Category: Science Fiction

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.

Here is my entry for Day 31 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’ll be using a game that I picked up at a thrift store. Iron Kingdoms Full Metal Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I had never heard of this game before I had found it. On the surface it appeared to be a store brand version of a steampunk Warhammer 40K RPG, but who ever owned this previously must have loved the rules. The book was so worn from use that I’m afraid that pages were going to start falling out if I’m not careful. There were also stick on tabs on various pages to easily pull up different rules. This was a table copy for this game and very well loved. So let’s see how it looks when I dive in for the first time trying to make a character.

This hardbound book was published by Privateer Press in 2012. It has 359 pages with an ISBN number of 978-1-933362-89-2. Iron Kingdoms was created by Brian Snoddy and Matthew D. Wilson. The fist 100 or so pages covers the history of the world that this game is set in. Basically it contains steam-powered machines, magic, various races, alchemy and lots of dangerous guns. The artwork shows a world filled with dirt, soot and ash.

The character creation chapter starts on page 102. It describes the primary and secondary stats for the character. The primary stat of Physique (PHY) describes the physical aspects of the character with the secondary stats of Speed (SPD) and Strength (STR). The second primary stat of Agility (AGL) covers the reflexes and nimbleness with the secondary stats of Poise (POI) aka hand-eye coordination and dexterity and Prowess (PRW) aka grace and balance. The last primary stat is Intellect (INT) which includes wits, deduction and speed of thought with the secondary skills of Arcane (ARC) aka magical power and Perception (PER). There are also several derived stats of Defense (DEF), Initiative, Armor (ARM), Willpower (WILL). There is also definitions of MAT (Melee Attack) and RAT (Ranged Attack), the Life Spiral (aka health), Abilities (things the character knows how to do which do not increase in level), Connections and Skills (things the character knows how to do that can increase in level).

The Character Creation steps are listed on page 107. They are 1- Pick a race, 2- Pick an archetype, 3-Select two starting careers, 4- Increase the stats and 5- Finishing touches.

The races available for the first step that are listed in the core book include Human, Dwarf, Gobber (aka Goblins), Iosan (they look like gold skinned elves), Nyss (they look like pale elves), Ogrun (aka Ogres) and Trollkin (aka Trolls). As much as I’d love to explore some of the unique races in this book, I’m trying to play catch up with the challenge so I’m going to go with a simple Human to see how a basic race is presented. The race determines the starting stats, which I wrote down. It also details what possible archetypes are available to that race, languages, height and weight and additional characteristics (which bumped up some of the stat values).

The archetypes listed for the second step are Gifted, Intellectual, Mighty and Skilled. Each archetype has a series of benefits that are awarded when selected. One is automatic, the other is selected from a list of available feats and advantages. I picked Mighty and Back Swing. I guess I’m leaning towards a fighter character (obviously I may have picked different if I was creating in a group for a party).

Step three is to pick not just one, but two careers. This would provide the character with a set of skills and abilities. Some careers have prerequisites such as race or archetypes. There are 28 different careers so I’m not going to list them all. They were all very dark steampunkish in nature. Some of these were very close in nature that trying to decide which two to select was a little hard. This is where having other party members might have helped. I knew that I wanted to have this character be some sort of fighter, but which one and what to pair with it? After going through them several times I think I settled on two of them. The Aristocrat (basically a member of high society within the Iron Kingdoms) and a Bounty Hunter. This character is turning out to be someone who was raised with a silver spoon but left that lifestyle (probably upsetting his family in the process) to forge his own path out in the world. Why not. I wrote down what was earned from the two careers on my notes.

Now the book leads us to step four, Increase Stats. On page 150 it states that I have 3 advancement points to the primary or secondary stats. So far I don’t know how the RPG system works, so I just picked three secondary stats and increased them. Now that these numbers are determined, I’m instructed to fill out the life spiral to match the stat numbers by blocking out the excess numbers not used.

Last step is step five, the finishing touches. This deals with party setup (um… OK) and purchasing additional equipment to go with the starting assets from the career choices (only gold crowns for the two I selected). The money is to be used for weapons and armor as there is a basic set of adventurers equipment that each character is assumed to have and doesn’t need to be noted on the character sheet. Even thought it wasn’t listed, I would assume that the character name and background would have been selected here as well. In the Bounty Hunting world he’s known as the Back Adder (yea, I’m being inspired here) those in more polite circles might know him as Sir Edvard Blaccadicus. I still had to do some filling in of the character sheet but there were still a lot of blank spaces. I’m done, here is the scan.

Afterthoughts:

Creation wasn’t too bad, but seemed to be lacking a few steps to make sure that all the “T’s” were crossed and “I’s” were dotted. They could have also used some additional “see page xx for more information” sections. While they did a good job of explaining the stats, I wish that I could have quickly found the “this is how the system works” section. With how the book was starting to come apart I didn’t want to do too many page flips. There were some missing sections on my character sheet. What is social stats? Feat points? I’m sure I could have spent some time digging through the book, but I was done by that point.

While this was an interesting experience, I don’t see myself playing this game. I don’t even know of anyone else who actually owns this game.

Additional Notes:

After I had posted my character for Mazes and Minotaurs on one of the RPG message boards, someone responded. They told me how much they liked the post and wanted to try the game out themselves, but then they asked why I gave a character in a Greek inspired universe a Roman name. I hadn’t even realized that I had done that. The only thing I could chalk this up to is how exhausted I’ve been lately. 2025 has not been a good year so far, so I won’t miss it when it’s gone.

If you’ve stuck with me through these challenging times, thank you. I really appreciate the readers of my blog. Especially those who have contacted me, interacted with me on social media or just joined the conversation on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. I’ll leave my final thoughts for the after-action report, but I wanted to make sure you all heard a thank you from me for being a light in this dark time.

One last note, I was talking with my wife about this while we were driving around. In the future I’m going to try to make the last character of the challenge from a system that is easy to use. This way I’m not looking at a daunting task to wrap up the month.

Coming Up Next:

The real After-Action Report for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge

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.

Day 26 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’ll be using a roleplaying game I didn’t know existed until just recently, The Strange. This book was written by Bruce R. Cordell and Monte Cook and published in 2014 by Monte Cook Games. I had picked it up at the 2024 SaltCON-Spring. It wasn’t the first book that I owned from this game, the supplement The Strange In Translation: The Strange Character Options. was sent to me when I was still enrolled in the Random RPG Book Club.

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.

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.

The Day 18 entry for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge will come from Traveller: The New Era (I wonder if that title was inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation?) I had won an online auction that had a ton of dead tree books for this game last year, so I thought that I’d use it for the challenge. I recall seeing a lot of ads and articles for this game when I picked up the Challenge Magazines (there were a lot of good Star Trek and Star Wars RPG articles within the issues). This game was originally published by Game Designers Workshop, but is currently being sold on DriveThruRPG by Far Future Enterprises.

For a game that I’ve never played, I sure do pick up a lot of Traveller products. I remember the original game being advertised back in my early D&D days. When I’ve posted Traveller characters from past challenges, I notice that the number of visitors to my website spike up. So there is a lot of popularity with this game. My past character entries have included the Classic Traveller, Traveller20, Traveller 2nd Edition and retro clones, such as Cepheus Deluxe. There was even a fantasy version called Swords of Cepheus and a fan made Star Trek adaptation called Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant.

So this game comes with a one-page character sheet and a one-page character generation worksheet. Hopefully this will help with the creation process. The book itself is 384 pages long and I can tell it had been used a lot. There were several highlights that a previous owner had made on certain rules and page numbers. They had even colored in some of the black and white artwork. I haven’t looked at any of the different supplements that came with this core rulebook to see if they have also been highlighted/colored. This is primarily a cold read as I’ve only flipped through the book a few times prior to the challenge.

Note: In the book, the character generation starts on page 15 and it looks like it is in a slightly different order than on the worksheet. For the purpose of this entry, I’m going to follow the worksheet steps.

Going down the character sheet, the first thing to do is pick a name and race. I did read up on the different races earlier today and I think I’ll stick with Human just because I’m still trying to catch up. The name will be Jarl Barkton because it popped up in my head.

Attributes are next on the worksheet. We start with Strength (STR), Agility (AGL), Constitution (CON), Intelligence (INT), Education (EDU) and Charisma. There are columns for roll, mods and final as things may change during the creation process. I’m instructed to roll 2d6-1 and assign as desired. There are two additional attributes of Psionic Strength (PSI) and Social Level (SOC). The PSI is the only entry on the worksheet that has a page number and when I read it, apparently you have to role play the encounter to get your PSI tested, so I’m going to skip it as I’m already getting a mental image of what I want Jarl to be.

Step 4 is the homeworld. The worksheet has several blank spots on it and when I look at the book on page 16 it states that the player or referee can name a starting homeworld that has already been created, or the referee can roll up a homeworld for the character. However, when I went to look at the planets in the core rulebook, the different sectors were all marked as “Referee only, do not share with players” so I guess I am rolling after all. It then took a second to track down the homeworld effects on the character which I added to the worksheet.

The careers are step 5. When I’ve made past characters using the similar systems referenced above, I never know how many four-year career terms I’m supposed to use when making the character. Looking over the careers I’m going to select Army (just because he meets the prerequisites). I stumbled my way through this process and I think I got it right. There are blank sections on the worksheet (Scndry Act is what?). The character did two terms in the Army then one as a Mercenary.

From the careers I wrote down the skills for step 6 the initiative for step 7 and the age for step 8 (17+terms x4). Step 9 was the Jarl’s Hit Capacity per body part, step 10 is the character’s weight, step 11 is the load (carrying capacity) of the character, step 12 is the throw range and step 13 is the unarmed combat damage (all determined by math formulas).

The last step on the worksheet is starting money. You multiply the character’s SOC by the tech level for each term (three in this case) so 1,500 credits.

Well the worksheet is done and I did have to refer to the book quite a few times to get clarification. I didn’t come up with any backgrounds for the three contacts. As I was looking for the equipment I stumbled across the military academy section (Jarl did become a commissioned officer and was promoted several times) but it looks like he didn’t meet the prerequisites so… never mind. And actually I’m going to skip the equipment for now because 1- I need to wrap things up and 2- I would have heavily consulted with an experienced referee to see what type of campaign this would be. I’m going to go with the assumption that Jarl is the hired gun who is protecting the exploration team that I created in my earlier Traveller 2nd Edition and Stars Without Number challenge entries. I transferred what information I did have over to the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I really like the character generation worksheet. It’s all on one page. The only thing I wish they had added was the page numbers in the core book so I could quickly find the additional information that I may have wanted.

Some of the skills listed in the careers didn’t have skill descriptions that I could find (Determination, Spacehand were two I wanted to know more about). This was frustrating as I needed to know more about them to select or increase. Oh, I found out while transfering the data from the worksheet to the character sheet that determination and spacehand were skill clusters that I could have selected something specific in. Too late now.

While this was an interesting dip into the pool and I did read some of the game lore that was in the book (and there was a lot), I really don’t know if I’d play this game. I wouldn’t turn down an offer, but if anyone is going to have a game going, I’m expecting it to be the latest version of the Traveller RPG series.

Additional Notes:

Narak on BlueSky had created an entry using the Teenagers from Outer Space RPG. I got into a discussion with this person since I had used this system in last year’s challenge. They said “It seems like it be a great game to bust out for a silly gamenight, maybe between story arc of a serious campaign. It was fun lightweight character to build in any case! Kind of a less random, less shameful Maid RPG.” I had never heard of Maid RPG. Should I look in on it? Or is it something that I should avoid?

Coming Up Next:

OGL Wild West

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 14 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’m using a game that I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. The Stars Without Number Revised Edition by Sine Nomine Publishing. This is an OSR D20 based science fiction RPG that has spawned several other “Without Number” type games such as Worlds (fantasy) and Cities (Cyberpunk). The game allowed for third-party publishers to produce their own adventures and supplements on DriveThruRPG. I had picked up this game in one of the bundle sales.

This appears to be a sandbox style game where the GM can select the type of science fiction universe they wish to run. Mechs, AI, rebels, explorers, etc. There is an in-game universe where it is the year 3200 and humanity lives on different planets scattered across the stars but I don’t think that would stop the GM from adapting it into a campaign they would want to run.

The character sheet is only one page. The PDF file is 325 pages long with the character creation summary located on page 4. Steps 1 and 2 deal with attributes. Steps 3 is for selecting background. Steps 4 and 5 deal with skills. A class is selected in step 6 and a foci (side talents) are selected in step 7. Step 8 deals with aliens or AI characters (if used in the game). Step 9 deals with non-psyching skills that reflect outside interests and step 10 deals with any psychic capabilities if present. Steps 11 and 12 deal with hit points and attack bonuses. Equipment and armor are covered in steps 13 through 16. Step 17 deals with savings throws and the final step covers the character name and goal. That’s an interesting breakdown of the character creation steps. Let’s see how they hold up for a first time attempt.

If you need a character quick, there is a Quick Character Creation chart on page 26. But I will not be using that for this challenge entry.

Being an OSR inspired game, the six attributes are determined by a 3d6 roll and assign as desired. The player then has an option to change one attribute to a 14 to ensure that they have at least one good one. There is also an option to take a pre-determined set of numbers, but if you’ve been reading my past blog entries, you know that I’ll want to roll some dice. Before rolling, I looked over the character options and I think I’m going to follow up on my Traveller character that I created earlier in the challenge. That character was a scientist in an exploration group, this character will be a medic/doctor type person. I generated the attributes and wrote down the modifiers.

With the background you can choose or roll for it. The book describes this as something that your character did before they started the adventure. Each background provided a list of skills that are provided. A 0-level skill is one that the character has a basic competence in and thus doesn’t incur the -1 untrained penalty to skill rolls. The chapter also advises the player to pick their homeworld and note down why they left. So my unnamed doctor dude selected the background of Physician on the colony planet of Orton III. He was training to be a full blown doctor until he was accused of a crime by a rival, one he didn’t commit, but didn’t have the clout the rival had to prove it. I wrote down the skills provided from the background.

For the class, I picked Expert as it sounded like something a doctor would be. I wrote down the additional skill, rolled the hit points and attack bonus (what little there was of it). As for the Focus, this is an additional knack that the heroes have in the game. Something that makes them stand out from the standard NPCs. Looking through the list I picked Wanderer since he had to leave his colony world. I wrote down the skill and bonuses it provided. Next the book instructed me to pick a non-psychic skill to represent an outside interest. Being on a colony world he had to know how to shoot since there were predators around. I also rolled the hit points as described in the class.

With the final touches I picked a name for this wandering doctor from a random name generator of Zan Camrin. On page 25 there are equipment packages ready to go for new characters. This sounded faster than trying to pick and choose the equipment. I wrote these down and wrote down the Armor Class and damage from the laser pistol. I also wrote down the saving throw details for the character and decided it was time to transfer everything over to the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I don’t know if it was the authors intention, but I was getting a lot of Firefly vibes from reading the rules for this game. I know it’s not just limited to that, but I could see myself running a Firefly campaign using Stars Without Number.

I was also getting a Traveller meets D20 vibe as well when looking at the character backgrounds with the growth and learning tables. There were also chapters on creating planets and sectors like I had seen in some Traveller publications.

The character sheet has no spots for regular equipment. Sure there are places for weapons, armor and “readied items” that I assumed was for stuff in hand. For the purpose of the sheet, I used the section as a regular equipment list.

Seeing how many third-party publishers there were for Stars Without Number, I wondered if I could homebrew some stuff for this and actually get paid for it? I may have to look more in on this.

Additional Notes:

I’m really enjoying the challenge entries that I’ve seen on the TardisCaptain discord, various social media sites and on the three big RPG message boards. It has been keeping me inspired to continue on despite how far behind real life had placed me in.

Coming Up Next:

Shadow Ops

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