- Even from the get go,
when you make a character in Theros
they have something different about them.
You're not just a villager who happened
to take up a sword necessarily
you may actually have
come from someone's mind
or from someone's forge.
You know, you have that kind of
level of destiny from the get.
- Yeah, you could be a nix born,
or you could be an anvil rot.
You know, you could have these things
where you were actually
brought into being by the god
not necessarily a servant,
but as a potential champion of that god.
and so it's something that ADM
could work with their player
on like a session zero.
So when you are rolling up your character,
how much of that story
do you wanna weave in?
You could just say like
we're doing D and D
I roll up a character
and now I'm in Theros,
I'm gonna do my thing
and I'm gonna go on an adventure.
But you could really get into it.
If a DM Derino was really
into the (mumbling)
and says, all right, your character
already has a destiny set down for them
and destinies are kind of
cool because there is fate
and there's destiny and Theros,
and fate is this sense
that if you do nothing,
if you're just a regular person
on Theros, you will live your life
and the faith will weave it
and it will be determined
by what the fate weave.
If you are a hero, you all of a sudden now
have a chance to change your fate
and now you have access to your destiny.
Now it doesn't guarantee that your destiny
is gonna be something
that you can achieve,
but you at least have a shot at it
and so now being a hero, the fates kind of
see the threads start to weave itself
and then the fates kind
of think to themselves,
Oh, we got a hero and the weave here,
and this has got to be interesting
and that, that heroic sort of impulse
then drives you out of the weft of fate
and now you can try and
achieve your destiny.
So the ADN can kind of work with a player
and say, well, here's like
one of one of your destinies.
If you can achieve this,
you will have a pleased your
god that you wanna worship,
or maybe you are gonna
free yourself of the gods
and sort of a rebel,
maybe roll up a Leonin
which are sort of these iconic class
and these atheistic, these
creatures, these lion people
and you can kind of forge your own path
and achieve your own destiny
outside of this whole scheme.
So there's a lot of fun stuff,
a lot of fun story material.
- Beyond the Leone which is
basically the line men and women
we've got, which do have
much beef with the gods.
We've also got Cedars.
- So as Cedars is fun, I
actually had to fund, privilege
of doing the Cedars playable race section.
And the thing I love
about the Cedars is that
Cedars are seen by most people on Theros
as just being sort mischievous goofballs,
they are troublemakers
they are these forces of chaos,
they kind of lure in human
to their crazy lifestyle
and they're kind of like the wild artists
of Greenwich village you know,
like if you're a kid went
and said well, I'm gonna
go to Greenwich village,
you know, as a parent, you'd
be like, Oh no, like my kid,
you know, they're not gonna be,
you know, they're gonna
go off on this wild thing
or like, come on I'm
gonna go to Woodstock.
You know, it's like, Oh no, don't do that.
So, the Cedars and I
felt like with Cedars,
that some of them are that way.
Some of them are just like,
lets just party all the time
and have bucket alls
and, you know, drink wine
and have a good time.
But then there's other
Cedars that are more evolved
and there's this thing called the rebel
and the rebels are kind of misunderstood.
So that the sort of the
basic form of the rebel
is like just having a good time.
But then the sort of the
art form of the revel
is that the rebel is
about appreciating life.
It's about, really taking in
what the moment has to offer
and being present and being,
you know, tasting the fruit
of the great wine and
not worrying about time
being free of time
and so if you get in
with the right Cedars,
the ones that are wise,
the ones that really know
what the rebel is all about,
you're gonna get this
sort of another aspect
of sort of divine inspiration,
that comes through like
the pure form of chaos is,
that you have let go of structure
that you are just merely
moving in a truly natural way.
Like a lot of Cedars
in magic are red green,
which is means that they're
chaos, but they're also natural
and that the pure form of
that is to move with nature,
to enjoy the chaotic form,
to be okay with that.
There is no sort of structure,
or there's no certainty
that you're just kind of
allowing nature to move you,
but you're also appreciate it as you go.
So I really love this
thing about Cedars that
if I'm gonna play a Cedar,
I can play the spectrum
of, you know, goof ball, you
know, comedy relief character
to sort of this wise Sage
druidic kind of character.
So there's a lot of
space in which a player
could run a Cedar
and sort of enjoy all these
different aspects of them.
- That's very cool.
Tell me a little bit more
in depth about the Leonin.
Now we've got two cat races (laughing).
- Yeah, Leonin are, you know,
a much more burly tough,
you know, they're warriors
and they come from,
their originally their whole race was sort
of like enslaved by these creatures
in fact, most of the races of Theros,
were enslaved by these
creatures called Archon
and they existed long, long ago
and, they were tyrants.
They just completely dominated everything
and, through intervention
by the gods, like Fara
and (mumbling), the Leonin
were inspired and the humans
and Tritons and everybody
was sort of imprisoned
by these Archon were
inspired to, rise up defeat
these evil entities, destroy their empire
and then build their own cities
and, the humans did it
and then out of that came
Miletus the Polis of Miletus
and Agnomarcos who was one
of the big Archon tyrants,
his empire was destroyed
and he had to flee and
all the Archon beat it,
the Leonin, they felt like,
you know, it's all bad.
Anything that is kind of try to impose
their value system on
us we were not into it.
So instead of joining with the humans
to build the Polis of
Miletus, they bugged out
and they said, we're gonna
create our own place,
our own sort of Polis our own city
and it's not necessarily
like a Polis, like Miletuses
it's their own sort of realm,
and we're going to rule ourselves
and we're gonna be a part from the gods.
We're not gonna join in on this
sort of belief system thing.
We're gonna just rule ourselves
and be our own people.
- Where are some other elements
of the book that you designed
or that you are a favorite bit?
- Well, I mean, a lot of
the stories about the,
you know, the Cedars, the miniatures
and coming up with them, you know,
giving them, you know, miniatures
were an interesting one
because when we had done Theros,
the first one miniatures
we're like super bad guys
and then it kind of evolved
like when the second
Theros came out for magic,
it was then that now
miniatures are actually sort
of this race of people
and they have a city
and they have a place to be and now with
the D and D book came out,
now it's a playable race
and you can actually be a miniatures.
So it was like how to
evolve them from what
they were back then to
now and thinking about,
well, okay, how do I
write, these creatures?
And now they have they have personalities,
and now they have wants and dreams,
and they're trying to
integrate into societies
that, you know, and so now they
become like your stalwart companions
and you know, that the
miniatures that follow Mogas
are the giant murder machines
that are the old school Theros monsters.
But now these other miniatures
that are like, you know,
they're questioning like, you know,
okay, well now who, who am I?
And who am I in relationship to the gods?
And, and who am I as a hero?
You know, can I, can I leave
the weave of my own fate?
My fate is kind of an arc,
but I want to be something better.
I wanna be something different.
So, then to build that into
the, sort of the playable race.
- Ari, tell me about the new background.
- The new background is the athlete, yeah.
The athlete feeling, you know, again,
very kind of inspired by Greece,
the idea of somebody who
it might be a wrestler
or a marathon runner, in world,
there's a thing called the Erolian games,
which is basically a nod to
kind of the Olympic games
and so you might be somebody
who competes in that
and it felt very flavorful
for inspired setting to have
- Did you do much design
on the sub races as well?
I'm pretty excited to have cedars
- Yeah, Adam Lee worked on the Cedars
and I think they're my favorite.
There are so many options
they kind of fall out of that.
I got to work on Leonin
and
what else did I work on now?
It's all such a blur.
- I know it was kind of
like a long time ago.
What's unique about the Cedars in this?
- The Cedars are all about
living for the moment
and really indulging in that
sense of having a good time
is always a worthwhile endeavor
and so, yeah, I don't really
design that into the Cedar.
and yeah, I think that
they're the most fun.
I kind of wanna see a party of all Cedars
and just the mayhem that can ensue.
- The Leonin also I've been told,
have kind of like a
disconnect with the gods.
They're actually quite angry with the gods
typically culturally they are.
- Yeah, generally speaking
they have turned away from the gods,
again this is all generally.
So if you wanna play Leonin I mean,
those that do continue to
worship generally lean toward,
Nelea who's kind of this god of nature
or helium god of the sun,
but generally speaking,
they lean toward being,
not atheist causeyou can't
be an atheist in Theros
because the gods are present.
You don't deny that they exist.
You could be anti-theist,
I guess this is kind
of a thing philosophy.
- Yeah, I get what you're
saying yeah, yeah, yeah.
you can have beef with the gods.
- Well, you can believe that
they exist and still believe
they're not worthy of worship right?
So I think if you wanna
play that as a thing like
that is very much a
within reason for Leonin
and it's very easy to get
to a character that way.
and I think it's a fun
story in Theros especially
if you're in a party of
people who do, you know,
worship and are devoted to their gods,
and now you have, you know, a Leonin.
I think that type of a character
can have some of the most
and create some of the most
memorable conversations
at a table about philosophy and theology.
and I just think it's a fun dynamic
to include it, put in the book.
