Last year during a sale on DriveThruRPG I picked up a copy of Tiny Dungeon 2nd Edition just in time for the 2022 Character Creation Challenge. So I used it and was pretty impressed with the system. Gallant Knight Games had released several “Tiny” RPG books covering different genres. When some of them went on sale last year, I picked them up as well allowing me to use another one for the 2023 challenge. So for day 4 I selected the espionage game, Tiny Spies.
The superspy creation rules start on page 16. The first to select the archetype of the character you are going to play. These are like character classes and consist of Agent (solo spy), Face (confidence man), Driver (vehicle expert), Hacker (tech expert) and Soldier (tough guy). Since I’m only creating one character instead of a team, I’m going to select Agent. This earns me 6 hit points and an additional trait (usually a character starts with three, but the agent is more well-rounded). Traits are specialties that your character is really good at. Being a superspy, I thought the character should have Agile Defense, Charismatic, Eidetic Memory and Perceptive. The next item to select is the weapons proficiency. Being someone who needs to blend in, I selected Light Ranged thinking he would be a marksman with a pistol that he could keep hidden under his jacket. There is a background trait that I need to select. This is the experience that the character learned before they became an agent. Out of the seven available, I selected Analyst. The character was good with putting two and two together which originally got him a job with a shipping company. This assisted him when he was recruited as an agent for UNITY. The last step was to select a Belief. This is a simple statement that is a core of your character. There were six examples listed and from those I selected “Someone Has To Do It.” I figured he had put some puzzle pieces together and realized that he had to help make sure that things didn’t get worse.
So that was all that was on the character creation steps. I came up with the name of Daniel Drake. Drake was a suave looking gentleman but very determined to accomplish his mission. The equipment section describes to the GM how they could handle the allocation of gear and vehicles to the agents. Since Drake is a member of UNITY, he would obtain his gear from the Santa and the Toymaker Division. I did write down a few sample items to help fill out the character sheet. I’m going to declare this character done.
Afterthoughts:
Just as Tiny Dunegeons was simplistic and rules light, Tiny Spies is the same. The system sounds pretty upfront and easy to learn. I’d love to run or participate in a couple of one-shots to see how the system really works out. Especially the interesting chase rules.
I could see myself homebrewing for this game.
Additional Notes:
I would like to thank everyone who has been linking back to my website. It’s not required, but very much appreciated. I’ve noticed a lot of participants no only on the message boards but on social media as well.
Please let me know if I’m missing a website on the Character Creation Challenge section of the website. If you are thinking of starting now, you can do so.
Coming Up Next:
Swashbuckling Adventures
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server.
In late 2021 when I was checking the blogs that had participated in the 1st Character Creation Challenge, I came across a blog that I didn’t have on my list yet. One of the games he had used was Low Fantasy Gaming. His descriptions intrigued me enough that when DriveThruRPG had a sale on the game, I snatched it up. I wanted to use it for a future challenge.
Low Fantasy Gaming is an RPG system that borrows from various D&D clones with a little hint of Dungeon Crawl Classics. Spell casters and magic items are rare. Clerics are called Cultists and the Artificer is a class you can choose from. Yes, even rules for black powder weapons. Mega-monsters are also very rare as well. While Halflings, Dwarves and Elves are available as possible races, the bulk of the population in the game are human. Half-Orcs are called Half-Skorn.
Creating a character starts with the steps listed on page 9. There is an alternate option to create 3-4 random level zero characters, but I’m going to stick with a single 1st level character. The attributes presented in Low Fantasy Gaming are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception, Willpower (mental toughness) and Charisma. Each character starts with one automatic 15 to use on an attribute. The remaining attributes are determined by rolling 4d6 and using the highest three. Once the six rolls have been made, the player selects which attribute gets which score. Using this method, I ended up with some pretty good scores with nothing over 15, so I could be just about anything. I’m sticking with human in the spirit of the game, so no racial adjustments and looking over the classes I selected Ranger. The final attribute scores are STR 14, DEX 15, CON 14, INT 13, WIL 12, PER 15 and CHA 9. There is also a luck score which is 10 + half the level rounded up. So starting the character gets 11. Lucks are used for both savings throws and luck checks (such as a second chance when your skill roll fails). Each time the character successfully uses luck, it gets reduced by one point and can be regained through rest. At first level, hit points are automatically at max for their class which is a philosophy I have used recently in a Basic Fantasy session. So my ranger has 9 HP to start.
The ranger starts out with three skills, Animal Lore, Wilderness Lore, Stealth. He can also choose three from a list of skills the class might use. I selected Apothecary (I figured he would know about the herbs used to treat illness while in the wilderness), Athletics (climbing trees) and Detection (spotting things while hunting). With my +1 INT modifier, I can select an additional language besides common so I selected Elvish. The rules also state at 1st level my ranger gets a beast companion between adventures (I didn’t choose something because I would have asked the GM to roleplay something out on this) and a special ability called Rangecraft. This provided a variety of one time effects that he could encounter while out in the wilderness or in combat.
The next item on the character creation list is to write up a background or randomly roll a party bond. The list was provided for quick and easy party cohesion. The rules recommended rolling a D20 twice and selecting and select the one that fits or sounds like fun. I’m up for rolling more dice. The first roll was to have the party members be bodyguards for some type of lord. The second was to have the party be the survivors of a mercenary company that was destroyed by bitter rivals. I liked the second one so I wrote that down.
3D6 x 10 for starting gold (had I been a fighter, it would have been 5D6 X 10) resulted in 120GP. I liked that the rules had gear rarity rules. I may use them in other fantasy style games. After looking at the gear packs listed in the equipment section, I selected the one for the ranger. Nothing too fancy with the weapons, a long sword, dagger and longbow. Since he needs to be stealthy in the wilderness he wears studded leather. I believe this character is ready.
Golarth was hired by the Hand of Dovar Mercenary Group as a scout. While returning from a scouting mission they discovered that the rival band, the Silver Blades, had attacked the camp. Golarth and his companions had managed to just barely escape downriver on a small boat. The party is now trying to make their fortune in the world while staying one step ahead of the Silver Blades.
Afterthoughts:
I could see this game being used to roleplay the Castlevania animated series that came out recently. I’ve also thought about a campaign where magic is rare and this might be the system for it. At a minimum, there are a lot of concept from this ruleset that I may steal for other games.
Additional Notes:
I had another participant send me an email with a link to their blog with their #CharacterCreationChallenge entries. I’ve added it to the Character Creation Challenge site. As more are discovered, I will continue to add them to the list.
Follow up to Star Frontiers from yesterday. When I had posted the character in a Star Frontiers fan discord server the other members provided me with some feedback. I had completed all of the steps (my weapons would have been provided by the company that hired me to be a troubleshooter) but I did misread one item. When selecting my starting skills, one of the skills must be from my chosen PSA and the other can be any skill. So the character I made yesterday would have been altered slightly before I used him in a game.
Coming Up Next:
Tiny Spies
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server.
So when I posted my entry for Top Secret in the 2021 Character Creation Challenge, I talked about how my gaming buddies had copies of Star Frontiers and Top Secret, but for some reason, we never played either of them. So, just like with the post for Top Secret, I’m going to pretend it’s the 80’s and one of my friends has said “Let’s make characters for a Star Frontiers game that I’m going to run.”
Now there are two books in this hardback POD version. The basic game and the expanded game. As a new player, we would have started our characters in the basic game rules on page 4. I’ll jump over to the expanded rules after the character is made to see what else may be needed.
OK, we are using the percentile dice for this game. Each ability score will range from 1 to 100 with the higher number being better. The attributes appear to be linked in bases. So we have Strength/Stamina, Dexterity/Reaction Speed, Intuition/Logic (basically alertness and problem solving) and Personality/Leadership (yea, it’s charisma). There is also a listing for Initiative which is more of a modifier than an attribute. I roll percentiles and consult a chart to see where each base is from 30-70 and you roll in order. Before writing the results down, I wanted to select my race as there are modifiers. The four races in the core book are Humans (I have no idea who these guys are), Dralasites (short blob lifeforms that can stretch and have mechanical voiceboxes), Vrusk (Many legged insect looking lifeforms) and Yazirians (apes with leather wings between the arms and legs). They all sound cool, but I’m going to let the dice decide (my choice, this wasn’t in the rules). A random D4 latter resulted in this character being a Vrusk. With my adjusted stats I now have STR/STA 50, DEX/RS 45, INT/LOG 45 and PER/LDR 50. I divide the RS score by 10 and round up to get the initiative modifier, which is 5.
Next I select a name. K’likki sounds Vruskish (I only saw one Vrusk name in the start of the book) and that is where the basic rules end on character creation. However I see that on the next few pages are some other items that are listed on the character sheet such as movement information. So I add them to the sheet as well. The rest of the basic rules covers some equipment descriptions (employers provides), how to run combat and an intro adventure. I’m going to jump over to the expanded rules and take a glance at the character creation steps there.
OK, on page 4 of the expanded rules there is a more detailed list of steps. The first few in generating the ability scores and using the racial modifiers are the same. If this character had been human, I could have added 5 points to a single ability score (not base). I also had the option to move points around if I so desired. I’m going to keep my scores as I have them written down. I’m instructed to write down any racial abilities that my race has (Vrusk are Ambidextrous and a comprehension score of 15 percent, which appears to be a special skill). K’likki will be a male. And I get to roll for credits. d100+250 results in 277, but the rules states that I can buy the standard equipment pack for 250. I was going to find the equipment section, but the book (after showing good details on the races) showed the skills section. A starting character chooses their Primary Skill Area (Military, Technological and Biosocial). I’m not certain which one to take with the attributes that I have. As a starting character, I choose a PSA and then select two skills from that group. So I’m going to keep it simple and just choose military with Beam Weapons and Melee Weapons. Perhaps K’likki was the member of a security squad for his company that became disgraced and that is the reason he is out on his own adventuring. Also trying to find a way to clear his name. I think the character is done? From the rules-as-written I can see where the character creation system kind of sputtered out. I would have asked questions to an experienced GM when creating my character to make sure I had everything fleshed out. From what I understand by reading blogs from Star Frontier fans, the later books in the game helped smooth out some of these rough edges. I don’t have access to them for the challenge. I’m wondering if someone re-wrote the character creation steps to make sure everything was in one spot. Here is what I have for the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I liked the idea of using a Basic game to learn the ropes and an Expanded game for regular play. I think in the Expanded character creation steps it should have included information on how to obtain my character’s standard starting skills. I finally found the equipment section, but there was no way I could pick up anything with 27 credits (after buying my starting adventures pack).
I am a big fan of the d100 type system. I would love to see how the game actually plays at the table. Oh how I wish I could have lived in that alternate 1980’s. I don’t know if I’ll find someone running this game at the upcoming SaltCon, but perhaps I could find a game on Roll20 that would accept a newbie.
Additional Notes:
I was able to pick up this book in 2022 with the credit I earned from you guys clicking on my DriveThruRPG links and buying games. So thank you for helping me get a POD for this book. I wrote a review of the POD books that I have picked up from DTRPG. The next set of credits that I earn will go towards a game that I will use in the 2024 Character Creation Challenge.
So I’ve been able to update the large list of blogs and message boards participating in the 2023 Character Creation Challenge. This includes the first (to my knowledge) non-English website. If I don’t have your site listed yet, please email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com and I’ll add it. There are some new sites and some sites I recognize instantly. For those of you who have participated in all three years, thank you. For those of you who are new, welcome to the challenge.
Oh, if you are just finding out about the Character Creation Challenge now, you can still jump in. In the past a few participants hadn’t started until day 10 and they were able to catch up. Remember, this is just for fun.
Follow up to yesterday’s character from Alien. I mentioned that he looked like Ivan Draggo in combat fatigues and a reader on the RPG.net forums sent me this. Once I was able to pull it up, I thought it was perfect.
Coming Up Next:
Low Fantasy Gaming
This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server.
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.
Meeting Andrew EC Gaska at FanX 2022.
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.
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.
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.
Feel free to share this image on social media to spread the word.
Feel free to share this image on social media to spread the word.
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.
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.
View of the spines.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
