black father, knowing that violence can go so, so wrong, so quickly.
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And so wanting to just avoid that at any cost, but also having obviously a very deep primal desire to protect my family.
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To me, Pathfinder 2, you felt like this is truly living in the power fantasy that I wanted from 5th edition.
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I just want to raise a child and just enjoy a simple life without having to like walk down into a dungeon.
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Hello friends, welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet traveled.
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I'm Star.
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This episode I'm joined by Navaar Seik-Jackson, a narrative game designer, podcaster, and occasional TTRPG performer.
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Navaar enjoys providing a platform for marginalized people in the TTRPG space to tell their stories, and exploring the apocalypse as a setting with nuanced themes.
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You may have heard of Navaar from the Secret Nerd podcast, An Unwavering Force podcast, or his game The Corrupted.
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Navaar, thank you so much for coming on the show.
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Yeah, thank you for having me.
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So happy to have you.
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Um, do you want to tell me a little bit about how you got into TTRPGs?
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Yeah, sure.
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Uh, so I've always been a fan of fantasy, uh, as a genre.
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Uh, that's pretty much all that I read as a kid growing up, and I wanna say I've learned about D&D as a brand by playing the first two Baldur Gate games.
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Mhmm.
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It was like a thing that was like, vaguely ethereal existed in a space I didn't understand.
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And we played the games and I enjoyed like, you know, being able to play these games.
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This is around the time, I think, when the Lord of the Rings movies were coming out.
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So yeah, just being able to play an archer, which has always been like my favorite archetype of fighter.
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It was a lot of fun.
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So that kind of went on.
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And then when I was in high school, my friend, his dad had, I think the red box, the D&D red box.
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So we were looking at it and asking what it was.
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And he said he would run it for us.
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And then he never did.
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So it wasn't until I was about, uh, 19 years old that I got to play for the first time.
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I played a D&D 3.5.
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And it was amazing.
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I was a shifter ranger, of course, because that's always what I make is a ranger.
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Yeah, it was really cool.
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I only got to play like a few sessions before I ended up moving back home, but I really just enjoyed like the customization and the sort of freeform storytelling.
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And then from there, it took a long time.
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It was like nine years of not getting anybody else around me to be able to play.
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So I just continue to like read 3.5 and try to convince friends to play and then nobody wants to do it.
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And it wasn't until 5th edition had already been out and I had some other friends that were already playing.
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And so we started to set up a game and I think we played like five sessions.
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This was I want to say in 2019.
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We were actually already playing remotely because it was just hard to get everybody in the same room anyway.
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So when COVID hit, it was just an easy transition, but I got, I ended up getting Pathfinder second edition for Christmas and basically immediately switched to that and have not looked back.
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And I've just been sort of playing that and, uh, running, I did a home game for awhile and now I'm a player in a home game.
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And when I decided to make a podcast.
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It sort of opened the door for me to experience a lot more games, game design philosophies and be able to like, be a player and to GM for other games and then to create and then bring people into games that I've made.
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So yeah, it was like, it took a long time to get here, but then once I got here, then it was kind of full force.
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Yeah, I feel like so many people I talked to, myself included, got into D&D and TTRPGs and then just were hooked and starting podcasts, just so intensely into it, really enjoying the hobby.
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So I completely get that.
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I think it's the also during COVID, a lot of us also learned that we were neurodivergent.
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I think there's probably, that is probably also a contributing factor.
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But truly, for me, especially as somebody who grew up wanting to be a writer, having this way that I can play games, which is something I've always loved, and tell stories, which is something I've always loved, and like be able to marry those two things, I think has been amazing for fun and hobby and creation and everything else.
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I'm curious, are you playing Baldur's Gate 3 at all?
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Yeah, I did for a little bit.
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I think I made it into the second act.
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It was fun.
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I get bored of video games quickly, and I also Do not like 5e as a system anymore.
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So that was sort of a difficult mental obstacle for me, uh, as a player of it.
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And the other thing that really got me was, it felt like when it came out, everybody was like making their characters and I assumed that the character customization was deeper than it is.
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I went through a lot of like, I am excited about this and also very disappointed in this game.
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And that like, rollercoaster sort of burnt me out by the second act.
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I might return to it at some point, but I get why people play it and enjoy it.
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It's just, there are aspects of it that I, that no longer interest me, so.
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The reason I was asking, because I was also an avid player of Baldur's Gate 2, very excited when Baldur's Gate 3 came out.
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I really enjoy Baldur's Gate 3 as a video game, I'm not really into video games at all, but, uh, I totally get why, as somebody who transferred away from 5e, that that might not work for you.
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How can I put this?
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Like, the illusion of choice that the game gives you, where it's like, oh, you can do anything, and it's like, cool, cool, I don't want to kill all these goblins.
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Can I do that?
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No.
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You don't have a choice in this.
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So there's a lot of things that the game forces you to do or be party of that it's just like, I just don't want to do it.
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I spent a solid, I want to say like three hours, just trying not to have the little goblin children die in one of the encounters.
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So, yeah, I was, there's a lot of things where I'm like, uh, I don't know.
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But on the other hand, like, there are parts of it that are fun, but there's also parts like as a Pathfinder 2E player, where I'm like, ah, I'm so powerful and I can only attack one time and this really drives me bananas.
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So yeah.
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So you're bringing a character for Pathfinder.
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Yes.
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Tell me what you like about Pathfinder that's better for you than D&D.
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So for me, like, I think the thing that coming into D&D 5th edition for the first time, the thing that really stuck out to me was just like this feeling of, you're supposed to be this hero, this hero character.
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But your ability to do things that felt like you were like living in a power fantasy felt like it didn't happen until like at least fifth level and that was only for certain character classes.
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So when you start and it's like you can attack one time you're rolling with the d6 You only have 15 AC, you've got like 12 hit points, like, all of it just felt like, ah, this, my character's gonna get beaten up very quickly.
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So I was like, okay, like, I get, like, you know, we're gonna grow and all this stuff, but Pathfinder 2e, when I first got it and looked at it, it's like, you can do three attacks immediately.
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As a level zero character, which you can make, you can do three attacks.
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You take a penalty for it, but you can still be active in that way.
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And so I really enjoyed the action economy of it.
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Your hit points are higher.
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You're not rolling for it.
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You just have like a base for your class and a base for your ancestry.
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I believe your AC goes up every level you go up.
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So the difficulty increases as well.
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Like the harder monsters also can hit higher, but like the numbers just felt good.
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It feels good to roll like a 35.
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I've rolled in An Unwavering Force session last week.
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I rolled a 35 to pull off absolute shenanigans, uh, as a fifth level character.
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And yeah, it's going to be a great episode when that all comes to fruition.
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To me, it was that.
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It was like, to me, Pathfinder 2, you felt like this is truly living in the power fantasy that I wanted, that I wanted from fifth edition.
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And then just listening to like APs and stuff, it just felt like even though a lot of the characters would be higher level and they could do like more damage and stuff, it didn't have the fluidity that I wanted or the action that I wanted out of it.
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And so once I read second edition and started to play it, I was like, I'm hooked on it.
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Cause you can make a character, like basically if you're just a normal fighter, you on your second attack, you take a minus five and on your third attack, you take a minus 10, which is, can be a lot, but you can be like, if you're a ranger, for instance, and you're using an agile weapon, you can just take a minus two and a minus four, which is incredible.
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Then you're just constantly hitting.
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Fighters I think can even do something around the same range or they can basically combine two attacks into one action and just forego that penalty for that first one.
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And it can be very brutal.
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So yeah, I was like, okay, well there's a lot of ways to build this.
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I love character customization.
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You gain multiple different feats that all, like, center around how your character is built and make some unique.
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So there's just a lot of things in there that really stuck out to me that made it more appealing.
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They also, when I started learning about it, was around the time that they were gearing up to put out The Mwangi Expanse.
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And that is a book that's basically, Golarion is like the world, it's like basically like So it's like the world that the setting is built in.
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In Golarion, there's all these different continents and countries, and there's a continent that is like, basically, the fantasy Africa.
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And so they had canon orcs, elves, halflings, dwarves, that were Black.
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And to me that was amazing to see.
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Cause, that's just not something you really see in a 5th edition books, especially back in 2018, 2020.
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So I was like, okay, there's a lot of things that this is doing right for me, specifically, that made it easy for me to transition that way.
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Yeah.
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Well, and Pathfinder isn't making Hadozee level mistakes either.
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Right, yeah.
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And they recently put out a book that has monkey ancestry, and it is written so well, with so much care.
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Also, among Secret Nerd Podcast and An Unwaving Force, I'm also the host of, uh, the No Direction Podcast, the co host of the No Direction Podcast, which is a Pathfinder 2e podcast, so, yeah, I could go on and on about all the new stuff that's come out when it comes to that, and how, you know, they hire writers to, to write from culture that they exist in, and put things out with a lot of care, so.
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Yeah.
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No Hadozee level mistakes, for sure.
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You mentioned power fantasy, and I think that's a really interesting topic.
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Is being a hero your power fantasy?
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Is being able to attack three times in a turn or what is it that's underlying all of that?
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Yeah, I think so.
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I mean, I've always like grown up enjoying those kind of stories, enjoying like the hero of the story.
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You know, I remember like the first time I played Fable, for instance, my friends, they were like doing like the evil run through.
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And I just can't, like, even in video games, I just can't bring myself to do it.
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Yeah.
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I'm just like, yeah, but I'm just gonna go full Paragon or whatever it's called in whatever game.
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So that's always the way that I like to play it.
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I enjoy, like, the ideal of being the hero of the story.
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And I think, like, as I've gotten older, it's easier for me to, like, add more nuance into there.
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Um, and to understand, like, you know, we're still enacting violence in this game and, and how does that work for your character and how does that impact your character?
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But yeah, I, I just enjoy that aspect of it, because I think, like, growing up in a place that wasn't always safe for me and, and my friends and my siblings, like, it created in me a desire to protect the people around me and sometimes that works and sometimes it doesn't and at least in this way of the character that I'm playing is powerful and can protect those around them with with more skill and and athleticism than than I could.
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So.
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You mentioned that you usually play rangers.
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I'm a huge fan of that archetype myself, but you're not bringing a Ranger to the table today.
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I'm not.
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Yeah.
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Trying to break my, uh, my typecast here.
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Yeah.
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So tell me, who are you bringing to the table?
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Yeah, the character I'm bringing today is, uh, Oba Manu, and this is a character concept that I kinda came up with as, like, just dreaming about wanting to play Pathfinder 2E.
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So I am playing in a game, but the game I'm playing in is an adventure path for magic school and I'm playing a sorcerer also divine sorcerer.
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So I'm almost getting there with my cleric, but I really had this like fun idea of just sort of being this like veteran cleric who had retired already.
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And it's just like wants to live on his farm with this family and has this old friend who kind of that like trope of like one last job and, and reeling them back in.
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And so yeah, I just really love this idea of like, what does that mean for this character to have an adult child who's like ready to go off on the world, but hasn't left the nest yet.
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And you have to like say goodbye to them and, and like let them know they're set on their way and like worry about that as, as a parent who raised their kid for that long and your spouse and the farm and the community and all this stuff, like what does that mean to sort of have to step out of that responsibility into something else?
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And what is it that's going to draw you away?
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And this idea of like how that looks when you're watching all the things that are happening around you in the adventure in the campaign.
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And just wishing you could be back on your farm with your family.
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I loved that, like, idea of just sort of creating a complex character that way, who in his prime was like, you know, maybe like a 15th level character, and now has not done much of anything other than, you know, raise this farm and you know, do some, like, true medicine healing for people that don't need, like, a miracle to save them.
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This kind of, like, old sort of folk hero who just, who just wanted to be a part of the community and now has to, like, you know, sigh and step back into it all and, like, pulling the shield and the weapon off the, off the rack on the wall, dusting off the old armor, that kind of stuff.
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Yeah, why did Oba retire in the first place?
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I think it was just a matter of the adventure that he set out to do was done and somewhere along those lines he met his partner and they settled down and he just wanted to just be done with it.
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And so I really loved the idea of like, yeah, I just want to raise, raise a child, be with my partner and just enjoy a simple life without having to like walk down into a dungeon facing, you know, hordes of undead or stare down armies of bandits and ancestral dragons and things like that.
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Just let me just live a simple life.
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And there's only one thing that can bring you back.
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And I can't believe you did that to me today, but here we are.
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How much do you relate to that, this desire to live a simple life?
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A lot.
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Yeah.
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Almost all of us, right, we're all sort of trapped into this sort of capitalistic cycle that we exist in, but since I was a kid I've always loved the idea of just like owning a ranch and just living off the land.
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Or even not off the land but like living in a small community and just like the work is like the thing that you do when you go outside and you do the work and then you can feel the hard day of work and then you just relax and exist and you know meet up with friends and that kind of thing.
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As opposed to like going into the office and sitting in traffic and all that stuff.
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Pastoral life is such a uh, ideal, I think it just one that's so unrealistic for myself and my family right now, but it is definitely an ideal.
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I grew up in a place that was pretty rural.
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I didn't grow up on a farm or a ranch, but I did grow up in a place that was pretty rural.
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And so, you know, just the enjoyment of like playing outside in the dirt and using your imagination to pass time and things like that.
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I think still, even if it's hard to go back to that and achieve it, sometimes in real life, it's, it's something that I enjoy as an ideal still.
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So, you have kids?
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I do.
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Yeah, I have three.
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How old are they?
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Are any of them nearing the age of, uh, Oba's child?
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No.
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Thank goodness.
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No.
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My oldest is six.
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So, yeah.
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It's, I still have some time to get used to that idea, but it does fly by pretty quickly.
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But that's a big part of why Oba's kid is adult age, is because the idea of actually leaving a child, to me, seems like that's not happening.
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If Oba had a six year old kid, there's nothing you can do to convince him to go back out on an adventure, because despite the trope of fantasy TTRPGs, we should let these people have parents, something I would like to continue to do, so, yeah, that was a big part of why that was made the way it was, because I just, the idea of leaving a child behind to run off and swing a morningstar is just absolutely ludicrous to me.
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You're playing a cleric.
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What god does Oba worship?
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Just using the pantheon that was built for Golarion.
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So Golarion also in their setting books when they add new places like the Mwangi Expanse, they also add a few new deities, which is really awesome.
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So the one that I have been looking at for him, I'm probably going to get the pronunciation wrong, is Tlehar.
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She's like this catfolk deity, and is all about kind of like living up to your full potential, giving whatever it is you're doing, including farming, right, is like giving yourself fully to it, you know, making sure that you're treasuring gifts that are given to you.
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So in Pathfinder, there's edicts, which is like the thing you follow, and anathema, which is the thing you cannot do or you will lose your power.
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So like the anathema for her is losing your motivation to your regrets, spreading despair, and treating your loved ones poorly.
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And so obviously that really stuck out to me as things that would be idealistic for, for Oba is to sort of follow this philosophy of, you know, putting family first.
00:18:07.555 --> 00:18:17.085
Putting whatever it is we're doing, I did my best as an adventurer, and now that's done, and I'm gonna do my best as a father, and a husband, and a farmer, and the town healer.
00:18:17.295 --> 00:18:29.875
I just really enjoy that aspect of it, and like having sort of a god that's not like, one of the like, the major in the pantheon, but somebody that fits into his outlook on what his life is like in his community.
00:18:30.119 --> 00:18:34.759
And, is this the same god that he worshipped when he was out adventuring as well?
00:18:34.769 --> 00:18:36.240
Yeah, yeah, I think so.
00:18:36.390 --> 00:18:41.319
I feel like it was just a matter of, I will continue to do the work here, but this is what I'm pursuing now.
00:18:41.689 --> 00:18:47.528
Yeah, because it seems like that's a god that is maybe more well suited to a simple life.
00:18:47.640 --> 00:18:48.628
Yeah, it's really fun.
00:18:48.640 --> 00:18:50.140
I enjoy this aspect of it.
00:18:50.170 --> 00:18:55.420
There's a lot of the deities here, where I feel like the Mwangi Expanse has definitely built like the writers that did it.
00:18:55.420 --> 00:18:57.749
It seemed like a lot of them had a focus of community.
00:18:58.034 --> 00:19:09.644
And so there are other deities here that also have sort of these community centered edicts in different ways, but things that are based around how we treat the others around us that share our space.
00:19:09.913 --> 00:19:12.003
Are you personally religious at all?
00:19:12.044 --> 00:19:12.784
No, not at all.
00:19:14.003 --> 00:19:14.824
Yeah, it's very funny.
00:19:14.824 --> 00:19:22.314
My co host for No Direction is, I don't know if pastor is the right word for her, but literally somebody who like is fully entrenched in religion.
00:19:22.814 --> 00:19:34.179
It makes for a great conversation, because for me I'm an atheist, IRL, and I enjoy the idea of having these deities in a fantasy TTRPG that exist.
00:19:34.229 --> 00:19:35.179
It's not a debate.
00:19:35.489 --> 00:19:41.638
You can be a quote unquote atheist in Pathfinder, but it doesn't mean the same thing as what we would say here.
00:19:41.699 --> 00:19:47.669
It's more of, you know that the gods exist, but you don't think that they have any dominion over what happens in the world.
00:19:47.929 --> 00:19:50.888
You don't acknowledge it, which is, I think, like, that could be fun to play.
00:19:51.184 --> 00:19:59.013
I do like the idea of just like, well, they do exist in this world and we can just actually engage with them in a certain way.
00:19:59.125 --> 00:20:02.694
So even as a GM, I think it's fun if somebody wants that to be a part of it.
00:20:02.744 --> 00:20:10.424
I remember my first 2e home game I ran, the players early on were like getting sort of signs from their gods as like they were going through the world.
00:20:10.424 --> 00:20:14.164
They were like helping them understand the world around them and I think that that's a lot of fun to do.
00:20:14.459 --> 00:20:16.439
It's a magical place, like, we should engage with it.
00:20:16.719 --> 00:20:22.278
Yeah, and I think deities and pantheons and all of that can tell you a lot about a world as well.
00:20:22.288 --> 00:20:32.558
Yeah, it's, I mean, it's fun to, in the ways that they share space, there's a new setting book called Tian Xia, which is like, basically, to simplify it, is like fantasy Asia.
00:20:32.795 --> 00:20:33.515
That has just come out.
00:20:33.555 --> 00:20:36.765
And one of the gods in there is the god of heaven.
00:20:36.775 --> 00:20:43.525
But like, over the past however many years, there have been other gods who were like rulers of this, of this other dominion.
00:20:43.545 --> 00:20:45.244
So I love how it works.
00:20:45.335 --> 00:20:54.964
They exist together canonically, but also how cultures approach different ones depends on your region and the culture you grew up with.
00:20:55.224 --> 00:20:59.824
And all these other aspects of it, which I think is a really interesting way to like tie in how that works.
00:20:59.854 --> 00:21:10.924
There could be other clerics that Oba could run into that they could probably agree on everything when it comes to how they move through the world and what they want to pursue, but they're still worshipping different gods.
00:21:11.184 --> 00:21:12.653
And I think that that's really fascinating.
00:21:12.884 --> 00:21:13.253
Right.
00:21:13.284 --> 00:21:22.559
It sounds like Oba is very dedicated to these edicts and that is kind of his vow or his motto for moving through the world.
00:21:23.219 --> 00:21:26.159
So you would say that he is a principled person.
00:21:26.199 --> 00:21:26.759
Yes.
00:21:26.839 --> 00:21:27.740
Yeah, absolutely.
00:21:27.769 --> 00:21:35.990
I think it was like something else, you know, just in the role play, if I had ever got to play the character of just like, what does it mean to sort of be like the old dad, right, of the group.
00:21:36.209 --> 00:21:50.519
And like, as a person who is sometimes a lot older than a lot of my TTRPG space, it's interesting to be like, I see you and I see what you're doing and I want to give you the space to like make your own decisions, learn from your own lessons and all that stuff.
00:21:50.549 --> 00:22:00.439
But also I'm here if you need advice, uh, or you need, if you need support, you know, or, or if you, or wisdom, whatever it is to just kind of help.
00:22:00.669 --> 00:22:16.964
So I love that idea of like, here's this group that I can be wise for, but there's also this person who brought me into this that I'm sort of beholden to, and what does that relationship look like when you're trying to find the push and pull of when am I giving you too much advice and when am I not giving you enough?
00:22:17.013 --> 00:22:17.795
That's a lot of fun.
00:22:18.045 --> 00:22:22.263
Who is this person that got Oba back into adventuring?
00:22:22.263 --> 00:22:25.625
I don't know, like I think in my brain it was always another PC.
