Here is my Day 2 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today I’ll be making a character for The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition by Stellagama Publishing. I had used one of their publications in a past challenge where I made a character for Cepheus Deluxe. I also have another game from this publisher scheduled for later in the challenge. SoC2e is based off of the Cepheus Engine (basically the engine that ran Classic Traveller, to complete a task roll 2d6 and add skills and other modifiers to beat a target number). This is another game where the authors did the right thing by explaining the game mechanic near the front of the book in a way that I can explain it to others. If I can understand it quickly, the more likely that I’m going to be able to convince some friends to try it or run it at a convention.
This is a game that I had backed on Kickstarter and recently reviewed the reward on my blog. Since I already talked about the physical descriptions in that blog post, I won’t be talking much about that here. This allows us to get right into the character creation (and probably a shorter blog post than yesterday).
The chapter for character generation starts on page 24 (after a quick breakdown of the system). The first step is to assign a set of numbers listed in the book to the six different characteristics. They are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Endurance (END), Intelligence (INT), Education (EDU) and Social Standing (SOC). Now Intelligence and Education sound about the same, but are quite different. Intelligence represents your reasoning, creativity and intellectual capabilities where as Education is your general knowledge and formal schooling. I like the fact that they tell us in advance that INT+EDU determines the max number of skills that a character can have (if I wanted to plan in advance). Now it does state that there is an optional rule to roll 2d6 six times and assign the characteristics you desire or using 42 points to spread across the characteristics, however since this is the first time I’m making a character for this system I’ll stick with the Rules As Written (RAW). Let’s stick with a basic swordslinger this time around. Harrik Stol was born in a port town and worked at the docks before signing on with his first vessel. He was captured by a band of pirates who needed to replenish their crew after several bad encounters. Harrik became a pirate to survive and discovered that he enjoyed it. (note: I just came up with this while typing early in the character creation process, it wasn’t a requirement in the process). After assigning my characteristic scores I noted the modifiers for the three characteristics that had them.
Step two deals with Background Skills. At the age of 14 Harrik will have already learned some skills already. I selected the Port Town which gave him Watercraft 1, Craft 1 and Athletics 1. I wrote these down.
In step three we grow from age 14 in a lifepath generation to the final ready to play character. This creates a background for the character with contacts, milestones and additional skills and characteristics. I think this is part of the “character creation game” that I’ve heard about in other Traveller systems. Now the rules state that the Referee will determine the number of career terms the characters will go through before starting the game. This makes sense as some Refs may want to start greener characters out and then let them earn their way up or give you some experienced characters and then throw the big guys at you. With no Ref I elected to roll a d4 to see the max number of terms, which resulted in two.
Uh… now we have a Step-by-step character generation checklist on page 29? Should this have been marked as a Career Term checklist? Just a bit confusing for a first time read through. Anywho, section A. Term 1: Select a career (searches for the careers). As listed above, I’m taking Pirate. I noted the career service skills and raised one of them to 1, the rest are 0 (which means that Harrik knows the basics about them if I understand this correctly). Now pick two skill levels from that career’s available skills table which has Service, Specialists or Advanced (which I can’t take because his EDU score isn’t high enough). Uh… are these selections level 1 or 0? The book doesn’t say. I appreciate that they tried to break this down in an outline, but it doesn’t flow very well from how I’m reading it. I seem to remember having this same issue when I was creating a character for Cepheus Deluxe. I’m going to go with 0. OK, Section A, Part 2 Sub-section ii says that a maximum of one skill level may be spent to improve any Characteristic by +1. iii says that no skill level may be higher than 2 in the first term. iii makes senses and if I understand ii I could have selected one of my skill points to go towards a characteristic. Can I use this to up my EDU or INT to get more skills? I’ve already got them written down so I’m not changing my characteristics in the first term. So I’ll run section iv which is the career events table. He was a landlubber so Harrik gains a skill (level?) or a language. I’m going to add one to streetwise. Part 3 has me add four years to the character’s age, so he’s now 18.
Section B covers the second and subsequent terms. As mentioned above I randomly rolled 2 of them. If I understood the Master Character Generation Table, in the second term I get 2 skill levels granted plus 1 for a service skill and in the third term I get just two skill levels to spend. So four skill levels to spend and one more skill added if I’m reading this correctly. OK I’m going to spend one skill level to bump up my SOC skill to 6 (and thus out of the negative modifier range). I spent the three other skill levels and I thought I already had all of the service skills at zero (that didn’t already have a level added to them). I’m confused. I’ll increase the age by 8 (4 years for each term) and roll on the career events table twice. The first event referred me to a Life Event (where is that table, oh on page 49). Life events are listed by Hinterland (the wilds), village or city. It doesn’t say which table I’m rolling on. Is a Port Town a city or a village? Odds it’s city and evens its village, 3, city it is. 10, something good happens, gain an extra benefit role (I believe this is when the character “musters out”). Second career event roll results in Wizards? You learn a little bit from a friendly Wizard. Gain Sorcery or Natural Philosophy. These are skills that I can add to the character sheet. A quick look at the skill descriptions for both I select Sorcery. Yea Pirate Harrik learned a few conjurers tricks to help him with is pirate career here and there, but not enough to declare himself a full blown wizard with the staff and pointy hat. A quick read of the beginning of the Skills chapter on page 17 makes me think this will be a level 0 skill (which means I avoid the unskilled penalty when trying to use the skill). I may have missed where these new skills start out, a 1 or a 0.
OK, if I did this correctly I look at the Master Character Generation Table, Harrik is now 26 has completed three terms (the initial and two more), has some skill levels added to the sheet has two traits (apparently something explained in step 4) five Mustering out benefit rolls (one came from the life event) and a total of 3 events. Let’s roll these benefits and see what happens, it’s a d6 on the Pirate table and I get the following: die rolls a 3 for 100 gold and +1 INT (good), roll of a 5 gives me an Ally and 400 gold (I think I’m getting the gold with the materials), third roll is a 2 gaining 50 gold and some armor, fourth roll is a 6 which results in 500 gold and a ship (probably not a big ship) and the last roll of a 1 gives me 20 gold and a weapon (a cutlass is what I’m guessing).
Alright, step 4 is found on page 55 and it covers the final steps for the character. There is Stamina (add END and Athletics skill) then Lifeblood (resistance to injury) which is END and Athletics skill x2, so 20. Now I can use the cash I earned from mustering out and buy any equipment. There is a pre-purchased equipment package, but I would have to have spent one mustering out benefit to receive it (yea, I’m not giving that up since I got some good rolls). I’ll find the costs later and make the purchase of what’s in the package. Now onto traits, I have two of them according to the master character generation table and I selected: Master Sailor (hey he’s the captain of a small pirate ship) and Signature Weapon (the cutlass he got when mustering out was given to him by his ally).
OH, there’s a character example written out on page 72. Let me take a quick look to see if I missed anything? Ah, if I’m reading this correctly, one of my cash benefits could have been sacrificed to gain the equipment package (I’ll knock one off). There is also chapters on non-human character generation, but I’m already done. I’ll transfer everything to the character sheet from my notes. I’m not certain what my rank is, not certain if I want to look it up now. There is a section for Hero Points which is an optional rule, but you start out with 2. Yea, I’m done. Let’s scan this character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
There are a lot of optional rules presented in this game. Be prepared to ask your Referee which rules they want to run. Some sounded interesting, others sounded complicated.
The system seems pretty sound, but the way the character creation is described could use a little bit more work to make it understandable for those who’ve never played a Traveller type game before. Part of the issue with smaller publishers is that there isn’t a lot of experienced players to immediately ask questions to. I’m sure I would have leaned a lot on my Ref during this process.
The character sheet has some of the skills out of alphabetical order. Sorcery is listed before Sneak, Athletics is listed before Archery. Healing is listed after Liaison.
I was getting a lot of AD&D 1st edition vibes with this book. Lots of good stuff present, interesting system, but things are lacking some explanations or just found in random order. If this was going to be my go-to fantasy RPG, I’m sure I’d get use to it pretty quickly, but I’d have to explain a lot to new players. I’m still happy that I made the purchase and that I backed the Kickstarter, but I’d have to make some cheat sheets if I was going to run this at a convention or on a campaign. I’d still like to try a game or two just to see how the system handles at the table.
Additional Notes:
I’m still playing catch up after getting delayed on the first day. But I’ve been able to get some new blogs added to the Character Creation Challenge FAQ page. I’ve also been getting some feedback from participants on social media and the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. A few participants have been posting their characters there. Thank you.
Coming Up Next:
Traveller (Mongoose Publishing)
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.