Ignore the 2024 badge, I’ll be picking up my new badge very soon.
It’s time once again for the biggest SaltCON of the year. SaltCON-Spring will be running from February 27 to March 2nd at the Davis Convention Center and I’ve signed up to run four games this year. By running four games I was able to get a ticket for both myself and my geek wife. You can read about my past adventures at SaltCON in my past blog entries. I will be packing my Convention Backpack that I have documented in a previous blog post.
As you can see from the photo above, I’ve signed up to run another one-shot for Star Trek Adventures. Two other games that I will be running are also based off of popular franchises. Doctor Who 2nd Edition and the brand new Planet of the Apes RPG that only Kickstarter backers have. I just created a PotA character in the recent Character Creation Challenge. As for the fourth game that I’m running, well because lots of attendees come to conventions to play games that they don’t normally get a chance to play, I’m running Feast of Legends. Yes, that is the RPG that was used by the fast-food company Wendy’s to advertise their product.
As for the games that I’ve signed up for. Well for the first time I’ll have a chance to try Basic Roleplaying (no I won’t be using the character I made in a recent challenge). Another new system for me will be Pendragon. I don’t know what edition, but I’m assuming it will be the latest. Titans of Atlantis is a system that I’ve never even heard of before. A game master is going to be using the Genesys system to run a TRON RPG. Also on the new game front for me is Curseborn: Ashcan Edition by Onyx Path Publishing. I’ve also signed up for a Star Trek Adventures game run by another GM and a Starfinder game.
My wife has signed up for a Labrynth game, something called Lifewish: Ravenheart, another game called Black Powder and Brimstone and The Electric State. She also signed up to be in two of the games that I am running.
With how this year has been so far, I really hope that I can get a nice relaxing weekend with some dice, some friends and hopefully some good memories. I really could use some of that right now. I’ll have an after-action report when it’s all over.
What should I be on the look out for? Any recommendations for the games I’m going to be playing? This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.
The graphic I commissioned for those who have completed the challenge.
So, I’m sure a few of you are wondering what has happened. Here we are on February 7th and I haven’t finished posted my 31 characters for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Let me just say three words. “Real Life Sucks.”
First, I’m not having serious health issues. I wanted to say that up front so no one would panic. I’m also not losing my job. But some of the job stress has contributed to the perfect-storm of suck that 2025 is handing me right now. The hosting company having two hiccups in January didn’t help. There were also other real life and family duties that required my attention. It has not only affected my challenge entries, but my other relaxation pursuits as well. I think this has only led to some of the stress I’ve been feeling. Make sure you guys are taking care of yourself mentally as well as physically.
I commissioned artist Aurora Stark (yes I’m a proud Papa) to design and draw up the graphic for those of you who have completed all 31 characters. I didn’t want to delay getting it to those who were able to complete the challenge on time. If I haven’t responded to your email/private message, feel free to virtually tap me on the shoulder again as I have two sizes of the graphic to send you.
Aurora Stark does concept art and visual development with her art degree from the University of Utah. They based this design on the old black-and-white art seen while studying my older role-playing game books. It’s a medieval flail with three D20’s spelling out 2025. If you would like to see some of their other artistic examples, or perhaps even inquire with them about commissions, feel free to visit their website at https://aurorastark.art/.
So what is next for me on this project? I will finish the remaining characters as I hate leaving something half-completed. Especially since a friend surprised me with an RPG publication that had recently been my ‘Holy Grail’ of books that I’ve been searching for. I will be making a character for this game and I may need some curries or gazpacho soup to complete it (major hint there folks). When I post them, they will be back-dated to the dates they would have been posted on originally. But, I will post the links on my various social media sites and message boards. Once that is done I will write up a proper post-mortem that I usually post at the end of the challenge. That will not be post-dated, but it will have links to all of my entries along with my thoughts on them.
I’ve also received some KickStarter rewards. I should have some first-look articles posted in the next few weeks. I can’t wait to talk about one that I’ve been waiting for more than a year for. So I do have some articles in the pipeline.
If you are still reading this post, thank you very much for sticking with me. If you participated in the challenge, thank you. If you completed it on time, I hope you take a moment to be proud of your accomplishment. I didn’t make it within the time allotted, but I will complete it to join you guys.
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.
If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.
The original game that I had scheduled for my Day 29 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge was the Sci-Fi game Faster Than Light: Nomad when I had put my list of games together. However, just the other day I attended the Seventh Fleet Admiral’s Banquet where a couple of readers of my blog were in attendance. They greatly shocked me by handing me a gift with Red Dwarf The Roleplaying Game inside. Thank you Rich and Evelyn. I had stated many times in past blog entries that this game had been my ‘holy grail’ of RPGs that I had been trying to find. Sure there were copies on Amazon or Ebay, but they were always outside of my comfortable price range for a game that I’ve only played at a past SaltCON. So the shocked look on my face when I opened up this present was probably priceless. And I really didn’t want to wait a year to make a character since I had a physical book in my hand. So, sorry Faster Than Light: Nomad, I’ll try to fit you into the 2026 challenge.
If you haven’t guessed by now, I am a fan of the BBC sci-fi comedy Red Dwarf. A BIG fan of Red Dwarf. I love how it makes me laugh, I love how the show isn’t too serious. There is a line from the MST3K that says “If you are wondering how he eats and breathes and other science facts. Just repeat to yourself ‘It’s just a show, I should really just relax.'” Red Dwarf is very much like this line. In one of the seasons the space vessel they use, Starbug, and it’s the size of a small vessel. Then in another season the vessel has grown about twice the size. And this is where this RPG comes in. On the back of the RPG book it states “Create your own alternate Red Dwarf dimension and scour the universe in search of adventure, romance and the edible pot noodle.” So you can make any character you want, drop them on your own mining vessel Red Dwarf and have your own comedic adventures. You could have your own last human, a waxdroid, a Dog or a host of other possibilities.
So, enough fan gushing. The roleplaying game? If you read my SaltCON after action report I stated that I thought the system worked really well for a game based off of this series. On page 3 of the book is a quick start guide that covers both character creation and a rules overview. Thank you. Once again I can point to this page and show it to friends and say “this is how you play, do you want to sit at the table and have some laughs?” Basically to complete a task you roll 2D6 and try to get a number under a target number. This number can be determined by adding the character’s attribute and a skill number (and other possibly modifiers). So the better you are with one of your attributes (Agility, Perception, Dexterity, Intelligence, Strength and Willpower) and skills (such a Pilot, Repair, Seduction, Swim, Medicine, or Cool) the more likely that your character will succeed in the task. The GM is referred to as the AI based off of Holly from the show.
As mentioned above on page 3 it lists the Character Creation Overview. And in a case of synchronicity, chapter three of the book covers more details on Character Creation. The first step is to pick a Character Type. This is basically picking what race and style you want to play. The choices for the races are Human (see Lister), Holograms (see Rimmer), Cats aka Felis Sapeins (see The Cat), Dogs, 4000 Series Mechanoids (see Kryten), Hudzen 10 Series Mechanoids, Kinitawowi, Pleasure GELFs (Genetically Engineered Life Forms), Wax Droids, Simulants, Rabbits, Rats & Mice and Iguanas. As you can probably tell, there are a variety of evolved animals to choose from that have been mentioned in the show. One of my kids wanted me to make a Cat character, which was tempting, but I think I’m going to stick with human as I want to make myself into a Red Dwarf character. Each character type also has a special ability and drawback which I wrote down in my notes.
The second step is to distribute 20 points into your character’s abilities. Each race/type has a max number for each ability. Luckily for humans it’s all sixes. I selected the numbers that I wanted to use. From these stats I have some derivative stats of Initiative (who goes first in certain situations), Save (resiliency after taking damage) and Shrug (avoid any damage if it’s under this number).
The third step is to take 30 points and allocate them to different skills. So I looked at the skills that I wanted a younger version of me to have in this alternate Red Dwarf universe and I selected them. No this isn’t the first time I’ve made a character based off of myself in the challenge, but I think this will probably be the most realistic one out of the two.
Our fourth step is to select the Assets (a benefit the character possesses), Liabilities (something that hampers the character) and Behavior Tags (habits the character does that may or may not annoy others). Each Asset has a point value and you buy these points by selecting the Liabilities and Behavior Tags. The first thing I did was look at the Assets to see how many points I may need. Then I selected the appropriate number of Liabilities and Behavior Tags to equal that number of points. In the personality section is the “fill in the blanks”. There were a lot of them that wasn’t equipment so I may have filled in the steps five (fill out vitals) and six (create history and relationships).
OK, time to gear up for the last step. I’m directed to page 55 and there is no cost that I can see. I think, and I may be wrong because this isn’t a serious game, that I just pick some items the character would have. Actually, I’m going to roll with that and put the character sheet in the scanner.
Afterthoughts:
I really liked how they had sprinkled in humor throughout the book. You’d be reading a description about how humans are able to deal with all kinds of psychological trauma that included being able to survive Yanni concert videos.
I have played this at SaltCON, I have many plans for this book in the future.
Additional Notes:
Yea, I know, I’m behind on these. Thank you for going back and reading them. 2025 can die in a fire.
Coming Up Next:
Mazes and Minotaurs
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.
If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.
We are in the home stretch for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using one of my KickStarter rewards with the Planet of the Apes Role Playing Game. I backed at a level where I’ll be getting the physical book when they get it published. But until then, Magnetic Press Play provided a special PDF to the backers so they could see the game now. The PDF of the core rulebook isn’t even available on DriveThruRPG yet. Now I have made some characters previously for games inspired by the Planet of the Apes franchise. In 2021 I made a character for Apes Victorious that I thought was well done so much that I had to do a re-watch of the Planet of the Apes movies. Then earlier in this challenge I made a character for Terra Primate which was… OK.
So, two things I need to say about this game. It’s based off of the PotA movies and TV series from the 60’s and 70’s. Second, the RPG system is a modification of the West End Games D6 system that was used in Star Wars and Ghostbusters. This is called the D6MV (Magnetic Variant). One of the classic attributes, Technical, was removed with the skills moved to Knowledge and Mechanical and a new attribute of Willpower (spirit and mind power) was added. So the current attributes are DEXterity, KNOwledge, MEChanical, PERception, STRength and the aforementioned WILlpower. The skills were also limited to just six per attribute. Also when you roll a pool of D6’s one of them of a different color would be known as the “Irradiated Wild Die” which can provide additional bonuses or boons and can even explode if you roll a 6. So this game felt like I was returning home with how many sessions I played of the D6 Star Wars system.
The first several chapters in the book give a good rundown on how to play the game, a taste of the PotA world (not too much to be overwhelming, but just enough to wet the appetite), and information on the templates used in character creation. The actual steps to create a character are listed on page 106. Step One- choose one of the previously mentioned templates. The book highly recommends that the players make an ape character for the first games. There are information on the various humans and mutant characters that could also be created with additional supplements on the way. After reading through them, I wanted to make one of the Chimpanzees. Specifically an Ape Scientist named Flint. This provided some information on the character such as a Memento (a special piece of equipment that provides a bonus), regular starting equipment and the attributes.
The second step is to select the Character Persona which includes a Quirk, Remarkable Ability and Motive. There is a D66 quirks table on pages 108-9 where you can randomly roll for one. The one that came up is Paranoid. Hmmm…. perhaps Flint had discovered something that would be shocking and is worried that the Orangutans will find out that he knows. By taking a Quirk, I can also select a Remarkable Ability from the next list. I selected Lucky which would allow me to re-roll a 1 on an Irradiated Wild Die. It was probably by luck that Flint found out this deep secret. The Motive is a driving force for the character and is also randomly rolled by a D66. This came up as Selfish. I… don’t know how to fold that into the character yet, but perhaps it would come up in play.
Our third step is to select Flint’s skills. Each new character has 7D to distribute among the different skills with a max of 2D in any one skill. After I picked these the next step was to calculate the SRP defenses. This is the Surprised Defense, Readied Defense and Psyche Defense. These are generated by a mathematical formula based on other stats. I wrote them down on the sheet.
Step five is the fine details. It references the quirk and motives. This is also where the character’s appearance is written down with a random D6 resulting in Bulky. Interesting. Step six is the “time to get connected” step where the backstory of how the different characters in the party connected with each other. As I have no other characters to connect, I tried to ask the voices in my head and several of them talked about how it was time to go to bed. So I’ll skip this part. I think I’m done so I’ll scan the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
While reading through the PDF during some down time I found a major printing error. So much so that I had to make a screen shot and send it to the publisher. I hope they can correct it in time before the physical publishing goes into effect.
Reading the book, I really wanted to play and run this game. In fact, I am. I’m going to be running the quick start adventure at SaltCON spring in a few weeks.
Additional Notes:
I had one reader respond to my entry of For Gold & Glory where I talked about meeting the minimum requirements for the Illusionist. Apparently the character would have had to meet both requirements listed. Another reader wanted to hear more about a possible Rome inspired campaign, which I’ll admit is pretty tempting. And yet another reader (sorry there were quite a few of you and I’m trying to churn these last posts out as quickly as possible) liked how FG&G used the alternate skill rules that were introduced in AD&D 2nd Edition.
And one last feedback note that I received on The Strange (since I don’t want to seem like I’m beating up on them). I had even more “yea I also had major issues with character creation from this publisher” in a Old Gods of Appalachia game (using the same Cypher System) where it took them 2.5 gaming sessions to make their characters. Yikes!!!!
Coming Up Next:
You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to say this. Red Dwarf The Roleplaying Game
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.
If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.
The For Gold & Glory PDF is 384 pages long and was edited by Justen Brown. This is version 2.0.1 of this game that was released in June 2016. The armor class is given in descending values and uses THAC0. The character sheet is two pages long and the character creation process starts on page 6.
Being a D20 based game it has the standard ability scores of STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS and CHA. The first step listed is generating the ability scores. There are four methods listed. Traditional (roll 3d6 in order), Contemporary (4d6 and drop the lowest number then assign to attribute). New Age (roll 4d4+2 six times and assign) I wonder if I need to be playing Yanni if I do this one? Then there is a Points System for Method IV. Characters have 60+4d4 points to assign to their abilities. I’m not a fan of the points system in character creation, but I am interested in trying the New Age method that I’ve never seen or tried before. So let’s see what we get with that. Interesting, nothing was below 12 and nothing above a 14 by the time I had generated the stats. I didn’t have any class in mind when I started rolling as I wanted to see if the dice would lead me in one direction. The AD&D 2nd edition character was a wizard. I wanted to make an Illusionist, but even with any racial ability modifiers I didn’t think that I’d meet the minimum requirements (see afterthoughts below). So I selected a Human Cleric. Which is also the 2nd and 3rd steps in the character creation process. I wrote down the appropriate languages, THAC0, savings throws and other information provided so far. As a new cleric they automatically get a wooden holy symbol for equipment.
The fourth step is to select an alignment. This book uses the nine alignments from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil. I didn’t find anything about pantheons within these pages, but I would assume that this unnamed character would match his alignment to his deity. Plucking something out of the air the deity is going to be Apollo (a god of travel according to one of my quick internet searches) and the alignment is going to be Neutral Good. Since it seems like this is turning into a Roman campaign, I pulled up a random name generator for ancient Roman names and selected Marcus Dexsius Arcavius.
Steps five and six are to choose the skills of Marcus. At first level there are a series of skill points for combat skills. A Cleric has 2 points. According to the rules, I can pick two weapons, or I can choose a weapon group for 2 points that would give Marcus a proficiency in all the weapons listed for that class on Table 5.2 on page 31. The Club Class gives him training in Club, Morning Star and War Hammer. I’m going to go with that one. If the character had 3 combat skill points, he could have chosen a weapon by type (slashing, bludgeoning or piercing). But only the Warrior classes have 4 combat skill points. Additional skill points can be earned when the character reaches higher levels. The fighters also had access to buy combat methods like hurled weapon, brawling, shield bash or dual-weapon.
With the non-combat skills, a character rolls a d20 against their ability score (and adjusts it by any bonus or penalties from that ability score) and if the roll is equal or less then the character succeeds in the task. In the character generation process. As a a member of the Priest classes, Marcus has 4 starting skill points and gets one every 3rd level advancement. Marcus also gets a pre-game trade skill that they performed before starting their life as an adventurer. For this, I selected Brewing that he learned from his father before he entered the priesthood of Apollo. I picked the other four skills that I thought this character would know.
Equipment is usually the end of the character creation process. I made sure to get the starting money right after messing up on my Old School Essentials entry I made sure to roll 2d6x10 for this priest (I rolled 70 GP). There was a special rule that once I was done picking equipment that he was only allowed to keep 1d3 GP. The rest must be donated to the church. I wonder how this affects finding treasure? The book listed standard equipment first so I scrolled down to weapons and armor since those were usually the most expensive.
I realized that the Turn Undead and Spells section were blank, so I found them and filled them in. I think I’m done. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
Reading through the classes I was thinking about making an Illusionist. I don’t think I’ve rolled one up yet. However when I looked at the Specialist Mage section it had conflicting information. The Ability requirement on page 21 was INT 9+, but table 3.10 (specialist wizard restrictions) on the same page showed a minimum score of 16 DEX. So I abandoned that idea and chose another class.
The combat skills were interesting to read. I don’t recall if I saw these in AD&D 2nd edition. It’s been so long since I’ve actually played that so I don’t recall at all. If I get some time, I’ll have to look it up. But if a helpful reader wants to throw some wisdom my way, I’d be very grateful.
I wish they had put the turning ability with the cleric class description.
I wonder if running a FG&G one-shot at a convention would generate some sign-ups? I’d probably have to make a cheat sheet for the game to place on the table.
Additional Notes:
I had quite a few of you respond to my blog post about failing to make a character for The Strange. Apparently several other people experienced the same level of frustration that I had encountered. I’m glad to know that I wasn’t alone on that.
Coming Up Next:
Planet of the Apes
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.
If you are looking for my 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge after action report with completion graphic, it will be posted when I’m caught up from being put behind by real-life events. If you made it to 31 characters, email me or privately contact me on one of the message boards or social media and I’ll make sure you get the graphic. Thank you for participating.
Today I had an opportunity to take the physical book with me while I was on a road trip with my wife. I figured that while I was away from my computer, I could at least get a little bit of information in my head before creating a character for this game. A game with just the title “The Strange” does very little to tell me what it is. The description on the back of the book helped a little. Basically there is another series of universes with different laws of physics connected by a network called “The Strange”. Humans who are “The Quickened” know of this network and how to travel to other Recursions (aka other realities) where allies and enemies can be found. I started reading at the front of the book and I was amazed. There were two pages at the beginning that were written like a new-employee orientation for a global group called “The Estate” and how they protect the Earth from other Recursions. It also details how they use tools called Cyphers that reminded me of a type of Doctor Who Sonic Screwdriver or a Neuralyzer from the Men In Black series. Then the next two pages gave brief descriptions on how to play the game, what Task Difficulties are and how they work. Then the next four pages past that was a brief description of combat, weapons, special rolls, experience points and even more on Cyphers. With the brief descriptions were page numbers where more detailed information could be found. With just 15 minutes of reading I was able to turn to my wife who was driving and summarize what I had just read. She responded that just from my explanation she could see herself playing this game. This is what I’ve been trying to explain to publishers of roleplaying games. Give us a brief description of how the game runs at the very start and leave the heavy in-universe descriptions for later and your readers will bless you. Just from these ten pages I felt confident enough to try to dive into the character creation that started on page 16.
The first thing that is described is the character stats. These are Might (think health and strength), Speed (which also includes agility), and Intellect (knowledge and personality). Each attribute has two components, a Pool and an Edge. The Pool is is the basic measurement of the attribute with the higher the better. The Edge is…. something. The book says “When something requires you to spend points from a stat Pool, your Edge for that stat reduces the cost.” In the example it talks about a mental blast ability and if it has a cost of 0 then you can use it for free. But if there is a cost you have a finite amount of times you can use that ability. The examples didn’t really help here so I’m just going to go on and pray that the book explains things a little bit better in the next few pages. Next is something called Effort and they sounds like luck or fate points. For a beginning character, you have to spend three points (are these from the pool mentioned above?) in order to apply Effort. I really wish I had a GM familiar with the rules to explain this to me as the book is starting to go off the rails here. Keep it simple guys. (flips a page) Come on, tell me what I need in order to generate my stats for this character (flips another page). OK I guess the Tiers are the equivalent of character levels, everyone starts at Tier 1 (makes sense) and that a Tier 1 character is still a hero that can do more than the average Joe (again that makes sense). Oh come on! I’m three pages after the definitions of the stats with no information on how to generate these stats. They’ve given me averages, but nothing that states what my unnamed glob of clay has right now. There’s text on spending experience and increasing capabilities? OK, I take it back what I said at the beginning, this isn’t an example that I’m going to hold up about how to write an RPG book. (Walks away before I declare that this post is over and that I’ve failed to create a character)
After I returned from getting a drink I sat down again. On page 20 there’s another “To create a character” entry. Ugh, fine. To create a character I have to ad lib a statement of “I am a (fill in an adjective here) (fill in a noun here) who (fill in a verb here).” This is the character’s descriptor The noun is the type (aka Class), the verb is the character’s focus (which is what?). There are three types, Paradox, Spinner and Vector. I’ve been flipping pages all over the place already, let me go find the classes and see what the smeg these are. Ah, vectors are the action-oriented types, the Paradox seems to be the mad scientists, super sorcerers gang and the Spinners are facemen, manipulators, something? However in looking at the descriptions each class has a starting pool for the stats. This would have been good to know 15 pages earlier.
And I just looked at how long this blog post is already. If you are still reading this, bless you. I hope you are not as frustrated as I am. Because I don’t want this to turn into a copy of War and Peace, I’m going to kill it now and declare this a character creation fail. As I was shutting things down (I didn’t fill in anything on the character sheet so I didn’t scan anything) I did find a character creation walkthrough on page 412. GAAAAHHHHH!!!!! With all of the other good “see page xx for more information” side notes that you had for everything else you couldn’t have put something about that in there? Yea, I am so done.
Afterthoughts:
When I first purchased this book at a SaltCON game swap, I thought that it would be just a quick use for the challenge then onto the trade pile. After reading how well the first 10 pages were set up in this publication, I was very tempted to keep it to show as an example of good RPG book writing. But after my attempt to make a character, I’m on the edge on keeping this book or putting it in the trade pile. It seemed to be right there (holds thumb and finger close together) but just couldn’t push it over the edge.
The one thing that I wish the publishers had done in this book was provide a checklist or step-by-step guide to the character creation. I think it would have made the process proceed faster. The book started out so well then suddenly went into overly descriptive mode while trying to create a character which bogged things down. The Strange/Cypher System seems like a simple mechanical system, but the book got too bogged down in trying to teach the game in the character creation chapter. (additional: I did find a walkthrough on page 412 after I had given up on making a character for this system, but it was too late since I needed to move on)
I’ve got an opportunity to play a Cypher System one-shot at SaltCON. I think after I’ve had a chance to play that game I’ll decide if I want to keep the book. I don’t think that I’ll homebrew for The Strange. The Cypher System seems to be a generic sandbox like GURPS and others and I doubt that I’ll homebrew for that either.
Additional Notes:
You’re probably reading this on/after February 1st and wondering where my after action report is. Well if you’ve been a regular reader on my blog, you know that various real-life issues had struck in January causing some delays. I’m still playing catch up and when I have my 31 scheduled characters done, I’ll write up an after-action report. I’ve seen a proof of the 31 characters completion graphic and I’ve sent some requests back to the artists. It will be available soon.
Coming Up Next:
For Gold & Glory
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.
The Day 25 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’m using another GDW game from the 90’s, Twilight: 2000 2nd Edition (2.2 specifically). This is around the same time frame that GDW released Traveller: The New Era, so the character creation also includes a character generation worksheet. 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.
I’m going to be using the steps listed on the worksheet as the book recommends it. On page 16 is the start of the Character Generation process in the book. I’ll be returning to the book when the worksheet fails to provide the proper amount of information. Like the Traveller: TNE worksheet, I wish that page numbers were present.
First item on the sheet is selecting a name. I pulled up a random name generator and selected Blaine Dawson. The second item is the gender and I wrote down male and I selected American for the third step of Nationality. Native Languages and it says “See Army/Nationality/Native Language Table). I wish the PDF had bookmarks but eventually I was able to find it on page 47. Um… wow, it’s broken down by Family, Group and then Language. I’m not certain why. But being an American boy I wrote down Germanic/Anglic/English.
Moving on. Basic attributes. They are Strength, Agility, Constitution, Charisma, Intelligence and Education. Roll 2d6-2 and re-roll any zeroes. I believe that I do this down the line. If the total added together totals less than 30, I can bump it up. Luckily I rolled high enough and I wrote down the numbers in the “roll” column of the worksheet.
Step six on the worksheet just says “Background Skills” with four blank spots with +2 next to it. There is a list under it so I’m assuming that I pick four of these. I picked the four for this character.
And our next step is Careers. There is spots for six different terms and moved back to the book to see if more details were provided. While I’m assuming that this is like Traveler: TNE, I’m double checking. I finally found it on page 30. The first term has a set listing of skills that is provided to the character. After looking them over, I decided that Blaine Dawson was going to be a medic in the US Army. I think I roll a D10 to see if he earns a promotion, which he did not in the first term. I’m not certain how many terms he has to have, but I rolled a 1 to see if war started on his first term so World War III has started. All sequential terms have some additional items since they take place in wartime. This includes an automatic promotion (still in the enlisted ranks). And I found that there is only one more term since war has started. Works for me.
Now there are several rapid fire steps. The Initiative, Rads, Age, Hit Capacity (per body part), Weight, Load, Throw Range and Unarmed Combat Damage. Basically determined by several mathematical formulas later and I had the worksheet filled in.
Equipment. Each character was provided with some basic equipment from their military unit. There is a chance for a vehicle for every three characters in the group (whoops). Then there is some starting money that I can use to finish equipping Sgt. Dawson. I couldn’t find any standard list. So I just started writing down stuff I thought an Army Medic from the US would have. Here’s the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
As I mentioned above, I had played the 1st edition game. I’m not certain how this game compares to that one. I doubt I’ll ever get a chance to try. I did play a one-shot of the latest Twilight 2000 game at a SaltCON in 2023. But I don’t recall much from that event as it seems like just a blur now. I don’t know if I’d ever get a chance to play this game right now.
Additional Notes:
Phil Hatfield on MeWe responded to my GI Joe entry for the Character Creation Challenge with the following.
“I picked this up, as did a good friend of mine. We played it once. I generated a character, he ran it. The game plays “fine”, but it seems like it it just approaching something that could be really cool, but doesn’t quite get there. The biggest issue we experienced was the fact that not a single known Joe was statted. Cobra was, but not the Joes. Oh, eventually they released stats for a dozen or so Joes, but that was many months before that showed up. It was an unfortunate game system. It flirted with “cool”, but just never got there. My buddy picked up every much everything for it, I only got one or two other things for it. Like you, I don’t know and never heard of any other person playing this. You are honestly the first other person I have seen even talk about this.”
Roger B on MeWe responded to Phil.
“I have this at home, this and the Transformers RPG. I’m just intimidated to run it because my friend, who would be a player, is such a bigger Joe fan than me. And I haven’t finished my first pass through the rule book.”
Coming Up Next:
The Strange
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 24 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to be using the original 1st edition of Metamorphosis Alpha. Some sources state that this is the first science fiction roleplaying game. It was originally published by TSR in 1976 and was written by James Ward. I had picked this up in a bundle sale from Goodman Games where they were releasing some new material for this game. The first edition was included in the bundle.
In the original document (the PDF scan provided by Goodman Games had some weird page numbers) the Developing Characters section started on page 9. I’m instructed to roll 3d6 for several abilities down the line. These are Radiation Resistance, Mental Resistance, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength and Leadership Potential (if the character is Human). Since I’m going to make a mutant, I did not roll for this last one. Mutants roll for a physical mutation and a mental mutation. The book instructs me to roll a D4 to see how many mutations the character receives. There were 30 physical mutations and 12 defects (for some reason they were numbered together from 1-42). The total number of both mental mutations and defects came up to 45 (37 and 8 respectively). I’m going to vary from the rules and instead of picking my own mutations, I’m going to randomly roll because I feel that it would have happened that way in the game universe. For physical it was easy, the d4 gave me two mutations to ‘pick’ and I rolled a d30 twice (as long as they didn’t conflict and came up with Gas Generation (um…… no…. don’t say it) and Shapechange (that is how it’s spelled on the list). I rolled a d12 so the GM could pick the one defect and it came up with Near-nearsightedness. For the two mental mutations, had to get a little creative. I used the d30 and a d7 from my Dungeon Crawl Classics Dice Set #7 along with a d6 all rolled at the same time. If the D6 came up with a 5 or 6, then I added the D7 to the D30 for the final number. Yea, I’m probably putting too much thought into this. But for some reason, it seemed fitting. This resulted in Density Control (Others) i.e. I can slow other people down, and Mental Paralysis i.e. I can mentally disrupt the nerve centers of another being causing non-movement. If I do this for more than three melee turns in a row, the target will die. The ‘gm’ rolled a d8 to give the character the mental defect of Multiple Damage. Basically if the character takes any damage it could be doubled or tripled. Ouch.
Then the character development steps just end. The brief description combines both character creation and instructions for the GMs to “set the stage” and running a set of “continuing adventures and experiences”. I continued reading and it went into combat (wow, it looked complicated), random monsters, treasure. Oh, there was an original character sheet on page 29 (of the original document) but I’ve already printed out one that had come with the bundle for first edition. The sample characters shown in the development process don’t have any hit points, but the original character sheet has one. Ah I tracked it down under the Constitution description. Roll a D6 for each point of constitution the character has. And apparently it was explained under the example of a Human type character but not the other character types.
I guess the characters would find equipment in the adventure. Yea, this is really basic. But I have to remember that this was printed in the mid 1976. I’m going to give the character the name of Drixxian. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
In the 70’s several RPGs were written by those in the wargaming community and these rules seemed to follow the same format. Broken down by sections and sub-sections all identified with a letter number combination. It looked very technical, which isn’t a bad thing, but something I’m not use to seeing very often in my RPG books.
The scan provided by Goodman Games was the original text with some changes. If there was new information from an Errata, then there was a side note saying “See page ## for entries on ____”. I can see where Goodman Games was trying to make this a usable document. With how much care they had put here, I wish they had made bookmarks in the PDF.
I was getting the urge to re-write the rules when I see potential, but confusion. But I know it would be redundant since there are other editions already available.
Additional Notes:
So I posted my GI Joe RPG character on the Renegade Game Studios discord server and one of the games writers responded to me in two different posts.
“The art on the cover seems to indicate that it’s either their own “universe” or a comic series recently released.” The universe is based on Hasbro’s evergreen takes on the characters, which is basically “80s unless recently updated”. It primarily draws from the toyline lore, but dips into the various cartoon and comic series.
This is a solid concept and you went through the steps basically correctly, with one big misstep: Your Skills. When you increase an Essence Score, you get Skill Points that you can invest into Skill Ranks. So your Strength 2 means you should have two Skills at d2, or one Skill at d4 (or 2 Conditioning). You do have some Skill Ranks, but they don’t match the Essence Scores they’re tied to, so I’m not sure how you got them.
So apparently I missed a few items and the character of Spacebar should have some additional skills. This made sense because being a member of a special tasks force is usually filled by well-rounded individuals. But I also guess this is why making characters with someone who is familiar with the game would help. However before someone can become familiar with the game, they’d have to do the same thing I’m doing and crack open the book and read through the process. Again I want to say how grateful I am that the people who have worked on these games have responded to my posts. They do clear things up or lead to more insight.
Coming Up Next:
Twilight 2000 2nd 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.
Day 23 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’ll be using the single player espionage roleplaying game called No Day To Die. I picked up this game because I liked the name. It sounds like No One Lives Forever video game or the title of the James Bond film Die Another Day. The book says you need is pen, paper and a deck of playing cards and some imagination. I’ve never been big on solo RPGs, but let’s make a character for this game.
OK, character creation is presented on page 5. Step one- pick a name. Since this is a British secret agent, I went to the random name generator and selected Daniel Knight. Step two is create a prior history. It gave some information on what options could be available, but it provided a random history that could be selected by drawing a card. I’m going to test this out with my 20-in-One Card Deck. The Seven of Clubs gave me the Special Air Service (aka the special forces of the British Army).
Attributes are the next step. These are GRIT (Strength, action, energy and physical skill), WIT (awareness, cleverness, education, social and technical abilities) and HITS (the health of the character). Both WIT and GRIT start out at 5 and I am instructed to draw four cards for both of them. Which ever suite has the most number of drawn cards gets that many additions to the attribute. For GRIT I drew an Ace of Spades, Six of Clubs, Three of Spades and Ten of Spades. Since there are three cards from one suite, GRIT gets +3 points. I drew the Eight of Diamonds, Six of Hearts, Nine of Clubs and Eight of Clubs. So +2 gets added to WIT. Interesting way to do this.
Now we determine the expertise of Agent Knight. Each character has four of them that you can pick from the list or do a random draw (yep, I’m drawing). First is Two of Diamonds, a two is Stunt Driving. The five of Spades selects Seduction (Hey baby….). Seven of Diamonds points to Stealth (sneaky, sneaky). And finally the expertise of Piloting is provided by the Jack of Spades.
Each character has a Flaw. I can pick (heh, no) or randomly pull. The Ace of Hearts says that Agent Knight is addicted to gambling.
Decide Appearance is the next step. I hate coming up with appearances. But I could pull a picture down from the internet. Let’s be inspired by a famous spy song.
Next the book tells me that the agent will be assigned a Concealable Pistol. Then there is a list of standard items that an agent would typically carry (12 items). Then there is a list of possible gadgets, but it says gadgets are whipped up on the spot if you pull a Joker from the deck. So why list it here? The part that confuses me the most is that the character sheet says you only carry a maximum of 4 items. Is this both regular equipment and gadgets? I’m skipping this for now.
Well the next chapter goes into Resolving Situations. It is broken down by the draw of a playing card and looks pretty interesting. I may have to run a solo session later and blog about it. But let’s see if there is anything else left in the character creation. But scanning through the rest of the book there’s nothing left. So I guess he’s done. I transferred everything from my notes to the sheet and put it in the scanner.
Afterthoughts:
For a small publisher, I like how the graphics were done on the character sheet. The paperclip and the fingerprints on the dossier stood out to me.
I thought it was interesting that on the random Expertise list, Stunt Driving was listed twice. I wonder if this was a mistake or intentional. One of the Flaws had “Sick of always handing in his resignation”. I understood all of the other Flaws, but this one confused me (insert Data and Lore meme here).
I am going to run this later for myself. I’ll let you all know how it goes.
Additional Notes:
OK, I fully admit it, I’m bad at math. Stark Maximum on BlueSky pointed out that I had misread the step for starting gold in my Old School Essentials entry. It is 3d6x10 not 3d6x100. That slapped me like someone was hitting me with a trout in a Monty Python sketch. I could have sworn I went back and re-read that when I was confused. I don’t know what I was thinking.
On another note, reading the entries that others have posted on the various blogs, message boards and social media will introduce me to a game that I’ve never heard of. There is an RPG out there called “Teddy Bear Holding a Freaking Machine Gun“????
Coming Up Next:
Metamorphosis Alpha 1e
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.
GI Joe: A Real American Hero is one of the classic 80’s memories that a lot of people my age have. Between the animated series and the Marvel Comics, we ate it up. So when a charity bundle sale came up last year for the new GI Joe RPG, I had to pick it up. This is my day 22 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Now I do have to note that there has been a ton of other entries for the GI Joe franchise that included new TV and Movies, additional comics and other media. While I’ve been aware of these, I haven’t really followed them as much as I would have liked. The art on the cover seems to indicate that it’s either their own “universe” or a comic series recently released.
The PDF file is 354 pages long. The character sheet is two pages long. The Character Creation process starts on page 33. This is a cold read as I’ve not had any chance to look at these rules before hand so be warned.
There are eight steps listed ranging from 0-7. 0- Discuss with your GM & Other players, 1- Character Concept, 2- Set Starting Essences, 3- Select Influences, 4- Choose and Origin, 5- Select a Role, 6- Describe your Character, 7- Form your Squad. (OK, I’m really trying to avoid the Teen Girl Squad joke here)
OK for step 0 I tried to talk with the voices in my head about who would GM and who would play what. But I got everything from silence to curses to responses in a language that I didn’t understand. The description for this step did say that the game could be an 80’s GI Joe cartoon or a gritty modern game or one more focused on Snake Eyes and the ninja clans. While that later one is tempting, I’m going to stick with what I know. This will be a character for the 80’s animated series that is an on-site hacking expert. I guess this also takes care of Step 1, character concept.
So, moving to Step 2, Set Starting Essences. this is the core abilities for the characters. They are Strength, Speed (which also covers balance and reflexes), Smarts and Social (confidence, leadership etc.). The book tells me that I have 12 Essence Points to spend between the four attributes. Luckily the descriptions tell us which types of Essences is good for the type of character that I’m trying to create. I scrolled down and read deeper descriptions on the four Essences and spent my points as I saw fit for the character concept.
Step 3 is Selecting Influences. This is what kind of character I want this to be along with some background information. These will provide some benefits and hang-ups for the character. I’m instructed to pick up to three, but each Influence past the first one will cost a hang-up. I looked over the descriptions of the Influences and selected Gearhead for the first since they had some computer experts listed. The background bond can be randomly rolled on a d12 and it came up with “My speech is peppered with jargon that I rarely take the time to explain.” That sound about right for this type of character. I’ve decided that I’m going to take a second Influence of Greenshirt. This is a person who was a regular member of the military before he got called up to the Joe team. The bond that I rolled was “Someday I will turn my time in G.I. Joe into an anonymous biography.” As for the hang-up (since this is not the first influence), the only one listed was “You have trouble seeing yourself as an equal on your team.” Basically other members of the team can’t lend me an assistance on a skill test unless they also have the Greenshirt influence.
Alright, step 4 is choosing an origin. This appears to be what the character did or learn before he became a member of the GI Joe team. It can affect the character’s starting health, movement, Essence and Skills. I selected Army for my unnamed Joe and wrote down the appropriate details.
Step 5 has me selecting a Role. This is the position that the character fulfills on the Joe team. In this Role is a Role Focus that I must select at 1st level. And from that I noted down the Role Perks, Training and Qualifications. There are also additional Essence Points provided for use. The available roles were Commando, Infantry, Officer, Ranger, Renegade, Technician and Vanguard. I read the description for Technician and yea that was the one I was thinking of for this character.
Describing your character is step 6. This can be distinguishing features, personality, etc. It has a list of adjectives that you can use based off of your Essences. But I’m not really sure what these are for. This currently unnamed Joe is quick and attentive I guess. Gear is mentioned here but it just says you don’t have to buy the gear now as it is provided to you before the start of your mission. Handy, I guess. I think I’m going to pick a code name of Spacebar for this character. I was thinking USB, but that wasn’t really used in the 80s.
Step 7 Form A Squad. OK, I can’t resist. If you haven’t been introduced to Teen Girl Squad from Strongbad, here you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Seriously there would have been some discussion with the other players on who is doing what, how your character’s all know each other and the like. And that’s basically it according to the book for character creation. I transferred what I did have over to the sheets and scanned them. There were still a lot of blank spots on the sheet, but I assumed they would have been filled in during game play.
Afterthoughts:
Not really a concern about the character creation process, but I had to download the PDFs that I had purchased in the charity bundle directly from the vendor’s website. While I did get all of the titles I had purchased, they all had weird PDF file names that were just a series of numbers and letters. I’m certain it had to do with fulfilling my order, but I had to go and rename the core rulebook so I could find it easily when it was time to do this challenge. The only other time I’d had issues downloading my purchases came from Paizo’s poorly run download page. I can understand that some publishers want to save a few bucks by not going through another provider like DriveThruRPG, but at least make the download process easy and non-confusing for your customers. Issues like this make me hesitant to pull the trigger on future purchases.
I think I understand the system. The better at a skill you have, the higher of numbered die you roll.
All members of the GI Joe team had the “Yo, Joe!” battlecry that gave them benefits in game. Considering how much this was used on the show, I’m glad to see it here.
While I may play this at a con, I don’t know if I’d run it or homebrew for it. No one that I’m aware of is playing this. There is also a ton of books already out for this game. While I haven’t had a chance to go through them all yet, it looks like most bases were already covered. Has anyone played this? How did it play at the table?
Additional Notes:
Stark Maximum (no relation) on BlueSky responded in regards to two of my past challenge entries. This first one was from my recent Star Wars Edge of the Empire entry.
“Hey, we both made Star Wars pilots! Of course, mine is from Age of Rebellion, the book of soldiers, rather than Edge of the Empire, the book of smugglers. But it’s cool how that kinda lined up! Maybe they’d be friends, or perhaps rivals.”
“I am not a Doctor Who fan so my knowledge of the series is limited, but I looked up what a Sontaran looked like for context on this post, and now I have a new favorite species of Doctor Who alien.”
Thanks for reading Stark Maximum.
Coming Up Next:
No Day To Die
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.
