If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.
I’ve been wanting to use Mazes and Minotaurs for an entry into the #CharacterCreationChallenge since it first started back in 2021. During the month of January, the month of the challenge, another game always seemed to fall in my lap that pushed out one of the games that I had planned. Every year I added it back to the list in my prep sessions and something would force me to replace it. Well this year, when the Red Dwarf RPG was handed to me, I elected not to replace Mazes and Minotaurs. The description of this game is a “what if” scenario of the first fantasy roleplaying game being influenced by Jason & the Argonauts and Homer’s Odyssey rather than The Lords of the Rings. The images are in black and white and the system seems to be very OSR inspired.
There are 51 pages in the Players Manual. The character creation process is listed on page 4. There are seven steps in total. 1- Select class, 2- Roll attributes, 3- Determine character specifics (name, gender & age), 4- Determine combat scores, 5- Determine other scores, 6- Wealth and equipment, 7- Flesh out character.
The classes that are available are broken down into three categories. Warriors, Specialists and Magicians. The warriors include Amazons (female warriors), Barbarians (savage warriors from the wild lands), Centaurs (the guys who horse around), Nobles (warriors from a ruling class) and Spearmen (elite warriors). For the Magicians we have the choice of Elementalists (earth, fire, air, water), Lyrists (bards that follow the god of music), Nymphys (female spirits of nature), Priests (servants of the gods) and Sorcerers (both illusionists and mind magic). The two classes in the specialists category are Hunters (aka Rangers) and Thieves. I haven’t made a magic user in a while, so I selected Sorcerer. The book states we start at level 1. From the class description I wrote down the basic hits (health), possessions, and other class attributes.
Next is the generating the basic attributes. for Mazes and Minotaurs the six attributes are Might (aka Strength), Skill (training the character has had), Wits (alertness and cleverness), Luck (self-explanatory), Will (resolve and self-discipline) and Grace (aka Charisma). These are generated by rolling 2d6+6 and then placing them in any order desired. Each class has two primary attributes and for the Sorcerer it is Will and Wits. So after I was done rolling I placed my two highest in those categories. Each attribute has a modifier depending upon the score. I noted these down as well. The book did state that if all of the attributes did not total 75+ or did not have at least two scores of 13+ then you could re-roll the character’s attributes until the threshold was met. You could also adjust attribute points by taking from one and giving it to another as long as you don’t exceed 18. I did this to give me a higher Luck modifier since it sounded like I may be needed.
Step three is selecting the name, gender and age. I pulled up a Random Roman Name Generator and picked one from the lists provided. Flavius Antius Tiribius. Since the class wasn’t limited by gender, I kept him as a male. As for the starting age, well page 5 said to roll 2d6+20, but the class description said that the sorcerer uses 2d6+25. Since I had seen the later first, I had already rolled an age and written it down. I’ll stick with that since it’s more specific.
Generating combat scores is step four. These are generated from the basic attributes that were generated above. These include Melee, Missile, Initiative and the character’s Defense Class and Effective Defense Class (aka the Defense class plus and armor worn by the character). This section also told me that the Hits listed in the class were adjusted by any modifiers from the Might attribute.
In step five we are generating the Savings Rolls (athletic prowess (swimming, climbing, etc.), danger evasion (dodging), mystic fortitude (save vs hostile magic) and physical vigor (save vs poison). There are also Personal Charisma scores and scores for special class abilities (that I already wrote down previously) Like the combat scores these were generated from the basic attribute modifiers.
Wealth and Equipment for step six. From the class description I already rolled the character’s starting number of silver pieces (standard coinage in this game). There are also gold pieces as well, but the silver is traded more in the realm. The class description also gave me some starting equipment, so I just filled in what else I thought the character would need. Had this been a normal campaign, I’d be asking the GM for advice (aka traveling adventure vs in-city adventure). While I did see some armor restrictions for the class I selected, I didn’t see any weapon restrictions so I gave my sorcerer a sling to help out from a distance.
The last step was fleshing out the character. Religious backgrounds (the gods were every where in the Roman culture), physical appearance, demeanor, family etc. If this was for a campaign, I’d sit and get this all sorted out, but I’m running up against a deadline so I’ll call it good. The book did say that that M&M Companion had additional items for this step including background skills. I looked at the chapter on magic and it doesn’t appear that I pick any spells, I just use my power points to cast a limited number of options. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I can see where they carried the “This was the alternate universe version of D&D” gag in the book. Talking about the updates to the modernized version, the past conversations between fans, etc. The system looks pretty simple enough and I wouldn’t mind trying it at the table just to see how it runs. But the possibility of that is very low.
Additional Notes:
While looking up the Random Roman Name Generator I realized that I had already used this site before when I made my character For Gold & Glory. So perhaps they are members of the same party?
Coming Up Next:
Iron Kingdoms
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