The Fellow Manifesto

A while ago I was watching this video about Sword World, the TTRPG that was created in Japan when TSR refused to let them publish Replays (basically their version of Session Reports) with their official names - specifically for the campaign that then became known as Record of Lodoss War, a fascinating story - but one thing that stood out to me of the system was the concept of Fellows, which is what this post is about. But what are Fellows?
To learn more about them I found the unofficial English translation of the game (easily found on Reddit, here). I'll use that as a reference, but I'll modify it a bit to make it work with OSR games. In short, to quote the Rulebook:

Fellows are characters who assist the PCs in their adventures. Fellows are available on social media and in fan magazines. Players select those they wish to take with them on their adventures and have them travel along.

So they are basically NPC versions of PCs that people make available online, so that other parties can add them to their adventures. But they're more than just yet another NPC the Referee has to portray; they are members of the community that are chosen by the party to join their adventures. They could be members of a guild, or wandering travelers for example.
The Referee could have a list of them ready (assuming the community starts sharing these) to propose them to the party instead of a randomly generated henchman, and that character would come with already made abilities, attacks and personality, lowering the mental load on the Referee's part.
In Sworld World, Fellows don't have an HP value because they are immune to damage and any other negative effect, but to prevent players from using them as meat shields or sending themm ahead to trigger all traps, they always share the position of one of the PCs, never going ahead of staying behind the party, and only become "active" during combat, when players roll 1d6 to randomly determine which action they take - or while doing things like searching a room, if that is one of their abilities.

Another reason Fellows cannot be killed during adventures is what inspires me the most about them and pushed me to write this post: Thank you notes. I'll quote the Rulebook again:

When the adventure is over, report back to the player who published the Fellow and thank him or her. No contact is necessary to welcome a Fellow, but this post-adventure contact is essential.
Give a brief report of how the adventure went and how the Fellow helped you, even if it's just a brief history of the adventure, and make sure to give him or her a word of thanks.

The Rulebook then continues, underlining the importance of using only positive words in your reports, noting that even a lighthearted remark might lose its nuance across written words and come across the wrong way, in short making sure that the creator of the Fellow will be happy to receive the report (and let's face it, a bit more positivity is badly needed nowadays, especially on the internet).

Below is an example of a Fellow stat block, or "Data Layout", from Sword World:


 For my example of an OSR version of this I'm going to use Thunder, the Cairn 2e character I created in last week's post, so I won't use stuff like class or level, but they should be easy to add if necessary:

Name: Thunder Gender: Male Age: 39
Background: Fletchwind (Ranger)
Languages: Common
Self Introduction: "It's a pleasure to meet you. Me and my bow are ready to assist you on your endeavors...from a safe distance." 
Action Table: 1d6
1-2: Serrated Knife - "Stay away from me, vile creature!" - Melee attack that does 1d4 damage
3-4: Target Evaluation - "There's a weak spot!" - The next attack against a chosen creature is Enhanced (or has Advantage, or another benefit according to the system you're using) 
5: Distracting Shot - "Hey, stop! Don't look at me like that!" - A creature focuses their attention on Thunder: That creature can't attack this turn (or does so with disadvantage, depending on the system)
6: Wych Elm Bow - "You can trust my aim!" - Ranged attack that does 1d6 damage

There it is. What I would like to happen from this idea, which is the reason why I called this post a "Manifesto", is for the OSR (and TTRPG in general) community to feel more like one, with hopefully people embracing the idea and starting to share their characters as Fellows, and then using the shared characters in their campaigns, so that our various game worlds become closer to each other and we can collaborate even more than we already do. Maybe I'm dreaming of something to big and unachievable but hey, it's worth a shot at the very least.

Are you interested in creating some Fellows? And what about using them in your campaigns? Let me know what you think about this idea.

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon

 

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