Day 10 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge and we are looking at Tales from The Loop: Roleplaying in the ’80s that never was. I was able to pick this book up as one of my thank you gifts from GMing at SaltCON. Three of the games that I’m using for this year’s challenge came from volunteering or connections at that convention. So, thank you to all of those involved and to the contacts that I’ve made.
For those of you who haven’t heard of Tales from the Loop, it’s based off a series of sci-fi paintings done by Swedish artist Simon Stalenhag. These paintings showed life in an alternate timeline 1980’s where robots and weird science was prevalent (usually with lots of kids watching them, hence this is a game about kids in this alternate timeline). These paintings were then put into a book, and eventually the RPG and even a TV series on Amazon. When I had a choice of which RPG book to take as a reward, the allure of gaming in the 80’s appealed to me. This is also one of the many Free League games that I’m using in this year’s challenge. Previously I had created a character for Twilight: 2000 4th Edition.
The hardbound RPG book is published by Free League that also publishes Alien, The One Ring and more. It has 191 pages and was written by Nils Hintze and uses something called the Zero Game Engine. I believe this is the same one that I’ve played when I had a chance to sit at an Alien one-shot at SaltCON. On page 49 it talks about the character creation process where the player makes a Kid. There are fifteen steps in total with the last two done with the group playing at the table.
Step one, selecting the Type of Kid you are playing. This is the class of the character. The options are Bookworm, Computer Geek, Hick, Jock, Popular Kid, Rocker, Troublemaker and Weirdo. Something tells me that I’m going to base most of this character on me in the 80’s. I wasn’t popular, or a jock (not without trying) or a hick. I wasn’t wild enough to be a rocker (but I loved the music). Of the remaining, I think that Computer Geek probably fit the younger me the most. Each Type has a set of key skills and I get to choose something for the following categories. Iconic Item, Problems, Drive, Pride, Relationships to Other Kids, Relationships to NPCs, Anchor and Name. There were examples listed for these categories that I could choose from or come up with something on my own. I wrote down my choices on my notes.
Selecting the age is step two. The book recommends between 10 and 15. I went with the age of 14. I’m also instructed to select my birth-date, so I selected a random one. A few sentences down I discovered that once the character turns 16, they are no longer a Kid within the game and are out.
Step three and we are at the Attributes. There are four of them that include Body, Tech, Heart and Mind and will have a score between 1-5. These represent the number of dice you roll when using the attribute. The number of points to spend per attribute is the character’s age. Every year on their birthday, they get one more point to allocate until they reach the “out-of-game” age of 16. I wonder why 16 is this cut-off age? I could see 17 or definitely 18, but 16? Oh well.
The next step is determining how many luck points the character has. Take the character’s age away from 15 for the total. So in this case he has 1 luck point. Apparently because the older kids are better with their attributes they don’t need the luck as much as the younger kids. When he turns 15, he will have zero luck points.
Skills is next on the list to create the character. “You know, like nunchuck skills, bowhunting skills, computer hacking skills… Girls only want boyfriends who have great skills.” OK, that’s just a quote from Napoleon Dynamite. But it was the first thing that popped into my head when I started reading next item. Each attribute has three skills (some were already listed when I selected the type) and can have a score between 0-5. If the skill can be helpful when I’m rolling the dice vs Trouble, I can add the number of dice listed in the score. I have ten points to allocate between skills. The key skills can have up to 3 points allocated, with other skills capped at a maximum of 1.
The next series of steps I’ve already completed when I selected the character’s type. The Iconic Item (step 6) is the computer. The Problem (step 7) is “The tough guys hit me.” The Drive (step 8) is “I love solving puzzles.” And the Pride (step 9) is “I think I can do anything.”
Steps 10 is about relationships that the character has. With the other characters in the party I selected “We are best friends.” Obviously this step would need to be talked about within the group of players (just in case someone wants to have their characters be siblings). The second one is relationships with NPCs. It had some examples in the book that I wrote down, but as I’m reading the later section on this, it really should be done with the GM who has set up the NPCs. But some of the examples included “The strange scientist, Diane Petersen, is my aunt, but that doesn’t mean I like her.” or “My friend Leeanne told me that strange creatures have moved into the Cooling Towers. She thinks they are aliens.”
On step 11 I get to decide who the character’s Anchor is. this is someone that you can go for support, comfort and care that’s not another kid. I picked one of the examples for simplicity and selected the character’s father. And apparently I’ve already completed step 12 earlier when I came up with the character’s name. I altered my name slightly since this is an alternate 80’s world. Kirk Stark. For the description (Step 13) I’ll probably describe my geeky 80’s self. The last step before the group decisions is “Pick the character’s favorite song.” Ah man, how do I pick just one song. I bounced between “Our House” by Madness, “Sweet Dreams (Are Made of This)” by The Eurythmics before selecting “Mr. Roboto” by Styx.
The last two steps need the GM and other players to complete. So I won’t go too deep into them here but they consist of “Where is the Hideout for you and your friends?” and a series of questions that the GM will ask both the Kids and the group. These seem to be mostly background information on the character and team. Having reached this stage, I transferred my notes to the character sheet and scanned it below.
Afterthoughts:
I was getting a Stranger Things vibe while making the character. I could very easily see someone homebrewing this series using Tales from the Loop. They even talk about the characters playing RPGs like Dungeons and Dragons or Star Frontiers in the Tales of the Loop core rulebook.
I also liked the step of having a favorite song. I know that the radio and MTV provided a large portion of the soundtrack to my life while growing up. It made this kid seem more real as a character.
I almost forgot to finish the description of the RPG system. You set up a dice pool using attributes, skills and equipment. You roll that many dice trying to get at least one of them to come up with one six (for normal difficulty) or higher for tougher tasks. Like Star Trek Adventures, if you roll more successes than you need, you can “Buy Effects” which can the scene in the game. It looks interesting. I wonder if I’ll get a chance to play a one-shot at a convention in the future?
Additional Notes:
I had several readers from discord and message boards send me a wink since they got the special name of the character that I created for Rebel Scum. Glad to see you guys got it.
While re-reading my entry for Star Trek Adventures- Captain’s Log, I noticed that I had screwed up in other areas. I had an extra value in the description, but didn’t write it down on the sheet. So the sheet is good, but my notes are bad.
Coming Up Next:
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 1st Edition
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