I’ve been looking forward to the Day 9 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. I’ll be using a game that I received as a Secret Satan gift just last month. The Fantasy Age 2nd Edition core rulebook. Oh this thing looks beautiful. And the publisher is doing the smart thing by posting the basic game mechanic at the front of the book (see photo below). When it is explained to me very quickly, I can explain it to my friends for a possible game.
Now I’ve created a character for the 1st edition of Fantasy Age in a past challenge. There I made a Gnome Mage. For the 2nd edition, I think I’m going to make a fighter or a rogue based character. There is a new class called the Envoy, which is like a charismatic face-man/leader/jack-of-all trades, but I didn’t want to dive into that class today. If you are curious about the changes that were made in the 2nd edition of this game, the publisher had a good list on page 5 (again, keeping things towards the front for casual readers to flip through the book at the store and possibly buy).
So, the character creation steps are listed on page 10 with the pages following containing additional information for the player to use. The character sheet is two pages long and isn’t too cluttered graphic wise.
Step one is to create a character concept. How about an Orc Pirate? While I’ve made an Ork in a past challenge, that was for a comedy game. This is serious game with serious pirates. He had been rescued by the pirates after the character had been captured and was being hauled off for a crime he hadn’t committed. (note: the concept phase would have been discussed with the GM and other players to see what matched the party, but I’m going with a pirate theme today)
Next we get to determine the ability scores. These are the same abilities that were present in the 1st edition of Fantasy Age. They are Accuracy (your ability to handle ranged weapons), Communication (i.e social skills), Constitution, Dexterity (quickness and hand-eye coordination), Fighting (using melee weapons), Intelligence, Perception, Strength and Willpower. A preferred method and an alternate method to generate the scores were listed. The alternate method of rolling dice was the primary method in the 1st edition. The preferred method for 2nd is all abilities are at 0 and you have 13 points (called advancements) that you can spend up to a max of 3. The ancestries and backgrounds may alter these initial scores. I like having a balanced character so I made sure that every ability had at least 1, then I spent the remaining 4 points on the abilities I wanted my pirate to have.
Choosing an ancestry was next. While I’ve already selected Orc, I could have picked one of the other races. The book had the standard races found in most fantasy RPGs (Human, Hafling, Elf and Dwarf) but there were others as well. The above mentioned Orc, the Wildfolk (think beastmen with a head of an animal), Gnome, Goblin or Draak (dragon man). There are some sample names (I picked Harsk Redaxe) and I got to pick my first focus. This is a specialty that the character has. There are also two racial abilities that can be chosen from the list or roll 2d6 to get them randomly. I’m feeling adventurous so let’s roll. Fighting+1 and a new focus of Accuracy (Brawling).
Next, we have the character’s background. This includes a social class and what their career was in that class. I could randomly roll like I did for the 1st edition character, but I know that I want Harsk to be a pirate, so I’d probably ask the GM if I could just pick the Outsider social class and the Pirate background. I wrote down what that provided on my notes.
Now I’m looking up the Rogue information since it’s time to pick the class. This provides me with starting health, weapons groups, class powers, a talent and a specialization. I picked the ones that a pirate would have.
It’s the step where we pick equipment. Luckily it has the basics already listed, if you are a Rogue, you get light leather armor and two weapons. The standard equipment you already get is a backpack, waterskin and travelers garb. You also roll your starting money (silver pieces) based off of your social class.
The last couple of steps are basic ones. What is your defense and speed (calculated), name (see above) and goals and ties (we want the booty). I then transferred my notes over to the character sheet and scanned it for all of you lovely readers.
Afterthoughts:
I think I like the racial benefits being random. This way two members of the same race are not a cookie-cutter of each other.
It wasn’t explained in the character creation, but you get something called stunt points. When you roll doubles on your 3d6 you get to use a stunt. I’m at the end of the day so I don’t have time to read up on it now, but it sounded interesting to look into. And I do see a big blank spot on the character sheet where I could lists the favored stunts. I think it adds some narration options for the players to use in the game. Again, I’d like to see it in action.
This is another system that I really want to try in a campaign or possible convention one-shot. I’d probably know more then if I wanted to homebrew for a system like this. But with the way this book is laid out, I was able to get a character done pretty quickly. Which was a nice change after some (shudder) lengthy processes.
Additional Notes:
There have been a TON of characters posted by fellow participants on the TardisCaptain discord server. Lots of detail (one participant has even been uploading videos of his characters). I’d recommend checking them out under the #CharacterCreationChallenge channel.
Coming Up Next:
See You Space Cowboy
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