For Day 2 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to create a character for a game that I didn’t even know existed until last SaltCON. It is called Rivers of London by Chaosium and was based off of a series of novels called, you guessed it, Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch. I had received it as a thank you gift for putting in so many volunteer hours as a GM at the con. From what I can read on the back of the RPG book, there is a branch of the London police department that investigates those who have been changed by magic. It appears to be a percentile based system that may be common with other Chaosium products. I’m not very familiar with this line as I’ve barely dipped my toe in that water with past Character Creation Challenge entries.
There was a solo game at the start of the book. However I jumped straight ahead to the character creation section on page 43. The book does say that the chapter was written for new players who may be unfamiliar with the source material. Thankfully it also directed me to page 76 where a summary of character creation can be found. The scenario I’m running for the purposes of this blog post is: I’ve just been handed the book to create a character for a game that starts in an hour. I’m more interested in gaming with my friends than I am in the world itself so I’m going into it blind. Perhaps a GM friend really likes the source material and wanted to try the game out.
According to the summary there six steps in total to create a character. 1- Determine Occupation, 2- Assign Characteristics, 3- Advantages, 4- Determine skills, 5- Backstory and 6- Equip the character.
On page 45 is a list of Occupations that are used in the game. This is the job that the character makes their living at. Some are used in the source materials, some are added for rounding out the game. I went to the referenced page for the more detailed information on occupations on page 62 and read through some of them before deciding upon Police Officer (I guess I’m going with the path of least resistance here). It gave me a required skill, recommended skills, a contact and equipment.
For step two the summary tells me that I have 280 points to distribute between five attributes with the score ranging between 30 to 80. The summary states that I should have these in blocks of 10 and that the average person has a stat of 50. The attributes are STRength, CONstitution, DEXterity, INTelligence and POWer. I noticed that INT had replaced Appearance that I had used in the Basic Roleplaying character I had made last year. I’m not a big fan on assigning points so I gave each attribute 30 to get the minimum, then bumped up all but POW to the average person (I’m not seeing this guy as a big magic user type character). Then I slowly started spending the rest of my points until I ended up with a strong character that had some good health and dexterity with average intelligence. I guess this guy is a rookie cop. When writing down the attributes, I also had to write their half value on the sheet. And hey, I actually get to roll something. 2d10+50 to determine the luck of the character. Next item to determine is MOVement which is just 8. The last item in this step is the character’s age, which is just determined by the player. A quick internet search shows that public school in the UK ends at 18 and that the average police training is 2-3 years. So, I’m going to say the character is 21 years-old.
Finally onto step three. Advantages. This is something exceptional about the character in the game world. I can select one major advantage or two minor advantages. Some have prerequisites so I looked over the list in the book. There were less than I expected, but it made it easier to pick two that a rookie cop might have. Fast Reactions and Speedy (which bumped up the character’s MOV score).
Next is selecting skills. He had to have Law to meet the requirement for his occupation. The book instructs me to pick six skills in total. There are several common and combat skills that everyone gets. If I pick one of these as one of my six, they get bumped up in value.
Step five is the backstory of the character. There are actually a series of questions for the player to answer at this time with 3-4 possible answers each. So for this yet to be named character, let’s go through them. For childhood: What did “family” mean? Large family with lots of siblings and extended relatives. What did “home” mean? Uncertainty, lots of time we had to move because of the parents looking for work. Where did the character live as a child? It’s complicated. As mentioned above, they had to move around. What culture did the character get brought up in? Proud British, even if they had struggles. For present times: Mom is still alive and the character keeps in touch with most of the family. Returning home brings back memories of Dad’s passing, so it doesn’t happen much. Moving to London to pursue a career in law enforcement was a way to bring about some stability in the character’s life (or so he thought). As for the character’s first brush with the supernatural, since it’s an option I’d probably let the GM provide that in a flashback. The Affluence Rating is part of the backstory and since I didn’t take any wealth advantages, I’m going to assume it’s average. The last sub-step is to identify someone who the character can call when ever they want. I’ve already mentioned the character’s mother above, so I’ll stick with that.
Heh, in step six it says to name the character and then equip them. I don’t think I’ve seen those two items combined together. Uh, name? After pulling up a random British name generator I selected Oliver Cook. I then wrote down the equipment listed in the law enforcement occupation description. And with that, I think the character is done (at least I hope it is).
Afterthoughts:
I liked having the series of questions to ask when it came to determining the backstory of the character. Most of the time when a system says “come up with something” I start drawing a blank unless I’ve already got something in mind.
It was a little bit easier to create a character for this game than I expected. It always seemed that games from Chaosium was overly complicated. This was actually very smooth with how it was written out. Nothing really made me say “I wish I had a GM to explain this to me.” I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to play this game, or if I’ll even do anything with it. I’ve got too many books on my reading list to even consider trying this series. I’m glad that I made a character for it, but this book may end up going into the trade pile.
Additional Notes:
Thank you to everyone who has contacted me about getting your blogs and sites on the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge page. I’ve noticed a few of them are brand new just for the challenge. I’d like to encourage you to keep blogging even after you’ve completed the challenge. The more we share our gaming experiences with each other, the better our community is. If I’m missing yours, please let me know ASAP and I’ll get it on there. I’m always worried that I may have missed someone. Especially some of our past participants.
I’ve already received feedback on my FASA Star Trek- Trader Captain’s and Merchant Princes character. There was a lot of encouragement to make a merchant character in Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition so we could compare the two of them together. I don’t know if it will be the exact character, but don’t be surprised if I add it to my 31 day lineup.
Coming Up Next:
Time Lord
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