Category: Role Playing Games

Welcome to Day 20 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using the Shadowrun Anarchy Alternate Ruleset. I picked up this book from a gaming swap meet at SaltCON last spring for a decent price and decided to use it for the challenge. I have a Shadowrun character from the first edition of the game. I don’t recall very much about that game. Back in the early 90’s the cyberpunk genre was all the rage in gaming and I think the gaming group was just trying out different versions. I know we played the original Cyberpunk quite a bit.

Shadowrun Anarchy was published by Catalyst Game Labs in 2016 and I had never heard of it before I saw the book. The hardbound book has 213 pages and the ISBN number is 978-1-941582-19-0 and had an original cover price of $39.99. Character creation starts on page 61 and there is a one page character sheet.

The first step is to create a character theme. I looked over the sample characters given and elected to go with another Street Samurai that is cybernetically enhanced. He was taken in by an orphanage at a young age and never knew his parents (they could be a plot point to re-appear in a future session). This orphanage trained kids to become adults that would help protect the neighborhood from different street gangs and corporate thugs. So he has a strong sense of community. I’m instructed to create a character name, which will be Spike. The last item in this step is to create some Tags for the character. One or two word descriptions. I selected: Human, Tough, Protective and Street Life.

Step two is to determine the game level. This is done by the player group and not the GM apparently. The decision will determine the character creation stats and range from Gang-level game to Prime-runner game. As a committee of one, I selected the lowest at Gang-level. This gives me 12 attribute points, 10 skill points, 6 shadow amps, 2 weapons and some gear.

Step three is to choose the metatype (aka race). I already had selected human which gives me +1 edge and +1 skill point.

The next step is to determine if your character is awakened or emerged. Basically does the character have magical abilities or the capability to enter the matrix (Shadowrun’s internet) with just your mind. Spike will not have either of these items.

On step five we assign our attribute points. The attributes are Strength, Agility, Willpower, Logic and Charisma. Each starts with one point and I have the 12 to spread around. Now that we have the attributes assigned, some additional stats can be generated such as the Physical Damage Track and the Stun Damage Track (which to appear to function like hit points).

I have 11 skill points to use in step six. There is also a free Knowledge skill that the character has (I selected local neighborhoods to go along with the character concept). Spike fights, Spike shoots and Spike knows how to ride his motorbike to help his neighborhood.

Step seven instructs us to select Spike’s shadow amps These are special powers that enhance the character and I have six points to use. I selected a natural one of Fear (he intimidates people), wired reflexes and cyberarms (both give some bonuses but take two essence.

Next we are instructed to select two positive qualities and one negative quality. I selected Toughness (all damage taken is reduced by 1), Tough as Nails +1 to the Physical Damage Track and Emotional Attachment to the Orphanage organization (they instruct him and he follows those instructions).

The gearing steps are next. Step nine is to assign armor. Since I had an extra shadow amp point left, I used it to get an armored jacket and step ten is to pick Spike’s three weapons. He has a vibrosword, the Browning Ultra-Power Heavy Pistol and HK-227 Submachine Gun. And in the last of the gearing up steps (eleven) is to select other gear. Up to four items of non-combat variety and two contacts. He’s got a Harley-Davidson Scorpion Bike, a commlink, stim patches and a ring that apparently was left with him when the Orphanage found him. As for his contacts, he has the mysterious head of the Orphanage (who seems to be well connected) and the leader of the local street merchants (they are the extra eyes and ears that he depends upon, and in return he helps protect them).

Next we have step twelve where we create cues for the character. These are phrases (quotes basically) that the character might state during gameplay. These sound like the personal quotes from the D6 Star Wars game from WEG or the Values from Star Trek Adventures. I wrote down some, but would probably ask the GM to let me come up with some on the fly while gaming (when inspiration strikes).

Step thirteen instructs us to create a character background. I thought we did that at the first step? I added some personal data (weight, height, etc.) and history (as seen above). The final step is tweaking where you can adjust things now that you have the character down on paper. Does something not look right or needs to be adjusted, do that here.

Afterthoughts:

I like how at the end of the steps it gives you a chance to adjust a few things. I’ve also loved the use of quotes to help define a character. The steps were pretty straight forward. I did have to do a lot of page flipping, but I was able to track some things down. The book did reference the 5th edition Shadowrun core book once to reference additional equipment, but I didn’t really feel like I was missing anything. This sounds like a rules-lite version of the game when I read the core die-rolling process. I’ve been hearing that this game might be played at a local game store or at SaltCON. I may have to check it out.

I don’t know if I’d do any homebrewing for this. The cyberpunk genre, while interesting to play, hasn’t started any creative juices flowing. So that’s more of a me thing than an issue with the game.

Additional Notes:

If you are still reading my posts after twenty days of the Character Creation Challenge, I thank you. I know that some have been entertained by this. Feel free to send me any feedback on the characters or the site in general. I am getting some creative ideas from my attempts (even the unsuccessful ones) and the entries of others. One I’m really intrigued by may even lead to my first homebrewed RPG system.

Coming Up Next:

Night’s Black Agents

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 18 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I elected to use Vintage Space: Retro Disco Sci-Fi Roleplaying. I don’t recall where I read this from, but this game is a retro-clone/refit of the FASA Star Trek RPG with some serial numbers filed off. So I thought I’d check it out and see how it stacks up.

The PDF is 70 pages long and lacks any bookmarks. The character creation process is listed on page six of the index but is found on page 12 of the PDF. There is no character sheet. Because of this I almost dropped the game from my list. But I remembered that in my early years of participating in roleplaying games that I just used a sheet of paper to write my characters down on. So I’ll whip something up on the word processor and see how it turns out.

Generating the character’s attributes is the first step. They are Strength (STR), Endurance (END), Intelligence (INT), Dexterity (DEX), Charisma (CHA) Luck (LUC) and Psychic Potential (PSY). These were the same attributes found in the FASA Star Trek RPG. However instead of using percentage scores, you have attributes plus skill added together for a number to roll under. To generate the attribute scores, some generic guidelines are listed, but on the next page it has the same guidelines adjusted with racial adjustments. So it would make sense to decide which race the character will be first and then follow those guidelines.

The races are Humans, Satora (aka Vulcans), Korrin (aka Andorians), Inush (Tellerites but dog based instead of pigs), Neyokso (aka Caitians) and Takka (an octopus based race that seems to be original). Since there are six of them, I rolled a D6 to randomly select one, which was Satoran. I rolled up the attributes and wrote them down on the home-made character sheet.

Next is the Hit Points. This is equal to your END attribute. Simple enough, I wrote it down.

Now the character is going through the Starfleet…. err…. Star Corps Academy. There I choose a division (aka department) to join which will determine the course of study. Yea pointy ear boy is going to be a member of the science department. I wrote down the skills as instructed.

Now if the character was just starting off as a newly minted Ensign, the training would stop there. While this is tempting, I think I’ll make this guy a Lieutenant who is the Chief Science Officer on a smaller vessel. So he gets to add one rank to any one skill for Lt. (junior grade) and one rank for full Lieutenant.

The next section was a character creation example. It seems to have followed what I read previously except that each skill point meant that I pick a specialty that would match the skill. I went back up through the earlier pages and I didn’t see that mentioned in the rules. I found some listed specialties later in the book. Also in the example is the note that each character gets one passion skill (interests or hobbies). If you use a specialty your character has, you roll 2D20 and take the best roll.

Because this character is Vulc…. Satoran I looked over the Psionic Abilities. Especially since I had a very high roll when generating the PSY score. The racial description stated that Satoran characters have unrestricted access to psychic education and training, but the section on Psionic Abilities states that you lose the Passions skill and one rank of a skill that is gained at the academy. But is that only for Non-Satorans? Would I list all of the psionic skills or just pick a number of them? It states that there are specialties, but again, how many will this character get? Uh, I’ll just note that the character has them.

The book then goes into some of the system explanations (roll a D20 wanting a low roll for success on both skills and savings throws). I finally made it down to the equipment section. The items your character has is dependent upon a requisition clearance level that is rank based, but there is no chart for the clearance levels. Ugh. There are several items listed. I’ll just write down what a Chief of Science who is a Lieutenant would have. I named him Troxtor and took a screen shot of the document.

Afterthoughts:

I mentioned the AI images (you can’t really call it art) in my White Lies 2nd Edition entry. While those looked like paintings with some emotion, the AI images in this publication were very distracting and pulled me away from the text. Once again the eyes were off on quite a few images (pupils of different sizes and looking in different directions, etc.) No image matched the others in a theme. You couldn’t look at multiple images and say “yes these are from the same in-game universe”. At least the White Lies book had some consistency. I think the worse part is how plastic and soulless everything looked. Characters had no emotion, nothing to express more than “I’m just an action figure in a pose”. Even the ships were just jumbles dumped into a pot and poured out into a bowl.

I wonder if this was an early draft? There was some minor errors that an editor would have caught. While I was going through the creation process and reading some of the sections, I got the urge to re-write some sections to make it smoother.

I can see where the FASA Star Trek RPG inspired this system. It’s not a direct descendant of the game that has a cult following, but the DNA is present. I can see where references were pulled from other shows with the serial numbers filled off. I would often say “Oh, those are Klingons from Star Trek and those are Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.” The system itself looks like it could work at the table pretty easy. I wouldn’t mind getting a few friends together just to try it out. I could even lead to some homebrewing. But it needs something more, it needs something to give it the extra kick needed to say “I want to play this game.” Clean up the character creation steps is something that I would recommend for a start. If there is an update or re-write of the game, I’d even pay a few extra bucks just to have a publication with real art that gives flavor to the universe.

Additional Notes:

Wow, just wow. Yesterday when I was checking the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on Mastodon, I came across a post by Lester Smith. He had posted on his blog about his involvement in the 2021 challenge and how it helped him to climb out of a bout of depression. Creating the characters got him back into writing and he has released several new roleplaying games including one called D6xD6 Dungeons. I decided to buy a copy to check it out. Then I started going through his blog. I eventually had to stop myself because I had items that I needed to get done. Mr. Smith had written the first edition of the Dark Conspiracy RPG and contributed to a lot of other works in the gaming industry. Now he is “retired” and just writes the stuff he wants to because he enjoys it. It sounds like a goal of mine. David Gerrold once said that he writes the books he wants to read. We’ll I’d like to get to the same level as Lester Smith and write the games that I’d love to play. I guess I was taken aback by hearing how the Character Creation Challenge had helped someone. It wonder if this is what Jimmy Doohan felt when he had helped save a fans life from suicide. Note, I’m not saying that Mr. Smith was at that level in his issues, but I got the same feelings that Mr. Doohan had when read this blog post.

I started this challenge to have fun and I invited others to participate in that fun. Having fun was the goal. But I should also remember that participating in the group activity called a roleplaying game can be very therapeutic as well. Even just the act of writing, drawing, painting, getting together, etc. for a game would be therapeutic. I guess I’m just awed.

Coming Up Next:

Fantasy Hero

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.

Here we are at Day 13 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today I’ll be using Star Ace originally published by Pacesetter in 1984. Sometime in my gaming past, I had created a character for this game, but I never remember playing it. Perhaps we never got out of session zero where we were getting everything ready. In the post I linked above, I mentioned that the game wasn’t on DriveThruRPG or other sites that I could find. Buying a game that I would probably never play at Ebay prices didn’t make sense to me. A reader sent me a message after that post stating that the PDFs was available on the Paizo website at a reasonable price. So I snagged them. It only has the three books from the boxed set, but it would be enough for me to use in the challenge.

The three books are the Star Team Basic Training Manual, the Star Team Wilderness Briefing Manual and Deuces Wild, an introductory Star Ace adventure. The first two PDFs are kinda bookmarked. They only bookmarked the start of each chapter instead of the contents. But considering that these are scans of the original books, I guess that is more than what we could have received. The character creation process starts on page five of the Basic Training Manual. I’m instructed to use three ten-sided dice and I write my name next to Player on the character sheet.

Next we select a race for the character. I slipped down to the end of the chapter to read the descriptions. Crystal Clones (some sort of human/crystal hybrids) sounded interesting. The Humans (sounds boring). The Kleibor (Large humanoid polar bears with telepathy). Then there is the Traka (an agile cat like race). None of these really knock my socks off. So by a random roll (my decision) this character will be a Traka.

Next, I have to select three skills. Two of them have to match the Order I’ve selected. Uh, I haven’t selected an Order yet (goes and looks up what an Order even is). Hearts, Spades, Diamonds and Clubs (the card suites). OK, but what do they do? Ah, a few pages down finally describes them and they sound like the classes. Spades are the weapon specialists, Heart the techs, Clubs is the noetic skills (mental powers) and Diamond are decoy activities like deception and stealth (and for some reason called ducks). So Diamond it is. And I finally found the skills (I really wish the bookmarks were more precise) and wrote them down.

Now on step four we are finally generating the Basic Ability Scores. Roll 3d10, multiply the sum by 2 and add 20 for results between 26 and 80. Um… OK. I wrote down my results since in step five I assign them to one of the eight abilities. Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Personality, Perception, Willpower, Luck and Stamina. From these scores, other statistics and skill scores are generated (there is a lot of math in this creation process). This actually took us through several short steps.

Step nine is to find the base scores for each skill using the mathematical formula provided in each skill description. Then step ten states “Find the character’s actual scores by adding 15 to the base scores obtained in step 10.” Uh… I hope you mean step 9. Yea, I’m going with that (blasted lack of editing).

In step eleven we select a name (I wish they had given us examples) and a background. I plucked Balkor out of the air. As for his background, since the Star Aces are the Robbin Hoods of their time, yea he joined up because he wanted to steal stuff and give it to the less fortunate.

There is already some basic equipment (weapon, armor, starfighter) on the character sheet. But nothing else is listed in the character creation steps. Going back before the steps started I did see a note that stated that starting characters roll 2d10+10 for their starting chips (money). You also get a kit to a skill that you use. So I’m assuming I have a forging kit and a lockpick kit. None of the other equipment made any sense to my character. Ya know what, I’m tired of sloshing through this, I’m done. Here’s the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since the game is the year 3512, I noticed that the rules didn’t treat humans like they would have been in the 1980s. Longer life span, slightly larger size by a few inches, etc. Too many times I see a game treat humans as they are right now. In a hundred years we should have better ways to stay healthy and expand our life spans.

The character creation process seemed to be all over the place, which was typical from games published in the 80’s. Certain steps were referencing other sections that you hadn’t selected yet. For example, picking skills that would match your Order, but you hadn’t selected an order yet. It made me want to re-write the steps so that everything flowed in order. Another example, the skill descriptions were after the starship descriptions? Personality and Perception both have the abbreviation of PER? (I think Perception is PEN? that shows up in some of the formulas) Who edited this book?

Playing or homebrewing for this game. Likelihood is very low. I wouldn’t turn down a session to try it out (it looked like there was a lot of chart consulting to see what type of results came up from your rolls). If I was really going to play or run a generic sci-fi game, there are a lot more that have caught my eye like Frontier Space or one of the Traveller variants.

Additional Notes:

I’m very thankful that Paizo made this game available on their website, but that site needs a lot of help. There are a lot of links to sections that have nothing listed in them. And when you order PDF copies off of the site, it is like pulling teeth to get the downloads to come through. I’ve never had this happen with other publishers where I’ve purchased directly from them. Not only was I having issues with Star Ace, but when I picked up a charity bundle that contained a lot of books for Pathfinder and Starfinder, I wanted to pull my hair out. I had sent their customer service an email and they responded right away. But when I sent some feedback on the lack of quality on the website, I never received a response. Shrug, oh well.

The past few days have been extremely busy. I wish I had set up a buffer just in case real life issues came up. But I was able to get through it. I’ve already seen one person drop out. If you need to back off but still want to complete the challenge, you can. Some participants would make multiple characters for a familiar system on one day. What ever you need to do, do it. That includes taking care of yourself. This is a project for fun, not an assignment to be graded by a teacher.

Coming Up Next:

Ninjas and Superspies

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.