Here are the Daily Star Trek Quotes that will appear on the @STrekQuotes Mastodon account and the @STrekQuotes Bluesky account for the week of January 5th through January 11th. Note: Because Twitter/X will use posts to train AI, we will no longer be posting on that platform. This is out of respect for the owners of Star Trek.
“For me, the Cerritos is life in the cave of Garanoga.” Kayshon “Oh, you poor thing. They make you live in a cave?” Victoria “No, no, no. It’s… The Cerritos is like home to me.” Kayshon- Trusted Sources, Stardate: 58496.1 #StarTrek #StarTrekLDS #IDIC #Quote
“I know I’ve got something to offer. I just need a chance to prove it.” Nog- Heart of Stone, Stardate: 48521.5 #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #IDIC #Quote
January 7 “I expect nothing, Mister Scott. It is merely logical to try all the alternatives.” Spock- The Galileo Seven, Stardate: 2822.3 #StarTrek #StarTrekTOS #IDIC #Quote
“That’s an interesting challenge. And I rarely refuse an interesting challenge.” Ro- Ensign Ro, Stardate: 45076.3 #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #IDIC #Quote
January 9 “Correct me if I’m wrong, Doc, but we haven’t been treating anything more serious than an ingrown toenail.” Paris “That’s beside the point. If an emergency were to happen you must be prepared.” The Doctor- Vis a Vis, Stardate: 51762.4 #StarTrek #StarTrekVOY #IDIC #Quote
January 10 “I thought you were the skeptical one when it came to time travel.” Archer “Our recent visit to Detroit has tempered my skepticism.” T’Pol- Azati Prime, Date: January, 2154 #StarTrek #StarTrekENT #IDIC #Quote
January 11 “I hope you’ve learned that running away solves nothing.” Picard- Coming of Age, Stardate: 41461.2 #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #IDIC #Quote
What are your favorite daily Star Trek quotes selected for this week? 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.
On Day 4 the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to create a character for a game that I remember playing when it first came out but has the latest edition available. This character will be for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition by Free League Publishing. I just realized that I’ll be using a lot of their books this year. In the early 90’s had played the first edition of Twilight: 2000. I don’t remember much about the system, but I do remember enjoying the campaign the GM was running. In the 2025 challenge I created a character for Twilight: 2000 version 2.2.
I had played the 4th Edition of this game at a past SaltCON back in 2023. I don’t recall much about the system other than thinking it was a little crunchy at the time. Like Rivers of London, I’m going to go on the scenario that there is a game with some friends later that day and I need to quickly get a character put together so that I can join them at the table. We are stuck in Europe after everything has broken down with the goal to get home to the United States.
The PDF set that I had picked up from DriveThruRPG had several books in the core set including a Player’s Manual. It lists two different ways to create a character for the game. Following a Life Path (more options) or using an Archetype (quicker creation). Had this been a planned event, I would have gone with the Life Path option, but I really want to see of the Archetype could get me a character that I wanted to play. The steps for the Archetypes are found on page 20 and contains nineteen steps (as compared to twenty-one for Life Paths).
Step one is to choose the archetype itself. There are nine in total including The Civilian, The Grunt, The Gunner, The Kid, The Mechanic, The Medic, The Officer, The Operator (aka special forces) and The Spook (aka the spy). I played a grunt type character in the first edition game. I made a medic last year for the challenge. I don’t recall what character I played in the one-shot, but I don’t think he was anything special. For some reason, the Spook is really catching my attention, so I’m going to go with that. Just the thought of a spy caught behind the lines when the war breaks down appeals to me.
The next step has me picking the nationality of my currently unnamed character. I’m sticking with USA since I’m thinking that the rest of the party is American soldiers. After that, the branch of service is chosen for the next step. As The Spook, I only have one option of Intelligence. Had I been a grunt I could have picked the branch of service. This also affects the next step of rank, of which he has none as a spy. I do recall James Bond holding the rank of Commander but that was from his previous military service.
Step five is to determine the attributes of the character. They are Strength, Agility, Intelligence and Empathy. I’m instructed to start all of these at a baseline of C (which uses a d8). I’m allotted three step increases that I can spend (up to B or A which would result in using a d10 or d12). For my yet-to-be named espionage agent, I selected Agility and Intelligence.
On step six we determine the hit capacity and stress capacity. Basically the health of the character. Hit is determined of STR+AGL die added together and divided by 4 (rounding up). Stress is the INT and EMP in the same formula.
Next comes the skills and they use the same D (d6) to A (d12) rating. I’m instructed to pick one B level skill, two C level skills and three D level skills. After reading the skill descriptions, I picked the skills I thought a spy would have. Connected to the skills (and step 8) is choosing the starting specialty from the archetype. I selected Infiltration since getting into places unseen is what spies do.
The Coolness Under Fire rating was determined by the Archetype (which I had already written down). And after that, the next step is determining the unit morale. According to the book, it’s equal to the highest command skill of a group member. Well making this character on my own I’ll leave this blank for now.
For step eleven I pick a moral code for the character. There are some suggestions under the archetype or I can make one of my own. I selected “The mission can succeed with the right amount of planning.” Step twelve is the big dream of the character. Again the archetype has some suggestions. On my own I came up with “My government can survive, even if it’s just through me.”
The next two steps have to do with the group (which again on my own is a little difficult to do). So my buddy in the group would be determined later. How the character met them, they were a backup support team assigned to the character when he was on an infiltration mission. Things went to hell before they could get back to their assigned unit.
Step fifteen is the appearance and I went with the one described in the archetype. Also from the archetype is the selection of gear (which I already had written down). Group gear and vehicle is on steps seventeen and eighteen. I’ll skip this for the time being since I’m without a group.
The last step is the number of starting permanent rads the character has been affected with. Since this is a war that nukes have been dropped in, everyone has been caught in some sort of nuclear fallout. This is determined by rolling a d6.
When I was making the version 2.2 Twilight: 2000 character last year, the first step was to pick a name. I didn’t see that option in this series of steps, so I’m picking one now. I pulled up a random name generator and selected Benton Ward. I then transferred my notes over to the character sheet to present here.
Afterthoughts:
The basics of the game is to use the die from your Attribute and your Skill (if any) and see how many successes you roll (usually 6 or higher). There are methods to push rolls at the cost of stress
I’m actually quite glad that I made a character for this system. It reminded me a little of the one-shot game that I played. If I recall correctly, we didn’t do a lot of dice rolling at the table, so I’d want to try it out a little bit more. But I loved the fact that the Referee’s manual had a conversion guide for T2K 1st and 2nd edition to 4th edition if they wanted to use the published adventures that had already been released.
I remember the GM for the 1st edition T2K campaign that I played in did a lot of homebrewing for the game. He loved looking up the information on different weapons and hardware. I could easily see myself doing the same for this game, if I thought there was a chance to get into a campaign. I remember collecting and reading combat magazines in the 80’s and 90’s and Twilight: 2000 was right up the alley of those publications.
Additional Notes:
On the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server I had a participant (clash_bowley) tell me that they were having fun making their characters even if they made three of them in a day. That is part of the reason that I run this challenge.
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.
As most readers of my blog may have already guessed (by the title) I’m a big Doctor Who fan. It was another sci-fi genre that my father introduce me to while I was growing up. So for day 2 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to create a character for a rare game called Doctor Who: Time Lord. I had picked this book up when it came up really cheap on Ebay. And I didn’t know until after it arrived that it was a discarded book from a public library. Luckily I wanted it for the information inside and not as a collectors item. So, I didn’t complain about it to the seller. But be certain you know what you are bidding on with that site.
Now I’ve created several Doctor Who RPG characters in past challenges. During the first year I had created a character for the FASA Doctor Who RPG which I had played in the 90s. Also in that same challenge I later made a character for the Cubicle 7 Doctor Who RPG 1st Edition. In 2025 I had the opportunity to make a Sontaran for the 5e inspired Doctors and Daleks RPG.
When I started reading the Time Lord core rulebook, something became very clear. This game, which was published in 1991, was meant to be played by the players as one of the characters seen in the TV series. Every single Doctor that had appeared on the TV screen (at the time) had been stated. Same with all of the companions, enemies and other characters. The bulk of the book is a character guide with their stats in tow. I was actually quite impressed and a little worried that I wouldn’t be able to use it for the challenge. But then I came across Appendix I on page 276 where it gave you the rules to create a companion based upon yourself. Thus began my descent into the weirdest character creation process I had ever come across.
There are several attributes for a Time Lord character. Strength, Control, Size, Weight, Move, Knowledge, Determination (aka Bravery) and Awareness with a score ranging between 1 (extremely bad) and 6 (extremely good) with 3 being the average. These are pretty basic RPG attributes. The book states that you are supposed to create the character representing you with the referee. I’m going to base this Carl character off what he would have been back in the early 90’s when this book was published.
For Strength, the referee and the player has an arm-wrestling match to determine the rating. Now you see why I picked 1991 Carl. In all likelihood, I would have been arm-wrestling Geothan or Jill back then. But we were basically the same stature when we were younger. If I was beaten, I would have gotten a lower score (like 2 for puny) or if I won then I could have been awarded a score of 3 or 4. I know I wouldn’t have had a 5 for body-builder. I’m going to guestimate that I would have been average (score 3).
Control was pretty easy. 1991 me wasn’t in track and field and I didn’t play sports or exercise three times a week. So the book states that most players will have a Control score of 3 (again average).
Size was a little weird. It stated that male characters will usually have a score of 3 (average) but females will have a score of 4? I went back to the abilities descriptions on page 51 and re-read them. For some reason with size, the smaller the number, the taller you are. Very weird. So I guess that makes sense that some females could have a score of 4, but the book says Size affects both bulk and height and should be modified according to the player’s extremes. 1991 Carl is a little tall compared to others, do I make him a 3 or a 2? This is where having all of the characters in the show stated helped out. I flipped through them and found random characters and even the ones I thought would be taller (Ogrons, Zygons, etc.) and they were still listed at a 3, so a score of 3 it is.
Weight is our next attribute. The average person has a score of 4. We are back to the higher number representing more on the character (thus heavier). I didn’t argue on this one and wrote down the score.
For Move it only says that all human characters have a score of 3 with a special ability (a sub-skill under an attribute) of Running 1. As we all know, there is a lot of running in Doctor Who. Usually in a gravel quarry substituting for an alien planet.
Knowledge used examples from the UK Educational system (which I seem to be learning a lot about while making different characters). It is based upon what education level you had reached. Well 1991 Carl had been to some community college, but didn’t have his university education (score 5) just yet. So I put him down with a score of 4.
The average Determination score was 3. I wasn’t stubborn as a mule, or in a brave occupation (firefighter, soldier, etc.) so I couldn’t bump it up higher.
Awareness is the use of sight, smell or hearing. I don’t think the use of glasses pushes me down to a score of 2, so I kept it at a 3. With how many girls flirted with me in the 90’s that I missed (according to friends who told me after-the-fact) I know I couldn’t bump this up to a score of 4.
Now we have the Special Abilities of the character. These are based upon the background and training of the character and refers us to chapter 3. The attributes listed above are the “Common Abilities” that each character has. Under each Common Ability, are special abilities (such as the Running 1 under Move listed above). The guidelines in the back of the book suggests that the Referee should provide Cheat Death 1 to Humans with average Strength (3). Again I thought of 1991 Carl and wrote down what I thought would be reasonable. I didn’t give any of the Special Abilities a score of more than 1.
There wasn’t anything in the Appendix about the wounds or equipment on the character sheet. I went back and looked at the chapter they were described in. You mark off wounds when damage is taken, but I couldn’t see anything about what each character starts with. When I looked at the boatload of character stats in the book, they all had the same number of wounds to check off. So, I guess I’ll leave that be. As for the equipment, again little is listed other than a few weapons that are usually carried by the opponents. I went back to the many characters listed and it looks like common sense items that they carried. So I just jotted down a few things and called it good. Here is the character sheet that I would have presented to the Referee for their approval.
Afterthoughts:
And for clarity’s sake, the way the system works is that the player rolls two D6s when they are attempting a task with a chance of failure. They then subtract the lowest number rolled from the highest number rolled and add any scores from the applicable abilities. These numbers are then added together to see if they meet or beat a target number between 0 to 10 based on the difficulty of the task.
Looking through the list of Special Abilities I had to chuckle when I saw that Screaming was listed. Yea there was a lot of that in early Doctor Who episodes. Gloating was also listed and specifically mentions The Master.
From what I understand, there was a bit of an online community for this game before the new Cubicle 7 books were released. The fans had expanded the game and included a better character creation system. However, since I’m focusing on the rules themselves, I did not use the fan made system.
As for playing or homebrewing for this game, I doubt I’ll get a chance to do either. The system sounds interesting enough to try and I wouldn’t turn down a chance. But the likelihood of that happening seems very slim.
Additional Notes:
I was able to get a few more links put up at the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge page. Keep them coming in. I’m also following a lot of entries on the different message boards and on the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on BlueSky and Mastodon.
Some of the feedback on my Rivers of London entry encouraged me to pick up the first book of the series. I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to do that soon, but I’ll see if the e-book ever comes up on sale.
Coming Up Next:
Twillight: 2000 4th Edition
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.
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
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.
As with all FASA Star Trek systems, they provided a Character Generation Short Form. This is found on page 126. So let’s begin. Step one, create attributes. Strength, Endurance, Intellect, Dexterity, Charisma, Luck and Psionic Potential. The last two are a straight up percentage roll. The others are 4D10+30. Then add the racial modifiers to the attributes. So, I don’t think I’ve made an Edoan yet, so I’ll make one now.
Step two is the Character Background. We are rolling a 1D10 to see what three possible background options come up between Privileged, Normal and Disadvantaged. This yet to be named character came up as Normal.
The background skills are determined in step three. The number of skills are INT/10 rounded down. With my INT of 65 I get to pick 6 of them and roll a 1D10 to come up with the starting score. I picked the six skills.
Step four is the Advancement Lane. Where did the character get some education from? After a D10 roll he went to the Merchant Academy. So onto step five I added the skills that came from attending the Merchant Academy. This included the Outside Electives. In the Mid-Program Evaluation, the character was approved for specialty training, so I selected Helm/Navigation to focus on.
Step six is the Apprenticeship Program. Again a lot of skills scores were added or updated. On the Mid-Program evaluation he must have done something bad because no further education was allowed. The character now has to enter the base-level labor program which is step seven.
So if I’m reading this correctly, the character gets a year of unspecialized labor (hopefully flying a ship). For this first year he gets 10 unspecialized and 1 specialized skill at 1d10 that I pick. Then we get to roll on the opportunities table and add some modifiers. He didn’t get an apprenticeship, but he did get specialized labor which was another round of 1D10 to different skills. After the second year I rolled again and he barely made it into the Apprenticeship program. That he was forced out of, so do I just go to next step that I didn’t do in step six? It seems like I’m kinda in a loop. I’m going to guess I’m back in step 6-D (each step had a series of sub-steps) and continue from there.
I don’t see this character going to Command Training School, so I think I skip step 8. On step 9 is the Trading Experience and Skills. I roll 2D10 to see the number of years served. Wow, just to be a regular crewmember on a merchant ship still takes years (more for CO/XO or the equivalent of a Department Chief). If I did this correctly, he served 11 years as a navigator on a merchant vessel. That adds to some skills, but he’s still not at a chief level. Perhaps he’s just on the cusp? Anyway, I added the skills listed in this step.
Technically that was the last step. But when I moved everything from my notes to the sheet, I noticed it didn’t have the combat skills, equipment or anything else. I went back through the book (including the original rulebooks) and found the information. I guess they were expecting experienced RPG players to find these items. Here is the character sheet for my Edoan trader named Kraxx.
Afterthoughts:
There were some printing errors in the short form, I seriously doubt that a character would gain a skill addition of zero. Why even put it in the book with limited space. I’ll have to look back though my collections and notes to see if there was ever an errata for this book.
I think I can see why I never played in a FASA Star Trek merchant campaign. Of course, everyone wanted to play Starfleet officers when we were playing Star Trek. If we wanted to just play merchants, we could have played Traveller or Star Frontiers instead. But now that I’ve made this character, I’m wondering how the Star Trek Adventures 2nd Edition merchant character would roll up? Perhaps I’ll pick that for one of my later characters in this challenge.
Additional Notes:
I’ve already had a ton of people contact me about making sure their blogs were posted on the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge list. If I’m missing your participating blog, or message board, please let me know and I’ll get it added. I’ve been enjoying the entries that I’ve read so far.
Coming Up Next:
Rivers of London
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.
