Month: January 2025

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Doctor Who, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 5: Doctors and Daleks

Written by TardisCaptain

The Day 5 entry for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge is a little unusual. The game is Doctors and Daleks (D&D, get it?) by Cubicle 7. This is a Doctor Who RPG using “The worlds most popular roleplaying game system” (aka 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons) as it is put in the description on DriveThruRPG. I had picked up both D&D and Doctor Who RPG 2nd edition in a bundle sale, but I decided to limit the number of Doctor Who RPGs in the challenge to one this year.

Now I’ve created several other Doctor Who characters in past challenge entries. In the first challenge (five years ago), I created a character for the FASA Doctor Who RPG (that I still had my books for luckily) where I made a TimeLord called “The Baron”. Then later that month, I created a companion for him, a small-town police officer who was recruited by UNIT named Tim Bronson using the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (1st edition) by Cubicle 7. As I quickly scroll through the descriptions of the different races, I wonder if I could make an alien companion for The Barron? Let’s see. I know there’s already a Sontaran that isn’t trying to gloriously advance the cause of the Sontaran Empire, but I’m drawn to this idea of The Baron having saved a Sontaran Warrior who had been taken over (psychically or something) and when he was freed, he discovered he had more free will than before. He was still efficient, but when around other Sontarans, he has to act more guff that normal.

But enough chit-chat, the chapter for character creation starts on page 20. A (sort of) character creation list has the following steps. Decide with your group what type of game they are going to play (A time lord is having an adventure with his own companions, not the Doctor or other canon characters as PCs). Decide on the core concept for your character (mostly done, see above), choose your species (Sontaran), choose your class (OK this will need more than a quick rundown), choose a background (what you were doing before you started your adventures), decide on the Time Machine your group has (The Barron has a TARDIS of his own) and some Finishing Touches.

There is a side-bar with some changes from 5th Edition D&D, everyone can understand the languages of others due to the TARDIS Translation Circuit. There are no alignments (so my car might drive off the side of the road) since the Doctor (or in this case The Barron) only travels with good morals. And Hit Points and Hit Die are replaced with Plot Points and Plot Die. Part of this reason is not all combat is physical. And finally there are different Tech Levels ranging from 1 (Primitive-Stone Age) to 12 (Beyond Comprehension) with our earth at TL5 (Space Faring) and the Time Lords at TL 10.

So when I finally got to the ability scores, it stated that I could generate them in any way that I desired, or I could choose from a set of scores already provided. Nah, I want to roll the dice today and I’m going to go with 4d6 drop the lowest die. I quickly look over the classes to see what their attribute minimums are. The classes are Charmer (fast talker), Empath (wise sage), Protector (guards their friends), Stalwart (dependable jack-of-all-trades), Thinker (brainbox), and the Trickster (uses cunning and guile). Yea, it’s going to be Protector so I made sure the ability scores reflected that.

After writing down a bunch of notes, I decided to start transferring what I already had (and locked down) over to the character sheet. While doing this, I realized I’ve never really played 5th edition much. When I have played it, it’s been at conventions where the characters are pre-generated by the DM.

I’ve moved to the Finishing Touches section as I’m trying to wrap this up. I had already picked a name of Vrogg (it sounded alien enough). But now the game asks 10 questions for your background. Where (and When) are you originally from? Vrogg was cloned on the glorious homeworld of Sontar. What is your family like? Family? A Sontaran warrior doesn’t have a family, but he does remember the others in his clone batch. Most of them have already given their lives for the Sontaran Empire. What was your childhood like? Vrogg was cloned at birth to full maturity. If he did have a childhood, it would have been glorious. What have you done in your past? He’s had the pleasure of serving in the Sontaran Battle Fleet for three years, serving in many countless battles. At least until that last one where he was separated from the fleet and rescued by The Barron. Owing him a life debt, he is serving with the Barron, until released. Who are your best friends? Friendship had no business in the Sontaran Battle Fleet. While he gets along with the other companions of The Barron, he has come to realize that they are people he has… met. What do you wish you could change? Vrogg would have wanted the outcome of his last battle before he was left behind to be different. Would this have resulted in his death, perhaps, but it would have been glorious. What are your best or worst memories? The sounds of the defeated Rutians crunching under his boot. What is your biggest secret? Vrogg doesn’t know if he will feel shame when he he comes back into contact with the Sontaran Battle Fleet. Until that time, he is attempting to serve out his life debt and will, as the Humans put it, “cross that bridge when he comes to it.” What is your biggest fear? Sontarans do not have fear. But he won’t walk on the recently mopped kitchen floor in The Barron’s TARDIS. Why are you traveling with The Doctor The Barron? The Barron rescued Vrogg when he was left behind, thus he owes a life debt to The Barron. There wasn’t really a lot when it came to equipment. Sure there is an equipment chapter, but not much detailing what a Sontaran warrior would have, so I wrote down some battle armor and decided to scan the first page of the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

The book didn’t really go into the character creation system or a few other basics which was annoying. There were several times that the reader was referred to the SRD and I spent my time going back and forth between publications. I’m wondering if the writers thought that everyone would know 5th Edition D&D. While there were several pages describing some of the differences between Doctors and Daleks and D&D, there really wasn’t a step-by-step guide. I wonder if a Doctor Who fan picked up this book and then was a little confused? Remember, system first when writing your RPG manuals.

Both Doctors and Daleks and the regular Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7 assumes that someone will be playing the Doctor. Has this really been the case? When I played with friends using the FASA system back in the 80s-90s, we always had original characters. The Doctor was usually a guest character at the most while we ran around having our own adventures. I’m wondering if this is really the case with other Doctor Who RPG sessions? I checked with one of my 80’s buddies and she confirmed that they just made up their own.

So, would I play this as a Whovian? Possibly. I’m not in a lot of games right now, but I’d consider it if offered or saw it available at a convention. I was really impressed with the 1st edition Doctor Who RPG by Cubicle 7 and I can’t wait to look into the 2nd edition. I may want to play one of those before I play Doctors and Daleks. There’s already a big resource of homebrewed material for the 1st edition DWRPG, which gives that a slight edge.

Additional Notes:

I did get some additional feedback on my Traveller character I made the other day. Apparently I had done some things wrong as the math wasn’t mathing. I may have to go back and try to make a Traveller character again when I’m not under the pressure to catch up on the challenge. I wonder if I’m putting myself at a disadvantage of not giving some games the time to really get into the system itself. But another part of me asks “Can this game be picked up and played on short notice?” Some are definitely yes, some are definitely no and others are in-between.

Please let me know if I’m missing your blog from the Character Creation Challenge listing. I’ve been trying to add them as I find them.

Coming Up Next:

Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium)

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 4: Castles and Crusades Reforged

Written by TardisCaptain

Still playing catch up, but here is the Day 4 entry into the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and we are going to use another recent Kickstarter reward. This would be the 10th printing of the Castles and Crusades that was called Reforged in the Kickstarter campaign. Long story short, this is the C&C game with the OGL material pulled out of it. A trend that was seen in other RPG books like Basic Fantasy 4th Edition. And while I have created a Castles and Crusades character in a past challenge, I thought I’d use it again because I wanted to show off the book once more and test to see if the character creation process was still the same. With each printing, Troll Lord Games keeps the rules the same, but presents them differently and polishes them up for clarification and ease. So let’s see if there is, or is not any differences from the earlier challenge entry.

For those of you who don’t know, C&C is a D20 clone that uses the same attributes found in the oldest fantasy RPG, but uses a skill system called the Siege Engine. Instead of going into the differences, let me point you towards a very excellent video by Magehammer that explains it using index cards. This skill system has made me really want to try C&C in a campaign setting to see how well it works. I’ve played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, and I know that skill system. But the Siege Engine seems to give players the option of “What do I want to do?” instead of “What does my character sheet say I can do?”

So the last time I made a C&C character, I rolled up a Knight, but didn’t make him a Halfling because I misinterpreted the rules (as per some feedback I received from it). As I was flipping through the book I decided that I’m going to make a Monk since I don’t think I’ve made one yet. And to make up for my previous mistake, I’m going to make him a Halfling Monk that wanders the countryside trying to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Yes, that isn’t listed as one of the “typical classes” for this race (as per page 95) but the mistake I made last time is that “typical” doesn’t mean “only”. And since I’m short on time, the Halfling Fantasy Name Generator inspired this character’s name to be Barakas Nimblebarrel. One of the primary attributes was selected by the class (the Monk uses CON and I selected STR as the second primary attribute)

The character creation process starts on page 12 (again, thank you for putting the system first in an RPG book) and while there really isn’t a checklist, it breaks down the process in two pages. Imagine the character (done see above). Roll attributes (the book states, roll 3d6 and assign as desired), done including the racial modifiers. Roll Hit Points (OK, I’m going to snag Optional Rule #1 since it’s listed right here and take the max HP at first level since that is how I like it) and the last step is Fleshing out the Character. This includes the starting money and buying equipment. When I compare these steps to the 7th printing, the appear to be the same. When I look at the class and race descriptions in the 7th printing I can see how the layout has been altered, but the information appears to be the same. However I did notice that the 10th printing has details for higher levels beyond 12th.

OK, I think I’ve got everything, the stats, the race and class information, the equipment. I’m sure that there is probably a thing or two that I might be missing from making Barakas table ready, but I need to wrap this up for the day. Here are the two character sheets.

Afterthoughts:

I wish the publisher did have a checklist for character creation. But I’m sure that if I was going to run this as a campaign (tempting) I’d probably put one together. I’ve offered to run a C&C game when one of my kids asked about a game, but I haven’t heard back if her friends could make it (the dreaded schedule curse).

I like how Dusk Vision (spelled Duskvision in the 7th printing) is laid out as compared to Darkvision in other OSR games. Dusk Vision will work outdoors, but not underground. Dwarves have Deep Vision, Elves have Twilight Vision (I wonder if it will let them see sparkly vampires?).

In this new version of C&C, Alignment has been changed to Disposition. I’m sure that if I read further into the rules (when I have time) I’d probably see more changes, but I suspect that they won’t disrupt your table.

Additional Notes:

While I’m still playing catch up, I’ve been on the look out for the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on BlueSky and Mastodon. I’m seeing quite a few entries. I’ve been re-posting them as I come across them and I’ve started following a few accounts. Thank you for using the hashtag, it’s made it easier to follow the other participants.

Coming Up Next:

Doctors and Daleks

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 3: Traveller 2nd Edition (Mongoose Publishing)

Written by TardisCaptain

For my Day 3 entry into the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I am using the latest version of a classic science fiction roleplaying game, Traveller. This is the edition that was recently released by Mongoose Publishing (at least the copyright on my Starter Set is 2017). If you wanted a good comparison, this version of Traveller is like Wizards of the Coast releasing Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Yes there are older versions, such as the Classic Traveller, different editions like Traveller20 and retro clones, such as Cepheus Deluxe. All of which I’ve had the pleasure of using in past character creation challenges. But this version is the currently supported by Mongoose. To my knowledge, there is no special add-on to the name, like Traveller The New Era, or MegaTraveller, just Traveller.

I had picked up a Humble Bundle sale which contained the Traveller Starter Set, a book called the High Guard, a Central Supply Catalogue, a Companion, a Referee’s Screen and a few other items. As it turns out, the Starter Set is different than the Core Rulebook 2022 Update that Mongoose has released, but it should fill my needs for character creation.

So the Starter Set has three books, 1- Characters & Combat (image seen above), 2- Spacecraft & Worlds and 3- The Fall of Tinath (a starting adventure). There are also several character cards and sector maps provided. I’m not finding an ISBN, but that may have been on the actual box itself (which I don’t have). The only book that I’ll be looking at for this entry is the Characters & Combat. The Traveller Creation is detailed in the first chapter on page 7. It also talks about creating your character at the same time as your fellow players for group balance and cohesion. The character sheet is two pages long. Oh, there’s a character creation flow chart on page 10, I’ll run with that. I’m also thinking I need to decide what type of character I’m going to make before getting to deep into the process. I don’t think I’ve made a scientist character yet in any of my Traveller/clone entries. His name is Denton Wilkinson and he’s a member of the science team for some explorers. Let’s go with that.

As discussed in other systems based off of Classic Traveller, a character has six Characteristics. The physical characteristics of Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX) and Endurance (END) and the mental characteristics of Intellect (INT), Education (EDU) and Social Standing (SOC). These are randomly rolled with two six-siders (2D is how they list it in the book) and adding the results together. I get to assign the roll results to the characteristics. I’ve written these down on my notes.

OK, now the flowchart takes me to Background Skills, choose EDU DM+3 for the total number of background stills that you get before starting your career. But I’m confused, the example text says it would be 0 to 6 depending upon the EDU score. But the description for a Dice Modifier (DM) on page 5 says the number after the DM is added or subtracted to the roll. A DM of plus three added to the Characteristic Score of 12 would be 15 if I’m reading this correctly. Not finding anything else that would clarify this for me, I took a picture of the Background Skills description and sent it to a Facebook page for Traveller fans. This was the closest I got to asking a Referee. The group members explained that I was reading it wrong, the EDU DM is a +2 because of the score of 12. Add that to the +3 for the background skills and he starts with five total. OK, that makes sense now. Which I had this access with some of my other games. On with the show, five starting Background Skills with the level 0. I wrote them down on my notes.

Pre-education check is the next step. Denton is smart so he should be able to get into University. I also get a DM bonus for having a SOC of 9. I rolled an 8 which beats the target score of 7, so he’s in. I choose some additional skills (written down on my notes) and I get to increase my EDU by 1. Now did I graduate? Another roll results in an 8 that beats the target number (but I did not roll high enough to graduate with honors). I wrote down the benefits and skills that were earned. Rolling on the event during the pre-career education resulted in a Life Event roll (finds another chart) and that came up with Birth of Death (not Cake or Death? Oh, OK.) Denton’s father passed away while he was in college. As someone who had inspired him, he elected to go into field research like is father instead of going for some cushy corporate research position.

Now the flow chart says I start a new term. Specifically the first term that the character has in his career and it needs to be picked. Denton meets the minimum requirements for a Scholar-Field Researcher, so I don’t need to roll anything there, but he still needs to go through Basic Training. I write down these skills at level 0. Then the flow chart says I roll for survival (made it) and then roll for event, I rolled a 6 which gives me an advanced training if I rolled above a certain EDU rating, which I did. Woot, one skill goes up by 1 point. Next I roll to see if I advance and he did not. So I guess I’m still a Scholar level 1 (shrugs). OK, I add four more years to the character’s life and come back for the second term. Since this is not the first, there is no basic training, but I’m sticking with the career Denton has now. I’m going to pick from the Personal Development table and roll 1D, his Dex goes up by one. As with the initial career, I roll for survival (passed) and advancement (still no, hmmm… I guess he didn’t include the cover to his TPS reports). Now we loop around with four more years added and try again, this time I’m going for one of the Field Researcher skills, which earned me a Survival 0. Survival roll passed and advancement roll finally passed so he must have sucked up to the right boss. Onto the last term and we are picking from Advanced Education (earned Art 0) and Denton survived and advanced. He’s mustering out and if I’m reading this correctly gets two benefit rolls. They are some money, INT+1 and more money and a lab ship with 25% of the mortgage paid off on it. But now I have to roll on the outdated ships table in Book 2 (scrambles to pull that up). Wow, it’s 30-40 years old and has a ton of problems with it. I guess it’s held by duct tape and wires.

The last step on this flow chart is picking Skills Packages (which should be done with other players). I picked the Explorer Skills package and wrote down the skills. But now the flow chart is done and other than getting a ship, I have no equipment. (goes searching through book) I was really hoping that there would have been an Explorer’s pack or some sort of pre-generated go-to list of equipment to get done quickly, so I wrote a few things down that I thought my Field Researcher had and called it a day as it’s really late. Ugh, moving everything over from my notes to the character sheet and I see that the other characteristics haven’t been filled in yet (I don’t remember seeing them on any flow charts or lists). I’m ready for bed so I won’t bug the Facebook people tonight. I had downloaded the character sheet so they might be extras. Especially when Morale didn’t pull up on a quick search of the Character’s book PDF. I’m tired and done. Here is the character sheet, I only scanned one page since didn’t get any information for the second.

Afterthoughts:

I liked how they had two pages to explain everything that was on the character sheet (and what page it could be found on). But I had a different character sheet so it was slightly different.

I can see where there has been some improvement from the Classic Traveller and OSR clones (while there were still a few sections where I needed to ask questions). I could see myself playing this if the opportunity arises. I don’t know if I could home brew for it until after I’ve had a chance to play, and I don’t know how likely that is. But who knows. I think this would be my flavor of Traveller if I were to play a game.

Additional Notes:

More real life events have caused delays and it’s been bugging me. Nothing serious like a health wise or computer issue, but so far 2025 has decided to be a drag. I’m still playing catch up and I’m feeling like I’ve been letting others down as the person who came up with this challenge. So these additional notes may not be very big until I’m all caught up. I’ve already moved a few games around to see if I can get a few easy builds done.

Coming Up Next:

Castles and Crusades Reforged

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 2: The Sword of Cepheus 2nd Edition

Written by TardisCaptain

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Trek

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 1: Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition

Written by TardisCaptain

So 2025 started off with a loud clunk. I had a bunch of items prepped for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and when I went to type it up (I usually type these up directly to the blog itself as part of my process) and the hosting company for my blog had a technical issue on January 1st and I was unable to get into the site to edit it. I reached out to my provider and messages were sent up the chain, but with it being a holiday I knew it was going to take a while. I was hoping it would be a quick fix otherwise I’d probably have to type these up on a doc file and wait until I had full access again. I don’t know if you guys could see this site, but for me it wasn’t coming up at all. So my apologies if you couldn’t see anything on the 1st day of the year. On Thursday, January 2nd about mid-day everything was restored and I could start editing (and writing) again. And now without further ado, on with the show.

I always start the Character Creation Challenge with the game that I was most excited about in the previous year. Either I wanted to own it, play it, run it or write for it, and this case it was all four. If you know me you shouldn’t be surprised that this year I am starting off with Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition by Modiphius. I already talked about the physical characteristics of the book in the Review of Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition blog post that was published last year, so I’ll skip that portion here. The previous books in this line that I’ve used in past Character Creation Challenges include the Star Trek Adventures 1st edition core rulebook and the Klingon Empire core rulebook.

Each character in Star Trek Adventures 2nd edition has six Attributes that represent your mind and body: Control (think Dexterity and coordination and the ability to do exactly what you want to do), Daring (think Willpower, courage or sanity to do things when you don’t want to), Fitness (think Strength and Constitution for physical power and health), Insight (think Wisdom and empathy, the ability to work out the why questions), Presence (think Charisma and the ability to be stunning, good for leadership) and Reason (think Intelligence, use of logic, perception and fact remembering, the ability to work out the how questions). Each new character starts out with a rating of 7 in each attribute. All characters also have six Departments (previously called Disciplines in first edition) that represent the training your character has: Command (the skill at persuading others by different methods), Conn (the skill of operating and navigating surface or space vehicles such as rafts, automobiles, environmental suits or large starships), Engineering (the skill of of making, maintaining, fixing or reverse-engineering technology), Security (the skill of using, avoiding or understanding different forms of violence or hazards), Medicine (the skill of treating or understanding different life-forms) and Science (the skill of studying and understanding the universe rationally). Each new character starts with a rating of 1 (basic training) in each Department. (if you are homebrewing for Star Trek Adventures, there is an excellent chart on page 90 defining what each Department rating level represents in the real world, thank you for this)

Now, a MAJOR improvement from the first edition of STA is the use of flowcharts in the core rulebook for certain elements of the game. This makes things a lot easier to run and set things up at your table. The flowchart for the Lifepath Summary (aka character creation process) that I will be using can be found on page 98. Not only does it have everything listed step-by-step, it also gives you the page numbers for additional details. Very smart.

So step one is to select a species. Another change between the first and second edition is the inclusion of non-Starfleet/Federation species if the GM and Players wanted to run a Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Orion, Ferengi or Merchant/Civilian campaign. The species present in the core rulebook include the Andorians, the Aenar, the Bajorans, the Betazoids, the Cardassians, the Denobulans, the Ferengi, the Humans, the Klingons, the Orions, the Romulans, the Tellarites, the Trill and the Vulcans. There are also guidelines for characters of mixed species (like Spock or B’Elanna Torres) and augmented or cybernetically enhanced characters. By comparison, there were only eight species in the first edition book. The selection of your species adds +1 to three attributes (depending upon the species) a unique species ability (a new addition to the 2nd edition) and a species trait (something that all members of this species has). Now when I was printing out the character sheet for this challenge, I could have printed one for any of the major campaigns listed above. Since I didn’t know which character I would be making, I elected to print out a Federation/Starfleet character sheet since they had the most options. I made a Vulcan in the first edition entry to the challenge and a Klingon for the Klingon core rulebook entry, so let’s create a Trill character. I don’t think I’ve done one of those yet. So I add +1 to my Control, Presence and Reason as per the description. I also write down the details for the species ability of Patient. In the first edition, you had to use one of your ability slots to take a species ability, now it’s an automatic add-on in the second edition. While it isn’t part of this step, I selected the name of Keman Les from the list of possible names since I had the page right in front of me.

OK, step two is to select the Environment that Keman was born or raised at. There is a d20 chart here with different options, and since I want some randomness, I rolled a 13, Isolated Colony. This gives me the first opportunity to select a Value (which is a statement that describes the attitude, belief or conviction of the character, it is usually represented by a small quote (oh, I like that) and there is some in-game benefit when it’s used or challenged. In an isolated colony I think that everyone would be supportive of everyone else so I selected “We are all in this together now.” (originally spoken by Picard in the TNG episode “Loud as a Whisper“). I can bump up Reason or Insight by one point, and I selected Insight since it hasn’t been bumped up yet. Now I also get my first Departmental increase, 1 point for Engineering, Science or Medicine. I selected Engineering.

On to step three and I get to select the upbringing that Keman was raised in. This is his education and influence during his formative years. Another d20 roll on another chart gives me Science and Technology. Perhaps the reason the colony was isolated is due to the fact that his parents were researchers working remotely. I can accept or reject (rebelled) against this upbringing which both provides different character enhancements. I elected to go with acceptance. So Keman gets +2 to Control and +1 to Reason. Other additions include +1 to another Department (I selected Science on this one) a Focus (think a specialty to compliment the Department listed above) in which I selected Power Systems (If I am attempting a task dealing with Power Systems, I get a bonus to my rolls) and I gain a single Talent. A Talent is an additional benefit the character possesses which also gives some bonuses to task rolls. They come in General categories or categories defined by species, culture, enhancements (such as cybernetic) or department (command, engineering, etc.) I already have my species talent, so I’m going to pull from the General category at this time. Again thinking Isolated Colony I selected Extra Effort (and I wrote down the benefits on the sheet).

Alright, step four the career path. What is Keman doing in Starfleet (which I’ve decided he joined to expand his engineering expertise he learned at the isolated colony of Vaxian III. In the first edition or Klingon books, the career path was limited to Starfleet or the Klingon Defense Force. Here the random paths could include diplomatic or civilian options. But as mentioned above, I’m selecting Starfleet Officer in the operations (engineering) track. I write down the trait of Starfleet Officer, find an engineering quote for a value (“The right tool for the right job.” said by Scotty in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier), additions to his Attributes and Departments, three new Focuses (Transports & Replicators, Warp Field Dynamics and Computers) and a Talent (Maintenance Specialist).

Next is step five where we cover the Experience of the character. Of the three options there is Novice (young and usually just out of the Academy), Experienced (been in the service for a while) and Veteran (been doing this for a long time, wised and experienced). Kemen is Experienced and gets to choose a freely selected Value an Talent. For the Talent I selected Bold (Engineering) and from my master list of Star Trek quotes I picked “All you have to do is relax and use your imagination” said by Jadzia Dax in “The Way of the Warrior“.

There are two Career Events in step six which are randomly rolled. The first event was Mentored and the second was First Contact. With Mentored a highly-respected officer (I’ll name him/her later) took notice of the character’s career and Keman served as this person’s aide and learned from the benefit of the officer’s vast experience. He gets +1 to any attribute (I selected Fitness) and +1 to Conn (that’s good as it was a weak one) and a Focus (I selected Etiquette from the list). I like this because I probably wouldn’t have selected these on my own. For First Contact, Keman was involved with a first contact mission with another culture. This gains the character +1 to Presence +1 to any Department (I selected Medicine as it was his lowest) and a Focus (selecting Infiltration from the list, why, because they had to sneak in and study before revealing themselves to the local population).

And our last step is Finishing Touches. I get to pick one final Value (Quote selected is “Focus on the goal, not the task” said by Tanis in the episode “Cold Fire“). Increase two Attributes by 1 as long as I do not exceed the maximum rating of 12 (I selected Daring and Fitness). As for Departments, I hadn’t exceeded the maximum of 5 so I was instructed to add +1 to two departments (again not exceeding the maximum) so I selected Engineering and Command. I’m instructed to make sure I have a minimum of six Focuses from the previous steps (I do) and three Talents (also good). So I’m now instructed to select one more Talent. It doesn’t say if it has to be selected from a specific category so after looking over the list I selected Former Initiate (a Trill talent). There is a final check for the Attributes (added together they should add up to 56, which I had) and Departments (should all add together to 16, which I confirmed), the correct number of species ability, four values and six focuses (all checked). Now we choose the character’s name (see above) age (randomly selected 32 from the guidelines) and a rough description of the character’s personality and appearance (I’ll nail this down later when I find an image to use). Now one of the new features of the 2nd edition game comes into play, each character gets a Pastime. This is a hobby or interest of the character that makes them unique, but may or may not really come into play. This could be a game/sport, something creative or a subject the character is really interested in. Keman is interested in writing Holo-Comics after seeing some while on leave. As for selecting a Role with the team I would have obviously worked with the GM and other players, but I’m running with the assumption that Keman is the Chief Engineer (which comes with some benefits) on a smaller starship (USS Nova Scotia, NCC-72719, Nova Class) and I’m going to pluck the rank of Lieutenant Commander out of the air. I also wrote down the equipment listed on page 141. The flowchart on page 98 instructs me to record the derived ratings of Stress and bonus damage in this step, but none of that is present in the “more information” chapter in pages 132-141. A quick search in the book found on page 277 where it states that Stress is equal to the Fitness attribute and may be adjusted by other Talents. This blog article is already too long, otherwise I’d go into more detail on how Stress works in this game, but it’s basically your health. Looking at the other blank spots on this character sheet I see there is nothing for Resistance (something that would have been provided by a Talent or Equipment) and Determination (page 261) which describes this as something like luck or fate points and work alongside your Values or a Mission Directive. Each character starts with one determination at the start of a mission and may gain up to a maximum of three through roleplaying opportunities. With attacks, I copied the information from one of the characters in the Quickstart Guide as I was running short on time. Here is the character sheet that I scanned.

Afterthoughts:

There were only a couple of items that I had to look outside of the flowchart and the character creation chapters. An experienced GM could easily guide a new player through these hiccups very easily and speed up the character creation process. Otherwise it was a pretty easy experience (especially compared to the 1st edition) Yes there is a very good fan-made online character generator for Star Trek Adventures, and I’ve used it to quickly make characters for convention one-shots, but actually siting down and following the process helps me learn the game. Something that I think that others should do as well if you want to learn more about this system.

I apologize for the length of this blog entry. As I realized how big it was getting, I realized that I was just excited about this game. Not only does it work for a Star Trek setting with the exploration and cooperation working more than the combat, but it could be used for other popular franchises as well such as Babylon 5 or The Orville. As I’ve stated above, I will be homebrewing for this system. There is a vast library of Star Trek novels, comics and games that could be mined for Star Trek Adventures material. I’ve already done this once with the entry for the Tarn (which adjusting to 2nd edition will probably be done in another blog post).

Additional Notes:

Thank you for your patience in getting this blog entry out. While I will mark it down for January 1st, it still frustrated me that it got delayed until the 2nd. I still need to catch up on my other entries.

As you can see from the title photo above, I’ve changed the format slightly to include the challenge year and my blog URL. In the past I’ve had at least one (that I know of) image from a past Character Creation Challenge get pilfered and used in someone’s YouTube video (which they make money on) without asking for permission first.

I’ve also been adding to the list of participating sites on the Character Creation Challenge FAQ page. I’m still adding them as I find more on message boards and social media. If I’m missing yours, please let me know. Following the #CharacterCreationChallenge hashtag on BlueSky has helped me find new accounts to follow.

Coming Up Next:

Sword of Cepheus

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.

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