Category: Science Fiction

The 2016 publication of Metamorphosis Alpha is another game that I picked up in a charity bundle that benefited Doctors Without Borders. This is only the third game that I used (along with The Agency and When The Moon Hangs Low) for the 2023 Character Creation Challenge. There are another 25ish games in the bundle that I could have used this year. I’m certain that I’ll use a couple of them in future challenges.

If this game sounds familiar, it is the predecessor to TSR’s Gamma World. This edition of Metamorphosis Alpha was written by the original designer, James M. Ward and published by Signal Fire Studios.

So the PDF of the core rulebook has 160 pages. The character sheet has two pages. The Character Building steps start on page 19, but I would recommend reading the basic game play chapter (start on page 13 if you are already familiar with roleplaying.

The first thing that needs to be determined is the character’s stock. Are they a pure human, mutated human, mutated animal or mutated plant? The rules state you can choose or roll. Yea, I’m gonna roll. And this guy is going to be a mutated plant. I’m provided the movement stats for someone of this stock and instructed to take physical, mental and plant mutations.

The next step is to determine the traits of the character. Not only is this the talents and training a character may have, but the negative aspects they possess as well. There is a questionnaire provided when building a new character. It then tells you to place that trait in one of five categories. Amazing (which adds 3 to your dice pool when using that trait), Good (+2D), Competent (+1D), Weak (-1D) and Hopeless (-3D). It doesn’t provide a list of possible traits here, but there are some listed in chapter 4. Let me swing down there and find out what they are? I wish they had given us a basic chart to do a quick look and then let me decide which traits I wanted to do a full description read on. I picked out what my plant guy would have both good and bad traits in.

Now we pick our qualities. These are specific actions that you are good (aka a talent) and bad (aka a liability) at. I get 2D of talents and can take 2D of additional liabilities to get 2D more talents. I believe that these are the specialties that are listed under the traits if I’m reading the rules correctly (I had to do a lot of jumping around to make sure).

Finally we are to the mutations. A mutation is beneficial while a defect is not. You start out with 6D of mutations and can take 4D more if you also take 4D of defects. I picked out my mutations I thought would be specific for a walking talking tree.

Next comes equipment. A talking, walking tree with natural weapons starting with equipment? I’m going to go with he’s a primitive and doesn’t have any to start. However a kind woman who he helped gave him a special necklace that he keeps hidden on him. But he has no idea what it does, if it does anything at all. He doesn’t think about this, he only wants to protect the plants that can’t move or speak.

Technically the character is done according to the steps seen on page 19. However I don’t have a name for the character (I called him Spikeleaf) and there are a lot of blank spots on the sheet (initiative, dodge, radiation resistance, wound capacity and fatigue capacity. So I did a search in the PDF and found these items. However some of the descriptions didn’t fully give me the answers (what is my dodge starting at? Just the 2D? If I don’t have a specialty do I not get it?) Ugh, I’m done. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I thought it was interesting that the character sheet had a place for the player’s name, but not a place for the character’s name. But I did like that they had the game basics listed on the second page of the character sheet.

The system itself sounds plausible and usable. With how some of the documentation was a little lacking I probably would have asked quite a few questions to an experienced GM. I also like the world that the game would be taking place in as it sounds interesting. I’m sad that the likely hood of actually playing this game is very little. I don’t know if I’d be able to do any homebrewing for this game until after I’ve played it.

Additional Notes:

I had one reader respond that they had experienced similar issues with the GURPS character creation system that I had. When I talked with a GM who loved running GURPS, he informed me that he used a special program to set up characters and make sure they had all of the many, many items added and set up. While I’m looking forward to the GURPS game at Salt Con, I’m glad that I don’t have to create a character for it.

I had another interesting experience yesterday. While at a massive Seventh Fleet event, one of the members told me that they were reading my blog posts. Wow, thank you. Sometimes when I write these posts out I wonder if anyone is really reading them. So to get some validation made me feel good. Thank you Evelyn.

Coming Up Next:

True 20

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

So I made a Classic Traveller character in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. I recently had a chance to pick up the D20 based Traveller20 (sometimes called T20) in one of the online bundle sales. So let’s see how this stacks up using the D20 RPG system in the Traveller universe.

According to the rules, you will need the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 Players Handbook. In my copy of the T20 PDF there is 435 pages. There are two pages in the character sheet and a single “Prior History Worksheet”. The character creation steps start on page 18. So let’s start.

Besides the standard D&D attributes, there are two additional attributes that are used in T20. Education and Social Standing. Another ability called Psionic Strength is listed on the character sheet, but this isn’t described until chapter 10 (page 186). All of these were common attributes in Classic Traveller as well. The rules state that you roll them as per the standard D20 rules. So I’m going with the 4D6 and drop the lowest.

I thought it was interesting that under races (step two) that they mentioned the various races in the D&D 3.5 PHB and how they could be used, but it wasn’t recommended. I’m going to select the wolf-like Vargr. They look like they would be neat species to play.

Next is to roll what type of homeworld the character came from. This looks interesting. First is the tech level (I rolled a 2, which was Low Technology) which had a Tech Level of 6 (rolled a 3 and added 3, but this TL gives me a -2 to my EDU score). Apparently this homeworld results in the class of Belter or Traveller from being a prohibited class. Shrugs. I rolled for the Starport and ended up with a type C (E was the worse, A the best). Next we need to determine the basic characteristics of the world. I hate just calling it the world (or homeworld) so I’m going to name it Onkin. I’m instructed to roll a 2d6 and got a Ni (Non-Industrial). I wrote down the skills and the one feat that my character gained from growing up on Onkin.

Step three is the class of the character. I selected Mercenary out of the list because it sounded like a good idea. I wrote down the feats, class skills and other details.

Final details, rolled up a height of 150 cm (4’9″). But the weight formula confused me. 46x(1d4) kg? I rolled a 4 so 46×4= 184 kg which is 405 lbs. I know that the Vargr are aliens, but do they have that much weight in a small frame? Um, OK, I think this is wrong. I know math isn’t my strong point but did I read that wrong? Shrugs, moving on.

And in the Traveller tradition, there is a prior history (the mini-game when creating the character). I wonder how they are going to do terms for mercenaries since they are not an organized military force like the Army or Navy? Hey I get to use the special prior history worksheet. Let’s see if it helps. First term, Commando Raid: survived and cash bonus. No rank advancement, commission or bonus XP. Now age 22. Second term, Commando Raid: survived, commissioned (went from Private to 2nd Lieutenant). No bonus XP or bonus cash. Now age 26. Third term, security forces: survived, promoted (now 1st Lieutenant), XP bonus (4,000) but no cash bonus. Did not roll high enough vs the DC9 to get a fourth term. So he musters out. I think I did the mustering out benefits right. It’s by term.

Now this character is at 6th level. Actually, I’m going to scrap all of this and just release him at a 1st level mercenary. I’m at the end of my day and I need to hit the sack. So I’m going to assume that he got some equipment and is out trying to make a name for himself. Speaking of name, the character’s name is Baaken. Yea some spots on the sheet aren’t filled in, but it’s D20 3.5 so you already know the drill. I’ll fill it in before he gets used in a game (if that happens).

Afterthoughts:

I really wish that the PDF core book had been bookmarked. I’ve really grown to use the bookmarks when creating characters. Also I was referred to charts and I had to hunt for it since it was provided on an earlier page.

I don’t know if I’m a fan of the mini-game. Rollplaying the character at 1st level would have been just as enjoyable.

Other than the excess on the character creation, I’d be willing to try a T20 game. Just because I’m a fan of the D20 system.

Additional Notes:

Under a week to go before the end of the challenge. Can you make it to the end?

Coming Up Next:

Star Crawl

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The friend who gave me a bunch of games in 2021 (he was clearing out his shelves) had included R. Talsorian Games Inc. Cyber Generation 2nd Edition along with quite a few others. Because I was using Cyberpunk v3 in 2022, I held off on using Cyber Generation until the 2023 Character Creation Challenge.

There is a single page character sheet. The character creation process starts on page 13 (spoiler hint, there is a full summary on page 85) and is handled in a narrative fashion instead of providing bullet points. You are guided by a character called Morgan Blackhand who is talking to you through a series of electronic communiques trying to keep your young character safe from the Dead Boys and Zombie Girls. The first thing Morgan needs to know is which yogang you belong to. A list of 18 different groups, all with different abilities and specialties. Basically these are the character classes. Looking through all of them, some sounded very interesting, but the one I selected for my character (who I decided is going to be age 16) is an ArcoRunner. If you’ve ever watched the youtube videos of urban explorers sneaking into abandoned buildings and locations, that is what the ArcoRunner is. The rules had me select my name (Side Wire), age and sex. I also filled in my description, the YoGang skill (Tunneling) and I selected the equipment that a member of this YoGang would have.

The next step that Morgan instructs you to do is to run to a safe-house. He provides a hardcopy map and tells you to get going. The Referee is instructed with some basics on how to run the scenario. It appears to be like a funnel that we’ve seen in Dungeon Crawl Classics. If the first character doesn’t make it, the Referee is instructed to have the player start another character that will already be at the safe-house when the other players get there. I read through the instructions for the Referee and I can see how this would set up the tone of the game, but the rules for combat and spotting were pretty simplistic. Probably to get the players in the mood of the dark dystopian world that this is set in.

At the safe-house, Morgan then gives them an assessment to determine their stats. These are INT (Intelligence), REF (Reflexes), COOL (Cool, resistance to stress and presence), TECH (Technical Ability), LUCK (Luck), ATT (Attractiveness), MOVE (Movement), EMP (Empathy, aka Charisma) and BODY (Body Type, aka Strength, Endurance and Constitution). The player is provided with 50 points to allocate between the different stats. Each stat must have a minimum of 2 with 5 being considered an average stat and 8 being really good. I dumped a bunch of points in INT since that was the favored of my YoGang, used very little for ATT and EMP and then averaged out the rest. That was easy.

You have 40 points to spend on various skills. 1 minimum and 8 max. This includes the YoGang skill. I allocated what I thought would be useful for my character.

The next ref opportunity is to run a scenario in the safe-house where all of the players get to know each other. There are a couple of NPCs that can also be used by the ref if needed.

By now I had found the actual character creation summary on page 85. Considering how late it was, I dropped the narrative creation process and just finished out the character. Each character gets $1,000 to shop for equipment at the mall. The rules do state that you get the clothing mentioned in your YoGang description plus the special equipment you already selected. Anything else needs to be purchased.

The last step is to randomly roll for the character’s cyberevolved type. All characters were hit with the carbon plague. This is a type of nanotechnology that is set loose on the population and changes them (those that survived the changes) when they hit the age of 20. Since the PCs are under this age, they may not know what they are going to get. The Referee should be role-playing the emergence of the evolution the characters will go through. Since this is not known to my character, I’m going to leave this section blank on the sheet. Which is posted below.

Afterthoughts:

I loved when slang was used in the text, there was a sidebar (called hypertext) explaining what the slang meant.

I’ve made characters with the narrative style before. I can understand that this can be used to get the player into the feel of the game or even teach them the rules of the game. But I also wish a regular character creation checklist was provided. Later, I realized that this checklist is on the character sheet itself. That made things handy. And even later on page 85 there was a character creation summary. By the time I had found this, I had already read through several chapters.

Additional Notes:

Yes I’m still finding new blogs that are participating in the Character Creation Challenge. The list of links on the challenge page has been updated.

I’ve also been introduced to a game that I may have to put on the list for the 2024 challenge. A game called Straight to VHS. Someone used this as one of their entries on one of the message boards.

Coming Up Next:

Strike! Tactical Combat and Heedless Adventure

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In the 2021 Character Creation Challenge I created characters for two Goblinoid Games systems. Apes Victorious (think Planet of the Apes with the serial numbers filed off) and Starships & Spacemen (think Star Trek with the serial numbers filed off). I was impressed by both works which used OSR style D20 rules for the game. For this year’s challenge, I am using Mutant Future from the same publisher for the Day 12 entry. This was Goblinoid Games entry into the post-apocalyptic genre were you can make characters that are mutated plants, animals or robots.

The character creation steps start on page 10 of the book. The first is to generate the abilities. Mutant Future has the standard six abilities that you find in the OSR except that Wisdom has been replaced with Willpower. According to the conversion guides in the back of the different Goblinoid Game books, the two attributes are the same. As with most OSR style games, I can generate the abilities by 3d6 down the line, 3d6 and select where they go or 4d6 and drop the lowest die. Since I have no Mutant Lord (aka game master) I’m going to go with the later since we haven’t done that in a while. This character, let’s call him Carath, is a mutant human and started with the stats of STR 16, DEX 16, CON 11, INT 10, WILL 12, and CHA 10. I rolled a 5 for the character’s starting hit points.

The next step was to roll for mutations which can be good or bad depending upon the roll. There can be 1d4 physical mutations and 1d4 mental mutations. I ended up with 3 physical mutations and 2 mental mutations. For my physical mutations I rolled Shriek (beneficial, once a day I can let out a horrible sound that will affect everyone in a 10′ radius), Vision Impairment (drawback, not totally blind, but something that effects the eyes. I’m going with severe light sensitivity) and Energy Ray (beneficial, a type of blast of energy that does damage. After rolling, Carath can shoot heat beams). Rolling for the mental mutations I ended up with Know Direction (beneficial, pretty self-explanatory) and Temperature Control (beneficial, since I already have heat ray, let’s stick with the heat theme).

Starting gold is 3d8x10 and I ended up with a total of 140 GP. Carath has studded leather (a workers protective jacket), a shield (it was a piece of industrial steel that he fashioned into a shield) so his starting AC is 3 (after DEX adjustment). For his weapons I selected a war hammer (an industrial tool) and a dagger (an industrial knife). He has a backpack, bedroll, crowbar, flint & steel, trail rations (8 days worth), a waterskin, candles (not a fan of large fires), a large sack and a guard dog named Squire (a faithful companion that Carath had raised from a pup).

Since the savings throws were not filled in yet, I found the section in the book for them and wrote them down. I think this character is done.

Carath was raised in a community of mutants that lived in the various tunnel levels under a heavy industrial complex just outside a ruined city. He was content living in the safety of the undergrounds when a rival (with whom he had argued with the night before) was found murdered. Despite protesting his innocence, Carath was banished from the community. Taking some equipment and his faithful dog, Squire, Carath is now searching for a new home. He has heard rumors of a mutant friendly place called “the Valley”. Is this place real, or just another tale told by the passing merchants. Carath was setting off to find out.

Afterthoughts:

I can see myself playing or running this game. I could even see myself homebrewing for this system. Since it was based off of OSR fantasy, it was pretty simplistic and easy to set up. I was a little surprised that there wasn’t any type of firearms or “modern” armor to select for starting equipment. It felt like I was making a fantasy character. I had to describe some of the items in a post-apocalyptic terms.

I’ve always loved how Goblinoid Games has decorated their character sheets.

Additional Notes:

On one of the RPG message boards, I had a reader respond to my Star Frontiers entry. Apparently they had never heard of the game and was glad to be introduced to it. So I know I’m doing some good out there. I love it when I hear that a player has been introduced to a new game.

Coming Up Next:

Krom am hate you, but me want make Ork! 2nd Edition character

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com with any comments.

Last year in the Character Creation Challenge I had my first opportunity to create a character for the very popular Classic Traveller system. The post generated a lot of traffic and some feedback from fans of that system. During the rest of the year, I catch various sales on DriveThruRPG and one of those sales landed me the Cepheus Deluxe Enhanced Edition from Stelagama Publishing.

What is the difference between Cepheus and Traveller? Traveller is the original game and Cepheus is based off of the System Reference Document (SRD), so essentially a re-write of the rules for some clarification and house-rule additions. It’s kind of like how there is the original B/X Dungeons and Dragons and Basic Fantasy RPG. As I was doing some research on the differences, I came across Timothy S. Brannan’s excellent blog The Other Side where he had recently talked about this very subject.

So on page 9 of the rules it starts talking about the character creation process, but the actual steps start on page 12. Instead of rolling your characteristics, assign these scores to one of the six. 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10. The characteristics are still the same as they are in Traveller. Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence (now abbreviated as INT), Education and Social Standing. I wrote down my selection (and their dice modifiers) on character generation worksheet.

This is a game of skills. Before you started your career at the age of 18 you learned a single skill. I was instructed to select a homeworld and choose one of the skills available from that list. My guy would have grown up on a high-tech core world and learned about computers. This leads us to step three where the character goes through a career. I decided to make this character a scout (I didn’t see anything that was randomly rolled). I elected to increase my Education characteristic and add a skill rank in Survival. I rolled on the career event table and it instructed me to roll a life event. This resulted in a new romantic relationship which generated a contact. Hmm. Interesting. So no mustering out at the end of the first term so the character gains four years to the age of 22.

OK, second term. Two more skills increased and another life event rolled on the career event. My character ended up with cybersurgery getting cr5000 of commonplace cybernetics. I selected a cybernetic eye. Nothing I read stated that the career was done, so I added four more years and went to the third term. Added two more skills and on the career events I rolled up the discovery a new world which got me an extra skill (+1 END) and an extra benefit roll on mustering out. On to the fourth term. One more skills advanced. For the career event I rolled a rescue mission. I had to make a skill roll to see what happened. Failed to rescue, so I gained an enemy. Interesting. Next the 5th with 2 more skills and a career event roll. Another life event which resulted in the character studying and gaining +1 EDU. I’m supposed to roll an aging effect since I’m 34. But I don’t understand the table. It goes from 1 to -6, what am I rolling against?) It says see page 37, but that has nothing on it for aging. Ugh, not a good sign for this system. Do I go onto Term 6 at age 38? I guess I do. One more skills and a career roll. Deep space travel which resulted gaining a skill. Another aging effect in which I still don’t know what to do. Nothing said to stop so 7th and final term on the worksheet. The scout chart shows a bonus skill for science +1. Added a skill and rolled the career chart, exemplary service, gain a DM+1 on one benefit roll.

Ok muster out is where you leave your career and gain stuff before the adventure begins. I see the chart with the scout, but do I gain all of this? The Mustering Out benefits on page 30 were vague. Again I wonder if this book is meant to be used with another set of books? I don’t recall Traveller being this clunky in the character creation. I could have used a good GM helping me along with this character. I just wrote down what I had and put the final character sheet in the scanner.

Afterthoughts:

Was it fate? Today as I was writing up my character, Stellagama Publishing sent me a message that the hardbound POD of Cepheus Deluxe was now available on DriveThruRPG. Veeerrryyyy innnteresting.

I really liked that there was a character creation worksheet for Cepheus Deluxe. When I re-read my Classic Traveller entry in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge, I had commented that I would have created my own worksheet if I was planning to run some people through the character creation process. However the worksheet still had some mistakes on it (when referencing page number for example) which caused some confusion. When I tried to just look at the book, they had charts listed with little definition. For example on page 14 there was a Skills Package chart based upon the campaign style (good idea) but do I automatically get those skills? Or are the skill listed added to the skills list provided with each class? The charts with the class (as well as the master character generation table) mention adding to the characteristics, but it is not listed in the steps. I wonder if this document was written for players already familiar with the Traveller system? The worksheet needs a re-work. I know this character isn’t play ready, but I was frustrated by the time I got to this point.

The system itself sounds pretty straightforward. Roll 2d6 an add bonuses/skills to beat a target number. I’d love to play a session or two to see how this works at the table.

Additional Notes:

So far no feedback on the John Carter of Mars post I made on the Modiphus discord channel. However I did receive another email with a blog participating in the #CharacterCreationChallenge. I’ve added it to the links site on the CCC page.

Coming Up Next:

When The Moon Hangs Low

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