TardisCaptain's Blog of Holding

On Day 27 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to use another game that you can’t pick up on DriveThruRPG any more unless you had purchased it prior to September 2025. The Terminator Roleplaying Game by Nightfall Games. According to the Terminator Fandom Wiki, the publisher decided to end their rights by mutual agreement with StudioCanal. I didn’t know that until now and it may have explained why the game came up for sale when I had purchased it on DTRPG. The link I posted above goes to an Amazon listing for anyone looking for a copy.

I’ve always enjoyed the Terminator franchise and thought it would make for a good RPG campaign. I even remember reading articles with what-if scenarios like: “What if the series 800 model 101 infiltrator unit was accidentally sent back in time to 1886 instead of 1986?” I think that is what I like about science fiction stories and games. The “what-if” factor. In this game, it appears that you can play resistance fighters in the future war, or those who have been sent back to the 1980’s (or other times) to protect the timeline.

So the PDF I own has 232 pages in it. It was written by Andrew E.C. Gaska who also wrote the Planet of the Apes RPG, The Alien RPG and I even had a chance to meet at a past FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. As I was reading the rules, I could see some of his fingerprints in the system based off the in-person conversation that we had at the con. The character sheet is one-page long and the character creation process starts on page 30. There are seven steps in total (with an optional eight step that I will not be using) to create a character. I’m going to make a member of the resistance who will be sent back to the 80’s to find and protect a target from being terminated.

Step one is to select a role. This could be considered a class or archetype. Not everyone in the resistance is a soldier (but everyone fights where they can). The options are Engineer, Grunt, Hacker, Historian, Medic, Pilot (ground or air), Scout and Strategist (aka generals). I made a Drow Hacker yesterday with Modern Necessities, so I’m going to go with Historian this time. I don’t think I’ve made one in any of my past challenge entries. Each role gets some initial stats, skills and a resistance ability. I wrote these down for my yet-to-be named character.

Next comes the stat generation. These attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Concentration, Charisma, Cool and Fate (which I was glad to see in the game). They range from 0 (poor) to 6 (incredible). Some of these stats already have a score thanks to the role selected above. I’ve been given 7 points to spend on the other stats. There is a max stat limit for the different roles and a chart is provided. For example, with his brains, this historian could have a score of 6 in KNOW, but only a 2 in STR. I didn’t know if I should make him general (1 point in each stat) or specialized? I think this is why I don’t like point buy systems. I decided to go with 1 in each category and added it to my notes.

Step three covers the Hope Points of the character. According to the book, this represents the faith that the character has in their own abilities and in humanity. There are three categories for hope points, Body, Brain and Bravado which are associated with a stat (example Brain has KNOW and CONC). I add the two associated stats together and then the category with the highest number gets 2 Hope points (in this guy’s case Brain, and the second gets 1 and the lowest gets zero. Since there was a tie between Body and Bravado, I was instructed to pick one. Now I’m confused. Besides the three points listed above from the values, it says that I have 3 more hope points to spend in any category (max 2) how I want? Am I reading this right? Slightly confusing. But I think I have the 3 more points to spend so I wrote them down on my notes.

Skills are the next step in the creation process. There are skills categorized by the stat would use them (e.g. melee weapons falls under STR). The range is 1 (skilled) to 4 (Specialist) with the max at creation time of 3 (Expert). Each Roll has a list of starting skills that begin at the rank of 2. I’m then given 36 points to spend on any skills with a chart of how much it costs to go to each rank. Ugh, again I dislike point buy. Yea they are good if you have something in mind or are homebrewing, but for just general character creation, I’m not a fan. First I picked some minimal skills that I thought a resistance member would have surviving in a robot apocalypse. I was able to get them spent and added to my notes.

Step five is the Traits that give the character some personality and possible hooks for the Director. I have zero points to spend on the traits, but if I take a negative trait, I’ll gain points. I’m getting a GURPS vibe here of all the negative things to get a bunch of points (something I dislike). I looked over the costs and descriptions and honestly nothing really pulled me in. Perhaps if this was random or required. I finally broke down and picked one good and one bad trait and moved on.

For step six we are doing the Figured Stats. These are stats that are calculated by other items noted above. Most have mathematical formulas. These include Hit Points (health of body), Willpower (mental strength), Movement (closing and rushing), Encumbrance and Initiative. Luckily after the descriptions there was a chart with all of the baselines and formulas for me to use when writing down my character notes.

And the last step (for me) is to come up with the Finishing Touches. Name (William Harden), background (was raised in an abandoned library so that is where he gained his knowledge and equipment (discussed with Director if the game is set in the future or if they traveled to the past naked). He’s naked to start.

There is a step eight, which is for the players who wanted to beg their Director to let them play a cyborg or fated (aka targeted by Terminators) character. Since I’m not using this according to the voices in my head, I skipped it. Here is the character sheet after I transferred my notes to it.

Afterthoughts:

They had the Terminator 2 font everywhere in this book. I think it was giving me flashbacks because that was one of the original fonts that we loaded onto our computers to make futuristic newsletters and flyers.

I like how they gave a one-word description of the different stat ranks. This would make it easy to homebrew stats for someone that I could have ported into the game.

This game uses a pool of d10s to determine success. One of the d10s has to be different from the others and it must role above the target number in order for the additional skill die to count. I kind of raised an eyebrow at this wondering how it would play at the table. Some of the target numbers were higher than 10, but you do add some modifiers to the roll if I read the system section correctly.

I know it sounds like I did a lot of complaining above. My issue is with the min/maxing of point buys. I wasn’t a fan of them in GURPS, and I’m not a fan of them in other games. I feel that it drags out the character creation process. Sure if you already have an idea in mind (which I didn’t) then it may help. While I hated making GURPS characters, I didn’t mind playing GURPS at the table. I wonder if I’d feel the same with this system? I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to try unless someone runs a one-shot at a con.

Additional Notes:

I’ve had some participants ask me if there will be a badge graphic for those who complete the 31 characters as we have done in years past. The answer is yes, my artists has been working on one and has sent me several prototypes for feedback.

I had a blogger reach out to me by emailing Carl (at) TardisCaptain dot com to let me know that they were posting their entries. I’ve added Skeleton Soldier Press Blog to the list on the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge page.

Coming Up Next:

The One Ring

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.