Month: January 2021

Character Creation Challenge Day 31: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 31, 2021

I started this Character Creation Challenge with the BECMI Dungeons & Dragons edition because it was the first D&D game that I owned. I thought that having Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition as the last entry would be a perfect bookend. My gaming buddies all owned different copies of the game. I had BECMI, another had B/X Dungeons & Dragons, and another had AD&D. We played all of them depending upon who the Dungeon Master was.

When I printed out a yellow AD&D character sheet it brought me back to those days. However instead of printing one, it was photocopied. The yellow didn’t copy out very well in grayscale. I’ve decided that I would make a character from a class that I’ve never played. So today I am rolling up the stats for Kellerin a Human Paladin.

The method to roll the ability scores wasn’t listed in the Player’s Handbook, I had to go pull out my Dungeon Master’s Guide to see what options were available. Method IV sounded interesting (roll enough stats for 12 characters and then pick one set of stats), but I didn’t have that much time for dice rolling. So I stuck with Method II, roll 4d6 and discard the lowest die twelve times and select which score will go with which attribute. Kellerin ended up with the following stats. STR: 16, INT: 14, WIS: 15, DEX: 14, CON: 15, CHR: 17. It’s probably a good thing I selected Method II, there were a few very low rolls that were eliminated.

I then wrote down all of the class benefits, ability modifiers and background information from the DMG. Apparently Kellerin was the son of a Taylor who thought he was going to go into the family business. I can’t think of a reason right now, but somehow he ended up associated in a holy order that trained him to be a Paladin. If I was talking to the DM, I would discuss that the reason he is out adventuring is due to his assignment of protecting the cleric in our party that is also a part of the same order.

My eventual goal is to get Kellerin in a suit of full plate mail with a powerful magic sword so that he might be able to smite evil. However until that time he would be starting out with some non-magical armor and weapons that was selected from the equipment list with the starting GP rolled up as per the RAW.

The saving throw information was also in the Dungeon Master’s Guide. I’m glad that the later editions made sure that was all in the Player’s Handbook. Kellerin isn’t high enough in levels to list any spells or turning abilities. So I think I’m done. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

It had been a while since I had thought about the STR 18/[percentage] attribute score. I remember having a character that was lucky enough to have an 18 strength score. I then rolled the percentile dice and got a really low number in the single digits. I remember thinking “really?”

While I had a blast going through memory lane going through the AD&D 1st Edition Player’s Handbook (and Dungeon Master’s Guide) I can recall why I stuck with BECMI when I wanted to play. There were too many nooks and crannies in AD&D 1e. I think that the reason I had never created a Paladin previously was due to the restrictions of role-playing such a character. At the time I wasn’t experienced enough to want to play it. I may be interested now, but I can understand why I wasn’t then.

Additional Notes:

And with that I’ve met the challenge. Thirty-one characters different characters from a different system, one for each day of the month in January. Whew. I will be giving a detailed analysis in tomorrow’s after-action post.

Coming Up Next:

The Character Creation Challenge After Action Report

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

Character Creation Challenge Day 30: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Written by TardisCaptain January 30, 2021March 29, 2022

The fan-made Star Trek RPG called Where No Man Has Gone Before v2.1 is based off of the D20 Microlite20 rules. The Microlite system is basically D20 slimmed down quite a bit so it is a quick system to learn and play. The Far Trek RPG system is based off of WNMHGB with some minor differences. There was also a version 1.0 of the WNMHGB rules that are more inline with the open source D20 system.

For the Character Creation Challenge I’m going to create, Ensign Navin a Deltan Starfleet Medical Officer serving on the Constitution-class USS Deneb, NCC-1826.

The attributes scores are only Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Intelligence (INT) and Charisma (CHA) which are generated by rolling 4d6 and removing the lowest die. Then you record the stat bonuses on the character sheet (score -10 then divided by 2 rounding down). The racial adjustments are made to the the bonuses which are the only thing you use in play. Ensign Navin ended up with the following stats. STR: 14 (0 penalty due to -2 for being Deltan), DEX: 12 (+1), INT: 14 (+2) and CHA: 12 (+3 including the +2 for being Deltan).

Being a Classic Star Trek based RPG, the three classes are Blue Shirt, Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt. The skills are Communication, Engineering, Knowledge, Medicine, Physical and Subterfuge. Each character selects one skill to be their trained skill which will start out at your level +3. All other skills will be half of the character’s level rounded down, plus one. A skill roll is a d20 + skill rank + any stat bonuses (if any) + any situational modifiers.

Starting characters in WNMHGB get to choose two talents. These can be taken from a General list or a list specific to the class. I selected Field Medic and Recollections. Hit Points are the same for all classes STR bonus + 1d6 per level. Armor class is 10 + 1/2 level (rounded down) + DEX bonus. All characters start out with two action points which have a variety of uses to make your character more heroic during a session (or in the case of one of Navin’s talents, heal others). They can be regained by proper roleplaying or other GM decisions or talents.

The section for equipment stated that you shouldn’t be worried about ranges, but it has ranges listed on the character sheet. This confused me and I’d probably homebrew something if I was running a game. I selected the equipment that I felt a members of Starfleet Medical would normally have and considered the character done. Here is a scan of the Character Sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Some of the talents are Vulcan specific (Nerve Pinch) which I felt that the members of that race should have gotten for free. Yea it make the Vulcan characters a little bit more powerful, but they were that way in the show as well.

I thought it was interesting that one of the optional rules was TV Ratings. After each episode the GM would roll a die to see how the show did in the Nielsens. If the results were too low, the TV executives may demand some changes such as a cute sidekick or replace a character or some inane suggestion that upper management usually things will fix things right away. Considering the ratings question with various Star Trek series, this gave me a chuckle.

If given a choice between the light-rules RPGs, I don’t know if I’d play Far Trek or WNMHGB. They both have their strengths and weaknesses. I know that I will be homebrewing for both systems.

Additional Notes:

Apparently some participants in the Character Creation Challenge have also been using the social media hashtag of #31CharacterChallenge as well as #CharacterCreationChallenge. I had not been following the first hashtag so I don’t know how far it reached but you may be able to find some additional entries there.

Coming Up Next:

Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 1st Edition

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

Character Creation Challenge Day 29: Starships & Spacemen

Written by TardisCaptain January 29, 2021January 12, 2023

This system by Goblinoid Games is Spaceships & Spacemen. Think Dungeons & Dragons B/X meets Classic Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off. You are on a starship serving the Galactic Confederation. Your opponents are the Zangid and the Videni instead of the Klingons and the Romulans. Taurans sounds a lot like Vulcans, etc. As a person who collects and studies Star Trek based RPGs (I’m still looking for a physical or PDF copy of Starfleet Voyages) I knew I had to create a character for this system in the Character Creation Challenge.

S&S uses just about the same system as Apes Victorious (that I created a character for yesterday) so this should go pretty quickly. Since I created a Human yesterday, today’s character will be one of the unique races to the game based upon the random ability rolls. They rolled high enough that I was able to select a Gorran (Gorn like lizards) and after adding the ability adjustments I ended up with the following stats. STR: 12, CON: 18, DEX: 9, INT: 9, CHA: 10, PSI: 13.

The skills in S&S are different from Apes Victorious. In AV they were based on a percentage score or a d6 roll depending upon the skill. In S&S the four skills are Combat, Contact, Science and Technical with a d20 roll with a requirement to roll equal or less than your character’s score. The contact skill is used in first contact with alien life form (a form of diplomacy) or the ability to recognize patterns and what is in your surroundings. If I’m reading this correctly, it could be used for perception/spot/listen type skills. Each class has a primary skill, some branches also have a secondary skill. If a skill is not a primary or secondary, it uses the other rating on the chart. The higher your character level, the better the skill roll.

The ages of the character can adjust the ability scores. This character ended up with the age of 22 which is an adult and adds +1 to the STR and PSI scores (umm… why on that last one?) But I didn’t want to go back and re-calculate the stats again so I left them as they were. If I were running a game I’d make sure this was added in early of the character creation or just skip it for the Adult range.

Equipment assigned to a character in this fleet is based upon the branch, sub-class and rank. A player can select items from the equipment list based upon a number generated from his rank plus one. Unit 1/2 equipment is basic and common. The higher the unit, the more unique the items become. Beginning players end up with basic equipment, higher level characters can choose from other distinguished items. Interesting technique. This allowed me to get a beam pistol for my security officer (which I felt was needed) but there was no armor options left that was 1 unit.

It took me a minute to find out how the Defense score worked. Instead of having an Armor Class, your Defense score is an adjustment to the attacker’s Combat Skill roll. Interesting. I wonder how this works in gameplay. This was the last item I need on the character sheet, which is posted below.

Afterthoughts:

Both Starships & Spacemen and Apes Victorious had a lot of psionic abilities. But I’ve never been a psionic player. So I’d probably only really push for this aspect of the game if the race (i.e. Vulcan like abilities) were part of the character.

Going thought the equipment they had a “laser sword” that is only usable by Security or Rigelians. I wonder what influenced this item.

There is an entire section in the rules where the Star Master (GM) can generate an alien race that is humanoid with a strange forehead. It even has 100 random foreheads that the SM can randomly roll for. Some looked quite familiar, while others were a little out there.

I could see myself playing this game to try it out. I also want to make sure I’m familiar enough with this system as I want to homebrew a lot of Star Trek material. Even with this not being an actual Star Trek game, it is close enough for me to want to include it in my collection of Star Trek type games.

Additional Notes:

Yea, tomorrow’s game is also a Star Trek RPG as well. I wanted to make sure I got the Trek games in that I had access to and I had something special for the last game in the 31 day challenge. So we’ve got two of them back-to-back.

Coming Up Next:

Where No Man Has Gone Before

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

Character Creation Challenge Day 28: Apes Victorious

Written by TardisCaptain January 28, 2021March 29, 2022

Apes Victorious is a role playing game that is heavily inspired by the 1970’s Planet of the Apes franchise. I’ve enjoyed watching this series when I can and I even put in the DVD of the first movie last night to prep for today’s challenge. While I’ve seen a few of the newer Planet of the Apes movies, I haven’t sat down and watched all of them. This was a universe I was interested in role-playing in. So I decided to make a character for the Character Creation Challenge.

One of the things that stood out from last night’s viewing is that the smart Humans did not have their technology to save them or confirm their stories. The ship crashed in the water and the non-intelligent Humans stole and trashed their equipment. Making another astronaut character seemed a little cliche, but the Apes Victorious book suggested that a smart Human could have emerged from a cryo-sleep in a bunker. So Martin Reynolds was a smart Human that was woken from his hibernation state by an alarm that he needed to evacuate the underground facility quickly before it exploded. Grabbing a few things while running for the exit he now finds himself in an unknown world. What will he find? What caused the destruction of his bunker? Who else survived?

Apes Victorious uses the same system as other Goblinoid Games (Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, Starships & Spacemen 2e) which are all D20 based with a few minor tweeks. The ability generation is done by 3d6 with the option to assign the scores after rolling. I will be using the Astronaut class for the revived sleeper (since he just woke up and not constantly living underground like an underdweller descendant).

The only difference between B/X D&D attributes and AV attributes is Psionic Potential (PSI) replaces the Wisdom (WIS) score. Astronauts do not get any attribute adjustments so Reynolds ended up with the following stats. STR: 11, CON: 11, DEX: 17, INT: 13, CHA: 9 and PSI: 8. Rolled a 5 for his Hit Points.

The equipment was easy (Astronauts get this). I didn’t include the rubber raft since he was actually a sleeper instead of a flyboy.

It appears that only Underdwellers get the psionic abilities. I wrote down the To Hit score and the save checks for Energy Attacks, Poison or Death, Stun Attacks and Radiation. After I wrote some description notes I considered the character done. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I really want to write up a homebrew for the Sleeper class now. It would be very similar to the Astronaut but have some tweaks from the Underdwellers and other sources.

I liked how the character sheet has the graphics that remind me of the classic PotA series. The system was pretty basic and straightforward. I could see myself playing or even being the Ape Master (Game Master) for a campaign.

Additional Notes:

While I still haven’t been able to locate any additional websites that has posts for the Character Creation Challenge, I have been seeing a lot of participation on the social media hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge.

Coming Up Next:

Starships & Spacemen

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Wars

Character Creation Challenge Day 27: Star Wars Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain January 27, 2021March 29, 2022

While I’ve had lots of experience with the D6 Star Wars RPG by West End Games, I have never played the D20 Star Wars RPG by Wizards of the Coast. I’ve been able to collect a few of the books. Apparently there is a revised edition and a saga edition with smaller books. But I’m not certain how they all go together. But being a Star Wars fan I knew I had to make at least one character in this system for the Character Creation Challenge.

I will be using the Revised Core Rulebook that was published in 2002. I’m thinking a Fringer that is a member of the Rodian race named Navik. He was kicked out of his village by a rival who’s father was on the village council. Navik wandered the lands until he decided that he wanted to leave his homeworld, probably forever. After taking a few odd jobs he ended up helping some rebels. Feeling like he was wanted for once, he has joined the cause for freedom in the galaxy.

With this being one of the many D20 variants I was curious on how the attribute generation was set up. They had the 4d6 random generation rule, the planned generation with base attributes and spending points to obtain the score you wanted or just a standard score package. The last one didn’t sound very fun, I’ve done the second before so I rolled. I just feel better rolling for the character. After adding racial adjustments Navik had the following stats. STR: 15, DEX: 16, CON: 14, INT: 13, WIS: 14 and CHA: 8.

Interesting, this game calls it Vitality Points instead of Hit Points and your CON score is your Wound Points. There are also Force Points (even a non-Jedi starts out with 1 FP). A Reputation score is also a part of the character.

Not a lot of basic equipment in the core rulebook I wonder if one of the supplements had a lot more equipment to choose from. But I selected what I thought a wandering Fringer would have and called it good. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I was a little surprised that Bounty Hunter wasn’t one of the classes in the core rulebook. With how popular the Mandalorians are I thought for sure that they would be in there. I was thinking about making a Bounty Hunter after watching The Mandalorian series.

This character sheet uses really small fonts. I understand trying to get as much as you can on the page, but I probably wouldn’t use this character sheet in a campaign. I’d probably put something together in Excel.

Being familiar with the D20 system I could see myself easily playing this system. However if given a choice I’d play the D6 version first probably due to the nostalgia factor.

Additional Notes:

I’m having a lot of fun coming up with these characters. Some I had a general idea what I wanted to do before I started. Others like this one I made up on the spot. It’s interesting to see where inspiration strikes and where it strikes from.

Coming Up Next:

Apes Victorious

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek

Character Creation Challenge Day 26: Star Trek Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain January 26, 2021March 29, 2022

The Star Trek Roleplaying Game by Decipher was the first Star Trek RPG that I played with my local Star Trek club. I was even able to GM a few sessions. I had a group of young Ensigns (the player characters) lead by an NPC Lieutenant as the CO, head to a shipyard to recover the USS Crockett for refitting just after the end of the Dominion War. Starfleet needed to pull some older, but still serviceable ships out of mothballs to rebuild the fleet and get back to the primary duty of exploring. Because the PCs got kicked off the station managing the shipyard, the team left with the Crockett before making sure the ship was ready to go. There was a very large nest of Talarian Hook Spiders that woke up from hibernation when the environmentals warmed up. As the crew tried to re-take back the ship, one of the PCs accidentally set the Lieutenant on fire who then fell in the turboshaft that they were traversing through. Luckily he survived despite being very injured. After the players recovered the ship and got to their destination, the poor Lieutenant was placed on a medical leave and eventually retired somewhere far away from the PCs.

For this entry in the Character Creation Challenge, I decided that I would make an Andorian Flight Control Officer serving on the Nebula Class, USS Ulysses NCC-66808. His name would be Ensign Rexun and is is a member of the Athrun keith (clan). Selecting the race and the profession was the first and second part of the character creation process.

The attributes used in this STRPG is Strength, Agility, Intellect, Vitality, Presence and Perception. For the random method roll 2d6 nine times and discard the three lowest results, then assign a score to the attribute. There is also a pic method but I felt like rolling dice today. With the racial modifiers Rexun ended up with the following attributes. STR: 8, AGL: 8, INT: 9, VIT: 8, PRE: 7, PER: 9.

Reaction tests are like savings throws. You select the highest of the attribute modifiers that feed into the four reaction scores. These also in turn generate your Initiative and Defense scores.

This is a skills based system. I’ve been a fan of these types of systems, but I’ll play the “general skills” games as well. I just feel that the skills list makes the character unique, especially when you are homebrewing a character seen in the show or in the expanded universe. These skills are selected by going through several steps including Personal Development (military brat was selected) and Professional Development (I selected Helm/Navigator)

The character creation process rounded out with wound status, courage and renown. There is a chapter on equipment, but it wasn’t part of the creation process listed on pages 20-21. In the RAW Starfleet equipment is assigned as per the mission needs. I considered the character done. Here is the sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Creating this character brought back lots of good memories. Especially with friends from Starfleet Command’s Seventh Fleet. We did some homebrewing in our games and it made me want to homebrew again.

There was a time I had to go find the Players Guide errata. Luckily I had it readily available. The book had a few rough edges while trying to navigate the character creation system. Quite a few bookmarks were used. I remember in the Fleet we had created our own Character Creation Guide to assist members unfamiliar with the game.

Additional Notes:

We are entering the home stretch towards the end of the Character Creation Challenge. Because I’m creating a character and writing a blog post at the same time, it takes quite a bit of coordination and energy. Especially when I have to stop myself from pulling out the other resource books and fan made homebrews after the character is created. I get distracted by the shiny things sometimes.

Coming Up Next:

Star Wars Roleplaing Game by Wizards of the Coast

Character Creation Challenge, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

Character Creation Challenge Day 25: Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 25, 2021January 30, 2021

So another confession time. I’ve played Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition, but I’ve never created a character for it. Back when the 4th edition of the rules had just come out, my wife and I went to a local gaming store and joined the official gaming league and participated in a demo of the game. The characters were pre-made on these half-page sized cards. Even though we bought the Player’s Handbook, we never went back to continue in the game. We just were not impressed with the rules that gave it an “MMORPG” feel. So when the Character Creation Challenge came about, I decided that this would be a perfect opportunity to create a character using the Rules-As-Written.

I haven’t created a ranger yet and I haven’t created a Dragonborn character. So today’s entry will be for Kriv the dual-wielding ranger. There are three methods of generating ability scores. I selected method 2, customizing scores. The six scores start with one at 8 and the remaining at 10. Then you have 22 points to spend (consulting a chart) for the attributes you want. By the time I added my racial modifiers and spent my points Kriv had the following attributes. STR: 16, CON: 13, DEX: 15, INT: 10, WIS: 15, CHA: 10.

While I was writing down my class abilities, they had things called Class Features, Powers and Exploits. If I read the rules correctly, you get all of them for your level. It is something I haven’t seen in any of the other D&D editions and I think this gave it that MMORPG feel. I’m really glad they didn’t continue this part of the game into the 5th edition.

Wait, if I want low-light vision I have to take it as a special feat? The race doesn’t have it automatically? As I read through the feats it sounded like there were some that should have been automatic for the races. But when I went back and checked the racial descriptions, they were not listed. While I was still jumping from section to section in the book (and using a lot of bookmarks) they a least had a section showing the character sheet with information on where to find the information to fill in for each section.

Equipment was pretty quick an easy. Not a lot on equipment but a lot of information on magical items that you could obtain. Very strange. Here is the character sheet after filling in everything that I could find.

Afterthoughts:

While I was going through the book I found the original character card stuck between the pages of the book for Alvenor the Paladin. Apparently it had remained there since that first game. There was also a second paper showing the Undermountain Play Tracker. I head earned 100 XP, three more Renown Points and 13 GP. The DM’s name was Matt.

While I was creating this character, I talked it over with my wife and got her thoughts. She also didn’t like how this edition was set up. She also used the term, “It was too much like the online games”. I’m glad to see that I wasn’t the only one that recalls this. I don’t see myself playing or homebrewing for this edition. But I do wonder if the other books smoothed out or aggravate the rough edges found in the players handbook.

I will say I did like how the character sheet had guidelines for some sections. It did help.

Additional Notes:

I was able to locate another blog with someone who is participating in the Character Creation Challenge. Chimerical Realm has been added to the list of links. I’m not certain how I missed this one before. It looks like this person has been participating for the entire month. If I’ve missed anyone, please let me know via email Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.

Oh and for those of you who asked, we were able to get a permanent fix to our furnace issue. Luckily it was an inexpensive sensor that needed to be replaced. Thanks for asking.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek Roleplaying Game by Decipher

Character Creation Challenge, Doctor Who, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

Character Creation Challenge Day 24: Doctor Who Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain January 24, 2021August 23, 2023

While I have played the FASA Doctor Who RPG many, many years ago. I have not had the chance to play Cubicle 7’s entry into the Doctor Who game universe. So this will be an introduction to the game for me. I picked up the book from a local game store a year ago and I also had a chance to get a lot of the PDF books in one of the charity bundle sales. I’ve also noticed that a lot of fans are homebrewing their own “publications” for this game with unofficial “Expanded Universe” sourcebooks. This gives me a little bit of hope and inspiration as I’d like to do this with other universes (Star Trek in particular). So I knew that I had to make an entry into the Character Creation Challenge with this game.

Since I made a Gallifreyan Time Lord with the FASA system, I think I’ll make a companion with this game. Tim Bronson was originally a police officer in a small city when he got caught up in some business with a mysterious stranger, some weird alien looking things and some para-military group that claimed they were working with the United Nations. Turns out, they were working with the UN and they all helped to stop a group of aliens from harvesting Human body parts for some intergalactic medical black market. The mysterious stranger, called The Baron, put in a good word with UNIT’s commanding officers. Upon this recommendation, they invited Bronson to join them in their quest to keep the Earth safe from the aliens that wish to harm the planet and it’s occupants. Sometimes he’s with a team heading off planet, other times he’s helping The Baron with some urgent tasks. But he’s been running ever since that fateful day.

The character creation system assigns you points to build a character. They can be spent on Attributes, Skills and Traits. The attributes are Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity, Presence, Resolve and Strength. They have a score range from 1 to 6 in each attribute. For a law enforcement character I selected the following. Awareness: 4, Coordination: 3, Ingenuity: 3, Presence: 2, Resolve: 3 and Strength: 3. The Traits that Bronson had (which also pulled from the same pool of character points as attributes) was Brave, Lucky, Keen Senses (sight), Voice of Authority (aka The Policeman’s Voice), Quick Reflexes and Friend (all of his buddies back in the police force). There were a few other traits that were intriguing (including some bad traits that would have gained me points) but I decided not to go overboard on the character.

There are twelve skills listed. Each skill can also have an Area of Expertise (but they cost points to put into them). So I selected the following for my police officer turned UNIT operative. Bronson’s area of expertise was Interrogation (trying to get information out of a suspicious person). The Stuff section basically stated to select what you thought your character should have. So I picked a few things that a former police officer may still have in his possession and called it good. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I liked the detailed explanation of the attributes. Ingenuity-3 represents this, Strenght-1 represents this, etc. It detailed what an average Human would have for statistics which, I think, helped players create their characters. This level of detail also went into the Traits and Skills.

I also liked that the end of the character creation process was noted in the book. Usually a character creation process just pushes you into the next chapter, then the next and so on. There were times I was wondering “Am I done or did I miss something?” Especially when I would see blank spots on the character sheet. I usually had to go look up the index to find the section to fill in that part of the sheet.

I really had to resist the urge to pull the other books out and check out what they had listed for stats and information. I may have to do that soon, especially the fan made stuff.

Additional Notes:

Dealing with a malfunctioning furnace made me wonder if I was going to be able to get a character made today. Luckily we were able to get a temporary fix going until we can get a professional in to look at the system. I really dislike the winter and the cold weather. I’ll take the heat of summer anytime.

Coming Up Next:

Dungeons and Dragons 4th Edition

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Character Creation Challenge Day 23: Top Secret: New World Order

Written by TardisCaptain January 23, 2021March 29, 2022

When I original came up with the concept of the Character Creation Challenge, I had intended to do a character write up for the Top Secret S.I. role playing game. However as I searched and searched through the boxes in my garage, I could not find the game. I had purchased many of the game supplements when they originally came out and I’m really hoping that they are still in an unopened box somewhere. However I was lucky enough to discover that the PDF version of Top Secret: New World Order role playing game was free on DriveThruRPG. At the time of this blog post, it is still free to order so I figured that it would be a good way to learn this new game from the original Top Secret designer, Merle “The Administrator” Rasmussen.

This will be the last espionage game that I will be using in the 2021 challenge. And for this entry I will be creating the character of Peter Page, another new operative to help refill the depleted ranks of UNITY. He joins agents Gary King, Andrew Knightley, Steven Prince and Oliver Chamberlain in the active field. If those names sound familiar, they are the names of the main characters from Simon Pegg’s 2013 comedy movie “The World’s End” which was the last movie in the Blood and Ice Cream trilogy.

The game uses five different types of dice. d4 (Weak), d6 (Average), d8 (Healthy), d10 (Robust) and d12 (Paragon). Sometimes the player may be instructed to “step up” or “step down” the dice depending upon the situation they players find themselves in. It also utilizes a type of exploding dice called Burst & Blowback. The burst is the highest roll of the die, and you get to roll again and add all the rolls to get the total. A blowback is rolling a natural 1 and it may or may not lead to bad results.

Characters have the following attributes. Nerve, Suave, Pulse, Intellect and Reflex. You roll percentile dice and consult a chart. Agent Page ended up with Nerve- d10, Suave- d12, Pulse- d10, Intellect- d6 and Reflex- d6.

For a random background I rolled Actor. That almost makes sense with the high nerve and suave. There is an optional rule to have an impairment selected or randomly assigned to the character. If you do this, your character also gains an additional specialized skill. I let the dice roll and Agent Page has Vertigo. Next comes languages. Again random roll stated that he knows three other languages besides his native English. These came up as Burmese, Chinese-Canton and Arabic.

The Tradecraft skills are the same as some of the attributes other than one that is the “weak area” of the agent’s training. I chose Tech as his weak area so his final Tradecraft is Human Intelligence (HUMINT) d12, Signal Intelligence (SIGINT) d6, Technical Operations (TECH) d4 and Combat d6. It appears for a skill check you will roll your attribute die + tradecraft die + asset bonuses to obtain a result that must match or exceed a certain target number. Other situations such as combat or perception will follow similar patterns. There are specialized skills your character can also obtain which will result in higher die rolls when your specialized skill matches the task. These can be improved with character advancement. I selected the specialized skills that a master-of-disguise would need to help the team.

Starting characters can purchase equipment for $3,000. There was a lot of really interesting gadgets. It referred to real life costs, which would help in a modern game. Since these characters are based in the 1960’s, I guesstimated what my character would have. Specifically a disguise kit. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I like how the character sheet looks like it is being read out of a folder. I also like how the attributes have grid-lines that connect it to the tradecraft that is being used. Very good design.

This was my first deep dive into the game rules. I’m really curious on how this comes out in play. I could see myself using these rules and probably homebrewing some stuff for this game.

Additional Notes:

No new additions to the link of participants in a while. But there has been a steady stream of new characters coming out on the blogs and on the social media hashtag of #CharacterCreationChallenge. Keep it up.

Coming Up Next:

Doctor Who Roleplaying Game by Cubicle 7

Character Creation Challenge, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

Character Creation Challenge Day 22: Advanced Dungeons and Dragons, 2nd Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 22, 2021

I had a subscription to Dragon Magazine back in the late 80’s. I don’t remember what issue it was, but I remember reading the announcement that TSR was going to release Advanced Dungeons and Dragons 2nd Edition. I immediately called up one of my gaming buddies and I had to read the entire article to him. I don’t recall how much of 2nd edition I played. Just after the game came out I had moved to a rural area for a job and it took a while before I found any gamers. When I did, they wanted to play Twilight 2000. But I still have my 2nd Edition Player’s Handbook so I decided that I would revisit that time by placing an entry into the Character Creation Challenge.

Xal Tolman is a Human Wizard that has just set out to find his fortunes after studying under a master in his home city. His goal is to come back with an artifact that will secure his membership within the local spell casters guild.

The RAW for generating character ability scores is vast in 2nd Edition. There are seven different methods that can be selected. I’ve already done Method I in this challenge (roll 3d6 for each attribute in order) and Method V (roll 4d6 and discard the lowest die) so I decided to try Method II (roll 3d6 twice for each ability and keep the highest score). This didn’t always guarantee a high roll for each stat. One roll set had me selecting between an 8 or 7 for the attribute. Ugh. While another had me choosing between a 14 and 13. Double ugh. I had forgotten that ability scores of 13 and 14 don’t really get any adjustment bonuses, but on the flip side the STR of 8 will not give me any penalties either. The remaining attributes are DEX: 13, CON: 14, INT: 16, WIS: 12 and CHR: 14. I wrote down my abilities and stats.

A wizard didn’t get or need a lot of equipment so that was pretty easy to select. Magic Missile was the lone spell I got at first class. Filled in some skills and called it good. Here is the character sheets.

Afterthoughts:

It had been a long time since I had created a 2nd edition character. I can see where it still has hold overs from 1st edition and I can see where the foundation was laid down for 3rd edition. I really don’t know if I’d ever get a chance to play in a 2nd edition campaign. Most players want nostalgia with 1st edition or they liked 3.5 of the new 5th edition. But it was fun to go through the rules again. I’ve also been finding old notes in some of my older books. Some have been interesting to read.

Additional Notes:

Started getting the final prep done for the rest of the month. I’m trying to make it as easy as possible for the later half of the Character Creation Challenge. If you are still going, good job. If you’ve run into a stumbling block, pick yourself back up and keep going.

Coming Up Next:

Top Secret NWO