Author: TardisCaptain

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 9: Pirates and Plunder

Written by TardisCaptain January 9, 2022

(singing) “Yo ho, yo ho a pirates life for me.” I’ve always been fascinated by the legends of pirates and privateers. From watching the various movies through the years, visiting the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disneyland in the 80’s (and getting a “real” pirate map as a souvenir), having a pirate mascot in one of my schools to the pirate flag hanging in my office just to my left. You could say I’ve been a life long fan of the lore and legends. So when a pirate based RPG became available in one of the online auction sites (that was still within my price range), I jumped at the chance to pick it up. Thus I became the owner of the 1982 game Pirates and Plunder and knew that I had to create a character for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge.

Luckily the boxed set I bought still had a pad of character sheets included, I was unable to find a character sheet (or anything else for this game) online. Before I had started this year’s challenge, I made it a goal to have every character sheet printed out (more on that in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge after action report).

There are three books in the set. Basic Rules, Advanced Rules and Adventures. While reading the character creation rules they ran you through a scenario of escaping (thus a way to teach the different rules). There were some stats that they stated “This will be explained later” or “Saved for the Advanced Game”. So as I create this character, I may mention a characteristic but not go into detail as it is not covered in the basic rulebook character creation process.

The primary core of the game is using 2d10 to resolve conflicts. The book explained the 20 sided dice with different sets of numbers on them. I did not get any dice with my purchase, but I’m assuming that they included the 20 sided dice that only had 1-0 (10) on them. For the sake of this article, I’m going to use the standard ten-sided dice.

The first step is to name your character, but then the RAW advises waiting to see what stats the character has before completing this step. If you choose a nickname that doesn’t really fit, then you’d have to go back and change it. So the first real step was randomly rolling for the character’s height and weight (again sticking with the 2d10 formula). The weight results could provide some mods for the character. I ended up with 7 (he’s 5’3″ tall) which guided me to a column for the weight table. This ended up being 100 lbs. No positive adjustments to the attributes, but no negatives either (barely). A roll of 20 resulted in my pirate being left handed for the next step in the process.

Next we had a Luck/Adrenaline attribute. This the number of times I can re-roll a bad roll (by you or the GM) that affect your character per adventure. If you use this number for Adrenaline, you can temporarily increase an ability for one turn. Using either one of these items will cause the number to go down. My character ended up with a 6, no lucky breaks, darn. So far this isn’t a very impressive pirate.

Finally we have some statistics. Strength, Encumbrance Points (an advanced rule), Agility, Movement, Stealth (another advanced rule), Vision, Hearing, Senses (think Spider-sense), Constitution (advanced), Stamina and Wounds. Since I have no modifiers from my height/weight, I just roll 2d10 and add the numbers together to get my scores (other than Movement which consults a chart and Senses which is a combo of vision and hearing divided by 2). I didn’t stat any of the advanced attributes at this time. So I ended up with the following. Str- 12, Agi- 10, Mov- 6 (rolled an 11), Vis- 11, Hear- 11, Sen- 11, Wounds- 6 (really?).

Next comes your training with muskets, Pistol, Swordsmanship, Fist/Dagger with each skill getting a training rating. Again roll 2d10 and add any modifiers to two of the skills of your choice. Since I didn’t have any modifiers, I just rolled the following. Musket- 9, Pistol- 17 (wow), Sword- 10, Fist/Dagger- 4 (ugh). Now we do math to get the To-Hit rating for all of these items. Some are simple (Musket+Vision)/2 = To-Hit rating. Others were a bit more complicated. After all was said and done my To-Hit ratings came up as follows: Musket T/H- 10, Pistol T/H- 14, Sword T/H- 10, Fist/Dagger T/H- 7 Throw- 11, Reload#- 9.

Now we get to randomly roll for nationality. I’m up for this. A roll of 15 makes this character Scottish. Now I’m glad that I waited to decide upon a name. If I ever play this character, I hope I don’t drop a really bad accent in gaming sessions.

Hey, we are not done rolling up attributes yet. We get to roll 2d10 and add the results together to find our Intelligence score. I would have thought that a good Intelligence could have helped with the training we just went through above. Oh well. I rolled a 13, which is not bad, but still doesn’t earn any bonuses. This leads into the Languages. The RAW states that we are all pirates on an English privateer so we all get English no matter what nationality. A quick Google search states that most people in Scotland speak English and Gaelic. So before I can say what my un-named Scotsman can speak, I have to roll 2d10 to find out how many Language Points he has (seems a little overly complicated). A roll of 17 gives me 12 of these points. Then there is a weird note for the GM to not allow players to let the others know what languages they are taking as to prevent a group with a wide variety of languages (like I said above, overly complicated). Ya know what, screw it. Even though it’s not on the list of languages, my pirate is putting all 12 points into Gaelic since it’s from his homeland and I’m moving on.

Now I go to a chart to randomly find out what my character’s religion is. I rolled a 9 on a single d10 (first time we haven’t rolled 2d10) and checked the Scottish chart resulting in none. Ok, no problem. I’m suddenly thinking of the scene from Muppet Treasure Island when the crew gave Long John Silver the black spot on a page torn from the bible and how he was able to use that to frighten the crew back into line. Had this character had religion, I would had to randomly roll a fervor rating.

For some reason there are a bunch of boxes at the top of the sheet and I need to cross out the numbers that are above my ratings. The previous owner never did this with the characters he left in the boxed set. Next the basic book has the GM take the characters through a prison break scenario to teach the game (and fill in some other sections on the character sheet). Again there are other areas covered by the advanced rules that I didn’t have filled in. Equipment, Encumbrance, Position on ship, Swim, Drink, Greed, Emotional, Compassion, Morals, Courage and Physical. Using the guide on the back of the sheet I quickly filled in these last items. I filled in some equipment I thought my pirate would have.

Using a random name generator, Jason “Jake” McCabe is a Scottish pirate working on an English privateer. While he can’t swim, he can drink pretty well and is a crack shot with the pistol. Not much of a mean streak in him, but get him near gold and jewels and he might go a little crazy. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

A nice touch, a quick character creation process is listed on the back of the character sheet. The sheet also had the “results of ability dice rolls” explanation. This would be handy when dealing with players new to the game. You can also create secondary characters for the game. Primary characters get the most character advancement rewards earned in play with the secondary getting a smaller amount.

The previous owner had a lot of characters in the box. The advanced rules were very well worn so I think they really enjoyed this game.

I don’t know if I’d use this game to play a pirates campaign, but if I did, I’d probably want to make a character sheet out of Excel so that a lot of the math was already done during the character creation process. I know that I went a little deeper on the note taking for this character since a lot of people are probably not familiar with this RPG system.

Additional Notes:

Still no undiscovered blogs participating in the challenge have popped up. If I recall correctly, this was the same for last year. I’m still searching Twitter for the hashtag of #CharacterCreationChallenge. I’m also reading several Facebook posts in different RPG groups (I’d Rather Be Killing Monsters is a big one). I’ve been posting on MeWe, but I haven’t seen anyone else participating (but to be fair there is not a lot of users on that site in comparison to the big two). I’m not on any other social media sites (lack of time for those I’m on now) so if you see anything, please let me know at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.

Coming Up Next:

Modern Age

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Trek

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 8: Star Trek Adventures-The Klingon Empire

Written by TardisCaptain January 8, 2022March 29, 2022

So I’ve put together a regular Starfleet character in Star Trek Adventures for the 2021 Character Creation Challenge. However the Klingon Empire core rulebook looked so kewl, I had to create a character for the 2022 challenge. When I created the 2021 character (which I was able to use in a game later) I had to use a cheat sheet along with the core rulebook. Since the rules in the Klingon book seem to be better organized, I’m going to just use the book for this character. I’m also not going to describe the system as much since I did that last year. So let’s create (runs random Klingon name generator) Nurot son of H’unos.

Since this game uses values which are usually a quote, I pulled out my massive list of Star Trek quotes to assist me. If I get a chance to roll a dice to decide something, I’m letting fate take control. I’ve noticed that a lot of characters lately haven’t had a lot of dice rolling involved. So my Environment was a Starship or Space Station. Pulling up the power of internet search, I found a name for a ship. The IKV notqa’ is a large Klingon cruiser that his parents were serving on when he was born. For Caste I rolled Warrior which he accepted. Training I rolled an Enlisted Warrior. So far this is going where I’m hoping it will. In his career, I selected Young Warrior. The two career events are: Serious Injury (He was injured on a hunting trip and got a nasty scar from it which resulted in an implant as part of his arm) and Conquest (assisted in the conquest of the Jugul homeworld, a previously undiscovered planet on the edge of Klingon space.)

I know there is an option to create a Klingon House, but unfortunately I’m under a time crunch today, so I’ll explore these rules at a later time. Here is the character sheet for the young Nurot who someday hopes to make it up to command his own ship.

Afterthoughts:

I love the fact that they included two ribbon bookmarks with this book. The book is about 10-20% bigger than the STA core rulebook so it needs it. Also having dark text printed on a light background is much easier to read. And yes I didn’t need to use a cheat sheet to create a character for the Klingon Defense Force.

Additional Notes:

No new blogs found today. But I’ve been retweeting any new character that I’ve found on twitter with the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge. On the RPG.net forums, one person stated they had to bow out because of real world issues. No honor lost in that because real life comes first and they can always jump back in if things improve. Keep the new characters coming.

Coming Up Next:

Pirates & Plunder

Character Creation Challenge, No One Lives Forever, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 7: Espionage!

Written by TardisCaptain January 7, 2022

Today’s entry is Espionage!: The Secret Agent Role Playing Game (1st edition). This was published in 1983 by Hero Games and is based off of the Champions super-hero RPG. While I’ve had a chance to play a few super-hero based RPGs, Champions had never been one of them. So this will be a new experience for me. I had picked up this game when I won an online auction that contained several different RPGs from the 80’s. Some of the other games will be used in future 2022 Character Creation Challenge entries.

In the 2021 #CharacterCreationChallenge I created characters for several different espionage based RPGs like Top Secret, James Bond, Mercenaries, Spies and Private Eyes, Spycraft 2nd edition, and Top Secret: New World Order. I had tied all of those characters together in two methods. They were all inspired by characters seen in The World’s End movie and they were replacement agents for a depleted group known as UNITY from the video game series, No One Lives Forever. While I was thinking about making more new agents for UNITY, a read through of the character creation process dissuaded that idea. So I’m going to make a CIA agent since that is what the game is built around.

Devron Marcus was a college student trying to earn a degree in business management so he could follow in his father’s footsteps. Just before Marcus was planning to graduate, his father was killed in Europe in an armed robbery. During his personal investigation, Marcus uncovered evidence that his father had been targeted by East Germany’s Secret Police (the Stasi). A CIA agent, working on the case, took Marcus under his wing and assisted him in confirming the plot and allowing the CIA to respond. This lead to Marcus being recruited by the CIA after graduation. Officially Marcus works as a business salesman working in European markets for the company his father use to work for. Unofficially, he carries out assignments for the CIA.

The primary characteristics for an Espionage! character is Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Body Pips (think hit points), Intelligence, Ego, Presence and Comeliness. While the average person starts with 8 in all scores, the average character (being a little bit more heroic) starts with 10. Each new character starts with 50 Character Points to spend on stats and packages. You can gain additional points by lowering some stats or taking disadvantages. Different attributes had different costs (there’s a lot of math so far in this game) so I selected the stats that I felt a college graduate the age of 25 would have. From these you can generate Figured Characteristics which are Physical Defense, Energy Defense, Speed, Recovery, Endurance Pips and Stun Pips. Thanks to the power of math I come up with the base scores, which I can then improve with any Character Points if I so elect.

I added the skills/advantages/disadvantages from the two CIA packages that I took. I then used the remaining Character Points to add some additional skills that I thought that Agent Marcus should have. There is a section for equipment in the book, but no spots on the character sheet for it. So I skipped that part thinking it would happen in play.

So the breakdown of the system is roll 3d6 and try to get a number lower than a certain amount for a success. Getting that target number to roll under could be a little complicated depending upon the skill/stat level and other factors. It could be interesting to see in play. I wonder if there are any YouTube videos of the Espionage in an RPG session to watch? There are several other espionage RPGs I’d probably play first before this one, but I could have my mind changed. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

There was only one package in this edition to create characters, and that was for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). I wonder if the 2nd edition of the game had more packages for characters to choose from if you wanted to play MI-6 or an independent agency (like UNITY). Hopefully someday I’ll get a chance to find out. I could tell this was a first edition of a game, it was a little hard to read in some sections. While I know I played at least one session of Fantasy Hero by the same company, I don’t recall any big desire to purchase or play releases from Hero Games.

There is some player notes in the back of the book that advised against turning the game into a shooting fest. I was actually glad to see this. In other spy-fi games I’ve been worried that the game would turn into a merc/shooting-fest. I’d be more interested in actual espionage action instead of run-and-gun style action when playing an espionage style game. Yes some shooting can happen, but if it happens too many times, you’re not much of a “secret” agent are you?

Additional Notes:

The number of new blogs found seem to be coming up in twos. I’ve added the latest two finds to the Character Creation Challenge page. I appreciate those that have linked back to my site. Thank you.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek Adventures- Klingon

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Wars

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 6: Star Wars Saga Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 6, 2022March 29, 2022

In the 2021 Character Creation Challenge I had the opportunity to create a character for the D20 Star Wars Revised Core Rulebook. At the time I mentioned that I didn’t know what was the difference between the revised rules and the Saga rules since I did not own the Saga core book. Well over the summer of 2021 a friend (not the same friend who moved back east) offered to give me his Saga books since he knew they would be going to a good home. So for the 2022 challenge, I decided that I would make a character using the Star Wars Saga rules.

Over the holiday break I had the opportunity to watch my college aged kid play a lot of Star Wars Jedi Fallen Order, so I think I want to make a young Jedi character. I was tempted to use the Knights of the Old Republic guidebook, but it’s been a buys day so far so I’m going to stick with a pre-empire era character. Keet Apaal is a young Zabarak Jedi serving with the order on various assignments.

I haven’t done a lot of dice rolling for this year in the #CharacterCreationChallenge, so I elected to go with the 4d6 drop the lowest method listed in the book. There was also a point build option and a standard score package just as there was in the revised rules. I ended up the following. STR 12, DEX 13, CON 11, INT, 11, WIS 14, CHA 11. I see that they moved back to the term “Hit Points” for the Saga edition. I added my racial and class abilities. No armor class, but the savings throws are used as defenses with the Fortitude added to the Damage Threshold.

As a Jedi Guardian, I selected the appropriate skills (Use the Force and Perception), feats (Force Training) and force powers (Move Object, Rebuke and Surge). I started filling in my equipment and weapons. For some reason there was no crit information on the weapons despite it being listed on the character sheet. I was done with the creation process. Here is the sheet.

Afterthoughts:

It’s been a year since I did the earlier D20 Star Wars character. I don’t recall there being too much difference between the revised and Saga character creation process. I think it was a little clearer this round, but having just completed the process may make it fresh in my mind.

I’m still a big fan of the D20 system based off of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 rules. I could very easily see myself playing this game if an opportunity arose. There could also be some homebrewing in the future if inspiration struck.

Additional Notes:

I’ve added a couple more blogs that are participating in the #CharacterCreationChallenge. As I was doing this, I noticed that we have more links to blogs than we did in 2021. Please let me know if I’m missing anyone.

Coming Up Next:

Espionage! by Hero Games

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 5: BASH! Sci-Fi Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 5, 2022January 6, 2022

The friend who gave me the Men In Black roleplaying game, also gave me Basic Action System Heroes (BASH!) Sci-Fi Edition. I had never heard of this game so I thought that I’d use it as one of my entries in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. BASH! appears to be primarily a super-hero game that the publisher has ported over to other genres. There is also a Fantasy version of the system. The descriptions state that you only need a pair of D6s, the rules and a 3×5 card to play. Let’s see how this works out.

So the basics of the game appear to be roll 2d6, multiply by a stat or power to get the result (beat an opponents roll or a difficulty number). If you roll doubles, roll another d6 and add it. If it matches the double, roll another one until there is no match. Then multiply. Thank you for putting the basic concept at the front of the book. I hate having to dig for the core mechanic. The keep rolling on doubles sounds like an interesting concept.

So there are three character stats. Brawn, Agility and Mind. Pretty straightforward. These range from 1 (normal man), 2 (standard professional like soldier, average marksman, scholar, etc.) 3 (exceptional professional like a very competent scientist) 4 (human max for any stat like geniuses, pro-athletes, etc.) 5 (alien or machine like quality, max for the stat). I like that they define what each level represents. For new characters, you get 7 points to spread across the three stats. You can reduce the number of powers by 2 in order to get an 8th stat point. This must be a hold over from the super-hero game. There are different alien races in step two that have minimums or maximums in order to select that race. So before deciding on my stats, I looked over the races to see if anything interested me. Hmm.. Eldans may have been influenced by Vulcans and the Velkar sounds like Klingons. There is a race of lion like people called the Simbasa. Let’s run with that. Races have certain advantages, disadvantages, skills and powers. Do I get them for free or do I have to pay for them during character creation? I couldn’t find an answer so I’m going to say “I have to pay for them.”

Next comes Advantages and Disadvantages. You gain an advantage for each disadvantage you take. Well the Simbasa already have Long Sleeper (need more sleep in a day) disadvantage. So I’ll take an advantage of my choice. Unknown Ally is a mysterious GM controlled ally who appears at random times and helps out. I really liked the sound of that. There is no information on the number or maximum advantages/disadvantages that a character can have or how you could gain future advantages/disadvantages in the rules. So I’ll stick with the one set.

You get 7 points of powers. Some powers were straight from the superhero game. Others were things that could have been skills (dog fighting in a starfighter?). Four points were already taken by the powers gained from the Simbasa species. So with the three left over points I selected off-hand pistol (I can attack with two pistols) and quick draw (I have a feeling I’m making an alien lion gunslinger).

Next is skills. You have mental skills (based off your mind score) or physical skills (based off of your agility score). The number of skills is equal to the attribute. So I’ve got three physical skills (one of which is already taken up by athletics) and two mental skills. Each skill has a specialty so it’s something you are extra good at. I selected several that I thought would be good for a space lion who was separated from his pride and had to make it on his own as a streetwise mercenary. That was the end of chapter one on character creation.

The next chapter went into equipment. Each character started out with 5,000 credits to buy equipment. I selected what a merc could have. And as with most games, there are sections of the character sheet that are still blank? Somehow I missed where the Hits a and Wound Threshold is at. Back at the key terms, it states that heroes get 100 hits. The index guided me to a page in the combat rules for the Wound Threshold and needed a better explanation. The gist is if you are damaged it can affect your agility and skill rolls. Makes sense, but what do I put the threshold at? Meh, since I have no GM to ask, I’ll just leave it blank for now.

So the character, named TaChar, was a member of a Simbasa pride out roaming the universe when he got separated from the pride. A group of mercs took him in and he learned the trade. He takes different jobs trying to survive and is continuously looking for his pride to see if he can rejoin. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

There is an image near the start of the book that looks like it came from the Star Ace RPG. I don’t have a copy to check, but it looks familiar.

This is clearly a sandbox game. There were lots of examples of different styles of play and different sci-fi genres (post apocalyptic, fighting mecs, cyberpunk, space opera, space fantasy and examples that were clearly inspired by various sci-fi franchises. A ton of “your GM can adjust things for their game and here’s how” guidelines. However there was a lot of superhero feel to the text. It could have used a little bit more polishing. I wonder how the game holds up in actual play?

Additional Notes:

I’ve discovered another blog that is participating in the #CharacterCreationChallenge and added it to the CCC page. I’ve also added a link to the hashtag on Twitter so anyone can see the latest posts with that hashtag.

Coming Up Next:

Star Wars Saga Edition

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 4: Men In Black The Roleplaying Game

Written by TardisCaptain January 4, 2022 1 Comment

I’ve really enjoyed the different Men In Black movies. They were silly and a little campy and looked like fun. It was also one of those franchises that screamed, I should be used in a role playing campaign. Back in the 90’s I recall some friends playing an MIB game that I think was based off of the original comics. I don’t believe it was this system however. So when a friend was moving back east and needed to do a serious reduction in the number of items he needed to pack, most of his RPG books were donated to me. This was one of the books that was included in the set. As I mentioned in my Star Wars D6 entry into the Character Creation Challenge, I loved this system and was very interested in seeing how the MIB D6 game compared.

The MIB character creation rules have three options, take a template of pre-made characters (located in the back of the book), create a character from scratch or base the character on yourself. Yes, I’m going to make myself in this game. I mean, come-on I get a flashy thingy device to use right? Right?

There are eight attributes for the game. Reflexes, Coordination, Endurance, Strength, Knowledge, Perception, Confidence and Charisma. Each attribute has several skills listed that are appropriate for that category (example: Ignore Pain is under Endurance, Dodge is under Reflexes, etc.) Each character gets 24 six-sided dice (24D) to slot into all of your attributes. A die can also be broken up into three pips (0, +1 and +2). Then you get an additional 7D to add to various skills (which can also be broken up if desired). I set my attributes and skills. Each new starting character has 5 Character Points and 1 Fate Point. For the body points I rolled my endurance (3D resulted in 13) and added 20 to get 33. I liked that there was a section for “useless trivia” just to round out the characters. Agent C knew about the television show “Star Trek”.

Equipment was assigned by the Director so I wrote down what I thought Agent C would need as a MIB Agent. I wrote down CLASSIFIED for his background. For the agency he is an Alien Tech Specialists. I also noted that Agent C is very excited about the new technology he gets to encounter while in the field.

Afterthoughts:

I was having more flashbacks to the West End Games Star Wars RPG while creating this character. I could see myself playing this game or writing up homebrew material for it. It’s too bad that there isn’t a group I could test this out with.

There has been an updated version of the D6 System. I’m certain that the MIB RPG could very easily be updated to the latest version.

Additional Notes:

I’ve noticed that the number of entries posted with the #CharacterCreationChallenge hashtag is much, much larger than the 2021 event. Again I’m seeing a ton of entries that I have never heard of. I’m glad to see participants getting into the spirit of this fun challenge.

Coming Up Next:

Basic Action System Heroes (BASH) Sci-Fi Edition

Character Creation Challenge, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 3: Dungeons and Dragons-Holmes Basic

Written by TardisCaptain January 3, 2022

As I mentioned in my Day 1 entry in the 2021 Character Creation Challenge, I never owned the blue covered Basic Dungeons and Dragons rulebook by Eric Holmes when I first started playing D&D. A friend had a copy, another had the Basic/Expert version of the rules and I owned the first Basic set from BECMI. We all compared notes and basically picked what we liked the best for our games. That all changed on December 18, 2004 when I found a copy at a local thrift store. How do I know? When I opened this book for today’s challenge, I found the receipt for the purchase. After tax, I only paid 52 cents for this book that was in very good shape. It even still had the chits attached for those players who did not have dice (this was early in the gaming industry and not a lot of people had the different shaped dice). I actually remember the trip well. I had no cash on me at the time so I had to use a card to pay for the book. Not wanting to run my card for half a buck, I looked all over the store to see if I could find anything else to buy. I even tried to look for some article of clothing for my wife. But with no luck, I tried to buy the book with my card and prayed that the store wouldn’t state that there had to be a minimum purchase. Luckily for me they were just fine running a card for such a small amount. Whew.

For this character, I’m going to use the oldest dice I own and let them decide what type of character this is. Just a straight 3d6 down the line. The dice rolled the following: Str- 16, Int- 10, Wis- 12, Con- 8, Dex-11, Cha- 6. He’s not to good looking and not of the best of health, but he’s pretty strong. So fighting man it is. No ability score can be lowered below nine, so I can’t take away anything from Intelligence to put towards Strength, but I can lower Wisdom by 3 to raise Str by 1. So Wisdom now equals 9 and Strength equals 17. Had Intelligence been higher, I might have considered an Elf character, but I’m happy with a strong, but slightly ugly fighting man (not fighter in this rule book). There were bonuses for high Dexterity and Constitution in the RAW, but nothing for a high Strength.

I ended up with 4 hit points. So Cylath will have to be careful until he gains additional levels. Next it stated I should roll for my gold and pick my equipment. 3d6x10 later I’ve started out with 110 GP. I outfitted Cylath with pretty standard equipment that a fighting man would need. I really wanted a horse but I didn’t have enough money to get one. For an alignment, It had the nine standard. I elected to go with just Neutral. I found the section on Savings Throws and wrote them down.

Cylath was the first son of one of the town guards in his small village. When he became the age of 20, his father could see that Cylath was not into the life of a farming village. The father revealed that he had once been an adventurer before settling down and felt that Cylath should set out to find his fortune and see where fate would take him. If he couldn’t make it as an adventurer, there would always be a place for him back at the village. If he could make it and find riches, he could return and help the family. Cylath jumped at the chance to get out of the sleepy village that held no interest for him. His father provided some of his old adventuring equipment and set his son off into the world.

Now I want to find some friends and go on a dungeon crawl. Here is a scan of the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

The rule book actually referred the reader to the Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition Player’s Handbook for the higher levels. I can also see where a lot of items were changed for the B/X version of the game. I think that’s part of the reason I’ve enjoyed the #CharacterCreationChallenge. It reminds me of the differences when you see the rules as written (RAW).

There was no official character sheet for the Holmes-Basic edition. I even checked with a Holmes centric Facebook group. (Note to self: Holmes-Basic and Blueholme are not the same book) Luckily the internet came through and I found a character sheet for Holmes-Basic here.

Additional Notes:

I found two more blogs of participants that have been posting characters and added them to the Character Creation Challenge page. The It’s Mister Wilson entries because of his reviews. Besides posting a character, he also talked about what he liked about a game and what he would consider changing.

Coming Up Next:

The Men In Black Role Playing Game by West End Games

Quotes, Star Trek

Daily Star Trek Quotes: January 3-9

Written by TardisCaptain January 3, 2022January 2, 2022

Here are the Daily Star Trek Quotes that will appear on the @STrekQuotes twitter account for the week of January 3rd through the 9th.

January 3
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine premiered on this date in 1993 with the episode Emissary. https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Star_Trek:_Deep_Space_Nine #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #WeAreStarfleet

“We are constantly searching not just for answers to our questions but for new questions.” Sisko- Emissary, Stardate: 46379.1 #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #WeAreStarfleet

January 4
“The only person you are truly competing against is yourself.” Picard- Coming of Age, Stardate: 41416.2 #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #WeAreStarfleet

January 5
“There is a certain scientific logic about it.” Spock “I’m glad you approve.” Anan 7 “I do not approve; I understand.” Spock- A Taste of Armageddon, Stardate: 3192.1 #StarTrek #StarTrekTOS #WeAreStarfleet

January 6
Aron Eisenberg born on this date in 1969. @AronEisenberg https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Aron_Eisenberg #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #StarTrekVOY #WeAreStarfleet

“I want to join Starfleet. I want it more than anything I’ve ever wanted in my life.” Nog- Heart of Stone, Stardate: 48521.5 #StarTrek #StarTrekDS9 #WeAreStarfleet

January 7
“What should we tell the others?” Tuvok “A friend got lost. We helped her find her way.” Janeway- Fury, Stardate: Unknown #StarTrek #StarTrekVOY #WeAreStarfleet

January 8
Happy Birthday to Michelle Forbes. @MishkaForbes https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Michelle_Forbes #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #WeAreStarfleet

“The way I see it there’s one good reason to take this mission and that’s to validate your faith in me.” Ro- Preemptive Strike, Stardate: 47941.7 #StarTrek #StarTrekTNG #WeAreStarfleet

January 9
“It was a misunderstanding. I hope we can avoid them in the future.” Archer- Dawn, Date: Unknown #StarTrek #StarTrekENT #WeAreStarfleet

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 2: Wendy’s Feast of Legends

Written by TardisCaptain January 2, 2022

When I was reading the other entries in the 2021 Character Creation Challenge, I saw an entry for the marketing role playing game, Wendy’s Feast of Legends and had a V-8 forehead slap moment. When am I ever going to get a chance to play this game? (spoiler alert: never) So using it for the #CharacterCreationChallenge was perfect. I’d get a little bit of a taste (pun intended) of the game and I can check a box off in my geek cred. I even bought lunch to go along with this character set up, so the advertising must be working.

So first you select your order. I elected to go with the Order of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich. A fire based magic user (even with the weird name) sounded good. Next you rolled 4d4 (to represent the $4 for 4 deal that I’ve never taken advantage of) to come up with numbers for your stats. The stats used are Strength, Intelligence, Charm, Arcana and Grace. Pretty basic. After electing which stat to place my five rolls into (and adding the bonus from my order) I ended up with STR 8, INT 10, CHA 7, ARC 13 and GRA 9. Got 11 hit points, (rolled 10 + 1 for the order). Only got a basic weapon and some order skills (spells basically). 10GP as starting money doesn’t really allow buying anything else. I guess additional equipment is picked up during roleplay.

The RAW lists additional skills and spells for different levels. But I was unable to find out how characters move up in level. I wonder if this is buried deep in the GMs section? However since I was eating food from Wendy’s I would have gotten several buffs for that game. Other than a bio (His teachers didn’t understand, they kicked him out of school at a tender early age, just because he didn’t want to learn things. He had other interests. He liked to burn things!) this character is done. Bonus points if you can name the song I just quoted. Here’s a scan of the sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Yea, I’m not seeing myself playing or homebrewing for this game. I don’t even know if anyone is even playing it now.

The advertising budget for this project must not have lasted very long. The game was released in 2019 and the website for the game is no longer active. It’s not even pointing towards the primary Wendy’s website. Thus the link above is to the free PDF on Archive.org.

While looking through the PDF, my college age art-student kid loved the internal art in this book. So that is some high praise in my mind.

I would also like to say that I’m very grateful that Taco Bell didn’t release a marketing role-playing game. I don’t know if I could have handled that one.

Additional Notes:

While I was writing the date at the top of the character sheet, I wrote 2021 and then quickly corrected it to 2022. It was the same mistake that commonly happened when writing checks in January of a new year.

I’ve got a few more links sent to me to add to the Character Creation Page. The RPG.net forum page is going like gangbusters (no not the RPG). I’m also seeing a lot of use of the #CharacterCreationChallenge hashtag. Where are you seeing new characters at?

Coming Up Next:

Dungeons and Dragons- Holmes Basic

Character Creation Challenge, Dune, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 1: Dune Adventures In The Imperium

Written by TardisCaptain January 1, 2022March 29, 2022 1 Comment

For my birthday in 2021 I received an Amazon gift card. While there was a lot of stuff I could have picked up with the gift card, I really wanted it to be something special. This was a birthday gift and that should be something that will be remembered, not something plain like a pair of socks. Luckily, Dune Adventures in the Imperium had just been released and I was able to find a physical copy of the book to buy. I’ve discovered that when learning a new system, I prefer to have a dead-tree version of the rules in my hand.

Dune is one of those franchises that I learned to appreciate from my Father. It was one of the many sci-fi loves that he had passed onto me. I was also very excited for the (then) upcoming Dune movie to finally be released in the theaters. However I was a little nervous about the RPG being released by Modiphius. While I’ve been enjoying the Star Trek Adventures RPG, I would always get the urge to re-write the core rulebook to make information easier to find and to read (colored text on a black background was a bad idea). Luckily the lessons learned from the STA fiasco were applied to the Dune core rulebook and I’ve found it much better to read and understand while giving a ton of detail about the universe the franchise is based in. After looking through the core rulebook, I knew that Dune Adventures in the Imperium was going to be my first entry for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge.

Before you create your character in the Dune RPG, you first create the Noble House that you and all of your fellow party members are associated with. This makes a ton of sense since the game is usually about various types of political intrigue and they should all be on the same side. For the purposes of this entry, I’m going to create a house on my own pretending that it was done in a group.

In the game a noble house is one of four types ranging from Nascent House (just starting House Minor with few enemies and serving a House Major) to Great House (largest and well known, but lots of enemies and lots of House Minors serving it). The larger the house, the more Threat that the Gamemaster receives for game purposes. In most 2d20 games from Modiphius, Threats are used by GMs like Momentum is used by players. In Dune, just as there is Threat that can affect player characters, there is also Threat that can affect the house as part of the political intrigue part of the game. The type also determines how much land the house actually controls. I’ve decided that House Nimoi would at least control an entire planet (Eridani), which meant it would have House Major status. It would have more Domains (see below) but would also have more enemies (2 Threats per player). As a House Major, Nimoi would have 1 primary and 2 secondary starting domains. Domains are what the house produces or is famous for. I selected Science (expertise) Researchers as the primary. The house is known for educating and finding the best researchers in the known universe. For the first secondary I selected Industrial (produce) Refined Alloys. I felt that this went along with the research angle. Once a new alloy was discovered, then House Nimoi would want to profit by producing it’s new alloy. The last secondary domain would be Political (machinery) Expensive Trinkets. These special items are used as diplomatic gifts with various noble houses to keep House Nimoi in the political spectrum. A gift of one of these trinkets would be considered a great honor.

Next there is a section in the rules to describe the homeworld (choose stuff, nothing random) and Banners and Arms (again choose stuff). So Eridani is Earth like with a variety of continent types and oceans. The banner would be the brazier with a flame and the colors would be Red and Gold. Each house has a trait that members of the house can use as part of their characters. The traits in the Dune RPG are primarily descriptive and can be used for both houses and characters. Luckily there were quite a few character and house write-ups in the back of the book which allowed me to gather an idea of what what could be used. For House Nimoi I selected “Scientific Accuracy” as the house trait. The houses listed in the back had multiple house traits, but the rules did not state how many traits a house starts with. So for the time being I’ll stick with the one. For the Roles of the house, I just filled in some names thinking that the stats would have been generated later.

Enemies of the house is the first section with die rolls. As a Major House, House Nimoi has one Major House and one Minor House that serves the primary enemy and opponents. Instead of rolling twice, I’m going to just name both of them and roll for the primary. House Tevon serves House Malak. For House Malak I rolled a 12 on a d20 for Hatred which means that the house lothes House Nimoi. For reason I rolled a 4 resulting in some past Slight against House Malak. Finally the house stats are done. Now onto the Character

Dune has two character creation options for the game. Planned creation (make the character in full) or Creation in Play (make a few stats and fill in the rest via roleplaying). If I was actually playing in a Dune campaign, I’d be tempted to do the Creation in Play. However I’ll be doing a Planned Creation.

In the 2d20 Star Trek Adventures you have attributes of Control, Fitness, Insight, Presence and Reason. For Dune, Modiphius changed this up to Duty, Faith, Justice, Power and Truth (called Drives). As this is only my second Modiphius 2d20 game, I believe that all of their books under different titles are altered in such a way as to fit the universe that they are for. The Skills are listed as Battle, Communicate, Discipline, Move and Understand. You get a focus(es) for Skills (think specialization) and Statements for your Drives (again something that stands out).

Darkin Tal is the younger Swordmaster for House Nimoi, training under the master Swordmaster: Areth Bishiop. For his Archetype I selected Battlemaster-Warrior. After going through the character creation steps he ended up with the Drives of Duty 7 (My house is my life), Faith 4, Justice 6 (I must shield those in my care), Power 8 (Objects are rarely immovable) and Truth 5. Skill ended up being Battle 7 (Long blades, Short blades, Dirty fighting), Communicate 5, Discipline 6 (Self-control), Move 5 and Understanding 5. I think this is a pretty balanced character. For my three assets I selected a pulse-sword, a semi-shield and an Old-Friendship. I liked how assets could be intangible things as well. After going through the creation process, there are still blank spots on the sheet. Advancement points would need to be earned, but I had to look up faction and determination. Each character starts with one determination and can earn more during play. Factions are specialty groups like the Bene Gesserit or the Spacing Guild. So basically the character is done. Here is both the House and Character Sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since the game was recently released I did not have any additional supplements to pull character information from. However I did have the core rulebook errata with me. The setup for the rules and character creation was a vast improvement from Star Trek Adventures, but still had a few stumbling blocks. I would have loved to have an experienced GM to answer questions about setting up talents and drives. For some of the talents I had to look at the examples in the back of the book. The overall building process was much easier than it was in Star Trek Adventures. I’d really like to see how this game stacks up in actual play.

I also liked that Dune had a character advancement system and it made sense. If you had difficulty in a task, you earned points towards advancement. I had some friends state their displeasure in a character advancement system in STA. Characters in the show grow on screen, they should do the same in the game.

Additional Notes:

There has already been a TON of characters posted on the RPG.net message board or found with the social media hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge. I was entering in so many links to the Character Creation Page that I almost rand out of time to get my first character done. Again if you have a link and I haven’t posted it yet, please email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com and thank you for participating. I hope you are having fun with this.

Also the thread on the RPG.net forum has been named a 100 Staff Pick. So the thread is getting a lot of attention.

Coming Up Next:

Wendy’s Feast of Legends