Tag: Character Creation Challenge

Alien, Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2023 Character Creation Challenge Day 1: Alien

Written by TardisCaptain January 1, 2023February 25, 2024 1 Comment

Hello readers and welcome to my first entry into the 2023 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Last year I used the first day to post about Dune: Adventures in the Imperium because of how much I’d love to play that game. Hopefully I’ll get a chance to at the upcoming SaltCon. Another game that I hope to play is Alien from Free League Publishing. I had the opportunity to meet the writer of the Alien RPG, Andrew E.G. Gaska at the 2022 FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. He was able to explain a little of the game to me and he signed my book. So I wanted to use Alien for day 1 of the new challenge.

OK, so let’s get down to making a character for this game. The character creation steps start on page 27. There are two types of play for this game. Cinematic (think one-shot, character has a good chance of dying by the end of the session) or Campaign Play (self-explanatory). I’m going to run with the assumption that this character will be for a campaign. I need to select a career for my character out of a choice of nine available. The choices are Colonial Marine, Colonial Marshal (oh, I wonder if the movie Outland could be an inspiration for something like this?), Company Agent, Kid, Medic, Officer (think CO of a mining vessel like the one we first saw in Alien), Pilot, Roughneck (worker) and Scientist. Since I told Mr. Gaska that my favorite movie of all time is Aliens, I know that I’ve got to make a Colonial Marine. I’m going with the name Jan Karlsson (plucked out of the air).

There are four attributes in Alien. Strength and Agility (both self-explanatory), Wits (this covers intelligence, sanity and perception) and finally Empathy (think Charisma and how you treat others). You get 14 points to spend over these attributes. Minimum of 2 with a max of 5 for the key attribute of your career (4 max on the others). For the Colonial Marine, my key attribute is Strength. I selected the following for Jan. Str 5, Agi 4 Wit 3 and Emp 2.

Now we spend some points in our skills. There are only twelve of them and they are tied with one of the attributes listed above. As a starting character, I can spend 10 points on any of the following (keeping in mind that my Colonial Marine has to have certain skills) with a max of 3. Close combat, Heavy Machinery or Stamina (under Strength), Ranged Combat, Mobility or Piloting (under Agility) Observation, Survival or Comtech (under Wits) and Command, Medical Aid and Manipulation (under empathy). As my character progresses, I can increase the skill numbers. Jan is not a leader, he’s a point and shoot guy who also wants to make sure he and his squad comes back. So I selected Ranged Combat-3, Close Combat- 2, Stamina- 2, Observation-1, Survival- 1 and Medical Aid- 1.

For a campaign, each player starts with one talent and can earn three more later. A talent in the Alien RPG is a trick, move or minor ability that gives Jan a small edge in something. Each career has a selection of three starting talents to choose from. Later, there is a selection of general talents that can also be used. For the Colonial Marine, I loved the idea of the Banter talent. It helps reduce stress levels between fights. Plus I love interacting with my fellow players at the game and making them laugh.

It wasn’t on the list on page 27, but in the descriptions following the next items are calculating your health and stress. Health is self-explanatory but if you reach zero (and don’t die) you can receive a critical injury. Stress is what your character feels under certain situations. The stress level can rise if you push a skill roll, perform certain actions (or lack of actions such as lack of sleep), etc. If stress gets too high and isn’t kept in check, your character can panic (which is bad). Starting health is based upon the Strength attribute (so Jan’s is 5) and stress at the start of the game is 0? (Flips back a few pages to the combat chapter) Yea it’s 0.

Next on the list is choose a name (done, see above), decide on your appearance (imagine Ivan Draggo from Rocky 4 in Colonial Marines fatigues) and select a personal agenda. From the looks of things, the personal agenda is something about your character that you want to fulfill, or want to keep secret. If you are playing a cinematic game, you earn story points if you complete an agenda item. In a campaign, you gain extra experience points. Since these can be anything I selected “Previous unit let a company man die because he was endangering the team. We kept the details a secret and want to keep it that way.” Since this is a campaign, I can select a buddy and a rival. The rules stated one or both could be another PC. Since I don’t have other PCs to decide on, I’m randomly picking my buddy to be Chester Williams, a marine I helped train and the rival is Miguel Rodriguez, a guy who claims to be an ex-company man, but Jan doesn’t really trust him.

With gear, there is more than just the stuff you have. You can also select a signature item and there are also consumables. From the Colonial Marine details what I felt was appropriate. Jan’s signature item is an old pocket knife that an ex-commander gave him before he died. I think I only track consumables (food, water, air, etc.) if we are off ship. So I’m leaving those sections blank right now. And hey I get to roll my first die while creating a character. Jan has $500 to start out to buy other equipment, of which I did that I thought was logical for a Colonial Marine. I think the character is done. Here is the sheet.

Afterthoughts:

There were only a couple of areas where it was a little confusing. Besides the physical book, the publisher also sent me a PDF copy. I was able to use that to do some quick searches for subjects like “cash” and others. The pages are black, but the majority of the text is in light boxes with a dark font. So it isn’t too hard on the eyes. I still haven’t had a chance to go through the entire book cover-to-cover, but I really hope to play this game at an upcoming convention. The log entries at the start of the book was drawing me into a story. I really want to see the system in action. With experience, I could easily create a character quickly. I wonder how much material that the publisher has pulled from the older Dark Horse Alien comics? I could see myself homebrewing some of those items.

Additional Notes:

I’ve been seeing submissions for the #CharacterCreationChallenge on the RPG.net forum and on social media using the hashtag. I’ve even been tagged on a few Mastodon posts. Several participants have emailed me links to their sites. So far there have been some interesting submissions. There was even a link to another message board on Board Game Geek that are participating in the challenge. I’m trying to get all of the links posted on the Character Creation Challenge page so that everyone can see them.

Update: The TardisCaptain dot com Discord is now ready and can be accessed by following this link.

Coming Up Next:

The classic Star Frontiers game from TSR

Character Creation Challenge, Website

Moving from 2022 to 2023

Written by TardisCaptain December 31, 2022January 1, 2023

Stack of character sheets printed out for the 2023 #CharacterCreationChallenge

So another year has come and gone. And I’m very happy to see it leave. While 2022 had some good things that happened, such as the opportunity to see a boat-load of musicians perform in live concerts, it also had some challenges as well. A lot of these challenges was related to health issues. Note to everyone, if you can avoid breaking bones, please do so. My little mishap turned a one-month project into a six-month project.

I’m not going to go into a huge list of what I did over the year while reading, watching, playing, etc. I’m going to try to give end-of-month reports talking about the geeky things that I accomplished that month.

Now off to the USS Ticonderoga New Years Eve party. Tomorrow I dive into the deep end of the pool with the Character Creation Challenge.

Oh, on January 1st I should be launching a new Discord server for feedback an interaction with readers of my blog. I figured this would be a better way to do interactions instead of having to make people try to log into another site and try to keep everything secure. Links posted soon.

Character Creation Challenge, Pirates, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Westerns

Prepping for the 2023 Character Creation Challenge

Written by TardisCaptain December 25, 2022December 25, 2022 2 Comments

Some of the games that I plan to use in the 2023 #CharacterCreationChallenge

As I’ve mentioned before, it is always a good idea to plan ahead for a 31-day challenge. I’ve already seen quiet a few people prepping on the RPG.net forums. They are deciding upon which system(s) they wish to use. Are they going to follow a theme or just create characters randomly? I’ve already had some people reach out to me using various methods to let me know of their participation. Please let me know, Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com if you plan to post your characters up on a blog. I’ll link to it from the Character Creation Challenge section of my website. I also have something else in the works, but I’m not quite ready to announce it yet. Still trying to get some ducks lined up in a row.

I’m once again using a spreadsheet with the date, day and game type to schedule my games. This way I won’t have two fantasy games next to each other. I can also plan a game that may take more time and energy on a day off. This is also a good idea for those dates I know are going to be busy, I can schedule the systems I’m more familiar with for these days.

As in the past, I’ll try to walk through the character creation process as I understand them in the rules-as-written (RAW). This also gives me a chance to do a review of the process. I will then scan the character sheet for all to see. And I will have all of the character sheets printed out before the challenge starts. I’ve found that this helps me get everything ready.

If you are posting on any of the social media websites, please use the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge so that other participants can find them. I love seeing what other RPG fans have come up with. I also know that there is one reader who wants to see if a game will pop up that he’s never heard of. I was able to accomplish this last year with my Technoir entry.

I’ve picked up some new physical books by online auctions, trade or special sales. I’ve also done a lot of purchasing from Kickstarter, DriveThruRPG, HumbleBundle and Bundle of Holding. I even donated to a Doctors Without Borders fundraiser, for which a lot of PDF copies of different games were provided. Some of these sounded very interesting.

If you are reading this after January 1st and you still want to jump into the challenge, please do. A few participants last year either did a quick catch up or just made sure they ran a full 31 days. The choice is yours. This challenge is just for fun with our gaming systems.

Remember to have fun with this. That was one of the primary goals of the challenge.

You can also use this graphic to help promote the #CharacterCreationChallenge.

31 Day Character Creation Challenge — Feel free to share this image on social media to spread the word.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2023 Character Creation Challenge

Written by TardisCaptain November 16, 2022November 16, 2022

Can you feel the crackle of energy in the air. A new Character Creation Challenge will soon arrive in January 2023. Swords are already being sharpened, blasters charged up and battle plans drawn. Soon the dice will roll and 31 new characters will be born.

For those of you learning about this for the first time, the Character Creation Challenge is for fans of various role playing games. You may have looked into a game or collected the books with the intention to play but never have. Or perhaps you have a favorite system that you always turn to for RPG sessions. Well the Character Creation Challenge is an event to create a new RPG character for each day in January (running parallel to the “new year, new you” theme) from what ever system(s) you choose. Once you have the character ready to play, post it on a website, blog, social media (use the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge) or online message boards. The forums at RPG.net was a popular forum where a lot of participants had posted their completed characters. You can find the official RPG.net forum for the 2023 challenge here.

I’ve been collecting a few new games to use in the next Character Creation Challenge. Besides picking up a few physical books at various sales and PDFs online, I also had some trades. On the RPG.net forums there is a trade board and one fan wanted my Judge Dread D20 books. He sent me several core books that I’ll be using for the next challenge. Also the creator of Bare Bones Fantasy sent me a PDF of the core book. I told him that I would be using it in this challenge as well.

I also updated the Character Creation Challenge page itself. In the past I would post links to the various blogs and sites that were participating in the challenge. I will do the same this year, but in order to keep the page itself from getting to unwieldy, I moved the links for the 2021 and 2022 challenges over to their own pages.

There was also a special graphic that was made for those who completed all 31 days in 2022. A badge of honor (bragging?) that participants could display. It was designed by my daughter who is going to college for graphic design and production art. I may bribe her again to make a graphic for the 2023 challenge winners.

If you would like to participate, email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or find me on social media/message boards and let me know where you will be posting your challenge characters at. If you are posting them on a website, I’ll add the link to my Character Creation Challenge page.

Collecting, Dungeons and Dragons, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

DriveThruRPG Print on Demand Review

Written by TardisCaptain May 31, 2022May 30, 2022

The Dungeons and Dragons Rules Cyclopedia and Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn print on demand books.

A package arrived for me the other day. It contained my hardcover print-on-demand copy of Star Frontiers Alpha Dawn from DriveThruRPG. This was the second POD that I had ordered from DriveThruRPG. Before the first Character Creation Challenge, I had ordered a POD of the Dungeons and Dragons Rule Cyclopedia hoping that I could use it in the challenge. It had arrived too late for that event, but it made me realize that I could use the POD options to obtain books that I’ve been wanting to add to my collection. While PDFs are good for reference and quick searching, I still like the feel of a book in my hands. Especially when I’m learning a new system or wanting to recall reading the books for the first time. While I had my own copies of the BECMI Red Box books, I’ve been wanting a copy of the Rules Cyclopedia. Star Frontiers was one of those games that my group of gaming friends wanted to play when it first came out, but for one reason or another, we never got the opportunity to do so. With the credits that I had been building up from DriveThruRPG (thank you) I thought I’d pick up a POD for me to enjoy.

Another thought hit me as I was opening the package, I should write a review of the POD copies that came from DTRPG. So I took some pictures and decided to write down my thoughts. This will be a review of the POD, not a review of the games themselves (which will be handled in a later blog post).

Ordering the books was pretty easy in both cases. Go to the entry on the website and see the options available. Just keep in mind that there is a charge for shipping as well. I don’t recall how long the Dungeons and Dragons book took to arrive (I had ordered at the tail end of the holiday season which is probably the worst time to try to get things by mail), but the Star Frontiers book arrived in ten days after ordering. Both books were printed in Tennessee. A USPS tracking number was provided in both cases.

Both books were packaged very well. The container the D&D book did get a little roughed up in transit, but the book itself was just fine. There was no damage to the container that the SF book arrived in.

Top views of the bindings for both books.

As you can see, the bindings for both books look pretty solid. The covers are not attached directly to the prints themselves which has allowed for repeated book opening. While I haven’t had a chance to go through the Star Frontiers book, I have had several sessions where I’ve sat down to read chapters in the Rule Cyclopedia and I cannot see any additional wear from these readings.

As you can see from the earlier picture, the covers are pretty sharp. The back image on the Star Frontiers book does slightly bleed onto the spine. The Rules Cyclopedia front and back cover appear to be the same as the original publication. As for Star Frontiers, it appears that “The Original” was added to the top of both covers. Another note on the Star Frontiers, book, they did not change the wording of the description on the back. So the hardbound book talks about how “the box set includes…”. Since they had slightly changed the cover, I’m surprised that they didn’t change the description. But it was an interesting read to see what the original box set stated.

A colored map in the Star Frontiers book.

The Grand Duchy of Karameikos map in the Rules Cyclopedia.

Considering these prints are from a scan of the original books, they came out sharp in the publication. The colors stood out just fine (as seen by the photos above). There were a few pages that contained blue text in the Star Frontiers book (which I believe was the same in the original book). The art printed out OK as well. Again, for a scan, these came out readable and usable. Nothing extra blurry or hard to read.

Now that I own Star Frontiers, I’ll be able to use it in the 2023 Character Creation Challenge. I don’t know if I’ll ever get a chance to play it, but I can at least read and understand one of the classic games that I saw advertised early in my RPG days. I’m also planning to pick up a few more POD books that I’d like to have dead tree versions of without having to pay expensive collector prices for.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

More feedback from the Character Creation Challenge

Written by TardisCaptain February 3, 2022

So the graphic above is the one put together by my art-school college kid. I’ve been sending it out to the people who responded that they have completed the 31 day character creation challenge. If you completed it, shoot me an email and I’ll add you to the list and send you the graphic. It can be posted on your blog, message boards or social media. I still loved that she put this together for me as a gift to those who completed the challenge.

Here are the Names/Handles of those who have completed the challenge and requested the graphic.

Automeris
Brian C
Capellan
Craig O
Hunter
MarchHarrier
Mr_Sandman
RadioKen
Slack_C
Subplot Kudzu
SunlessNick
Thorr-Kan
Three Kobolds

Here are some of the comments I’ve received recently regarding this challenge.

“Thanks, also for your posts (I didn’t even know about Espionage, and thought I’d know the big entries in the genre) and for kicking this of!”

“Thanks so much for inspiring this. I’ve had kind of a wretched January and the challenge was a real bright spot for me.”

“I had great fun across the month – although I’m glad to have finished! But yes please to the badge!”

“I also read your blog post on the Traveller character you created and it sounds as if you pretty much got it in one. The character death is interesting but it was a vital part of the creation as it stopped players maxing out on terms to get the skills with no risk. I thought it rather cleverly balanced.”

“Thank you for the inspiration!”

“I made it to 31!”

“I’d like to once again thank you for organizing this. I had a blast doing and look forward to next year’s Challenge!”

“I made it to 31, although some of them were pretty nothing-y (I might start in October for next time).”

“Ooh, ooh, I made it through all 31 days of the 31-day challenge! What did your daughter make?”

“I did indeed get 31 characters posted, and I look forward to seeing the badge. Thanks for organizing the challenge, and thanks to your daughter for her contribution!”

“I did the thing, and a badge would be lovely. Thanks!”

“It was a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to it next year.”

“I managed to post a character a day for the whole month.”

So once again thank you to everyone who participated. I’ll be posting more gaming stuff (and non-gaming stuff) very soon to the blog.

Character Creation Challenge, Dune, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi, Star Trek

2022 Character Creation Challenge after action report

Written by TardisCaptain February 2, 2022January 11, 2024

Note: If you made it through 31 days of the challenge, read to the bottom of the post.

So the 2022 Character Creation Challenge is now in the books and this was a bit different from the 2021 challenge. I don’t know if I was more enthusiastic about the games in 2021 or if it was something else. Not knowing if there was going to be a 2nd challenge, I used a lot of games that I really wanted to run/play. For 2022 there were more games of “well it’s there, let’s take a look at it” which may have been the wrong attitude. But I’m glad that I used those games. While there are some that I’ll never play and may even trade the games away, I can still say that I’ve dipped my toe into the water. I was worried that my lack of enthusiasm for that game may affect the creation process. There was a few times I told myself “smeg it, I’m done”. I still want to do a variety of games, but I’m wondering if I should just limit it to the games I would actually want to play? I’ve got some time to think about this.

I tried to use the time that would have been allotted to me in a session zero time frame to create a character for the challenge. For some games that I am not familiar with I would probably need a lot more time to learn the system. For games that I am familiar with, I would need time to think about a character concept that would go with a party. During the 31 day challenge I also made a Far Trek character for an online game. That was done in free time and it took a few days because I had to confirm what positions were still available. Unfortunately the Engineering spot had already been taken up otherwise I would have requested the use of the character I made in 2021.

My biggest suggestions for game writers, a checklist or worksheet is a big help. Give a start and an end to the character creation process that includes the allocation of equipment. There were some really funky and weird equipment guidelines in some of the games. Some kewl and some made me scratch my head and wonder what they were smoking. Also explain your system before character creation starts. I mean explain it simply and save the extra details for later in the book. If you are going to have a player pick a value or belief for the character, give more than 2-3 examples. Even if they don’t get used they may inspire other ideas.

I would like to say that I’m very surprised by a couple of things. A thank you has to go out to the companies that still have character sheets available online for games that they haven’t touched in years. I was also surprised that some of the dead games were still available on DriveThruRPG. Especially the Farscape RPG since it is based on an intellectual property.

Last year I only printed out the character sheets just before I needed to use them. This year I had this drive to have all sheets printed out and ready to go before the challenge started. I was really glad I did this. When I discovered that one game (sideways glance at Fantasy Imperium) had a six-page character sheet and that I had scheduled it for a weekday, I moved that game to a day I had off. I’ve played with character sheets in excel, fillable character sheets and even sheets provided in a virtual table top. But I have fond memories of writing things down on a printed out sheet and loved doing that as part of this challenge. When I found my three-ringed binder full of old characters that I had played, I had a blast remembering the past games.

Yes there will be a 2023 Character Creation Challenge. Details won’t be posted for quite some time however as I’ve got to decompress.

The reaction to this year’s challenge is one of the many things that blew me away. The 2022 Character Creation thread on the RPG.net forums was named a Staff Pick by the moderators. This year’s thread has made it up to (at the time of this posting) 128 pages. This was three times larger than the 2021 thread of 42 pages. I loved reading all of the different blogs that participated. If I don’t have your blog on the Character Creation Page, please send me the URL. On social media I could not keep up with all of the entries using the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge. This was particularly true on twitter, that place was gangbusters. I tried to like and re-tweet as much as I could but some days that got to be too much. If I missed your post, don’t feel bad. Ten days into the challenge I realized that I should have kept a tally of how many entries there were for each system, but in 20/20 hindsight I’m glad I didn’t. That could have taken up a ton of time. Perhaps I’d do this if I wasn’t actually creating characters, but I really want to roll dice since I haven’t been able to get together with friends on a regular basis. There was a number of entries also posted on Facebook and MeWe. It wouldn’t surprise me if similar threads were popping up on other social media sites and message boards. If you hear of any that I don’t follow, please let me know.

Speaking of reactions, I added a new plugin for my site this year that tracked the number of visitors. It showed the sites that you guys would read. The top five games that brought in the most visitors was Dungeons & Dragons: Holmes Basic, Classic Traveller, Espionage! and Dungeons & Dragons: B/X edition. I still need to find a way to enable followers to comment on blog posts without having to worry about spambots infiltrating everything.

The 2022 games that made the most impression on me are Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, Star Trek Adventures-The Klingon Empire, Dungeon Crawl Classics, Boldly Go!, White Lies! and Covert Ops. I want to take deeper looks at Tiny Dungeon 2nd edition, Amazing Adventures 5E, Modern Age, Castle & Crusades and Classic Traveller. While I may never get a chance to play them, I do have a greater appreciation for Werewolf: The Apocalypse and Paranoia 2nd Edition. The low points of this challenge were Fantasy Imperium and Blue Rose.

A lot of participants were posting their list of games before the challenge started. While I had a spreadsheet created to help me with my entries, I’m glad that I didn’t post it. I swapped out a couple of games when two new games came into my possession. The two I rotated out was Rocket Age and The Frontier, which should be on my 2023 challenge list.

Here is my final 2022 Character Creation Challenge list.
Day 1: Dune Adventures in the Imperium Character: Tarkin Dal of the House Nimoi
Day 2: Wendy’s Feast of Legends Character: Garthos of the Order of the Spicy Chicken Sandwich
Day 3: Dungeons & Dragons-Holmes Basic Character: Dylath
Day 4: Men in Black The Roleplaying Game Character: Agent C
Day 5: BASH! Sci-Fi Edition Character: TaChar
Day 6: Star Wars Saga Edition Character: Keet Apaal
Day 7: Espionage! Character: Devron Marcus
Day 8: Star Trek Adventures-The Klingon Empire Character: Nurot son of H’unos
Day 9: Pirates and Plunder Character: Jason “Jake” McCabe
Day 10: Modern Age Character: Raymond Ray
Day 11: Farscape Roleplaying Game Character: Drellith
Day 12: Castles and Crusades Character: Godfrey of Cloverdale
Day 13: The Judge Dredd Roleplaying Game Character: Judge Stark
Day 14: Boldly Go! Character: Tigrox Carvor of the SFS Valiant
Day 15: Covert Ops Character: William Greene
Day 16: Paranoia 2nd Edition Character: Car-R-PET-1
Day 17: Fantasy Imperium Character: William Moore
Day 18: Cyberpunk v3 Character: Freejack
Day 19: Amazing Adventures 5E Character: Derick Fieldstone
Day 20: Dungeons & Dragons B/X edition Character: Brother Alexander
Day 21: Prime Directive 1st edition Character: Kovil
Day 22: Werewolf The Apocalypse Character: Hans Brulker
Day 23: MERC Character: Mark Powell
Day 24: Dungeon Crawl Classics Character: Multiple
Day 25: White Lies! Character: Ronald Denton
Day 26: Classic Traveller Character: Tyrell Balto
Day 27: Blue Rose Character: Valk Starn
Day 28: Bubblegum Crisis Character: Taxun
Day 29: Technoir Character: Arron “Trench” Chambers
Day 30: Dark Conspiracy Character: Dale Laslow
Day 31: Tiny Dungeon 2nd edition Character: Rek Son of Talk

While I’m not trying to think of the 2023 challenge yet, I’m really hoping that I can find a copy of Star Frontiers for it. I’m also having doubts that I’ll ever find my Top Secret S/I collection. I may have to break down and see if I can acquire the rules again.

Also, if you purchased anything after clicking on the link to DriveThruRPG, thank you. I’m not doing this blog to make money, but the kickback helps when making game purchases for future challenges.

So did you complete the challenge and make 31 characters? If so, please email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com. My art school kid in college loved hearing about the characters I was making on a daily basis and the challenge in general. She created a badge for those who completed the challenge. If you buzz me, I’ll send you the badge to display.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 31: Tiny Dungeon

Written by TardisCaptain January 31, 2022August 15, 2024

So Tiny Dungeon 2nd Edition was not originally on my list of games for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. In fact, 48 hours ago I didn’t even own a copy of the game. However there was a sale going on at DriveThruRPG and I picked up the rulebook for a very good price. I was originally thinking that I’d use it for the 2023 challenge, but as I glanced through the rules, I realized I’d rather do it now. The original entry for day 31 was a game that could easily wait until next year (another PDF buy) so I made the call and here we are.

The basic for the system is that all tasks are determined by rolling 2d6. If you have an advantage, you can roll 3d6 (highest you can roll) and if you have a disadvantage you only roll 1d6 (which is the lowest you can roll). If you roll a 5 or 6 on any die, you succeed in the task. This is a minimalist rule set.

Tiny Dungeon 2e uses Heritage instead of races (they had races in the 1st edition) and your first step is to select one. The choices are Human, Fey (called Elves by Humans), Dwarf (called Dwarves by Humans, grin), Goblin, Salimar (Salamander people), Treefolk (think Treebeard from Lord of the Rings), Karhu (Bear people) and Lizard Folk (I wonder why these guys didn’t get their own name?). Goblin sounds tempting, but not as tempting as a Karhu. When you select your heritage you get the traits that the heritage comes with.

The next step is to select three unique Traits from a list. A trait is basically a skill or special ability that your character has. Looking this over I selected three that I thought would be appropriate for the character. The weapon group that my character would be proficient with was already determined by his heritage so I moved onto the Family Trade. This is something that you grew up learning (perhaps your dad was a cook, etc.). This character’s family was one that participated in fishing for the local sleuth (tribe). The last step is to select a Belief. This sounds like the Values that Star Trek Adventure characters have. This can be good, bad or neutral and basically defines the character. Since this character was almost captured by slavers, his belief is “Slavery is wrong.”

When it comes to equipping your character the rules keep it simple. If you selected a specific weapons proficiency, you get one weapon of that type. You also receive the clothing and armor standard for your type of character. Armor serves no mechanical function in this game (if I was running an adventure, I might change that). Each character also starts with 10 gold and an Adventurer’s Kit. There is an optional inventory system based on slots (like the slots you would see in Diablo II) and an optional system for wear and tear on your equipment called Depletion. I filled in a few basic items on the sheet dealing with descriptions and I think this character is done.

Rek Son of Talk was born and raised in the Karhu lands of Whitewater. While on a fishing expedition down one of the rivers he was captured by a tribe of Gnolls. He was the only survivor from the attack. They were leading him away to be sold off to the Rockfang gladiatorial arenas when he was rescued by a band of adventurers. Being too far from home and wanting to re-pay his rescuers, he joined the party on their quest.

Afterthoughts:

After creating the character I did see that there was an optional armor rule that allowed for damage reduction. I’m really curious now how this game plays at the table. There were a lot of optional rules to make it a little more advanced than the basic minimalist game without adding too much to the system.

There is a science fiction version of Tiny Dungeons called Tiny Frontiers and a post-apocalyptic version called Tiny Wastelands. I really want to obtain these variants see how it compares. I could see myself playing and homebrewing for this system.

Additional Notes:

And with that, I’ve completed 31 characters in 31 days. Instead of going too deep in my thoughts of this year’s challenge, I’ll save that for the after action report. If you made it to 31 days, please let me know at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com.

Coming Up Next:

2022 Character Creation Challenge after action report

Character Creation Challenge, Horror, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 30: Dark Conspiracy

Written by TardisCaptain January 30, 2022

Dark Conspiracy 1st Edition is the last of the games that was gifted to me last year that I’m going to use in this challenge. I decided to use this game for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge since I actually had the books on my shelf. I prefer the dead-tree versions when learning new systems.

In the early 1990’s the cyberpunk genre was the new “it factor” for roleplaying games. When something becomes popular a lot of publishers try to release their own take on the genre. This would also make it a very crowded market trying to stand out on the local gaming store shelves. Dark Conspiracy was GDW’s entry that tried to combine both cyberpunk and horror elements. Think Johnny Mnenomic meets X-Files meets Judge Dredd. I remember seeing ads and books for Dark Conspiracy, but the gaming group I was involved in had already elected to go with the Cyperpunk RPG. So I never picked up any of the books.

It is the early 90’s in this alternate history, my gaming buddies have decided that Dark Conspiracy is our next campaign and I need to sit down and make a character for play. Let’s see what the main rulebook can tell me about creating a character.

So the first thing is that the game has a two page worksheet that you fill in before you transfer everything over to your character sheet. Hold on, I’ve got to scan in a copy of this as well. OK now I’ve got one printed out let’s fill it in.

Items 1-4 are basic. Name (Dale Laslo), Gender (male), Nationality (American) and Native Languages (English). The worksheet even guides you to page numbers if needed. For item 5 we are rolling for basic attributes. These are Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Education, Charisma and Empathy. The last one you roll a 1d6-1. The remaining attributes roll 2d6-2 and anything that comes up zero gets a re-roll. Once I have these scores determined, if they are less than 33 I can add points to any attribute (nothing above 10). I ended up rolling 41 points for attributes so what I rolled stands. I could have done point allocation, but that would have only been with 36 points so I’m glad that I rolled.

So you start the character creation at the age of 17. Before you turned this age you earned four background skills selected from a list. It also listed the controlling attribute which helped in deciding which skills to take. You gain more skills by doing four years at a career. The career term also gains you a contact, secondary activities and money. Once you’ve finished a term, you can elect to do another one (or roll a certain number if you want to be random) and continue on. If you have a lot of terms, your age can rise to the point where it affects your attributes. This way if you wanted to play an aged professor when the game starts, you can do so. Also a term can be four years at a college if you elected to do so. With the attributes I rolled for Laslo, I didn’t think he would get into college so he signed up for the US Army and got into one of the elite corps. Where he stayed for three terms (12 years). Earning three military contacts (two foreign). I wrote down his various skills or attribute bonuses. From here we were able to generate the character’s initiative, age, base hit capacity (aka hit points), weight (yes there was a formula to follow), load (how much the character could carry), throw range and unarmed combat damage. The worksheet states that we need to generate our base hit numbers for ranged combat, but the book did not have that in the same order. I had to go track this down elsewhere, and I was unable to find it. The index had nothing on base hit numbers. Screw it, I’ll leave it blank for now.

Using my final equipment allowance, I allocated weapons, armor, tools, ammo and transport for this character and called it good. I think I did right on the equipment. I’m definitely noticing a lack of help on starting equipment in most games.

Dale Laslow came out of school thinking that he wouldn’t be able to get into any college or university. He signed up for the US Army, and to his surprise he was accepted into the Rangers. He spent 12 years serving the country in various hotspots around the world before an injury forced him out of the service. Wondering what he was going to do with his life a friend looked him up and inquired if he wanted to join his mercenary squad. They had just been hired to provide some protection for an unusual group of investigators.

Afterthoughts:

Trying to find a character sheet for this system was next to impossible. I ended up trying to scan in the sheet from the book. If the image looks a little warped, that’s because I couldn’t get the pages flat against the scanner.

While the character worksheet to assist in the creation of the character was very helpful, it still needed some polishing. There should be more page number references to easily find things.

Without knowing what was planned with “fellow players” and gamemaster, it was kind of hard to see myself playing this game. I didn’t get a chance to dive too deep into the actual system rules so these are just numbers on paper. It looks like there was a lot of thought put into the world-building for this game, but I don’t see myself playing it at this time.

Additional Notes:

One of the things I love about the RPG.net forums is the vast amount of knowledge available. Practically every game has had someone who knows about it and can give some feedback on it. When I posted my Technoir character yesterday, one of the posters stated that this was the first game that they had not heard about. So I was able to introduce someone to a new game.

Coming Up Next:

Tiny Dungeons 2nd Edition

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2022 Character Creation Challenge Day 29: Technoir

Written by TardisCaptain January 29, 2022 1 Comment

Technoir is another roleplaying game that I gave a home to after a friend was trying to clear out his bookshelves last year (thank you Stan) so I thought I’d use it in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. This game was published by Cellar Games in 2011 and was written by Jeremy Keller. It printed in the 5.5 x 8.5 digest size. According to the Technoir website, the game was taken over by Dream Machine Publications around 2018/2019 with plans for new expansions. The site lists a companion called Morenoir, mech supplement called Mechnoir and several location settings.

In Technoir, the player character is called the protagonist. The generation steps are laid out both in the book or as a free download from the website. The first thing they have you do is select three training programs. These are basically jobs that your character can do. Each program increases a Verb by one and you get to pick one Adjective. The Verbs appear to be the stats of the character. They are Coax (a form of intimidation, manipulation or seduction), Detect, Fight (hand to hand), Hack, Move, Operate (also driving and repair), Prowl, Shoot and Treat (healing). Adjectives look like basic descriptions about your character (agile, obsessive, sexy, tough, etc.). For your first three Programs, you can select two of the same (selecting different Adjectives with each one) but you can’t use all three in the same program.

So this guy is going to take Bodyguard (alert), Pilot (quick) and Soldier (tough). I filled in the verbs (including the 1 free one at the start of creation) each program came with and wrote down the adjectives.

Now the protagonists get to choose three Connections from the Transmissions (series of adventures) chosen by the Game Master. There is one in the back of the book for Los Angeles so I selected three connections from there. If the GM changes Transmission is a new game started with new protagonists or does the existing protagonist select new contacts? Some of the steps with the contacts require participation by your fellow players, so be prepared for a solid session zero dealing with character creation. I used one of the voices in my head for one of them but this part was quite difficult by myself. You pick your contacts, your fellow players select how they are connected to you (respectful, lustful, dependent, etc.)

Kreds are the currency used in Technoir. For step five you would purchase your objects. These are equipment, cybernetics, weapons all with their own adjectives. You can also buy upgrades for your objects which adds additional adjectives. A new protagonist starts with 10 kreds to buy stuff. The equipment was pretty basic and straightforward, which was quite a relief from some of the previous character creations where equipment allocation turned into a nightmare.

The final step is to select the protagonist’s name, handle (nickname) and description of what they would look like on the street. Then each protagonists starts with three push dice that I believe are placed on the character sheet in play. Basically the character is done except for what would have been needed from your fellow players.

This protagonist is going to be Aaron Chambers aka “Trench” because of the trench-coat he always wears.

Afterthoughts:

The example of three different characters being created in the book helped me follow the process. I tried reading the basic system for the system and it just seemed to confuse me at first. There is something about Push Dice (I think it’s a dice pool) and other D6’s that you would use to determine random results.

While I appreciated how quickly the character creation process was, the explanation of the system was not listed in or near creation. I really appreciate the writers who give a basis for the game before the character is create. This helps with the character creation process. Once I understand how Technoir works (if I ever do), then I may have changed a few tings in my character.

Kudos for having the character creation process available as a free download from the publisher’s website.

I really don’t see myself playing or homebrewing for this game.

Additional Notes:

I really shouldn’t create characters when I’m hungry. My lovely wife is making dinner upstairs and I can smell it all the way down here in the office. If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go see what she made.

Coming Up Next:

Dark Conspiracy