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.

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

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.

So I had picked up this game from an online auction and it actually arrived before the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge had ended, but I didn’t want to drop any of the scheduled games that I had at the time. So for Day 11 of the 2025 challenge I am using Terra Primate from Eden Studios Inc. This hardbound book was published in 2002 and from my look-through, it has all the hallmarks of a late 90’s early 00’s game. The first Planet of the Apes remake had been released in 2001, so I’m certain the game was released to follow up on that movie.

Terra Primate uses something called the Unisystem which appears to be a generic system that Eden Studios used with several other RPGs they had released. To resolve an action/task the player rolls a d10, adds the character’s attribute and/or skill number to beat a target number set by the Ape Master (aka GM). Sounds simple enough. I had to dig to find this all the way back on page 89.

On to character creation. The game provides us with a two-page character sheet. The character creation process starts on page 21. The book recommends that new players create human characters at the start and after they have been more experienced there are rules for creating ape characters farther back in the book. There was an option to just take one of the template characters (pre-made) and alter them for a game, but that obviously won’t take us through the process. But I was appreciative that the game designers had that available. The six character elements in creation are 1- Character Type (how powerful are the characters), 2- Generating attributes, 3- Select qualities and drawbacks, 4- Select skills, 5- Select powers (if present) and 6- Possessions. The characters are built by spending points and these points were allocated depending upon the character type and any drawbacks selected.

The character types are Pre-Heroic (aka every day person suddenly thrust into a dangerous situation), Heroic (aka the characters are stronger, smarter, more capable than every-day folks) and Powered (aka your characters are practically gods among men). The Ape Master would determine the character types, but since I have no AM for this character, I’m going to go for Pre-Heroic. So the character has 15 points for attributes, 5 points for qualities, can only earn 10 points for drawbacks and 30 points for skills.

The primary attributes in this game are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower. There are secondary attributes that are generated from the primary attributes and they are Life Points, Endurance Points, Speed and Essence Pool (spiritual energy). The point cost for the primary attributes are 1 to 1 up to level 4. Level 5 and 6 cost two points each. 6 is the max that a starting character can have in an attribute. The average rating for a human is 2-3 in each primary attribute. I’m starting to get a mental image in my head of what this character is going to be, so I spent the attribute points. The secondary attributes are determined mathematically from the primary attributes, I pulled out the calculator to made sure I had them correct.

Now I have 5 points to select some qualities and earn 10 more points if I select several drawbacks. The book says that I can use the points earned from draw backs on a 1-to-1 basis if I want to earn more qualities. If I want to use these points to increase an attribute, then the cost is the level (example: If I wanted to move my STR to 4 it would cost 4 points). I was able to eek out 9 points in drawbacks. This also generated into the backstory than an Ape General wanted this character dead. In an attempt to kill him, the Ape General ended up killing his family by trapping them in a barn which was then set on fire. I used these points to bump up two primary attributes (which I then had to go back and adjust the secondary attributes) and spent the remaining points on qualities for this farmer turned human rebel in the Ape Kingdom.

Now we move onto skills for our unnamed farmer turned rebel. I found it easier to go and write down the skills I thought is farmer turned rebel would have and then decided how many points to put into each skill.

The section on possessions says you just own stuff. So I’ll write down some basic items and move onto finishing touches. This included a name (uh…. random name generator says Caleb) and appearance (I’m going to imagine Captain Pike on his ranch before he shaved) and age (25 works for me). I then transferred from my notes to the character sheet and scanned it.

Afterthoughts:

During creation I was really reminded of the time I attempted to make a GURPs 4th Edition character in a past challenge. I didn’t really like that process trying to pick this and that and I was getting the same feeling here. If you like making characters in GURPs, you might like this Unisystem. While it might make it easier to homebrew stats for a character from another source (book, comic, show, etc.) I find it clunky when trying to create an original character. I’m not a big fan of min/maxing.

When it came time to pick the qualities and drawbacks they didn’t have a master list in the chapter with the descriptions. For some reason it was all the way at the back.

In the Ape Master section it left the world pretty open for the AM to select. This could be straight up Planet of the Apes (that is what I was using for the above character), but the Apes could have been in modern society, suddenly appeared from another dimension or a host of other ideas.

While the character creation system didn’t push me into tho no category when it came to playing/homebrewing for this game, there are too many other systems out there that would probably scratch the itch of playing a Planet of the Apes inspired game.

Additional Notes:

I’ve been enjoying the various entries into the challenge that I’ve seen on both social media and on the three big message boards. If I’m missing a blog, message board or another location, please let me know about it.

Coming Up Next:

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

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 10 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I will be using the Cowboy Bebop inspired RPG, See You, Space Cowboy… by Tidal Wave Games. They describe this as a scifi space bounty hunter jazz fusion roleplaying game. The credits actually state that this is the 0th Edition, 3rd Printing. Interesting.

Now there is an official Cowboy Bebop RPG that I had backed on Kickstarter. I had used it in a previous Character Creation Challenge and wrote a review that you can read here. Spoiler alert, I did not like that system. I think that is why when I saw an indy game for this anime with the serial numbers filed off (and on sale at the time) I had to pick it up from DriveThruRPG. I had really enjoyed both the anime and the live-action series and thought it would make for an excellent RPG world to play in. Let’s see if this publication is much better than the official game.

The character creation section immediately starts on page 2 and the rules state that the creation is part of the game itself and should be done with the other party members in session 0. There they will create a group of Outlaws (this game’s term for the bounty hunters) with the Bandleader (aka GM) with a shared backstory. Since I’m doing this solo for the challenge, I’ll assume that the other “players” have set up characters that go along with mine. The first step is to come up with a name. And the book provides a d100 table of names if you can’t come up with one on your own. I’m game. Oh, it has options for First Name, Last Name and Middle Name or Pseudonym. I’m going to roll twice first and see what we’ve been given: 43 gives me Mortimer and 96 gives me Point. I’m going to keep it because it seems like a pun name. He’ll be Mort to his friends, but when he’s being serious, he’s Mortimer Point. Please tell me you see the pun?

Traits, the traits listed in this game are Muscles, Moves, Brains and Cool. The rules say they are each associated with a Break. This is a specific action the character can take if I’m reading this correctly. Think of Task = Break where you roll if there is a chance of failure. Each attribute is represented by a die from d6 to d12. You assign one per attribute of which I did so.

Next we have the Talents which is something the character can do really well. They are assigned to a trait that most fits them (example: a Lifting talent would fall under Muscles). While there is a list of examples in the book, players are encouraged to come up with their own. These can be specific to make the character unique, or general to make the character more versatile. When the character performs a Break where the Talent gets used, they get to roll an extra d4 to add to the roll results. The rules don’t say if you only get one Talent or do you get a Talent for each Trait. I wish there were some sample characters provided so I could compare. Luckily I was able to track down the discord for the publisher and they confirmed it was one per trait. Having spent way too much time on this step, I picked four from the examples provided.

After getting a few segments on how the rules work we finally get back to the character creation with Bonds. No James, just Bonds. During the pilot episode (is this in session 0?) starting with one of the players, they turn to the player on their right and say how the two character’s know each other. I can see this being good for party dynamic as I’ve played in too many online games where I hardly feel a connection with my fellow players. I’m going to pretend that my friend Dave is to the right and I think of something that connects our two characters. We were in jail together. Yea, that’s the ticket. If Dave agrees, then it’s set in stone.

Next we are told to draw a portrait. This is the first time I’ve actually seen this listed as a step. Yea, there is a spot on most character sheets, but never a step. Since I suck at drawing, I probably would have found a non-AI image on the internet and used that or bribed my kid into drawing one for me.

Money, money, money. Must be funny. In the rich man’s world. Apparently you don’t actually determine how much money your character has now, but it gives the players to determine what the currency is called in the game. I would have thought that the Bandleader/GM would have already come up with that. But it does lead into the next section. Debts & Regrets. Each character has one debt or regret that they must resolve. If they can clear a Debt in the game then their Talent die becomes a d6 instead of a d4. Resolving a Regret would allow the player to choose a Break and make it a Specialty where they succeed at that Break once per session. Once these are both cleared you can retire the character or select an active Goal (something you can fulfill) to be the final character arc before retirement. There is a random table that can be used or players can come up with one of their own. I’m going to roll a random Debt and I got a Space Mafia debt (how are these guys different from the regular Mafia?) Once I’ve taken care of this debt, then I’ll have a Regret added to the character.

Wow, I typed up more than I was expecting on that last segment. But moving on. Wounds is the health of the character. If the Outlaw receives 4 wounds they are in critical condition, another wound after that knocks them out. Then decided during character creation is what Addiction your Outlaw has. The book listed smoking (to give it the feel that we saw in the anime) but says that other vices could be selected. Honestly I can’t think of one right now, but I really dislike smoking, so I’m going to leave this blank right now unless this character actually gets used in a game.

Now the book starts talking about spaceships. The players are asked to come up with the name of their starship and how they acquired it. Do we own it outright or are we making payments on it. While I love starships and will probably enjoy reading this, this segment is for the group dynamic and not the individual character. So I’m going to move to the next chapter.

Gear, finally. Each character can only carry 4 things and has $250 to spend on gear. Actually I need to wrap up so I’m going to just pick four items that I think a gun toting bounty hunter wold have (the other players would have things like the restraints and stuff) and I think it just hit me that I practically made Jayne Cobb from Firefly. I scanned the first character sheet because I filled a lot of stuff in, the second page of the sheet had some kewl items like “Theme Song” and “Favorite Food”, but I hadn’t been instructed to fill those in. So I didn’t scan it.

Afterthoughts:

I really liked the Debt and Regret aspect of the game. It showed why the characters were hunting bounties, how they were not perfect and gave them some advancement without having to worry about experience points.

There were some segments in the book that were very well detailed, and others that could have used some additional information to polish it up. This did give it a little bit of indy charm that I liked, but it was still a little annoying.

I didn’t know what to think of the character sheet. It has lots of space for information (I don’t know why my printer printed it so small) but I just felt like it could have been a little bit better. It lists the things you can do under your Traits, but that is something that you’ll get to know pretty quick so it seemed like wasted space. If I run a one-shot or campaign with this system, I might come up with my own sheet. I’d probably also write up my own step-by-step character creation guide if I was going to run a campaign.

By far, I’d play this more than I’d play the official Cowboy Bebop RPG. With CUSC (the abbreviation they used in the game) I can see how the system can be run and how they kept the feel of the anime in the game without having to use some gawd-awful experimental RPG system that no one understands. I wasn’t getting the mental image that this was Traveller/Star Frontiers for Cowboy Bebop. It actually appeared to be a game for this anime series. Once I understand the CUSC system more, then I can see if my tactical and/or homebrewing brain engages. And the fact that it’s only costs US $5 on DriveThruRPG means that it would be easy to pick up.

Additional Notes:

I feel like I’m eating an elephant one bite at a time. Especially since I’ve had a lot of weird things pop up this month that have sucked away a lot of my time. Yes, I’m still chipping away at this challenge and no I won’t let it beat me.

Another thanks to LexTenebris on Mastodon. He explained that you can make bookmarks in PDFs do not make the file bigger and should not be skipped by publishers. While making an index for the back of the book takes up time, bookmarks can easily be generated. As a consumer, I agree on the bookmarks. But I want to express how grateful that I am when I see an index in a book where I’m trying to look up information.

Coming Up Next:

Terra Primate

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