For Day 6 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge I am making a character for the Tiny Wastelands role-playing game. Previously I’ve created characters for Tiny Dungeons 2nd edition (2022) and Tiny Spies (2023). After the Tiny Spies entry was posted, someone had requested that I make a character for Tiny Wastelands. I had place it in my notes, but failed to write down who had requested it. So thank you for the request, I hope you enjoy this.
The PDF is 194 pages long. The “Making a Survivor” guidelines start on page 20. The character sheet is One page. The first step is to select an Archetype. This is the equivalent of a character class. The options are Normals (every day people), Mutant (self explanatory), Scavenger (wanderers searching the wastelands for useful stuff), Survivor (Normal humans that have been through some stuff and toughened up), Wanderer (Think nomads), Crazy (Nut jobs still alive after the apocalypse), Fixer (Mechanics basically) and Tyrants (Leaders who take over lands and people by force). I thought this last one would have been an NPC only archetype. Having read through the list and descriptions, I’m torn between Survivor and Wanderer. But I elected to go with Survivor.
Next on the list is selecting three traits. These are items that the character is really good at. The Archetype gives you a trait already (in this case, Always Prepared for the Survivor). Looking back, my tiny Spies character had four, but my Tiny Dungeons character only had three. Re-reading the blog entries, the Tiny Spies had an extra trait due to the Archetype that was selected. So I’ll just pick two more traits.
Now we select a weapon proficiency and mastery. These are weapons that you are proficient with and I selected the Heavy Ranged group. For the mastery, it is the specific weapon in the group and I selected Assault Rifle.
Next we will equip our survivor. The character creation steps say that it is assumed that we already have a weapon of our choice (the assault rifle mentioned above) and standard armor or clothing. Your character also has 10 clix (money, credits, moola, etc.) and a Survivor’s Kit containing some basic equipment. I wrote these down.
Pick an name and description and some background info. Stewart Barlow was a carpenter by trade before the bombs fell and killed his family. He is 6’0″ with black hair, a full beard and brown eyes. He’s always looking around like he’s expecting something to come out after him.
The last step is to select a Drive. This is a statement that the character lives by and may often say. Considering how nervous Stewart is he often stays “Been caught off guard once, never again.” I believe that I have everything filled in, so here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I did see some editing mistakes in my copy of the PDF. Example on page 30: “See Scavenging Items; pg. XX” So hopefully with this being a PDF on DriveThruRPG, they can update this. The book also mentioned blasters (sci-fi trope) when I assumed they meant guns. When I went to write down my Drive on my character sheet, I noticed it was listed as a Belief. I believe that these may have been hold-overs from other releases of the Tiny RPG line.
I liked how they used quotes and references to different media (not just post-apocalyptic shows) to reference different aspects of the game.
As I’ve mentioned with Tiny Dungeons and Tiny Spies, I really want to see how this rules-light system plays at the table. I’ll probably have to run a game myself to make this happen.
Additional Notes:
A reader on the RPG.net forums responded to me about the Top Secret S.I. character sheet comments that I had made. They had also agreed and had already done so. They had shared the updated design with me which knocked it down to two pages. I’ve saved them for possible future use. I love seeing how a game has inspired someone to be creative.
I also ran my first Star Trek Adventures game (prepping for an upcoming convention) and I also received a Kickstarter reward. Both will be detailed in upcoming blog posts.
Coming Up Next:
The Dark Eye
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.