Another KickStarter game is being used for my Day 26 entry 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Modern Necessities is a series of sourcebooks that sets up modern day rules (or future and western options) for Old-School Essentials. You can read my review of the KickStarter reward at this blog post.
So this one is going to be a little weird. Because I’m going to be using the character creation steps from Old-School Essentials. But when it comes to the class, spells (if needed) and gear, I’m going to be using Modern Necessities. I have used OSE for a past entry in the Character Creation Challenge that you can read here.
So the character creation process in the OSE book is listed on page 18. As mentioned in the last entry, there are multiple creation methods, but to use my Modern Necessitites options, I’ll need to follow the advanced path where race and class are separate. Everyone sing along now. To generate the ability scores, roll 3d6 down the line. Got some OK stats between 10 and 14.
From these I can now check which minimums the character meets for the different race options. I used the Half-Orc in the 2025 challenge, so this time around I’m going to go with Drow. I don’t know if I’ve had a chance to make one yeet. I added the ability modifiers and racial benefits to my notes.
Now we are to the part where we can switch over to the new Modern Necessities book, picking a class. I’m only using the modern times book, not the western times (with the Single Action book) and futuristic times (with the Cutting Edge book). My choices are Crook, Detective, Exorcist, Face, Heavy Gunner, Hired Killer, Martial Artist, Medic, Ninja, Psychonaut (drug powered users of magic or mental powers), Sapper, Scout, Secret Agent, Sniper, Soldier, Survivalist, Tech Expert, Treasure Hunter (think Laura Croft), Vigilante (think Punisher) and Wheelman. There are minimums for each class which helped with my consideration. While this unnamed character could have been most of them, for some reason I was drawn to Tech Expert (which includes some technomancy abilities). I wrote down the information presented from the class and picked his first spell.
OK, returning to the OSE book where step four is adjust ability scores. This is where I can raise a prime requisite ability by 1 by lowering another ability (STR, INT or WIS) by 2. Unfortunately a 1 point raise wouldn’t do the character any good on their attribute benefits so I elected skip any adjustments. I then went to step five which is noting the ability score modifiers and step six which was noting the attack values utilizing the optional Ascending Armor Class since I don’t like THAC0. Step seven is noting the savings throws and class/race abilities (which I already had done).
Ah, finally. Hit Points. Tech Experts are like magic users so they only roll a 1d4. I’m glad that I rolled a 4 since this yet-to-be named character has no CON bonus. I then proceeded to the next couple of steps by selecting the alignment and known languages.
Step eleven is buying the equipment. I rolled the 3d6x10 and then went back to the Modern Necessities book to look at what was available. After picking up the gear I noted the AC, level and XP for the next steps.
Step Twelve is an optional rule for secondary skills. The OSE book had fantasy based secondary skills. I didn’t see a listing like this in Modern Necessities. Honestly I think this was an oversight since Modern Necessities was based off of OSE. Perhaps writing up one of my own could be a homebrew project? But that will have to wait until later when the challenge is done.
The last step is naming the character. Hey look, a favorite website has a Random Drow Name Generator. I was able to pull the name Xathel Dalla. I also went to the Random Hacker Name Generator and selected BL4NK. Now there wasn’t a special character sheet for Modern Necessities or any of it’s two side books (yet, hint) so I used an OSE character sheet and tried to fill in the blanks.
Afterthoughts:
I can see where these two books can fit in with each other. And in old-school fashion, I can see where there are gaps that a GM may have to fill in (example, they gave extras to the basic races, but not the Drow as I discovered while creating this character). Not that this is a bad thing, because it leads to homebrew opportunities.
Now I really want to try this one at the table.
Additional Notes:
On the RPG.net message board, there is a participant going by the handle of “Hunter” who is making a set of characters for “The Alpha Squad” using the Outgunned: Adventure RPG. This is The A-Team in 1933 Los Angeles instead of the 80’s as seen in the TV show. I need to give him a golf clap for this one because it is very well done.
Another reader made a purchase on DriveThruRPG after clicking on one of my affiliate links. Thank you, that will help with future RPG purchases. I try to pick up games for the next #CharacterCreationChallenge.
Coming Up Next:
The Terminator
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