Tag: Character Creation Challenge

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 14: Ninjas & Superspies

Written by TardisCaptain January 14, 2024

And welcome to Day 14 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today we will be using Ninjas & Superspies Revised that was writen by Erick Wujick and published by Palladium Books in 1990. I picked up this book at a gaming swap meet at SaltCON-End of Summer for a decent price.

I saw several friends play a lot of the different Palladium games in the 90’s. I don’t know why I never got into those games. I’m sure they would have let me join the table if I had asked. I think it was a time that they were playing when I was working the graveyard shift. So let’s pretend that I’m not being hit by the dreaded scheduling curse and I can finally make a character for a game.

The physical book has 176 pages and is softbound. The ISBN number is 0-916211-31-2 with the original cover price of $14.95. The character creation steps start on page eight. The character sheet is one page long and can be found on page 173.

So I don’t have a concept for this character yet. No, he won’t be based on Jeremy Clarkson. The first step is to generate scores for the eight attributes. These are Intelligent Quotient (I.Q.), Mental Endurance (M.E.) which helps vs hypnotism, Mental Affinity (M.A.) which is charm and charisma, Physical Strength (P.S.), Physical Prowess (P.P.) which is dexterity, Physical Endurance (P.E.), Physical Beauty (P.B.) and Speed (Spd). I roll 3d6 to determine these scores. It doesn’t say I pick which score goes with which attribute so I’ll do them in order. One item of note, if I roll a 16, 17 or 18, I get to roll one more d6 and add the number. Unfortunately, I didn’t get any rolls in that range.

On step two we select the character’s O.C.C. aka Occupational Character Class. They are not listed here nor is there a referenced page number. Flipping through the book I found them on page 47. I like how these are broken down into five categories with several sub-categories each. Martial Artist, Espionage Agent, Free Agent, Gizmoteer and Mercenary. Of course I want to make an Espionage Agent, with Gadgeteer Agent being the final decision.

Step three, what martial arts forms and skills do I want to select for the character. According to the RAW the Gagetter Agent can choose any except for exclusive forms. I’m not a big martial arts aficionado so I stuck with Basic Hand-to-Hand. The O.C.C. gives a list of basic minimum skills. Then it lists the number of skills from different categories to choose from. There was quite a bit to write down, and I don’t know if I understand how the skill scores are generated. I had to do a lot of page hopping and I may have missed something.

Step four is listed as optional, but I’m going to use it because it involves dice rolling. It is the character’s background. I already know he’s going to be American (make it easy for me), but the rest I’m going to roll. So he’s 6’2″ and weighs 172 lbs. He is straight. No not the sexual orientation, straight as in he’s a “true believer” of his side. He was the third of five kids in his family. Apparently the GM rolls to see if the family is still alive or not. So I’ll skip that for now.

On step five we calculate the Hit Points, SDC (aka Structural Damage Capacity) and Chi. Wow, could they have made this any more complicated. You don’t just get a basic HP, you have to calculate your PE with your martial arts form with additional skills. He only has basic hand-to-hand. Nothing is listed in the Martial Arts Forms on page 83. Come on guys, this should be a simple step and not needing a masters degree. I really would have been leaning on an experienced GM here to help explain what this mess is. I think it’s the character’s P.E. score plus a D6 since he’s 1st level. Screw it, I’m going with that. SDC wasn’t any better. It’s the physical toughness of the body. Huh? Why separate these two? At least the score was determined by your OCC and not some unexplained mathematical formula. This character has a 10 SDC. And now the Chi, or living energy. (suddenly I’m hearing Yoda in my head) Perhaps this is something more on the martial arts side of the game that I have little interest in. It appears that since I didn’t take anything more than a basic hand-to-hand, the Chi score is the character’s Physical Endurance (PE) score.

Mercifully we are now to step six. Attribute bonuses (why this couldn’t have been next to the generate attributes step, I don’t know). Since this character had no attributes 16 or higher, he had no bonuses. That was quick.

Step seven is Buy Equipment. There is a starting cash listed in your OCC. Looking over at the equipment and weapons section, when I finally found it, was heavy on the martial arts side, not so heavy on the other equipment. I decided to skip it. Had this been an actual game I would have written something down, but I’m annoyed right now so this guy is going to have a weapon and some electronic doodads to help him do his job.

Step eight and we are selecting the alignment (good) and discipline (used if you are not using the basic alignments. Nope, not diving into that one, he’s just a good guy.

I think we are done because there are no more step listed (after going through pages 8 through 20 for the character creation process, not counting all of the page flipping to look up different items). I made another attempt to confirm what my skill scores would be (I was only provided with additions that was given to me in my skill programs) and there wasn’t even enough slots to write down all of these skills from my notes. So he’s good with electronics and gadgets but not much of a martial arts guy. Go figure.

Yea I guess I should pick a name. Quickly pulls up a random name generator. Luke Ward. Spy-guy. Here’s the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I had to chuckle at the disclaimers at the start of the book. Don’t think because your character knows Kung-Fu that you do. Yea, I’ve seen plenty of Mall Ninjas in my day.

So the character creation process started out good, then quickly descended into a quagmire of crunchiness. And not even the good kind. I wonder if I had seen the same thing when I first encountered the game and made a dodge roll then? When I was getting into what should have been basic calculations (like hit points), I was getting ready to throw the book away. While I may try to create a specific type of character in this game for an upcoming project, I doubt I’ll use this system or try to homebrew for it. I’m glad that I didn’t pay too much for the book.

Additional Notes:

There is one reader/participant out there who has been making Character Creation threads on various message boards out on the internet. I found another in my visitor’s history that I can see. If I can confirm it’s for the challenge, I add it to the links section on the Character Creation Challenge page. This latest one has been added. Thank you for attempting to get other RPGers involved. I see your efforts.

Coming Up Next:

Conan: Adventures In An Age Undreamed Of

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 13: Star Ace

Written by TardisCaptain January 13, 2024January 13, 2024

Here we are at Day 13 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today I’ll be using Star Ace originally published by Pacesetter in 1984. Sometime in my gaming past, I had created a character for this game, but I never remember playing it. Perhaps we never got out of session zero where we were getting everything ready. In the post I linked above, I mentioned that the game wasn’t on DriveThruRPG or other sites that I could find. Buying a game that I would probably never play at Ebay prices didn’t make sense to me. A reader sent me a message after that post stating that the PDFs was available on the Paizo website at a reasonable price. So I snagged them. It only has the three books from the boxed set, but it would be enough for me to use in the challenge.

The three books are the Star Team Basic Training Manual, the Star Team Wilderness Briefing Manual and Deuces Wild, an introductory Star Ace adventure. The first two PDFs are kinda bookmarked. They only bookmarked the start of each chapter instead of the contents. But considering that these are scans of the original books, I guess that is more than what we could have received. The character creation process starts on page five of the Basic Training Manual. I’m instructed to use three ten-sided dice and I write my name next to Player on the character sheet.

Next we select a race for the character. I slipped down to the end of the chapter to read the descriptions. Crystal Clones (some sort of human/crystal hybrids) sounded interesting. The Humans (sounds boring). The Kleibor (Large humanoid polar bears with telepathy). Then there is the Traka (an agile cat like race). None of these really knock my socks off. So by a random roll (my decision) this character will be a Traka.

Next, I have to select three skills. Two of them have to match the Order I’ve selected. Uh, I haven’t selected an Order yet (goes and looks up what an Order even is). Hearts, Spades, Diamonds and Clubs (the card suites). OK, but what do they do? Ah, a few pages down finally describes them and they sound like the classes. Spades are the weapon specialists, Heart the techs, Clubs is the noetic skills (mental powers) and Diamond are decoy activities like deception and stealth (and for some reason called ducks). So Diamond it is. And I finally found the skills (I really wish the bookmarks were more precise) and wrote them down.

Now on step four we are finally generating the Basic Ability Scores. Roll 3d10, multiply the sum by 2 and add 20 for results between 26 and 80. Um… OK. I wrote down my results since in step five I assign them to one of the eight abilities. Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Personality, Perception, Willpower, Luck and Stamina. From these scores, other statistics and skill scores are generated (there is a lot of math in this creation process). This actually took us through several short steps.

Step nine is to find the base scores for each skill using the mathematical formula provided in each skill description. Then step ten states “Find the character’s actual scores by adding 15 to the base scores obtained in step 10.” Uh… I hope you mean step 9. Yea, I’m going with that (blasted lack of editing).

In step eleven we select a name (I wish they had given us examples) and a background. I plucked Balkor out of the air. As for his background, since the Star Aces are the Robbin Hoods of their time, yea he joined up because he wanted to steal stuff and give it to the less fortunate.

There is already some basic equipment (weapon, armor, starfighter) on the character sheet. But nothing else is listed in the character creation steps. Going back before the steps started I did see a note that stated that starting characters roll 2d10+10 for their starting chips (money). You also get a kit to a skill that you use. So I’m assuming I have a forging kit and a lockpick kit. None of the other equipment made any sense to my character. Ya know what, I’m tired of sloshing through this, I’m done. Here’s the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since the game is the year 3512, I noticed that the rules didn’t treat humans like they would have been in the 1980s. Longer life span, slightly larger size by a few inches, etc. Too many times I see a game treat humans as they are right now. In a hundred years we should have better ways to stay healthy and expand our life spans.

The character creation process seemed to be all over the place, which was typical from games published in the 80’s. Certain steps were referencing other sections that you hadn’t selected yet. For example, picking skills that would match your Order, but you hadn’t selected an order yet. It made me want to re-write the steps so that everything flowed in order. Another example, the skill descriptions were after the starship descriptions? Personality and Perception both have the abbreviation of PER? (I think Perception is PEN? that shows up in some of the formulas) Who edited this book?

Playing or homebrewing for this game. Likelihood is very low. I wouldn’t turn down a session to try it out (it looked like there was a lot of chart consulting to see what type of results came up from your rolls). If I was really going to play or run a generic sci-fi game, there are a lot more that have caught my eye like Frontier Space or one of the Traveller variants.

Additional Notes:

I’m very thankful that Paizo made this game available on their website, but that site needs a lot of help. There are a lot of links to sections that have nothing listed in them. And when you order PDF copies off of the site, it is like pulling teeth to get the downloads to come through. I’ve never had this happen with other publishers where I’ve purchased directly from them. Not only was I having issues with Star Ace, but when I picked up a charity bundle that contained a lot of books for Pathfinder and Starfinder, I wanted to pull my hair out. I had sent their customer service an email and they responded right away. But when I sent some feedback on the lack of quality on the website, I never received a response. Shrug, oh well.

The past few days have been extremely busy. I wish I had set up a buffer just in case real life issues came up. But I was able to get through it. I’ve already seen one person drop out. If you need to back off but still want to complete the challenge, you can. Some participants would make multiple characters for a familiar system on one day. What ever you need to do, do it. That includes taking care of yourself. This is a project for fun, not an assignment to be graded by a teacher.

Coming Up Next:

Ninjas and Superspies

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 12: The Spy Game

Written by TardisCaptain January 12, 2024January 13, 2024 1 Comment

For Day 12 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I am using The Spy Game RPG. I had seen this book at my local gaming store. It is an espionage game using 5th edition ruleset from the world’s most famous roleplaying game rules. I just hadn’t been able to pull the trigger on the price for the book (perhaps I would have if there was a game that I could have joined at the time). It sat on my wishlist waiting to see if the price would drop, and it did. In 2023 DriveThruRPG had a series of themed sales in September with one of them being espionage games. So now I have a PDF of the game that I wanted to use for the challenge.

The PDF is 271 pages long with the character creation process starting on page 10. The character sheet is two pages long.

After using the name “Sir Richard Hammond” for my Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme entry I received a lot of humorous feedback. While The Spy Game can be a serious RPG, I was inspired to name this character Agent James May (Code Named: Captain Slow) a special transport driver for UNITY. After creating a concept we get into the steps of creating the character.

Step one is to choose your class. I had seen a Transporter/Driver type class in other espionage roleplaying games, but I couldn’t find it as a class in The Spy Game. It turns out the Transporter is a Technician Archetype that I can select when Mr. May reaches second level. So I selected the Technician class. It still fits since the real-world James May would over-explain the technical details on the show. I wrote down the class details on the character sheet.

Step two is picking a background, or what Mr. May was doing before he became an espionage agent. Academic was tempting until I saw Motorist. I wrote down the character features that this background provided. This also included the four background traits which appear to be quotes that would describe your character.

Now we are finally to rolling the ability scores. These are the standard found in 5E. They can be generated by rolling or purchase. I’ve never been a fond of purchasing ability scores, so let’s see what the dice give us. It gives several rolling options, but I’m going to go with Heroic. Roll 2d6+6 and assign to the abilities that I want it to go to. When you select your background, it adds to the ability scores.

Step four was the finishing details. Starting hit points (max for class plus CON bonus), armor class, etc. I searched for all of these and added them to the sheet. The RAW states that each agent has their own standard equipment which includes weapons, armor and tools. Then if anything extra is needed, there is a mission budget. Apparently I get two gadgets, but I don’t see which ones to pick from. If I could, I’d add the gadgets to my vehicle. So I think I’m done, here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I’ve only played Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition a few times at conventions. I’ve never really been in a campaign, so there were a few times I had to look things up which slowed down the creation process. It would have been good to have a GM to answer questions. I even pulled out the D&D 5e Players Handbook out just to make sure I was understanding a few things. But I think I got it.

I liked the use of quotes to define the different background traits. I need to track down other characters to see if they have the same thing.

Overall things made sense. I’d like to see how a gaming session is run. I could see myself playing and homebrewing for this game.

Additional Notes:

This is the second character sheet where the logo for the game is on the second sheet. I’m not certain about the logic behind this decision. Not enough room on the first page? Were they figuring that the second sheet would be looked at more? It made me scratch my head.

On my entry for Basic Fantasy 4th Edition I had noted that a participant had placed my username in the Dungeon Master entry. I was reminded that this same entry also appeared on the RPGGeek message board as well. Several participants have posted on multiple message boards and social media sites.

Another blog was found and added to the links section of the Character Creation Challenge site. I was able to find this one as well from the history of sites that linked to mine. There was also one for Palladium, but I couldn’t find anything on their message board so I don’t know if it was a generic reference or a reference to the challenge.

Coming Up Next:

Star Ace

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.

Anime, Character Creation Challenge, Humor, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 11: Teenagers from Outer Space

Written by TardisCaptain January 11, 2024January 11, 2024

When I received both a physical and PDF copy of Teenagers from Outer Space from my RPG.net “Secret Satan” (a play on words for Secret Santa) I promised that I would use this game in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. And to keep that promise, I’ll be using it for my Day 11 entry. Looking through the book, it had reminded me that I hadn’t seen any comedic anime in a while so for the next several days I had been watching Project A-KO on one of the streaming services.

This core rule book was published by AnimechaniX (a division of R. Talsorian Games Inc.) that also published several other anime RPGs including Bubblegum Crisis. It is 127 pages long (Including the character sheet in the back) with the character creation rules starting on page 22. The PDF contains links to the different chapters. Thank you for having that set up as it helps out a lot.

OK first is the character going to be Human or some sort of Alien? Well duh, this is Teenagers from Outer Space so this character is going I want this character to be an alien. The types of aliens are Near-Human (perhaps just some cat ears and a tail or something minor), Not-Very Near Human (more weird stuff is on your body, but still looks kinda Human) and Real Weirdie (You got big wings or you’re just a blob). Human or not, what is your character about? So this guy is going to be an Icaanian Alien Prince who has been sent to school on Earth while his royal parents take care of business back home on Icann Prime. Are they OK, fighting to save the kingdom or already dead? He doesn’t know because his handlers are keeping him in the dark on purpose. Since he is unaware, he’s just trying to survive math and see if he can get an invite to the party on Saturday. I’m going to go with Near-Human with with green hair covering some small horns and silver eyes.

Alright, our second step is to come up with the statistics for the character. The stats used in this game is Smarts (i.e. Intelligence), Bod (Strength & Dex basically), Relationship with Parents (called RWP on the character sheet), Luck (self-explanatory), Driving (piloting anything from a car to a flying saucer), Looks (i.e. physical Charisma), Cool (i.e. mental Charisma) and Bonk (i.e. a mental or health stat like hit points). You can’t really die (this is a comedy game after all) but you’ll be shaken up and looking foolish for a turn or two if you Bonk stat drops below zero. I’m instructed to take a D6 and roll it for each stat in order. Heh, the book states if you attempt to re-roll a bad stat die that it may void the warranty of the game and may result in the self-destruction of the game book. I did not re-roll any stat generating rolls since I didn’t want to destroy my gift. Luckily the RAW states that I can then move stats around as I desire as long as no stat goes above a six or below a one. I rolled really good (three sixes) of which I kept two of them in place (Bonk and Luck) and move other points around. I wanted RWP to be low to match the concept of the character and I wanted better looks than what was rolled.

Next (it is listed Advanced Teenagers) is to pick a number of Knacks. These are basically special items that are connected to your stats but you are really good at. Roll a D6 and that tells you how many Knack points you have. I rolled a 3, so I could select three at one point each, one at three points or 2 knacks with one and two points respectively. I could come up with one of my own with the GMs approval or look over the list of suggestions. I’m going to go with Sweet Talk Guardian (he has a couple of chaperones from his parents keeping an eye on him) with one point and Dance with two points (he has to make himself look good at he party).

As an alien, he gets a Strange Alien Power (Humans have their own special table to roll against to gain some kewl stuff). There are five charts with six random powers. I can pick from three different charts and roll to see what the character receives (if any, nothing is an option). The roll results are Teleport, Monster Out (the character can transform into a 50-foot silly-looking rubber monster at will with Super Strength) and Talk to Aliens (the character can talk to anyone, animal or inanimate objects or living people). Weird, but that’s where the dice rolled. I’d probably talk with the GM to see if the Monster Out could be an involuntary thing after a certain event had happened just to make it interesting (say Bonk gets down to a score of 1). Teleport could be a defensive mechanism and Talk to Aliens could be part of his future roll as a leader and ambassador for his people.

The next step is titled “Last Minute Wrap-Ups”. They include selecting three basic traits that define the character (habits, preferences or world view). There was a suggested list, but I could come up with some of my own if so desired. For some reason when my eyes fell upon “Talk to Trees” it clicked. Perhaps there is no Trees on Icann Prime so he is fascinated by their wit and wisdom. How the trees will respond to him could vary from tree to tree, but I thought it would be silly. He is also Trusting and Forgetful. Why those two? Why not. The character gets a weekly allowance/stipend/source of income. To determine this I roll 2D6x5 which resulted in $45. Starting money comes out to rolling one more D6 and using that result to times your weekly stipend (in this case $180). On the character sheet you can see actual TFOS currency that could be cut out and used.

Also in this section is the items your character owns. You automatically get a vehicle of some sort (since most teenagers want mobility the moment they can) but it’s a piece of junk. You can use your starting money to pimp it out, but you still have other things to buy as well. I added a good stereo to the junky saucer (I figured the tunes may distract from the neon green paint job) and picked up a few items.

So Prince Zaxxod of Icann Prime has two chaperones/body guards (they have to take shifts) who try to keep him out of trouble, but he keeps trying to ditch them as third-wheels when he wants to go out on a date or go to a party. Little does he know that rebels from his home planet would love nothing more than to get a hold of him to use as ransom/bait/who knows back on the home world. Prince Zaxxod has not been told about the troubles on his home world (his father believes it would interfere with his studies) and has instructed the two body guards to keep him oblivious. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since this is a game based off of Anime, I like how they used several pages of Anime art to set up a possible story-line. And speaking of references, they used several examples from Star Trek, X-Files, ET, Alien and more through out the book. I thought this helped as well.

There are conversion guidelines to connect this to the other R. Talsorian anime systems. I like how they used the term “Bubblegum 90210” as a possible example.

The system looks pretty simplistic. Roll a D6, add a stat/equipment/trait bonus and try to beat a difficulty number between 1 and 10. (LOL, out-think Mr. Spock is a difficulty 20) I could see this being a silly game to play in a one-shot or at a gaming convention.

Additional Notes:

After the success of finding a message board participating in the challenge in my visitor’s history, I took a second look and found two more participants. Another message board, started by a reader who has posted on several message boards, thank you. An another WordPress blog. I’ve added both to the links section of Character Creation Challenge page.

If you are looking for a new game to use in the challenge, or even play. Troll Lord Games has the Amazing Adventures 5E core rulebook in PDF for 50 cents. I don’t think you can even get a cup of coffee for 50 cents any more. They had put several of their 5E products for sale at this same price. I was able to pick up a few books at a massive discount. I don’t know how long this sale will be going on for so I’d recommend grabbing them as soon as possible. I used this game in the 202x Character Creation Challenge and I’ve been eyeing it for a possible one-shot.

Coming Up Next:

The Spy Game

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 10: Basic Fantasy 4th Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 10, 2024January 10, 2024 1 Comment

For Day 10 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I elected to put together a character for Basic Fantasy Role-Plaing Game 4th Edition. Now this game is available for free download on the BasicFantasy.org website. You can also pick up a physical copy (like I did) just for cost from two different sources. You can pick this up at Amazon or DriveThruRPG. I have the hardbound version, but it is also available with the softcover.

So if I already created a Basic Fantasy character in 2021, why am I making a character again? For two reasons. The fourth edition of Basic Fantasy was released after the WotC OGL fiasco inspired them to remove all SRD material and the OGL licensing information in the book. For my second reason, I volunteered to run a Basic Fantasy game at the upcoming SaltCON gaming convention in March. This character will be one of the pre-made characters provided for the players to choose from.

I won’t go into the statistics of the book since I covered that in my initial review. The character sheet is one that I downloaded from the Basic Fantasy project website and is a single page. There are quite a few other character sheets available. The character creation process starts on page three.

Our first step is to roll up our ability scores. These are the standard attributes that fans of the D&D d20 based systems will familiar with. Strength, Intelligence, Wisdom, Dexterity, Constitution and Charisma. The RAW states roll 3d6 and place them in order. I did this.

The next step is to select your class and race (if you meet the minimum requirements for either). With my INT of 17 this guy is going to be an Elvin Magic User. After writing down his special abilities I rolled his hit points (woot rolled a high number) and wrote that down. I also filled in his savings throws, movement and other statistics.

Next comes purchasing the equipment. This game uses the standard 3d6x10 for starting gold. I rolled up 110 GP and purchased what I thought an Elven Wizard would own. For the name, I selected Durlan Torven (found from an online random name generator). Durlan was instructed by his father to gain some experience in the world before he returned to the High Kingdoms to assume his place in the family business. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Basically (no pun intended) if you’ve played 3rd edition Basic Fantasy, moving to 4th edition shouldn’t be any difficult at all. Other than minor tweaks everything is the same. I forgot that the character sheet that I like to use still has page numbers from the 3rd edition. I should point that out to the original contributor.

I’m glad that I made this character now. It got me in the groove for creating the other characters for the upcoming convention session.

Talking with a friend last week, I had to explain that 4th Edition of Basic Fantasy was not the same as 4th Edition of Dungeons and Dragons. Don’t let the 4th edition trip you up in this case.

Additional Notes:

A participant in the Character Creation Challenge had posted on the RPG.net forums a D&D B/X character that they had created. Since they didn’t want to have any blank lines they placed “TardisCaptain” down as the Dungeon Master. I laughed and responded that I better get out my campaign notes.

While looking at the traffic hitting my website, I noticed that there was some coming in from the Steven Jackson Games forums. I went to the site and discovered that one of the participants had started a thread there. While there hasn’t been a lot of posts, I’ve added it to the links on the Character Creation Challenge page. If you know of a website or message board that is participating in the challenge, please let me know. You can email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or by reaching out to me on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server or on one of the social media services that I use.

Coming Up Next:

Teenagers from Outerspace

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Humor, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 9: Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme

Written by TardisCaptain January 9, 2024July 22, 2025 1 Comment

It’s… Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactement Programme. (Liberty Bell march starts playing) and it’s my Day 9 entry in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge.

I’ve been a fan of Monty Python every since I saw my first episode on our local PBS station. There isn’t a gaming session that didn’t make it out with at least one Monty Python quote (much to the chagrin of my Dungeon Master). So when I discovered that there was going to be a Kickstarter for a Monty Python ~~Role Playing Game~~ Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactement Programme, I had to make a pledge. And no, Mediaeval is not spelled incorrectly. Yea, I had to look that up.

In the past I’ve posted about some of my Kickstarter rewards, such as the one for Mystery Science Theater 3000, The B/X Advanced Bestiary and the XDM 2nd Edition book. I haven’t written about the Monty Python RPG and the RPG for Cowboy Bebop because the physical books haven’t arrived yet. But I promise that I’ll give you first looks when I can. Until then, they have sent me the PDFs for both books. Today I am making a Participant Character for this comedy game. This is for students of history who will use the programme for a memorable learning experience. Most of the items in this game came from the Monty Python movies: The Life of Brian and Monty Python and the Holy Grail. But there are references to other works from the comedy troupe.

The PDF is 360 pages long with the Character Creation process listed on page 84. The character sheet is one page. And now for something completely different.

Oh and I should mention, the GM is called the Head of Light Entertainment aka The HoLE. It is possible that the HoLE could get sacked while in session.

Your participant is a member of a Situation. This is also called job, role, career or calling. Basically it’s the character’s class, but the game doesn’t call it that. Probably because when you choose your Situation, you also choose if you are Upper Class, Middle Class or Lower Class which is how some NPCs might react to your character (not all class types available for all situations). The possible Situations to choose from are Churl (peasant), Cleric, Enchanter (aka the Wizard), Eremite (A hermit like the one seen in various Monty Python episodes), Knave (aka the Thief), Knight, Monarch (Well I didn’t vote for you.), Monk/Nun (Pie Jesu Domine, Dona eis requiem. [WHACK!!]), Noble (not Donna from Doctor Who) and Troubadour (aka the Bard). Do I want to be a king? Do I want to be a knight? I wanna hit things. Knight it is.

So look at the “Creating a Knight” section and it says that he is definitely upper class. So I circle that. On my character sheet is a very colorful section for Traits. A Knight has the Valour trait, which is doing various manly deeds of strength and arms. This could be serious or silly. If it is more on the serious side, you roll a larger die when attempting to complete a task or a test. These dice range from D4 to D30 (there are a lot of standard and no-so-standard dice for this game). Now for each Trait, you get an Accoutrement. This is a device that your character owns (and may have some minimum requirements for). I roll a 1d10 and it came up with Shield which gives me +1 to Strategy. I also get to roll the type of shield and it came up Buckler. Next Trait for the Knight is Chastity, which helps my character avoid temptation (oh boy, avoid the Castle Anthrax). The Accoutrement for this Trait rolled up an elaborate codpiece (why am I suddenly thinking of first season Black Adder?) which gives the character +1 Decorum. A Knight also has a Manservant as a retainer (it takes one of my colorful slots) which will be the character’s squire. The remaining two slots are selected from a list available, which I chose Heartiness and Strategy. My character’s indifference is Subtlety (i.e. he can’t do this trait).

I wrote down the character’s Spiffing Serious Ability, which is Slay. If I use it during a game, I roll a D30 and consult a chart. This could have good or bad results. And if I’m reading the steps correctly, we are done making this character. There is a section on the sheet for money (of the different types of currency) and Merits/Demerits (system currency earned in the game). Let’s give our Knight a name, which is Sir Richard Hammond (wink). Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I liked that some of the links within the PDF didn’t go where you thought they would go. Very sneaky and on tap with the brand of humor. There was a ton of in-jokes and easter egg references. But you don’t need to know them all to understand the game.

While making this, I was thinking that it could be useful for that other famous British fantasy comedy, Blackadder (well not the fourth season that takes place during World War I). But I was getting the same vibes.

I know I didn’t really go into the system too much for this blog entry, I think I’m saving that for the physical book review. But what I read, it did make sense. There were a lot of flowery words used in the book, but this was part of the Monty Python charm. I really think that the writers were able to capture the spirit of the comedy troupe. They even had warnings about forcing the humor. If played well, the humor would naturally come into the game.

There is a lot of unusual dice used for Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactement Programme. Luckily I had some dice for the Dungeon Crawl Classics which had all but one of the need die. I wonder where I can find a D18?

(in bad French accent) Now go away or I shall taunt you a second time.

Additional Notes:

There were quite a few readers who did not know that Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant existed. This is not surprising since it is a fan made game that was released about the same time as Star Trek Adventures. It probably got brushed to the side with the first official Star Trek licensed RPG in 15ish years.

I discovered another message board with a Character Creation Challenge thread. I’ve added the link to the list of participating sites. The thread itself isn’t very large, but the other threads have been interesting to read. I’ve signed up to post on The Piazza, but at the time of publication, I hadn’t been authorized yet.

Coming Up Next:

Basic Fantasy Roleplaying Game 4th 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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Trek

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 8: Star Trek Alpha Quadrant

Written by TardisCaptain January 8, 2024January 9, 2024 1 Comment

For Day 8 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I will be making a Starfleet Officer for the Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant roleplaying game. What is Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant? It is a fan-made conversion of the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document for Star Trek. It originally started as a conversion of the FASA Star Trek RPG, then evolved to cover all of the shows (up to Star Trek: Discovery) that had been released by 2017. Several years ago, the publishers of the Prime Directive rules wanted to make a “Traveller” version of their game, but it hasn’t appeared yet. So for fans who want to play some sort of Trek with the 2d6 system, this is probably going to be up your alley. Steven J. Ege, the author, did state that Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant is not compatible with other 2d6 style games.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve used a fan-made Star Trek RPG in the Character Creation Challenge. Previously I had covered Far Trek and Where No Man Has Gone Before. I have also covered the original Little Black Book version of Traveller as well as Cepheus Deluxe release. So I’m interested to see where this goes.

The Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant PDF has 160 pages with the character creation checklist on page 11. There is no character sheet in the book, but luckily I found a fan made character sheet on the Polyhedral Nonsense gaming blog. This sheet has four pages with the first being stats and skills, second page is equipment and weapons, third page is character history and the last page is any telepathic skills. I discovered that there are a lot of good character sheets on the Polyhedral Nonsense website.

OK, let’s light this candle. The first thing the checklist states is that the characters begin at the age of majority (usually 18 in Humans). But with the Q’s consent (Q is the name of the Game Master in ST:AQ) the character can start at 19 or 20. The character is entering Starfleet Academy. After discussing with the Q what positions and ranks that the character will take you can dig into the attributes. Thinking about this, I want to create a character in the time of the Original Series. Looking at the different alien races available (there are several basic ones that are mentioned in the front of the book, then a lot of races listed later in the publication) I selected Denobulan and named him Lt. Commander Tropp. He would be the Chief Engineer on the USS Valley Forge, a Constitution-Class starship.

Next we generate the attributes for Tropp by rolling 2d6 and assigning them. They are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Endurance (END), Intelligence (INT) and Education (EDU). For those of you wondering, INT is the intellect and the EDU is the learning and experience. Traveller/Cepheus players may notice that there is no Social (SOC) attribute. The author of AQ did state that he had to make some changes to make it fit the Star Trek universe. I’m assuming that dropping this attribute was one of the items he was referring to. I rolled my dice and made the racial adjustments and wrote down the attribute modifiers.

Step three is to select the background skills that Tropp had before he entered the academy. The rules state that you divide the EDU score in half and that is the staring number, in his case 4. These skills would be of rank 0 (semiskilled) and I had to choose two from the education category and two from the development category.

Now we enter the academy and gain several skills from the curriculum. This includes core, candidate school, outside electives and advanced study. While this took a moment, I was able to complete the task.

Step six is the cadet cruise. I rolled a 2 on 1d6 to represent that Tropp participated in two six-month cruses. At the completion of the cruises, he has graduated from Starfleet Academy and now holds the rank of Ensign. To be a Lt. Commander, Tropp needed to go on nine tours of duty (from rolls and various modifiers). This time allotted resulted in several skill rank increases, which I wrote down.

The steps now indicate that I should come up with a background for the character (which I would if this was really going to be played). The Universal Character Format at the end of the steps can list equipment, but no rules were listed at this time to any allocation. I snuck down to chapter 4 to read about the equipment and it described some equipment types, but didn’t really say if you started with anything. In most Star Trek games, your equipment would be what is available on hand. So I didn’t bother with any on the sheet. This meant that I only wrote on the first character sheet for this challenge. I’m certain that at least three of the pages would have been used in a campaign.

Afterthoughts:

This book was pretty thorough and covered the bases that you would find in a standard RPG core rulebook. These include a “What is roleplaying” section and how the core rules worked. You wouldn’t need any of the Cepheus books to play this game.

The lack of a character sheet concerned me. I was very grateful to find the Polyhedral Nonsense release. Their character sheet is also fill-able which may be of interest to some players. Since I was going old-school with my entries, I had mine printed out to mark up with a pencil.

Another concern was the use of graphics in the book. Since this book was never going to be printed for copywrite reasons, the author could use the images as he saw fit. There were some pages where a full color image in the background with white highlighted lettering over the top of it. It made it difficult to read.

I liked how the PDF was bookmarked. This made it easier to jump to a section to look up information. I also appreciate that major and minor characters from the Original Series and The Next Generation have been stated out. When talking with Star Trek fans who haven’t had a lot of experience with RPGs, they might create a character by saying “He’s good with computers, just not as good as Spock.” or “He’s just as strong as Worf.” I can take the provided stats to give them a starting point.

There is also a FASA to AQ conversion guidelines in the back of the book. While reading, I could see a lot of FASA influences in this publication. I could easily see myself homebrewing for this system just as I want to for Star Trek Adventures, Far Trek and Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Additional Notes:

I had a couple of readers report to me that they had heard of The Dark Eye and even owned a copy, but they hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it. So I guess this European game has made it to the states. But because they hadn’t tested it out yet, they couldn’t tell me about how the game plays at the table.

Coming Up Next:

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 7: The Dark Eye

Written by TardisCaptain January 7, 2024 1 Comment

We have reached our first week in on the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge with Day 7. Today I’ve elected to make a character for The Dark Eye. The version that I own is a hardback copy printed in 2003 by a company called FanPro. From my research, this appears to be the 4th edition of this game. The earlier editions had been very popular in Europe. Apparently this game was started when a German publisher was snubbed over the German translation of Dungeons and Dragons, so they ended up making their own RPG. I wonder if it has blackjack and hookers? There is a 5th edition of this game that was recently published by a company named Ulisses Spiele.

I had picked up this book at a game swap at SaltCON-Summer for a decent price. I figured that I could use it for the Character Creation Challenge. There is 184 pages in my book (which includes the map and character sheet at the back) and the ISBN number is 1-932564-02-0. The cover price listed is $29.99. On page 14 is a breakdown of the character sheet with the character creation steps listed on page 22.

Enough chat, lets get to creating. New characters start out with 110 Generation Points (GP) that are spent through out the character creation process. There are option to buy more points by taking disadvantages or restrictions. The first step is to think of a concept you’d like the character to be. Talking with the Highlord (aka Gamemaster) would be needed here to make sure the concept would match the campaign (for example, no underwater basket weavers). There is a background world already created for the game and most of the options are based off of those works. I think I’m going to keep things simple and create a mercenary type fighter who is looking for someone to help pay for his next bar tab.

The next step is to select your race, of which there are only three. Human, Dwarf and Elf. But in step three you select the culture your character came from. Now we’ve got some variety. These are based on historical cultures found in medieval/renaissance times. They borrow form Viking, European or Middle Eastern cultures and give some examples. This guy is going to be a Thorwalian (aka Nordic Viking type) which is going to cost 10 CP. He will have blonde hair and blue eyes. I rolled his height to be 177 centimeters (5’8″ basically). Then the rules stated that his weight would be the number of his height in centimeters minus 95 to equal greatpounds. Uh…. what? If I’m reading this right, he would only be 82 pounds and that doesn’t sound right. Screw it, he’s 190 lbs. because I understand that weight. I started ignoring the fluff and concentrated on the game stats that the race came with. I wrote them down in my notes for the character and finally selected a name of Halmar. Before I elect to stop lets move onto the next step.

This step would be cultures. Luckily there was only one for Thorwalian, so I wrote down the items the character received and took off the 10 CP it costs.

Step four is the profession, aka the job that Thorwalian does. Since some of these had already been talked about earlier in the creation process (haphazardly) I knew that he was going to be a Mercenary. I spent the 10 CP and noted the minimums that I would need to be of that class… er… profession.

It was at this point when I actually found a step-by-step guide on page 36. So I stopped slogging through the other fluff and just started using these guidelines.

OK, so far what I’ve done has matched what is on this step-by-step guide and I have 80 CP left to spend. Next comes buying the attributes. These are: Courage (CO)- Strength of nerve and willpower. Cleverness (CL)- Intelligence and logical thinking. Intuition (IN)- Deciphering clues and quick assessments. Charisma (CH)- Personal magnetism. Dexterity (DE)- Best use of the hands. Agility (AG)- Body coordination and grace (i.e. dexterity for the non-hands stuff). Constitution (CN)- Yea we know this one. Strength (ST)- And we know this one as well. Social Standing (SO)- status in society and reputation. All attributes other than SO range from 8-14. SO ranges from 1-12. I’m still having to flip back and forth in the book to make sure that I have it correct. I made sure to buy my minimum needed for Mercenary (counting what I gained from my Thorwalian adjustments) and averaged out the remaining CP for the other attributes. This left me with exactly 0 CP after all was said and done.

Step six was the advantages and disadvantages. I already have two disadvantages from selecting Torwalian. I’m assuming the points gained from these disadvantages were already calculated in the CP costs that I’ve already paid. If I take any additional advantages, I need to take an equal number of disadvantages so that I’ll still be at 0 CP. I looked over the two lists and selected the Rapid Healing advantage (as recommended in the mercenary description) and the rage disadvantage (Thorwalians get 18 points instead of just the 15 for taking this disadvantage. This leaves me with 8 CP left that I’m going to go back and raise some of my attributes.

Now to step seven and we talk about talents. I believe these are just skills. There are some talents that I already received from my race/culture/profession. There are some basic talents that I get at zero if they hadn’t already been bumped up from the gains in race/culture/profession descriptions. The character sheet had some of the talents listed, and a lot of blank spaces afterwards. Ugh. I then calculated up how many points I had to spend on new or advancing talents, and decided to skip it at this time since I was running up against a deadline.

Now there are some base values for thinks like health and endurance and attack and stuff. I calculated these and wrote them down on the sheet. But then I started running into terms that hadn’t been provided (what the smeg is GE?). Skip! Equipment was given from my profession, then there was an odd calculation to buy more, but since there is no place to add it to the character sheet, I skipped it.

There was also a 20 questions to flesh out your character and choose a name (I already did). I’ll look at this later since this has taken longer than I expected. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I was very grateful for the character sheet breakdown just before the character creation steps. Quite a few times I’m searching over the character sheet wondering where a specific item is located. After this listing was a very good breakdown on how the system worked (what the attributes were used for, how they were used in an attribute test, etc.). I was able to get a quick grasp on the system. It was making me wonder how it would play at the table.

When describing the different steps of the character creation, there was a little bit of info-bleed from the different steps. I think it would have made it easier to keep them in their proper lanes. I was starting to think that certain steps were combined together when they were not.

They had to come up with some interesting measurements that may not have needed to be used. A pace is basically one meter or yard. Is this a European thing? I’ve only heard meters used for this type of measurement on British TV shows. And what the smeg are greatpounds? Are they pounds that people really like? Even Google gave me a shrug when I asked.

There was also a LOT of page flipping through the book. I was using a lot of physical bookmarks (and praying that the referenced pages were correct, which one was not). There would definitely need to be a re-write of the character creation steps to make everything flow smoothly. Which I then found halfway through on page 36. Gah!!!!

There is no place for equipment on the character sheet. I would have been writing these items on the back of the sheet had this been for an actual game.

Will I play this game? Well some of the concepts sounded interesting. But I think I’d probably borrow the best parts for a homebrewed system instead. At the start of the process I was impressed with the system, then it slowly descended into frustration. I’m not really a big fan of point based creation systems, especially when there are a lot of skills. Let me roll some dice please.

I wonder if the latest edition of this game will be any better?

Additional Notes:

There has been a participant who has posted quite a few Dungeon Crawl Classic characters on the TardisCaptain do com discord server. I’ve played DCC at a con, but never played in a campaign yet.

I haven’t come across any new blogs or message boards participating in the Character Creation Challenge. If you see any that I am missing, please let me know.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek Alpha Quadrant

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 6: Tiny Wastelands

Written by TardisCaptain January 6, 2024

For Day 6 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge I am making a character for the Tiny Wastelands role-playing game. Previously I’ve created characters for Tiny Dungeons 2nd edition (2022) and Tiny Spies (2023). After the Tiny Spies entry was posted, someone had requested that I make a character for Tiny Wastelands. I had place it in my notes, but failed to write down who had requested it. So thank you for the request, I hope you enjoy this.

The PDF is 194 pages long. The “Making a Survivor” guidelines start on page 20. The character sheet is One page. The first step is to select an Archetype. This is the equivalent of a character class. The options are Normals (every day people), Mutant (self explanatory), Scavenger (wanderers searching the wastelands for useful stuff), Survivor (Normal humans that have been through some stuff and toughened up), Wanderer (Think nomads), Crazy (Nut jobs still alive after the apocalypse), Fixer (Mechanics basically) and Tyrants (Leaders who take over lands and people by force). I thought this last one would have been an NPC only archetype. Having read through the list and descriptions, I’m torn between Survivor and Wanderer. But I elected to go with Survivor.

Next on the list is selecting three traits. These are items that the character is really good at. The Archetype gives you a trait already (in this case, Always Prepared for the Survivor). Looking back, my tiny Spies character had four, but my Tiny Dungeons character only had three. Re-reading the blog entries, the Tiny Spies had an extra trait due to the Archetype that was selected. So I’ll just pick two more traits.

Now we select a weapon proficiency and mastery. These are weapons that you are proficient with and I selected the Heavy Ranged group. For the mastery, it is the specific weapon in the group and I selected Assault Rifle.

Next we will equip our survivor. The character creation steps say that it is assumed that we already have a weapon of our choice (the assault rifle mentioned above) and standard armor or clothing. Your character also has 10 clix (money, credits, moola, etc.) and a Survivor’s Kit containing some basic equipment. I wrote these down.

Pick an name and description and some background info. Stewart Barlow was a carpenter by trade before the bombs fell and killed his family. He is 6’0″ with black hair, a full beard and brown eyes. He’s always looking around like he’s expecting something to come out after him.

The last step is to select a Drive. This is a statement that the character lives by and may often say. Considering how nervous Stewart is he often stays “Been caught off guard once, never again.” I believe that I have everything filled in, so here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I did see some editing mistakes in my copy of the PDF. Example on page 30: “See Scavenging Items; pg. XX” So hopefully with this being a PDF on DriveThru R PG, they can update this. The book also mentioned blasters (sci-fi trope) when I assumed they meant guns. When I went to write down my Drive on my character sheet, I noticed it was listed as a Belief. I believe that these may have been hold-overs from other releases of the Tiny RPG line.

I liked how they used quotes and references to different media (not just post-apocalyptic shows) to reference different aspects of the game.

As I’ve mentioned with Tiny Dungeons and Tiny Spies, I really want to see how this rules-light system plays at the table. I’ll probably have to run a game myself to make this happen.

Additional Notes:

A reader on the RPG.net forums responded to me about the Top Secret S.I. character sheet comments that I had made. They had also agreed and had already done so. They had shared the updated design with me which knocked it down to two pages. I’ve saved them for possible future use. I love seeing how a game has inspired someone to be creative.

I also ran my first Star Trek Adventures game (prepping for an upcoming convention) and I also received a Kickstarter reward. Both will be detailed in upcoming blog posts.

Coming Up Next:

The Dark Eye

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 5: Top Secret S.I.

Written by TardisCaptain January 5, 2024 1 Comment

Day 5 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I will be creating a character for the Top Secret S.I. system. So I’ve been waiting a long time for this entry. There is a little bit of a tragic backstory with me and this game. In the early days of my involvement in the role playing hobby I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. While a friend would have a copy of the original Top Secret espionage role playing game, we never had the chance to play.

When TSR released Top Secret S.I. in 1987, I picked up the original boxed set. Then I picked up the High Stakes Gamble expansion (I walked a long way through Tucson, Arizona to get that box). I lost count but eventually I had the majority of books for this system. But, I never had the chance to play it. I kept this collection when I (foolishly) sold off my D&D collection in the mid 90’s. As I move, and I moved a lot, I kept that collection with me. After one move, I couldn’t find the box. There is a saying that after 3-4 moves it’s the equivalent of a house fire. So somewhere along the line I lost the contents of that box. I kept hoping that I’d open up one of my many storage boxes (something I’ve been planning to get rid of) and I’d suddenly find the collection again, but I had my doubts of seeing it again.

I started looking at re-acquiring the books. However they are not available anywhere except for Ebay. And since these books were popular, they are usually expensive. I lucked out in 2023 when the first boxed set came up for auction at a reasonable price. Sure the box was hammered, but the books and other contents were in good condition. It even had the original dice still sealed in it’s bag. While I’ve kept the box in the shipping package, the books I’ve been able to use to create a character.

In the boxed set there is a Players Guide, an Administrators Guide, an Equipment Inventory, a GMs screen, some cardboard character standees and a foldout map of several generic locations. The Character Dossier (character sheet) is four pages long. There is a character creation summary on the font of the GMs screen with the process listed on page 5 of the Players Guide.

There are seven attributes for a character. STRength, REFlex, INTelligence, WILlpower, CONstitution, MOVement and DEXterity. These are generated by rolling a d6 (for the tens digit) and a d10 (for the ones digit) and adding 10 for the first five attribute in order. After I rolled these, I added them all together. If they didn’t reach 275, I could take the difference and spread them through the different attributes as I saw fit. Luckily my total all together was 290. For MOV and DEX (the secondary attributes) I was instructed to add STR and REF and divide by 2 (for MOV) and REF and INT divided by 2 (for DEX). Whee I love extra math steps in character creation. (not)

OK for step four I’m instructed to determine my character’s sex, nationality, hair color, eye color, general appearance, name, handiness, native language and age. Whew. These are all items that I choose (other than Extremely Ugly, Extremely Attractive or Ambidextrous as they are advantages that I’d have to buy). Nick Tanner was born in Arizona, USA and speaks English as his native language. He is 6’1″ with black hair and blue eyes with no extra-ordinary features. He is right-handed and is 24 years of age. On to step five.

The reality rule? If you want to really round out your character, determine his psychological profile? Loyalty, sanity, cruelty, etc. Let’s see what the book says. Ah, the reality rules make the game more realistic, but may slow down game play. Looking at the section for the psychological profile, it has suggestions, but no tables to roll against. Since the reality rules appear to be optional, I’m going to skip them in favor of getting the basic characteristics down. If this was for a campaign (and not under a time crunch) then perhaps I’d dive deeper into these.

Advantages and disadvantages are step six. The standard is to select one of each (there is a point based reality rule option). There is quite a list, or I can make up my own as long as they make sense (and both items don’t cancel each other out). From the list I selected Toughness and Phobia (spiders).

Next we choose the background for the character. This is basically what the character has done for a living besides being an espionage agent. There are several packages available to choose from (or I could make my own). They only had four career packages listed which were pretty generic. So I picked Entertainer. The original idea was that this character was going to be an athlete (wrestler) and that seemed to be the closest one. From the background we get the number of skills known in each category (Mechanical, combat, etc.), starting money and level of career.

And as you probably guessed, the skills are next. There are a set that I can choose from and they are pretty basic as well. If I understood the background information, I have a set of skill points to spend in different categories. I selected the skills I through the character would need. But I’d also be working with the GM to make sure that the background of the character would be viable in the campaign they were setting up. Knowing the Spanish language isn’t going to help if most of our missions are going to be in the Orient, etc. While getting my skills, I noticed a major issue (see Afterthoughts below) so I tried to make the skills match what I thought they should be. It was confusing, but I think I got the basic gist of it right.

The last step is purchasing equipment. But the next chapter is “Playing the game” with basic rules. The index shows no equipment in the players guide, so now I have to pull out the equipment book that came in the boxed set. And that states it’s for administrators (aka the GM) only. I looked through it and just decided that this guy has a pistol and a few spy trinkets that wouldn’t normally be cared by an every-day individual. I really would have been pressing on the GM for guidance on this part. But I’m thinking that the character is mostly done. I didn’t scan the last page since it was cover identities.

Afterthoughts:

Considering how many times we see the typical, “criminal is recruited to be a spy” trope in shows, they didn’t have any criminal options within the character creation. I wonder if this came up in any of the expansions. It had been so long that I had read them that I don’t recall.

The skill costs probably needed some work as well. As an “Entertainer” I had to spend two skill points in the mechanical category. The first (which was a per-requisite for other skills) cost 1 point. All of the other skills costs more just to get to level 0 (basic knowledge of the skill). So I’d have to dip into the extra skill points just to spend my mandatory two. Yea, that would have been homebrewed out if I was GMing this.

The character sheet could also be improved slightly. I don’t know if I’d ever get a chance to play/run this game in a campaign, but if I did, I would consider re-making the character sheet. I’ll have to see if anyone made any videos showing this game in play just so I could see how the system works. It’s a percentage based system (roll under to succeed) so it sounds like it should be simplistic.

Additional Notes:

I’ve really been enjoying reading the various entries on social media and the different message boards. I’m also happy that several of you are posting on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. I’ve seen several veterans returning and quite a few new participants as well. These have included some very interesting ideas. There is one person who appears to be re-creating the Scooby Doo gang in different RPG systems.

Coming Up Next:

Tiny Wastelands

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.