Month: January 2022

So the game Merc, published by Fantasy Games Unlimited in 1981, was one of those games that I always saw advertised in different magazines. I never found it at my local gaming store or at conventions. It was through an online auction site that I acquired this game (a long with a few others in the lot) and I decided that I wanted to try it out in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. Let’s make a mercenary.

The Corporation is the company that is hiring mercenaries to work trouble spots around the world. Some covert and some overt. There are three sections that need to be determined to create a character. Physical Appearance, Physical and Mental Attributes, and Character Specialties. The dice used to create the character is 3d6, 1d6 or a type of percentage using d6 that range from 11-66.

To start the Physical Appearance is the age. 3d6+20 is what you start with, I ended up with 33. Nationality and Name are selected by the player. I’m going with American named Mark Powell to keep it simple. A random dice roll determined that Mark is of average height between 5’7.5” to 5’10”. Going in the middle I’ll select 5’9”. It talks about Weight, but mentions it will be discussed later in the character creation process. Random roll for hair color makes Mark a redhead with Hazel eyes (quickly looks up what hazel looks like, looks kinda brown to me but I’m not a color connoisseur). You even roll for the skin complexion, which ended up with Fair or Light Skinned (apparently they keep track of sunburns in this game). We even roll for what type of voice the character has? I guess it factors into something called Command Control. Will Mark end up with a voice that sounds like Pee Wee Herman? The dice say his voice is average (no affect on Command Control). Oh all of these rolls on physical appearance can be adjusted depending upon your nationality. The last item in the Physical Appearance section was what hand Mark preferred, which resulted in Right.

Now we move to Physical/Mental Attributes. These are Strength, Agility, Intelligence, Knowledge, Intuition, and Prior Military Experience (listed as Past Military Experience on the character sheet). You roll the 11-66 results and then select the score to which attribute you wish to use to meet your specialty minimum requirements. I rolled two really good scores and one really bad score. I checked out the specialties to see which one I wanted Mark to have for Primary and Secondary. Out of the 15 options, I selected Sniper/Sharpshooter for the Primary and Driver/Pilot for the Secondary. I assigned the attribute rolls to match the requirements. This also allowed me to fill in Mark’s weight and carrying capability.

On the Modified Test Rolls, are the attribute scores the attribute modifiers? Oh there they are, under the individual attribute descriptions. There is a weapons list with weight, but no costs. There is also no equipment list (unless I’m missing a book, which is possible since there is only one in the boxed set along with some handouts). I noticed that there is no info on experience points, rank or cash on hand. (Rank and XP were found in the GMs section) I really wonder if I’ve got an incomplete set now? A quick trip to the Merc entry on Wikipedia states that I’ve got everything, so yea. I guess I’m done? The second sheet mostly deals with wounds and nothing was written on it, so I didn’t scan it.

Afterthoughts:

I liked how quickly into the character creation the book took us. You want to shoot things, let’s get rolling. And the more I read, the more my eyebrow raised.

For the random rolls of physical appearances everything was pretty average. You had an equal chance to be a red-head vs a brunette. The only one that was not balanced was the hand preference.

While I was getting a “G.I. Joe” feel from some parts of the book, this system seemed off. 2d6 for some attacks while others were 3d6. Lot’s of info on movement, zero on equipment. No index to try to look things up. No background info on the Corporation or why they are hiring out mercenaries. Considering when Merc was released, this seems more like a wargame that tries to be a roleplaying game. I seriously doubt I’d play this game and I know I won’t be homebrewing for it. In fact I’m seriously considering adding this game to the trade pile.

There are plenty of other games that are fully fleshed out if you wanted to run a mercenary style campaign.

Additional Notes:

Besides creating a character for Merc, I also created a new character for Far Trek in the hopes of participating in an online game. The character was submitted today to the GM. I’ll let you know how the game goes.

I don’t think I have any more boxed sets scheduled for 2022, but if I use any in the future challenges I’ll have to make sure that they are complete before selecting them.

Coming Up Next:

Dungeon Crawl Classics

I was able to pick up PDF copy of Amazing Adventures 5E at an end-of-year sale on DriveThruRPG. While the setup in the book is mostly 1930s-40s pulp adventure, there are also sections about modern, supernatural and future. There is even a section about importing your fantasy 5E characters over just in case the DM wants to use a portal/time travel/magic hole/etc. on the players. I thought this would make an interesting entry in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge.

As mentioned above, this is a sandbox game. Since I’m lacking a GM to tell me what world I’m creating a character in, I’m sticking with the pulp style presented and creating a character from that. Derick Fieldstone will be an ex-cop turned detective who moved from the east coast of the United States to Bay City along the west coast.

There is the standard attributes in a D20 based 5E system. To generate these stats the rules recommends starting each stat at 7 and then spending 36 points to increase them to the max of 18. There are two optional methods (4d6 drop the lowest and arrange or a couple of presets) but I’m going to go with the points system for this entry.

I wrote down the basics for my class. My HP, XP, Equipment, AC, Speed, Alignment, etc. In Amazing Adventures you only get a feat at 1st level if you reduce four ability scores by 1. I’ve already gone through the ability scores so I don’t want to adjust them now.

Under “Rounding Out The Character” I selected the Law Enforcement background since Derick was once a cop. I already had the proficiency listed and weapons. So I selected a car. I could randomly roll a Personality Trait, Ideal, Bond and Flaw and write a brief description on the character sheet.

Amazing Adventures has Inspiration Points. If you play your character that is true to the personality, the GM can reward you with inspiration points. These can be used to gain advantages to yourself or an ally, avoid death, or just plain luck. It sounds like the luck and fate points used in other games. All new characters start with 5 Inspiration Points.

In your class you gain some starting equipment tool-kits and packs. This boils down to “what would your character have that fits the character” as common items. My gumshoe wouldn’t have a rocket ship, but he could have a car. Each character does have a starting wealth rating as determined by your class. This rating can be increased through game play.

Here is the character sheet. I think I’m done.

Afterthoughts:

I was happy that there was some suggestions and guidelines for the character background in “Rounding Out the Character”. Too many times I’ve seen rulebooks state “Pick a flaw”. Um, yea I’m not good at that sometimes.

I thought it was funny that the character sheet had a last will and testament.

Yes I could see myself playing this game.

Additional Notes:

We are coming to the back end of the challenge. Some of these have been a real challenge. By this time last year I was in a grove when I was creating characters. This year I’ve noticed that I haven’t reached that level. I wonder if it’s because this is a larger batch of systems that I’m not use to?

If you are still going, good for you. Keep going. If you’ve had real life get in the way, feel free to jump back in when you can.

Coming Up Next:

Dungeons and Dragons B/X Edition

Fantasy Imperium by Shadowstar Games is an Interactive Storytelling Game instead of a Role Playing Game. What does this mean? I’m about do dive in and find out since this is my Day 17 entry into the Character Creation Challenge. I had obtained this game last year when a friend gifted it to me while trying to reduce the number of books on his bookshelf. So I figured I’d give this game a go for the 2022 challenge.

If you are looking at the image above, yes all those pages are part of the character sheet. It’s six pages long. I had discovered this when I had printed out all of the character sheets before the challenge had started. When I saw the number of sheets, I moved the date for this character to January 17th because I thought I’d need more time to go through the process. Well as I discovered two days ago, all of that free time went poof. So lets see what we have in store for us.

The colorful maps on the front and back inside covers show the details of Europe in 1121 AD to 1348 AD. This is the basic time-frame that the game is set in. Magic is available, but risky and frowned upon in medieval times. The game is described as a battle between good and evil. OK I’m on board so far.

The GM is called a Storyteller and the players are, in a sense, actors. I’m still confused by the “storytelling” aspect. I’ve seen games like Amber and online Sims where you just “spoke your part”. But I’m also seeing various statistics and an RPG system. So what is this game?

Ah the Characteristics (aka the attributes). Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Intuition (think Wisdom), Self Discipline, Reasoning (memory of things you have learned), Ego (confidence and self-worth), Awareness, Presence (think Charisma) and Attractiveness. To generate these, roll d100 and go down the list. There are a bunch of additional rules when generating the characteristics, but the big one is if more than half of the stats are under 50%, you can scrap them all and start over. I had a really good roll for Strength (97) and a really crappy one for Intuition and Reason (17 & 22). Not enough to scrap the entire lot. Consulting the other options I can see that I can re-roll one Characteristic (OK now intuition is now 86, kewl). The character is not female so I can’t re-roll my Attractiveness, meh. There are three extra rolls that I can use throughout the character creation process. A Reason of 22 is not the best, but I have a feeling that I need to save the re-rolls for something else. So my Characteristics are set and this character will be a strong type of fellow. To use the characteristics, you roll a d100 and then add it to the characteristic roll, the higher number wins. The characteristic results are also use for combat factor statistics. These include Hits, Stun (Shock on the sheet for some reason), Morale, Winded, Exhausted and Burnout. Power (for magic), Fate and Luck are randomly rolled or decided depending upon the profession. There is magic resistance (called savings throws on the character sheet) of Ceremonial, Natural, Extrasensory and Black Arts (Black Magic on the character sheet).

Next came the History and Appearance (page 6 of the character sheet). The RAW stated that this would be determined by the Storyteller based upon the date and setting (oh boy). Nationality was just selected. Screw it I’m going with Medieval England. So he’s a typical guy from the British isles with brown hair and average looks. I get to roll for the social class. The d100 resulted in Lower Middle Class (rank 2). Just barely missed rank 3 by a few points. The number of siblings is also randomly rolled (he has 5). What year was he born? I guess that would have been coordinated with the Storyteller. Let’s say the game is set in the year 1348 and he’s 22 years old. So 1326 is when he came into this world.

Now the book wants us to create a background for the character. This is probably more of the “Interactive Storytelling” element. Actions, goals, needs, flaws, history, reputation, etc. There was a ton of details that they wanted. Probably more than is standard for a RPG character. Page six of the character sheet is for this entire section. Unfortunately I’ve been robbed of the time needed to do something of this detail, nor do I have a Storyteller with an idea of what type of campaign they are going to run in Medieval Europe.

I’m assuming that the character creation continues when we move into chapter 2 detailing skills and professions. Fantasy Imperium is a skill-based system (which I have enjoyed in other systems). Basic skill calculations are taken from a Characteristic and dividing them by five. You can then spend skill points (new characters get 100+d100 to start) to a base skill number to increase that final skill number. Each skill point is worth 10% to the final skill number with new characters not getting more than 3 points per skill unless it is a professional skill which can have up to five points. I can only choose a profession from my social class (rank 2). Looking over the list I selected a profession (some, while historically accurate, didn’t make sense for a game) that my massive strength would have justified. The Man-at-Arms. Not only did this give me the skills to start, it also determined the Income and Savings. The skills also include the use of weapons. This took a while to complete. I quickly filled in some of the blanks spots on the sheet (not all of them over six pages) and I would have moved onto equipment, but I’ve run out of time. So I would have worked with my Storyteller to make sure I was picking up stuff appropriate for the time frame.

I did not scan in any character sheets that did not have any details on them. There were sheets with weapons and armor, magic and the massive character backstory details.

Afterthoughts:

Well one advantage of having the sheet being so many pages is that everything was easy to read. There have been some character sheets where they make the font so small it makes it harder to read. I still think that six pages are a little excessive. There were also items on the character sheet that did not match the book. I’m assuming that Shock = Stun between the two, etc. This really should have been noticed by the editors.

The players will be doing a lot of work with the Storyteller before starting this game and creating characters.

There were a lot of adjustments to the statistics for female characters. Some good, some bad. There was also a ton of crunchyness in this system. I don’t know if this was part of the Interactive Storytelling or what? If I could find a video of a game in play, I might watch it to understand more. But I seriously doubt that I’ll play or homebrew for this system. It already has a ton of stuff in it so I don’t think there is anything that could have been added.

There is a ton of detail in this book. It may be a good resource just to have to use for your preferred fantasy/medieval style campaign. There was also a lot of good art in this book. I can tell that a lot of effort went into the book. Since I had never heard of the game before the book came into my possession (it was released in 2006) I don’t think a lot of other people have heard of it either.

From what I did read, I never did find out what it meant by Interactive Storytelling.

Additional Notes:

While my site was inaccessible to me (and everyone else) I had started writing the blog entry in a text file. When I could start posting again, I just cut and paste into the blog entry. I usually have the blog editor open as I’m creating the character so I can type in my thoughts as they hit me. I’m now wondering if I should stick with the text file first then worry about the blog entry later. Forcing myself to explore other options has given me something to think about. This entry was done as I had earlier and I may experiment with the next couple of entries.

Coming Up Next:

Cyberpunk v3