While I was growing up, all of my gaming buddies had Dungeons and Dragons books because that is what we primarily played. However a few games showed up in my friend’s collections such as Top Secret or Star Frontiers. I’m not certain why we never played these games. I know I looked through their books when I had the chance, but we were content to swinging swords and slinging spells. A few years ago at a gaming convention swap meet I was able to pick up a boxed set of the first Top Secret game and it has been sitting on my game shelf asking to be opened and played. While I may not have any games right now, I figured for the Character Creation Challenge, I would pretend that it’s the 80’s and my friends are making characters for our first espionage campaign.
For the first two entries in this challenge (Basic Dungeons and Dragons and Star Trek The Role Playing Game) I went into a lot of detail as I was creating the character. For this entry I’m going to read the rules and follow them in the character creation process. If anything odd or unusual stands out, I’ll note it in this entry. This should hopefully shorten the time in creating the blog post. But as you’ve probably noticed, I tend to ramble.
I’m going to be creating secret agent Gary King (bonus points if you can tell me what movie that name came from) a newly promoted spy for UNITY. In 1967, UNITY suffered some major losses resulting in a large number of field agents being killed. While the perpetrators were thwarted, new operatives were needed to replenish the ranks. Gary King (and other characters I’ll create in future Character Creation Challenges) are the new crop of agents being sent out on assignment. This scenario was inspired by the No One Lives Forever series of video games.
So it looks like this game uses a percentile system. The how to use the dice introduction seemed a little overboard, but probably assumes that players in the 80’s had mostly 20-sided die instead of two 10-siders. The primary personal traits are Physical Strength, Charm, Willpower, Courage, Knowledge and Coordination. To make the characters heroic enough for a spy game, there is a chart that adds a bonus to low rolls. No character will have a primary trait lower than 26. There are also a set of secondary traits that are determined by the primary traits. These secondary traits are Offense, Deception, Evasion Deactivation, Movement Value and Life Level. There is even a pair of tertiary personal traits for Hand-to-Hand Combat Value and a Surprise Value. These are generated by a combination of primary and secondary traits. The RAW do not tell me if I roll the stats in order or just roll them and then pick which trait they go to. So I’ll roll them in order and take what comes up.
The final results for traits are as follows. Primary- Physical Strength: 95, Charm: 64, Willpower: 88, Courage: 72, Knowledge 79, Coordination: 78. Secondary- Offense: 75, Deception: 68, Evasion: 71, Deactivation: 79, Movement Value: 261, Life Level: 18. Tertiary- Hand-to-Hand: 166, Surprise: 139.
I’ve got the opportunity to roll some of the ‘flesh out’ characteristics. This is what I rolled or elected. 32 year old Caucasian male from England, Height: 5’11”, Weight: 180 lbs, Right-handed who does not need glasses. Known languages include English (native): 85, Czech: 78, Polish: 76, Russian: 49 and German: 40. I selected these languages because I decided that Agent King would be a specialist in Warsaw Pact countries, specifically Eastern Europe.
Areas of Knowledge (randomly rolled) include Military Science/Weaponry: 119, Social Sciences: 82, Physics: 102, Economics/Finance: 123, Architecture: 87, Engineering-Aeronautical: 117, Photography: 86, Metallurgy: 100.
So the Bureau Classification sounds like the classes in D&D. There are three of them, Investigation, Confiscation and Assassination. There are levels, designations and experience points necessary. But no description of how these classifications come into game play. You can only select one (no multi-classing) and if you move from one bureau to another you drop back down to 1st level?!? Other than the number of experience points needed to move up in level, I don’t see any difference in the three bureaus. So I selected Investigation. It seems like a section of the rules are missing from this area. I don’t have any erratas so I’m wondering if I’m missing something.
Next I equipped Agent King. RAW states that your character has your clothes and $400 to spend on equipment. In the rule book the cheapest handgun (a mainstay for most spies seen in movies and television) is $265. So I purchased it and a few other basic items I figured that an agent would need with the money left over. The rule book kind of dumps you from the character creation section into the sparsely detailed equipment section. Had I been running a Top Secret game I could see myself making a few house rules and homebrew additions to the game. There are sections on the character sheet that were for additional items like residence, cover, history, friends, contact, enemies, etc. Since there were no details in the rule book I assume it would have had to be worked out between the player and the administrator. Here is the mostly filled out two-sided character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I wonder how the gameplay was for this system. With how the character creation rules were documented, I’m sure there were some areas that were covered by the Administrator rulings. But a lot of the earlier TSR games were this way, which was both good and bad.
The blog entry is still a little long, but I think this entry was a little bit smoother than yesterday’s.
Additional Notes:
I’m still getting a lot of feedback from players uploading their own character submissions. And the question of, what should I do if I didn’t start on the first. Some have told me they plan to post more than one character to catch up. Others have decided to just start now and continue with the fun. A few more links have been added to the Character Creation Challenge page. If you know of any more message boards or blogs, please let me know at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.
Star Trek: The Role Playing Game (note the space between role and playing in the name) by FASA was one of the first non-D&D games that I had the opportunity to play. I was introduced to the game at the tail end of it’s run by some friends in high school and I remember eagerly awaiting the latest release of the new books and supplements. Besides my Father’s introduction to Star Trek, the FASA game was one of the biggest influences in my Star Trek fandom. References from the FASA game continue to show up including season two of Star Trek: Discovery and the IDW Star Trek comics in 2020.
The FASA Star Trek Role Playing Game is based on a percentile (D100) system. I liked this type of statistics for a game based off of a franchise because another thing fans like to do is compare characters on the show (or even with other shows). While a lot of D&D characters could have a Strength of 16, it didn’t help much with the comparison side of the coin. Now if character A had a Strength of 55 and another had a Strength of 60, that would be close, but distinguished.
I decided to make a Human security officer named Lt. Bryant Wilson who will be serving in Starfleet during the time portrayed in the Original Series. While FASA had supplements that moved the game into the Star Trek Movies and the early days of The Next Generation, the primary focus was the Original Series with Kirk and Spock.
For the first five attributes of Strength, Endurance, Intelligence, Dexterity and Charisma, the player rolls 3d10 and adds 40 to the roll. The last two attributes, Luck and Psionic Potential, it was a straight percentile roll (D100). For Lt. Wilson I rolled the following stats. STR: 60 (rolled a 10+6+4). END: 60 (10+9+1), INT: 48 (3+3+2), DEX: 62 (10+7+5), CHA: 58 (10+5+3), LUC: 93 (whoa 93 on a percentile roll), PSI: 61 (again a percentile roll). The only racial modifiers for Humans is -30 to PSI which lowered this score to 31. In the RAW you roll another D100 and divide by two (rounding down). This roll was 23, which resulted in 11 bonus points. PSI cannot be increased and I am now allowed to put more than 30 in one attribute (no issue there). Most of my rolls were pretty good so I elected to put 5 points into STR and 4 points into END to help with his stats as a security officer (which brought both attributes up to 65 and 64) and the remaining 2 points going into INT (raising it to 50).
The next step was to pick my pre-academy skills. The number of points allowed was Lt. Wilson’s INT score divided by 10 and rounding down. So a total of 5. There were two categories to select from, Educational and Personal Development. I elected to put 3 points in General Medicine-First Aid (I figured he had to help in some capacity while growing up which may have led to his decision to join security) for Educational. From Personal Development I put 2 points into Streetwise. He had grown up living in a large North American city on the east coast. I randomly selected Baltimore.
At Starfleet Academy there were several skills that were learned as part of the curriculum in order to make a well rounded officer. I won’t list them all since they are in the rules, but I’ve added them to the character sheet. There were a few that I had to select the sub-skills. I selected Language-Orion, Life Sciences-Botany, Physical Sciences-Chemistry, Planetary Sciences-Meteorology, Space Sciences-Astrogation and Space Sciences-Astrophysics. I can select five outside electives at a rating of 10 each. Of these I selected Marksmanship-Archaic Weapon (Archery), Shuttlecraft Pilot, Negotiation/Diplomacy, Sports-Swimming and I added to my Streetwise (now up to 12). In my Advanced Study I get to add stats to the skills I already know. The number of stats I can improve is my INT score (50) divided by 10 (5) and add 5 which means I can roll a 1d10 and add that score to the skills I already know. I elected to add to Marksmanship Modern (rolled a 9, bumping this up to 29), Archery (+1 to 11), Negotiation/Diplomacy (+6 to 16), Computer Operation (+6 to 26), First Aid (+3 to 16), Zero-G Operations (+9 to 19), Federation Law (+7 to 22), Personal Weapons Technology (+10 (nice) to 15), Environmental Suit Operation (+1 to 11) and Personal Combat Unarmed (+4 to 24). I was done with the Academy Skills section.
Now onto the Branch School Skills. Luckily for the Security Branch School curriculum, it was pretty straight forward. Some new skills were added (such as Small Unit Tactics) and several had significant increases (+20 to Marksmanship, Modern) I added these skill points to my character sheet. There were two Outside Electives (any skill gets a 1d10) which I put into Carousing (rolled a 5) and Vehicle Operation-Hovercraft (rolled another 5). There was another round of Advanced Training. I could add a 1d10 to five skills I already knew. The Hovercraft skill got 6 (new total 11), Marksmanship Modern got 9 (new total 58), Small Unit Tactics got a 2 (new total 22), Damage Control Procedures got a 4 (new total 14) and Swimming got a 6 (new total 16). With that the Branch School was done.
Next was Bryant Wilson’s cadet cruise. It was a simple D100 roll with some modifiers for INT and LUC added (or subtracted). I rolled a 25 on the dice. My INT score didn’t alter anything, but since my luck was over 70, I took away 10 from the roll for a final of 15. This was exactly what was needed for a cadet cruise within the Exploration Command on a Constitution class starship. That high LUC really helped out. I marked that on my character sheet. The results of the cadet cruise was another D100 with additional modifiers. I rolled a 71, subtracted 20 for the cruise being on a Constitution Class and subtracted another 10 for the high LUC score for a grand total of 41. This resulted in Bryant Wilson passing his cadet cruise and earning the rank of Ensign. When I saw these results, I decided that Ensign Wilson had taken his cadet cruise on the USS Kongo.
After the cadet cruise, Ensign Wilson was sent to Department Head School which resulted in three things. Several new skills were added/gained (Administration, Computer Operation and Leadership), more Advanced Training. Five skills already known get a 1d10 advancement. These were Negotiation/Diplomacy got a 7 (new total 23), Small Unit Tactics got a 9 (new total 31), Marksmanship-Modern got a 4 (new total 62), Carousing got a 4 (new total 9) and Personal Combat Unarmed got a 5 (new total 49). The last thing earned was a rank advancement to Lieutenant (j.g.).
Next the RAW has Lt. (j.g.) Bryant Wilson going to Command Schools (there are a lot of schools in this game). I can select five skills and take the points listed. Well Starship Combat Strategy Tactics is a huge gain (40 points), Negotiation/Diplomacy is nice (another 10 for a total of 33), 10 more to Leadership (new total 40), Federation Law gets 10 (new total 37) and Federation Culture/History gets 5 (new total 20). Lt. (j.g.) Wilson has now been promoted to Lieutenant.
Now we get to determine the number of tours served. The eventual end goal is to make the character the Chief of Security on a starship. I was instructed to roll a 1d10 and divide by 2 (rounding down). The roll was a 7 resulting in three tours. My high LUC once again came in handing reducing the number of tours by 1. I needed to reach the rank of Lieutenant, so I didn’t need to add a tour for that requirement. However I need to add a tour for becoming a Department Head. The final total of tours needed would be three. If the game was going to be be held on a Constitution-class starship, there would have been one additional tour added. All the tours are determined by a D100 roll with modifiers.
The first tour rolled a 73, high LUC reduced this by 10 to 63. Wilson would be serving in the Merchant Marine Command (I decided he was serving onboard a Starfleet operated freighter known as the USS Whitlock). He must have done a good job because he ha a total Officer Efficiency Report of 15 (25 roll -10 for high LUC) which gave a rating of Excellent. The tour lasted 1 year (1d10 roll resulted in a 2, divided by 2 to get the one year) For serving in the Merchant Marines, I was able to add a 1d10 to either Carousing or Streetwise. I rolled a 4 that was added to Carousing (new total 13).
For the second tour I rolled another D100 and consulted the Tour Assignment Table. My Excellent rating gave me a -10 and my high LUC gave me another -10, so I rolled on the table for -10 to -20 (this way was set up that poor performances would not be rewarded with plumb assignments such as the coveted Constitution-class starships). I rolled a 42 (hey the answer to life, the universe and everything) which resulted in a tour within the Military Operations Command. I decided that Wilson was transferred to the USS Joan of Arc, a Larson class-destroyer. The tour lasted 3 years (1d10 roll resulted in a 7, divided by 2 and rounded down). For an Officer Efficiency Rating I rolled 41, modified by the high LUC to 31 resulting in As Expected.
The third tour rolled an 06 (Wow!) which consulting the table resulted in an assignment to a Constitution-class starship. That’s a feather in the cap for Wilson as he got to serve on the USS Constitution for three years (length roll on a 1d10 was a 7). There he earned an Officer Efficiency Rating of Excellent (roll of 35 minus 10 for the high LUC resulting in an OER of 25). This excellent rating is what probably got him noticed for his in-game assignment as the Chief of Security on the USS El Cid, an Anton-class cruiser.
Now these tours resulted in several skill increases. We already mentioned the Carousing from the Merchant Marine tour listed above. There was a total of seven years in service so one additional 1d10 can be added to skills already known for each two years (3 rolls total). Since at least two years was spent on a Constitution-Class, that adds another roll. High LUC scores again adding two additional rolls. So for the six rolls in total I added the following. Leadership gets a 10 (for a new total of 50). Small Unit Tactics gets a 3 (new total 34). Personal Combat Unarmed gets a 3 (new total 52), Security Procedures gets an 8 (new total 48). Zero-G Operations gets a 2 (new total 21) and Marksmanship-Modern gets a 9 (new total 71).
Lt. Wilson’s age is 33. He was 18 when we started the academy which took 4 years to complete. Half a year for the cadet cruise. 1.5 years for the branch school. A year each for department head school and command school and the three tours took 7 years.
Max Operating Endurance and Current Operating Endurance equals the END score. The Wound Heal Rate for Wilson is a 3 (END divided by 20, rounded down) and the Fatigue Heal Rate is 6 (END divided by 10, rounded down). Action Points came up as a 10 (DEX divided by 10, rounded down then add 4). The To-Hit Mod score is the average of the DEX score with the skill of Modern Marksmanship (62 added to 71 divided by 2 and rounded up = 67). To-Hit HTH (Hand to Hand) score is the average of the DEX (62) score with the skill of Personal Combat-Unarmed (52) which resulted in 57. Bare-hand damage is 1d10+3 due to his STR score of 65. Here is the final character:
Afterthoughts:
While discussing character creation for Star Trek Adventures, a friend stated that he preferred it over FASAs +5 to a skill here and +5 to a skill there. The FASA system was a little bit longer, but I felt that I could see the character forming before my eyes. Character creation would definitely have to be a session zero meeting between players and game master. If I was the GM for new players I’d also give them a little bit of leeway to go back and change some skills. In hindsight I should have given Lt. Wilson a skill in armed combat with sword or some unique weapon. I also like the Trivia catch all skill (even thought I didn’t use it on Wilson).
I also don’t know if I’m going to go into so much creation details on future entries. I need to pace myself if I’m going to make it through the 31 day challenge. I just get inspired to start typing and next thing I know I’m just continuing to type.
Additional Notes:
I’ve decided to start adding links to other blogs and message boards where players are participating in the Character Creation Challenge. I’ve had people ask if they can still participate if they didn’t start on January 1st. The answer yes, just pick up from today and move forward. If I don’t have your location linked, send me the URL. For social media (twitter, facebook, etc.) just use the hashtag of #CharacterCreationChallenge. I can’t link all social media sites, but I know they are coming up under that hashtag.
Also thank you to those who gave feedback to my Character Creation Challenge entry for Day 1. I had to go back and make a few minor corrections. I had been a while since I had created a character in the BECMI system.
I was really debating about which system I should use for the first day of the Character Creation Challenge. I knew it should be the first game I played, which was the basic Dungeons and Dragons game. But we all had different rule books. One friend had the blue covered (Blueholme) edition. Another had the magenta covered D&D B/X edition and my first purchase was the red covered basic Dungeons and Dragons BECMI edition. We had pulled things from all three books while playing. We didn’t care about editions, we just wanted to have fun.
Since the BECMI edition was the first RPG that I had purchased, I selected that as my final choice. I may still make a B/X or Blueholme characters in the future depending on how the month progresses. So without further ado, let me introduce you to Vaaltin the Elf, Wanderer of the Realms.
Most of you know the basic rules for a D20 type system. So I won’t go too deep into detail. I rolled 3d6 for my abilities. The strength roll was 6+4+2 for a total of 12. Intelligence was 6+6+5 (wow) for a total of 17. Wisdom was 5+5+3 for 13. Dexterity was 5+3+3 for a total of 11. Constitution didn’t fare too well with a 4+3+2 for a total of 9, but I guess it could have been worse. And finally the Charisma roll was a 5+4+2 for a total of 11. I wish the Constitution was higher to gain additional hit points, but I’ll take it. Since the rules-as-written (RAW) allow for adjustments to the prime requisites (for the elf it is Strength and Intelligence), I elected to take two points from Charisma (making it a 9) to add to Strength (bumping it up to 13). [Edited this section to correct some bad math. Thanks for the feedback]
I wrote down my special abilities for being an Elf. Infravision at 60 feet. A special ability to see secret doors and an immunity to paralysis from ghouls. I also wrote down the standard languages known by Elves. Common, Elvish, Gnoll, Hobgoblin and Orc. Next I added the savings throws. Poison or Death Ray gets a 12, Magic Wand gets a 13, Turn to Stone or Paralysis gets a 13 as well, Dragon Breath has a 15 and I wrote down 15 for Spells or Magic Staff. Wow I had forgotten how clunky the original savings throws were set up.
I added my adjustments for my good ability scores. Thus Strength and Wisdom both have +1 adjustments but that good roll for Intelligence netted a +2. Since there was no adjustment from my Constitution, I rolled my Hit Points and lucked out with a six. As an Elf Veteran-Medium (i.e. 1st level) I knew one spell. Since my Dexterity didn’t give any added adjustments for ranged combat, I selected Magic Missile for my first spell. The second spell in my characters book is Detect Magic.
Money, money, money. I rolled the 3d6 x 10 for my starting gold which came up as 5+3+3 x 10 for a total of 110 GP. I then pulled out the equipment list and outfitted Vaaltin for his first adventure. Not having a lot of money, but wanting protection I picked up a suit of chainmail and a shield. This would give me an Armor Class rating of 4. A sword and short bow would make up the character’s weaponry. In a backpack, the elf has a week’s worth of rations, 50′ of rope, a tinderbox, six torches, a wineskin and a large sack to put treasure in. The final sheet look liked this.
So why is Vaaltin out exploring? He was the member of a minor house within one of the Elf kingdoms. Vaaltin’s father saw how bored he had become after reaching the mature age for adventuring. The other siblings within the family were not as much of a troublemaker that Vaalin was, but his father had a need for all of them to fulfill. He gave them all a task to go out into the world and find a powerful weapon or artifact that would increase the standing of their minor house. Within the laws of their land, the father could declare his children as “wanderers”. This would allow them to complete a quest or other important task for the family instead of serving in the armed forces of the kingdom. Vaaltin was suspicious of his father’s request and wondered if his siblings would blame him for the task they had been given. But he decided he didn’t care since they were all being sent to the different corners of the map. Instead of occasionally fighting intruders that came into the kingdom, he could make a name for himself out in the world before returning home. He was provided with some basic equipment and set off out on his adventure.
Afterthoughts:
I forgot how the original book was designed to introduce new players to the game. I was jumping through several pages trying to confirm that I had the correct information and was following the proper procedure. I can see why TSR cleaned this up a little bit for the Rules Cyclopedia. But I wanted to create the character using the RAW. Creating this character I was remembering some of the excitement when I was writing in the stats and equipment. The background I came up with while making the character. I almost wish there was a game starting so I could play this character.
Additional Notes:
I’ve already had several people contact me with their entries into the #CharacterCreationChallenge. Thank you. I’ll be posting some links soon. If you are just reading about this, you can still get involved. Just grab a system you would like to create a character for, make it as per the rules listed and then post the character online. Us the hashtag or email me (Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com) so we can find it online.
Yay the end of 2020 is here. There were a lot of weird and bad things that happened this past year, but you don’t need me to tell you that. It wasn’t all bad, but I think I’ll be one of the many people who use 2020 as a swear word.
There were several movies that came out this year that I wish I could have seen in the theater. I really loved how cute the Scoob! movie was. Bill & Ted Face The Music was another really good movie that I wish I could have seen in the theater. I know that Wonder Woman 84 is out, but I haven’t had a chance to watch it yet. I’m really sad that several movies that was scheduled for theatrical release in 2020 were delayed. When they come out (and hopefully in theaters) I am looking forward to seeing the epic SF movie Dune, the new James Bond flick called No Time To Die, The King’s Man (as part of the Kingsman series), Black Widow, Godzilla vs King Kong, Ghostbusters: Afterlife and more. Yes, I miss going to theaters.
So starting tomorrow, January 1st, I will be participating in the 31 day Character Creation Challenge. So there will be a new blog post at least once a day. This will be a marathon on several levels. I’m curious on how this will turn out. As I’ve been finding more and more homebrew creations, I plan to post them online. Eventually I want to start making new creations that will be featured on this website. I’ve been gathering photos for my online photo album and they should be up fairly soon. This will include my meeting a variety of famous people and kewl things that I have seen. Plus I’ll be continuing to flesh out this website. Time seems to be the constant struggle with all of the things I have on my plate.
But in all I know that 2021 will be a much better year. I plan to make my contributions towards that goal.
This isn’t even peanut butter and chocolate being accidentally mushed together so you may be a little confused at first. What does the 1960’s British spy thriller “The Prisoner” and the 2006 Japanese cult film “Battle Royale” have to do with each other?
Answer: They both reminded me of the latest series I binged watched on Netflix called Alice in Borderland. The Prisoner was a psychological spy-fi series where the hero tries to survive brain washing and opponents using super-science in an effort to find out what information the secret agent found that caused him to quit the agency. Number Six doesn’t know if he is being held captive by his own government or a rival power. Battle Royale is a violent movie about kids being forced to kill each other in a last-man standing contest in totalitarian Japan. It was very bloody and controversial when it was released during the time that school shootings dominated the headlines. Both series developed cult followings.
I’m going to type out my thoughts on this blog entry and since I don’t know if I can avoid any spoilers, I’ll post the thoughts on Page 2. You have been warned.
Part of the reason I put this website together was to give a home to some of the creative works I’ve put together. While I don’t have a novel to release (yet), I have created some items including some home-brew stats for various role-playing games.
For the Star Trek Starship Tactical Combat Simulator by FASA, they created a Starship Construction Manual. This book contained charts and rules to create Federation, Klingon, Romulan, Gorn and Orion starships. I used this book in the 90’s for quite a few creations. Usually my targets were the various starships seen in different fan made technical-manuals and blueprints. The ships had already been designed and contained enough statistics to convert into game statistics. I would then type of the stats, photocopy the image of the ship and quite literally cut-and-paste. I was able to make one look really fancy (Belknap), but most were just the text and an image of the ship.
I had made a master book of starships for the game. I had copied all of the ships from the various manuals, modules, magazine articles and fanzines and placed them into a three-ring binder alongside my own creations. As you can imagine, this book became quite thick. Luckily I was able to keep this book through all of my moves and I recently pulled it out of a storage box. I selected three creations at random and scanned them into the PDF format. If I had enough background details, I would include it with the statistics. Since this was the time before Google, I didn’t know the reason behind some of the class names.
I didn’t have any construction stats for the Tholian and Kzinti races, but that didn’t stop me from at least attempting to create game statistics for them. I never had the chance to play test them, but I’ll be presenting them on this site. So for the first three samples I have selected the Belknap Class Strike Cruiser, The Klingon D-15 K’Teremny Class Cruiser and the Kzinti TC-1 Police Cruiser. I may re-write some of these with the computer tools available now, but until then I’ll be presenting them in the format I originally saved them in. Enjoy.
Today two things happened that made the season better. I received an unexpected surprise and I had the chance to give to a good charity.
If you recall from an earlier blog post, I talked about The Power of Gaming and how gamers on the RPG.net forums have been helping each other out by participating in a “Secret Satan” (a play on the Secret Santa name) gift exchange. Well apparently the copy of Mutant Crawl Classics wasn’t the only gift coming my way. A package arrived in the mail containing the two books shown in the photo above. The Ultimate RPG Character Backstory Guide and The Ultimate RPG Gameplay Guide both by James D’Amato. Also included in the package was a note that my “Secret Satan” had picked up extra copies of these books in anticipation of gifting to an RPGnetter and that there were two packages coming. Thank you for these gifts. One of my geek kids has already flipped through one of the books and was impressed by what she quickly saw. I plan to read through these books and I’ll write up a review for a future blog post.
Crystal Allen as D’nesh on Star Trek Enterprise.
Actress Crystal Allen has been in many different shows including Supernatural, Boston Legal, Star Trek Of Gods and Men (a fan film) and Star Trek: Enterprise. The photo above is her as the Orion Slave girl D’nesh. She has been doing something that I think is really wonderful. She has been making home-made meals for medical personnel, firefighters and first responders who have been serving us during the COVID-19 pandemic. Currently she is running a GoFundMe page to raise $2,000 to cook healthy meals for these frontline warriors for the holidays. She’s even willing to send an autograph to supporters. I would have picked up her autograph at a convention anyway, but donating to a good charity inspired me to jump at this opportunity. If you are so inspired, click on the link and see if you can help Crystal reach her goal.
So I’ve been trying to get all of my stuff out of cardboard boxes. While cardboard boxes are good for short term storage or getting pizza delivered in (mmmm… pizza) they are not good for long term storage of items you want to keep safe. One of the goals that I have set for myself is to get everything that is still in a cardboard box out of said box. Sometimes I even feel like Indiana Jones uncovering the hidden ark. From there I can decide if I want to trash it, donate it, trade it or keep it. When I uncovered this bad boy in his protective sleeve (now scanned and posted above), I knew I wanted to keep it.
Over thirteen years ago I went through a period of insanity where I was a Con-Chair for a local fan-run convention. A Con-Chair is basically the president of the committee (a Con-Com) that puts together the convention. One of our primary guests at this convention was an artist named Howard Tayler. Howard is one of those fellow geeks that when you see what he’s done, you have to be inspired. Twenty straight years of publishing the web-comic Schlock Mercenary without missing a date. He has also designed role-playing games, written short stories and participated in a weekly podcast which has won a Hugo award.
Howard made a caricature of me at the convention. I was in “Con-Chair” mode with my body in an injured Captain Pike wheelchair. Like Pike, I could beep ‘yes’ or ‘no’ but I also had the option to ‘delegate’. I thought it was hilarious. I have fond memories of those conventions and seeing this image reminded me of some of them. Now that I have an office, I will be framing this and putting it up on the wall. Thanks Howard.
Now I wonder what I will find next? I’m motivated to get more boxes emptied.
Feel free to share this image on social media to spread the word.
So the gears in my mind started churning last month and it came up with the Character Creation Challenge. I am so looking forward to this event. However I don’t want to jump in without being prepared. So I’ve been making sure that all of my books are where I can get to them (there are still a few I’m trying to unpack out of boxes). I have my dice bag in my desk. I even created a spreadsheet for each date in January (with the day of the week) and a tentative game scheduled for each day. This way I could spread out the games (so I wasn’t doing D&D 3.5 one day then D&D 4th edition the next. But I could schedule the games I’m familiar with on busier days and games I’ve never created a character for on weekends. I’ll probably be still adjusting the schedule if flexibility is needed.
Just recently I created my first couple of characters for an upcoming Star Trek Adventures campaign that I’ll be playing in. I won’t do a review of the game now, but I’m really glad I did a trial run before creating a character for the #CharacterCreationChallenge. Now I’m debating if I should do trial runs for some of the other games I’ve never created characters for or if I should just go in cold. About 2/3rds of the games I’ve got listed on my spreadsheet I’ve created characters prior (or it’s generic enough like the D20 system that I have a good idea what to do). This is another internal debate I’ll be having up until January 1st. It will be interesting to see how this Character Creation Challenge unfolds.
Every year the Star Trek fan club, the USS Ticonderoga, holds a Mugato Gift Exchange (think White Elephant Gift Exchange, with a Star Trek animal replacing the word elephant) to celebrate the various holidays that happen this time of year (even Wookie Life Day). This was a very popular event and had a large number of attendance for this Star Trek family. However, with how 2020 has treated us, the Captain of the Ticonderoga made some changes to event. Since we couldn’t get together in person, the White Elephant format was dropped and replaced with a “Secret Santa” format.
The new name for this year was the “2020 Can Die in a Fire” long distance Secret Santa gift exchange. Participants signed up in advance and random Secret Santas were selected a head of time. If they were purchasing something new the limit was $10. If they were re-gifting something or creating something of their own, then the limit is what they wanted. The gifts had to be to their victims before the regularly scheduled Ticonderoga meeting. Since the meeting was being held by video conference, everyone would get a chance to open up their gift with everyone watching.
When I first heard of this idea, I was worried about the distance involved. Some members of the club live in different counties. I am pleasantly surprised that everyone who participated made it (mostly) work. I understand some gifts were late and I hope that they have made it to their intended recipients.
At the meeting I was overjoyed at the person who opened up my gift. They had a big reaction to the Mugato present. I can’t say anything more about that otherwise I’ll end up giving away who my victim was.
The gift I received was the Klingon Meal Kit seen in the photograph above. I don’t know if that is what my Secret Santa was calling it, but one of my kids blurted it out while I was opening the gift and the name stuck. I hope you can see the detail that went into this home made gift. Home-made Klingon Bloodwine labels were fixed onto glass bottles of special cherry cola (I can’t tell what the original brand was). Another label was attached to a package of black rice noodles advertising “instant gagh”. It was accompanied by a bottle of premium fish sauce, which is something I’ve never tried before. I really love the effort this warrior cook put into the kit. It is truly with honor, well done.
So the next question I ask myself. Am I going to consume the items in this gift or keep it as a memento? I’m really curious how the “instant gagh” would taste and I am a fan of cherry colas. 15+ years ago I purchased the special limited edition Heinz Ketchup which had the special labels on them. It had a quote from William Shatner stating “Fixes burgers at warp speed.” However I did not empty the container and it got nasty looking. I threw it away this year when we were packing to move. I’m not certain how to keep these items in a collectable value so I may just break down and eat the gagh and try one of the bloodwines. If I do, I’ll report it here on the Blog of Holding.
