Tag: Character Creation Challenge

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 17: The Witcher

Written by TardisCaptain

For Day 17 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I am going to be using The Witcher Pen & Paper RPG to make a character. This game is based off of the series of The Witcher novels, video games and later a television series. The roleplaying game was published by R. Talsorian Games in 2018 and was written by Cody and Lisa Pondsmith. The PDF contains 337 pages and the character sheet is four pages long. I had picked up this game with several supplements (as well as other R. Talsorian titles) in one of the bundle sales. This will be a cold read as I haven’t had a chance to do any prep work on this. I recall watching some of the TV episodes with my wife as I know she likes the main actor. So I have a little knowledge of the world this game is set in. In fact that’s where the “toss a coin to your blogger” line that you see in the “About This Site” sidebar comes from.

There is a “Dice You Need” sidebar on page 5 that advises the player to be prepared with two D10s and some D6s. There is another side bar note on page 20 where the Creating Your Own Character list starts that states that the explanation of the game mechanics will be explained over the next several chapters. So it appears that the writers took the explain and create at the same time procedure that we’ve seen in other RPG books. Depending upon how this is done, it can be really good, or really confusing. We’ll find out very soon.

OK, the list is as follows. 1- Pick your race (thank you for not asking me to come up with a concept first), 2- Run a Lifepath, 3- Pick Your Profession, 4- Pick Your Statistics, 5- Select Pick-Up Skills, 6- Get Your Coin and 7- Outfit Yourself.

So for this unknown character I’m looking over the races. The available options are Witchers (Humans raised as Witchers), Elves (The Aen Seidhe), Dwarves and Humans. According to the book the Humans are the most prominent across the lands so let’s go with that.

On to the lifepath and for once, it’s actually a lifepath. There is a flow chart with a start box and a, go here guide depending upon what is rolled or chosen. This gives me hope. As a Human I need to know where this character’s homeland. An even roll guides me to Nilfgaard, I then go down to Nilgaardian Origin and I roll a 3 which is The Heart of Nilfgaard (and the character gets a bonus +1 to Deceit). Now the line takes me to the Northern Origin or Vassal Origin, so I’m assuming that I follow the path down to the Family chart. With an even roll, some of the character’s family is still alive and I’m directed to the Parents chart. Another even roll says both parents are alive, go to Family Status chart. My roll results in “Born into servitude” led a simple life as a servant and worked a lot. But he gets a trained bird or serpent as part of his starting gear (uh… OK). We are directed to roll on the “Most Influential Friend” chart which resulted in A Mage (and more starting gear). Perhaps the parents of the character worked for this Mage in their servitude. Next is the Siblings chart and he has two living siblings. An older sister that likes the character and her personality is romantic. For the second sibling they are another sister that is a twin of the character and looks up to him with a stern personality. Interesting way to roll this up. Heh, the book states that when your character dies, he dies. So your siblings could be used as a replacement character. Or they could be a possible rival to the character. Next on the lifepath is the life events of the character itself. You roll a d10 for ever ten-years that the character has been alive. I haven’t seen anything about the character’s current age, so I’m going to pluck the age of 25 out of the air. So I roll twice and both came up Fortune or Misfortune. The first one was a misfortune of an accident that resulted in four-months of healing. On the fortunate side apparently the character helped a Witcher at one point in time and he now owes me a favor. That’s interesting as the next step is Allies & Enemies. If I’m reading this correctly I’m only getting one randomly rolled. A roll of 4 is even for an ally who is male, Mage that the character saved from something and is now a friend who lives in the Northern Kingdoms. Based off of that roll, I’m going to assume it’s not the same mage that the parents worked for. Wow, this is still going (I think, we’ve moved to different pages that don’t say, move to next chart) and we have Romance. I rolled an 8 which resulted in Whores & Debauchery. Kids? Who knows, but I’m sure the character is light a few coins. Wow, this is still going. We are onto Your Personal Style (what is this style thing you speak of?) I roll a d10 four times and this character is wearing traveling clothing, is contemplative, has a complicated hairstyle (uh… what?) and a shadowy cloak. Um… OK. Now there’s a chart for values and three rolls later this character’s most valued person is a friend (who?), their value is hedonistic pursuits and his feelings on people is “people are great”. I don’t know how this is relevant to the game? The last list has some example names for by speech or region, but none of them really excite me so I reached out to the random name generator and selected Styd Rarlart. I haven’t read the books so I don’t know how accurate this generator is. But wow, that was a long section.

Styd’s profession is next. I haven’t made a bard yet, so he’s a bard. I wrote down his defining skill, vigor, magical perks, skills and starting gear. See, that was quick and easy (looks at last section).

We are finally to the statistics. Each character has a rating in Intelligence (INT), Reflexes (REF), Dexterity (DEX), Body (BODY), Speed (SPD), Empathy (EMP), Craft (CRA), Will (WILL) and Luck (LUCK). There were two ways to generate these stats, roll a D10 (ignore any 1s or 2s) and place the scores where you want or point buy. Yes, I’m rolling. After I assigned the scores there is some derived stats for Stun, Run, Leap, Health Points, Stamina, Encumbrance, Recovery, Punch and Kick. I mathed the maths and boy are there a lot of charts and side charts.

Skills are next and each skill can have a rating from 0-10. We already received a bunch of skills from the profession and I’m allotted 44 points to use between all of them and I stated them out. Next are the pick-up skills which are the non-profession skills that your character has also learned. Add your INT and REF scores together to get your total number of points to assign to the non-professional skills that you have picked up.

Step 6 is money money money and step 7 is outfitting the character. The coin is called a crown and your starting amount is based on your profession. I rolled up how much money that Styd and set him up with his equipment. I need to wrap this up so I’ll just say it’s the standard buy piecemeal, but there is some recommended items. Gah, everything has a special name because it came from the source material.

Wow, half the items from the lifepath do not have spots on the four page character sheet. I also have some blank spots but I’ve got to wrap this up. This only re-enforces my belief that a character sheet should not be more than two pages. I didn’t scan one of the pages because it had to do with spells and magic.

Afterthoughts:

I liked the lifepath in this game. I don’t think I would have come up with the concept of a twin unless the dice came up with it. However towards the end of the lifepath process I was wanting to get past all of this and move on.

When the book was providing the skill descriptions, I like how they said “A base 10 can do this, a base 13 or base 20 can do this”. It helped me decide where to spend the various skill points.

The system sounded pretty straight forward. d10+stat+skill (if present)+modifiers to meet or beat a target number.

I don’t really see myself playing this game beyond a one-shot at a convention. I also don’t see myself homebrewing for this system. Not because of anything bad, but because my fantasy itch is already covered by other games that I know very well.

Additional Notes:

Still chipping away at the block of marble. This will be something good when I’m done with the challenge.

Thank you to everyone who has been posting on social media with the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge. If I’m using that social media site, I’ve been re-posting your entries for others to see.

Coming Up Next:

Traveller: The New Era

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 16: Barbarians of the Ruined Earth

Written by TardisCaptain

Day 16 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’ll be using the post-apocalyptic roleplaying game Barbarians of the Ruined Earth. The book says this is a Black Hack adaptation and inspired by the animated series Thundarr the Barbarian from the 80’s. I show I remember watching back then, but I haven’t seen any episodes recently. I should do a re-watch. Now I’ve never done anything with Black Hack, but it sounds like a D20 OSR adaptation. So lets see what we have to work with.

I had picked up this PDF last year on DriveThruRPG when the game was on sale. I’ve had an affinity for post-apocalyptic games and movies for quite some time. Mad Max, Night of the Comet, Cherry 2000, Damnation Alley and a host of other movies that range from excellent to cheesy are still a cup of tea for me. So it’s shouldn’t be a surprise that I’ll pick up a post-apocalyptic game when a reasonably priced one becomes available.

The PDF has 170 pages in it with the character creation process starting on page 8. The character sheet is only one page. Let’s get started.

Being a D20 OSR game it has the standard attributes that we are use to. STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS and CHA. We are instructed to roll 3d6 in order, however if a stat is rolled at 15 or higher then the next stat must be rolled with 2d6+2. Then rolling returns to 3d6. There is an optional of rolling 2d6+5 for each stat. While the later sounds tempting, I really want to see what it’s like with the first method. Dang, none of them were 15 or higher. Oh well.

Selecting a race is next. The options are Human, Sorcerers, Beastmen, Robot and Vek (a raptorfolk) or the option to create my own. While the last is tempting I’m under a time crunch. The non-human races are treated as both race and class. I went and read the racial descriptions and selected the Robot. So this is also covering the next step of selecting a class. From this I rolled up my Hit Points and wrote down my unique abilities and starting equipment. I was asked to select the model of robot and I didn’t think it would be a combat robot with a really low STR score. A random name generator came up with Humanoid Lab Partner Robot which I turned into HLPR-47. But when I looked at the models available, there were no “science” type robots, so I selected a medical robot. It’s not entirely clear, but it appears that I roll for an interesting trinket and a life event (Life? Don’t talk to me about life.) Apparently HLPR-47 does not understand the whining and prattling of humanoids and has been chased off from towns for more than a few times due to mouthing off. Same HLPR-47, same.

I don’t understand why a robot was provided with torches in their starting equipment when they can already see in low light. I know it’s not see in the dark, but it made me raise an eyebrow.

The character creation doesn’t really have an ending. It starts with a list and then, like a lot of RPGs that I’ve read, just starts wandering off into the other chapters. I didn’t see anything about robots having any proficiencies. Under buying equipment it stated you roll for your starting currency (which is based upon the different kingdoms). I guess I’m done. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

There is no attack roll by your character’s opponents. Apparently when you are attacked, you roll to see if your character successfully dodges/defends itself, etc. Interesting. I wonder how that plays at the table.

Destiny points appear to be the same as fate or luck points. With this optional rule you can re-roll a failed roll or obtain other benefits.

I may have to look into the other Black Hack products and see if some things are explained a little bit better. I could see myself playing this game, but it sounds like a quick pick up game instead of long term campaign option. Possible run at an upcoming SaltCON?

Additional Notes:

LexTenebris on Mastodon responded to some of the questions and comments that I made on the See You, Space Cowboy… entry I had posted earlier. yea, clearly a space mafia is… in space. They also said that See You, Space Cowboy… strikes him as a cheap rip-off of Scum and Villainy. I haven’t seen this game yet but it is a Forged in the Dark clone (which I also haven’t had a chance to look at yet). So I don’t have a comparison between the two games, but I’ll have to see if S&V come up for sale.

Coming Up Next:

The Witcher

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 15: Shadow Ops

Written by TardisCaptain

The espionage roleplaying game called Shadow Ops is what I’m using for Day 15 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. I had backed this game on KickStarter and received both a PDF and physical copy of the game that I reviewed in a past blog post. I received some interesting questions from that post from people wanting to know more information including a map maker who’s live streams I watch several times a week. It made me feel good to hear feedback on my past writings. Since I had already talked about the physical book and RPG system in that past blog post, we will jump into the character creation process (aka Agent Recruitment) with the outline found on page 23 with an example of the steps on page 31.

We start with a concept for the character. Plucking an idea out of the air (especially since I don’t know what the other “players” at the table would have been taking) I’m going to go with one of the basics. This guy is a driving specialist that can handle any ground vehicle to get the mission completed.

OK, attributes. They are Insight, Intellect, Personality, Coordination, Endurance and Strength. Each attribute starts with a score of 5 and I have 30 points. I was trying to see if there was any minimums or recommendations for the different Skill Sets (aka class) but I couldn’t find anything, so I bumped up the attributes that I thought a Wheelman would have.

The book now says that as a level 1 agent the wheelman has 2 skill steps to spend on my skills (other choices had different skill steps). All skills start at d4 and the two I bump up will roll a d6. I picked the two I thought a good Wheelman would need which was Driving and Technology.

There are three combat skills. Unarmed Combat (using the body), Melee Combat (with hand held weapons) and Firearms Combat (with ranged weapons). The Wheelman has a 5 for the combat skills under that description (which is the same amount as a Solider), but I can’t seem to find out what I’m supposed to do with this score of 5. The character in the example creation only had 1 skill point and couldn’t raise anything. The Outline on page 23 fails to tell me how to spend these points. The additional description on 25-27 says that you can spend enough to get one of the combat skills from a d4 to a d6 at level 1, but still fails to give me a description on how to spend the points to get up to the higher dice step. Even the Combat Skills section on page 82 lacks an answer. It does tell me here that the combat skills are not advanced by skill steps, but rather by scores like attributes and resistances. OK, that helps a little bit since the score chart on page 8 has a breakdown of what the attributes have (Gods, I’m jumping all over this book trying to find answers). So if I’m understanding this correctly, I can dump all 5 combat points into one of the three skills to make it a d6 at level 1 but the other two would have a score of 0 (which only gives a d4). I’ve wasted enough time on this so I’m going to go with that assumption. Yes, I’m starting to get frustrated.

Deep breath. OK let’s continue. Choose one of 25 Fortes. These are described on page 86 and the book states “Fortes are intended to represent a significant element of an agent’s personality, previous life experience or additional career training.” OK these sound like the Feats we know in D&D. I looked over the list and picked one for Agent Unknown.

Next comes pick one Skill Set Ability choices. Looking at the description under the Wheelman these seem to be a special ability that only your class has (I really wish they had just stuck with the name “Class” in this book). Some can be taken more than once (I’m assuming when my character is improved in play) and one has a level 2 limitation. I picked Experienced and bumped the driving skill up to d8.

Pick two abilities. No not the Skill Set Ability picked in the previous step. These are General Feats… err Abilities that any agent can have. Looking at the list on page 87 there are a boatload of them (200 to be exact). A list of general feats broken down into smaller categories, I just found two and picked them.

Pick three knowledge. This is specialized stuff that Agent Unknown knows. The example seems to show that these are just general items the agent is really knowledgeable about, but not on a list. So from the air I plucked “Cars that Top Gear Has Tested” (where he got his interest in cars, he has the episodes practically memorized), “All organized automobile races in Europe” (like Le Mans, Formula 1, Monaco Grand Prix, etc.), and “Playing the Drums” (while growing up he through he was going to be the drummer in a rock band).

Selecting the Stress Die is the next step. Luckily there are three of them that are broken down by what type of agent your character can be. The book stated that d8/d10/d12 is a specialized approach that is good when the bullets fly. Sounds good to me. As for resistances all three of them (Speed, Spirit and Stamina) all start out as d4 for a level 1 character and the Combat Training and Defense was set by the Class… err… Skill Set as 1 and 0.

Equipment, there’s something in the Skill Set notes about Equipment .5 (vehicles) and a Resource score of 1. As you can probably tell I’m running out of energy here. Agent Unknown has a damn good car and I’m assuming he has a good handgun and perhaps a few other things. Who knows.

All agents start with a one d6 contact. The book says that it doesn’t need to be defined at the start of play and my mind says “Thank the heavens”.

Combat Modes? Smeg, I just want to make a character not write an wikipedia entry. These are actions a character can do in combat. I get 5 of these. Fine, randomly I picked Aid, Close Quarters, Aimed, Fight and Autofire. (and later when transferring information over to the character sheet, Fight was already filled in, I’m not going back and choosing another one)

Finally the last step. I found a name of English chaps from a random name generator which was Mason Gordon. Since he watched a lot of Top Gear and knew about European races he was born and raised in England. He was going to be a drummer in a rock band before he was ‘discovered’ and recruited to be a driver for an intelligence agency (MI-5? UNITY? GI Joe? Who knows). He’s good looking even when covered in grease and loves working on his car. I transferred everything over from my notes and scanned the character sheet because I wanted to be done. I didn’t scan the second page of the sheet since it was just ability descriptions.

Afterthoughts:

I was glad for the character creation example in the back. When I got stuck a few times I went back and read the example in order to make sure I was following the process right. However I really wish that page numbers had been provided when I wanted to look up additional information. I felt frustrated looking back and forth for information. I was using at least four bookmarks and could have been using more.

If I was going to use this in a campaign, I’d probably create a better step-by-step character creation guide or a worksheet. It started off well, then quickly became frustrating with all of the searching and page jumping. While I might use this game for a special series of blog posts that I have planned, I don’t know if I’ll be doing any homebrewing for this system.

The RPG system itself sounds pretty straight forward. But the deep dive in the character creation system made me not want to do a deep dive in the other systems provided for chases and combat. I’m sure I’ll take a closer look at them later, but I’m really not getting encouraged to run this as a one-shot at SaltCON.

I’m not disappointed that I backed this Kickstarter. The book is gorgeous. Hoping that the system will run well like GURPS even though the creation process was long and tedious. But I felt that things could have been written to make rule look up easier. Following the analogy of the pizza that I used in my Cowboy Bebop Kickstarter review, I got the right toppings, but the crust and sauce didn’t impress me much.

Additional Notes:

This was done at the end of a very long day, so forgive me if I got a little snippety toward the end. I may have to put this book on the “read later” list to see if just a simple read through would give me some 20/20 hindsight. I almost gave up on this character creation, which I haven’t done too often.

Coming Up Next:

Barbarians of the Ruined Earth

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 14: Stars Without Number

Written by TardisCaptain

Day 14 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I’m using a game that I’ve had my eye on for quite some time. The Stars Without Number Revised Edition by Sine Nomine Publishing. This is an OSR D20 based science fiction RPG that has spawned several other “Without Number” type games such as Worlds (fantasy) and Cities (Cyberpunk). The game allowed for third-party publishers to produce their own adventures and supplements on DriveThruRPG. I had picked up this game in one of the bundle sales.

This appears to be a sandbox style game where the GM can select the type of science fiction universe they wish to run. Mechs, AI, rebels, explorers, etc. There is an in-game universe where it is the year 3200 and humanity lives on different planets scattered across the stars but I don’t think that would stop the GM from adapting it into a campaign they would want to run.

The character sheet is only one page. The PDF file is 325 pages long with the character creation summary located on page 4. Steps 1 and 2 deal with attributes. Steps 3 is for selecting background. Steps 4 and 5 deal with skills. A class is selected in step 6 and a foci (side talents) are selected in step 7. Step 8 deals with aliens or AI characters (if used in the game). Step 9 deals with non-psyching skills that reflect outside interests and step 10 deals with any psychic capabilities if present. Steps 11 and 12 deal with hit points and attack bonuses. Equipment and armor are covered in steps 13 through 16. Step 17 deals with savings throws and the final step covers the character name and goal. That’s an interesting breakdown of the character creation steps. Let’s see how they hold up for a first time attempt.

If you need a character quick, there is a Quick Character Creation chart on page 26. But I will not be using that for this challenge entry.

Being an OSR inspired game, the six attributes are determined by a 3d6 roll and assign as desired. The player then has an option to change one attribute to a 14 to ensure that they have at least one good one. There is also an option to take a pre-determined set of numbers, but if you’ve been reading my past blog entries, you know that I’ll want to roll some dice. Before rolling, I looked over the character options and I think I’m going to follow up on my Traveller character that I created earlier in the challenge. That character was a scientist in an exploration group, this character will be a medic/doctor type person. I generated the attributes and wrote down the modifiers.

With the background you can choose or roll for it. The book describes this as something that your character did before they started the adventure. Each background provided a list of skills that are provided. A 0-level skill is one that the character has a basic competence in and thus doesn’t incur the -1 untrained penalty to skill rolls. The chapter also advises the player to pick their homeworld and note down why they left. So my unnamed doctor dude selected the background of Physician on the colony planet of Orton III. He was training to be a full blown doctor until he was accused of a crime by a rival, one he didn’t commit, but didn’t have the clout the rival had to prove it. I wrote down the skills provided from the background.

For the class, I picked Expert as it sounded like something a doctor would be. I wrote down the additional skill, rolled the hit points and attack bonus (what little there was of it). As for the Focus, this is an additional knack that the heroes have in the game. Something that makes them stand out from the standard NPCs. Looking through the list I picked Wanderer since he had to leave his colony world. I wrote down the skill and bonuses it provided. Next the book instructed me to pick a non-psychic skill to represent an outside interest. Being on a colony world he had to know how to shoot since there were predators around. I also rolled the hit points as described in the class.

With the final touches I picked a name for this wandering doctor from a random name generator of Zan Camrin. On page 25 there are equipment packages ready to go for new characters. This sounded faster than trying to pick and choose the equipment. I wrote these down and wrote down the Armor Class and damage from the laser pistol. I also wrote down the saving throw details for the character and decided it was time to transfer everything over to the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I don’t know if it was the authors intention, but I was getting a lot of Firefly vibes from reading the rules for this game. I know it’s not just limited to that, but I could see myself running a Firefly campaign using Stars Without Number.

I was also getting a Traveller meets D20 vibe as well when looking at the character backgrounds with the growth and learning tables. There were also chapters on creating planets and sectors like I had seen in some Traveller publications.

The character sheet has no spots for regular equipment. Sure there are places for weapons, armor and “readied items” that I assumed was for stuff in hand. For the purpose of the sheet, I used the section as a regular equipment list.

Seeing how many third-party publishers there were for Stars Without Number, I wondered if I could homebrew some stuff for this and actually get paid for it? I may have to look more in on this.

Additional Notes:

I’m really enjoying the challenge entries that I’ve seen on the TardisCaptain discord, various social media sites and on the three big RPG message boards. It has been keeping me inspired to continue on despite how far behind real life had placed me in.

Coming Up Next:

Shadow Ops

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 13: Tales of the Valiant

Written by TardisCaptain

And welcome to Day 13 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using the 5e based fantasy game from Kobold Press titled: Tales of the Valiant. This game has a free open gaming license and is compatible with D&D 5th edition with some changes. So how does it stack up? Well after finding the PDF on sale last year on DriveThruRPG, I was able to finally snag a digital copy.

The blue tinted character sheet is two pages long. The character creation step-by-step listing starts on page 11 and is broken down into nine steps. 0- Gather materials, 1- Create a character concept, 2- Choose a class, 3- Determine ability scores, 4- Choose a linage (aka race), 5- Choose a heritage (where the character was raised before adventuring), 6- Choose a background (also known as the character’s day job before they decided to become an adventurer), 7- Starting equipment and 8- Fill in the blanks. There is even a final checklist on page 14 to make sure you didn’t miss anything small like motivation, size, etc.

For the gathering materials in step 0 it lists the basic equipment that all RPGers should be familiar with (pencil paper, dice, etc.). I will say that I’ve been using a yellow mechanical pencil for the past 3 character creation challenges. It seems to wait for me to pick it up again the following year.

Step 1 is Create a character concept. While the classes look like the standard classes that you’d find in a D20 based game, I think I’m going to stick with a fighter just because I’m trying to chug through these posts as quickly as possible. Why is he a fighter? Dunno, perhaps something will inspire me while I’m creating the character.

Step 2 is already done from the previous step. He’s a fighter currently without a name. When I scrolled over to page 48 where the fighter was listed, they had a “Fighter Quick Build” side-note that talked about the items you wanted to focus in on while creating the character. There was a note about the fighter subclasses that you can select at higher levels. Spell Blade sounded interesting. There is a class in TOV called the Mechanist which is an inventor/tinkerer. That is one I might have explored if this was going to be a character for an actual campaign.

Determining the ability scores is our third step. This is the standard attributes that you see in a D20 clone. There are three methods provided to determine this. Rolling 4d6 and drop the lowest and assign as desired. Once this is done, add 2 to one score of your choice that is under 17 and add 1 to a score that is 17 and under. OK, I don’t think I’ve seen that before. The second method listed is a point buy (not really my cup of tea) but you don’t get to add anything after generating your scores. A standard array is listed as the third method with scores ranging from 8 to 16. Tempting as I want to get this blog post done past, but I can’t turn down the chance to roll some attribute dice. So I rolled and assigned and altered and chopped and sauteed. Oops, sorry about that last one, I must be getting hungry.

OK, step 4 is choosing a lineage. The choices that were available are Beastkin (bipedal animals) Dwarf, Elf, Human, Kobold (well it was released by a company called Kobold Press), Orc, Syderean (beings from another plane of existence like albino Celestials or the horned Fendish) and Smallfolk (aka Halflings and Gnomes). I’m thinking of making a Beastkin-Avian that has the head and wings of a bird after seeing the picture on page 105. I wrote down the details of that race.

Step 5 is the Heritage. While there are some recommended heritage listed, but a player can choose any of them if they want to try something unusual. However, as this is the first time I’m going to pick the standard heritage for Beastkin of Wildlands.

On to Backgrounds and Talents for step 6. Looking over them to see which background fit an Avian and knowing that he’d be a fighter, I picked Soldier. There was an adventuring motivation list that I could have rolled on, but I was attracted to having a dishonorable discharge so I have to adventure to make a living. So I’m thinking this unnamed birdman was a defender of his tribe/clan/what ever they are called and failed in a mission so he was kicked out of the group.

Starting Equipment for step 7, there is some equipment listed for the fighter that I was tasked to choose from as well as some from the background. That was easy. So for the last step, Fill In The Blanks so I looked at the final checklist. Basically this is making sure that anything you are missing on the character sheet is filled in. This included the talents and skills and a name (which I pulled from a random name generator) of Grunnubawk. I’m sure I missed something, but dinner is calling. Let me know if I did miss anything. Here are the character sheets.

Afterthoughts:

I like the final checklist. I just wish that the checklist had included page numbers if I wanted to look up additional information.

I need to get a physical copy of this book. I tend to learn a system better with a dead tree version. Yea, I know it’s basically 5e, but (insert gasp here), I’ve only played 5e a few times in convention one-shots. And we didn’t really get into the minutia there.

I’m wondering if this is the game that everyone would flock to if the general public decided to “BlueSky” the Wizards of the Coast products. I know that Pathfinder has a lot of popularity, but it has a nickname of “Mathfinder” that may steer people more towards ToV and other similar clones. Would I play this? Yes. Would I home brew for it? Possibly if I get into a campaign.

Additional Notes:

My apologies to anyone who tried to get to my website earlier today and found it down. As you can already see the issues were resolved and we are back to normal. But I’d like to stop having one website issue per week in 2025. This year has sucked so far and I’m hoping it won’t be bad as the year-that-shall-not-be-named.

Coming Up Next:

Stars Without Number

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Star Wars

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 12: Star Wars Edge of the Empire

Written by TardisCaptain

For my Day 12 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to use the Star Wars: Edge of the Empire core rulebook by Fantasy Flight Games. I had picked this up at the used game swap at SaltCON last year at a bargain price. I’ve been a Star Wars fan since the first movie in 1977 and I’ve had a lot of fun playing the West End Games Star Wars RPG that I made a character for in a previous challenge. There was also the D20 based Star Wars RPG and Saga Edition that I’ve also made challenge characters for.

Now at the SaltCON where I picked up both this book and a starter set, I had the opportunity to play the game at a table. It made some sense, but I didn’t get a chance to fully immerse in the game as the GM was also doing a test-run of gaming tablets which did most of the work for us. There are also other books in this series that cover other Star Wars eras. They are all interchangeable since they were published by the same company.

As you can see in the photo below, this game uses some special dice specifically for Star Wars Edge of the Empire. There are blue boost dice, green ability dice, yellow proficiency dice (all positive) then black setback dice, purple difficulty dice, red challenge dice (all negative) and Force dice (the white one) and apparently there should have been two D10s in the set (luckily I have some of my own). I don’t know the system well enough to explain it here. I feel like I’d be making this blog post way too long. So we’ll just concentrate on character creation.

No numbers, some sides are blank. Dome dice are positive and some are negative.

I don’t know if these special dice are needed in the character creation process, but in chapter 2 (starting on page 33) the book talks about creating a character. This volume of “The Edge of the Empire” focuses on characters that are on the fringes of the known galaxy. The steps listed are 1- Determine Character Concept and Background, 2- Determine Starting Obligation, 3- Select Character Species, 4- Select Character Career, 5- Select Specializations, 6- Invest Experience Points, 7- Determine Derived Attributes, 8- Determine Starting Motivation, 9- Choose Gear and Description, 10- Group chooses starting ship. Just from this list it sounds like the characters would have been made in a session 0, so I’ll make some different assumptions during this solo creation.

Concept and background- Random name generator came up with Corvo Sturig and he will be a Human smuggler trying to make a few credits without getting caught by the authorities. He didn’t want to be a bog-raker on the remote swampy world of Trankit IV where he grew up. When a smuggler needed a hired hand, Corvo took the first opportunity to leave and learned the tricks of the trade from him.

Starting obligation- This is a debt that the player owes. I saw this concept recently when I made a character for See You, Space Cowboy… and I can see how it would add to to the character’s background. This could be an actual debt (to a legitimate or illegitimate org) or a feeling of loyalty to a person or group. There is a random d100 table available, but I’m really liking the concept I’ve come up so far so I would have asked the GM if I could pick one. After Corvo’s mentor retired, he allowed Corvo to make payments on the ship to eventually own it outright. This would have been debt on the list on page 39.

Select character species- I’ve already said Human. Page 48 gave me the Species Abilities (as part of the attributes that I’ll post about below), wound threshold, strain threshold, starting experience and special abilities. I wrote these down on my notes.

Select character career and specialization- I’m instructed to pick a career and specialization. From this the character will gain some different skills. I found the information on the smugglers on page 80. Out of the eight skills listed, Corvo knows four of them at rank 1. I picked them. There were three specializations listed and the Pilot sounded like the one that fit the concept that I’m following. This specialization has four additional career skills of which I’m allowed to pick two (I believe at rank 1). I wrote them down on my notes.

Invest Experience Points- I have 110 XP from being a Human. I can use these points to improve a characteristic, training skills, acquiring talents or learning new specializations. I’m referred to page 92 for more information. Apparently during character creation is the only time that characteristics can be increased by XP. That tells me that I’ll probably be spending a lot of points in those as the other items can be purchased when more XP is earned in the game. I had said above that I’d list the Characteristics later, and I think later is now. These attributes are Agility, Brawn, Cunning, Intellect, Presence (I wonder if Vader can sense my presence?), and Willpower. They all sound pretty standard that you usually see in RPGs. As a Human I started with 2 in each category. To raise one characteristic up to 3 would cost 30 XP and if I want to raise it to 4, it would be another 40 XP. I looked at the Characteristics that would help my smuggler skills and decided to bump those up. With the remaining 20 XP, I went to the Pilot Talent Tree on page 83 and purchased a few talents for Corvo. (I was wondering what the talent tree was when I was reading the smuggler description)

Now that I have my stats nailed down, let’s move onto Determining Derived Attributes: I was directed to page 94. These give me stats for the Wound Threshold, Strain Threshold, Defense and Soak Value (no not the BYU thing, how much incoming damage you can ignore before being seriously wounded). These were determined by characteristics, racial modifiers and armor worn.

Determine Motivation: This is explained as something that makes the character “tick”. I can create one (with GM’s permission) or one can be rolled random. Since I didn’t roll for the earlier Obligation, I’ll roll for them here. A roll of 2 says that Corvo has a Motivation of Ambition (see table 2-6) and a d100 roll of 66 which is Status. So Corvo wants to be known as the best smuggler. Perhaps a smuggler that always eludes the authorities.

And here we are to Gear and Description: This is usually the sign that you are near the end of the character creation process. On page 97 the description starts. The character has 500 credits to purchase items. Wow, a light blaster costs 300 credits. And the last step is to select a ship for the group. Of the three listed I selected the YT-1300 Light Freighter. We could have talked the GM into providing another ship within a certain credit range and if this was for an actual game, I probably would have taken the time to look one up.

I transferred everything over from my notes to the character sheet. There was no spot for the ship so I assume it would have been on a different sheet all together.

Afterthoughts:

So good news, you don’t need the special dice to create a character. And for jumping into the pool for the first time without reading the book, the steps were pretty straight forward. Considering how interesting the play was at the table with the weird dice, I was expecting something more complicated. I remember thinking after I had played the game at SaltCON that the system did encourage a shared narrative from the players.

I liked the use of Star Wars quotes at the beginning of the different chapters. As a love of quotes this made me smile because it added to the Star Wars feel of the books.

I really wish that the book would have given us the stats for the characters we’ve seen in the various Star Wars movies. Even if it was just the big ones like Han Solo or Mace Windu. A game based off of an IP sometimes makes me wonder, how does my character stack up to them? What could my character eventually become to simulate what we’ve seen on screen.

Well I already know that I’d play this game as I had at SaltCON. Would I play this game in a campaign? Well I wouldn’t turn it down if someone was willing to run one. However the GM at SaltCON was from out-of-state. I’ve never seen or heard of anyone locally who plays this game. And it may be a sense of nostalgia, but if I was going to run a Star Wars game, I’d probably stick with the WEG D6 Star Wars RPG.

Additional Notes:

MoonHunter on the TardisCaptain Discord Server gave me some feedback on the Terra Primate challenge entry. They said “Not only do I like the setting, Terra Primate did an incredible job with it. And I like the game system. I admit it.” Considering I hadn’t seen anything about the game before the auction where I picked the book up, I was wondering how well known this game was.

Coming Up Next:

Tales of the Valiant

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 11: Terra Primate

Written by TardisCaptain

So I had picked up this game from an online auction and it actually arrived before the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge had ended, but I didn’t want to drop any of the scheduled games that I had at the time. So for Day 11 of the 2025 challenge I am using Terra Primate from Eden Studios Inc. This hardbound book was published in 2002 and from my look-through, it has all the hallmarks of a late 90’s early 00’s game. The first Planet of the Apes remake had been released in 2001, so I’m certain the game was released to follow up on that movie.

Terra Primate uses something called the Unisystem which appears to be a generic system that Eden Studios used with several other RPGs they had released. To resolve an action/task the player rolls a d10, adds the character’s attribute and/or skill number to beat a target number set by the Ape Master (aka GM). Sounds simple enough. I had to dig to find this all the way back on page 89.

On to character creation. The game provides us with a two-page character sheet. The character creation process starts on page 21. The book recommends that new players create human characters at the start and after they have been more experienced there are rules for creating ape characters farther back in the book. There was an option to just take one of the template characters (pre-made) and alter them for a game, but that obviously won’t take us through the process. But I was appreciative that the game designers had that available. The six character elements in creation are 1- Character Type (how powerful are the characters), 2- Generating attributes, 3- Select qualities and drawbacks, 4- Select skills, 5- Select powers (if present) and 6- Possessions. The characters are built by spending points and these points were allocated depending upon the character type and any drawbacks selected.

The character types are Pre-Heroic (aka every day person suddenly thrust into a dangerous situation), Heroic (aka the characters are stronger, smarter, more capable than every-day folks) and Powered (aka your characters are practically gods among men). The Ape Master would determine the character types, but since I have no AM for this character, I’m going to go for Pre-Heroic. So the character has 15 points for attributes, 5 points for qualities, can only earn 10 points for drawbacks and 30 points for skills.

The primary attributes in this game are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower. There are secondary attributes that are generated from the primary attributes and they are Life Points, Endurance Points, Speed and Essence Pool (spiritual energy). The point cost for the primary attributes are 1 to 1 up to level 4. Level 5 and 6 cost two points each. 6 is the max that a starting character can have in an attribute. The average rating for a human is 2-3 in each primary attribute. I’m starting to get a mental image in my head of what this character is going to be, so I spent the attribute points. The secondary attributes are determined mathematically from the primary attributes, I pulled out the calculator to made sure I had them correct.

Now I have 5 points to select some qualities and earn 10 more points if I select several drawbacks. The book says that I can use the points earned from draw backs on a 1-to-1 basis if I want to earn more qualities. If I want to use these points to increase an attribute, then the cost is the level (example: If I wanted to move my STR to 4 it would cost 4 points). I was able to eek out 9 points in drawbacks. This also generated into the backstory than an Ape General wanted this character dead. In an attempt to kill him, the Ape General ended up killing his family by trapping them in a barn which was then set on fire. I used these points to bump up two primary attributes (which I then had to go back and adjust the secondary attributes) and spent the remaining points on qualities for this farmer turned human rebel in the Ape Kingdom.

Now we move onto skills for our unnamed farmer turned rebel. I found it easier to go and write down the skills I thought is farmer turned rebel would have and then decided how many points to put into each skill.

The section on possessions says you just own stuff. So I’ll write down some basic items and move onto finishing touches. This included a name (uh…. random name generator says Caleb) and appearance (I’m going to imagine Captain Pike on his ranch before he shaved) and age (25 works for me). I then transferred from my notes to the character sheet and scanned it.

Afterthoughts:

During creation I was really reminded of the time I attempted to make a GURPs 4th Edition character in a past challenge. I didn’t really like that process trying to pick this and that and I was getting the same feeling here. If you like making characters in GURPs, you might like this Unisystem. While it might make it easier to homebrew stats for a character from another source (book, comic, show, etc.) I find it clunky when trying to create an original character. I’m not a big fan of min/maxing.

When it came time to pick the qualities and drawbacks they didn’t have a master list in the chapter with the descriptions. For some reason it was all the way at the back.

In the Ape Master section it left the world pretty open for the AM to select. This could be straight up Planet of the Apes (that is what I was using for the above character), but the Apes could have been in modern society, suddenly appeared from another dimension or a host of other ideas.

While the character creation system didn’t push me into tho no category when it came to playing/homebrewing for this game, there are too many other systems out there that would probably scratch the itch of playing a Planet of the Apes inspired game.

Additional Notes:

I’ve been enjoying the various entries into the challenge that I’ve seen on both social media and on the three big message boards. If I’m missing a blog, message board or another location, please let me know about it.

Coming Up Next:

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 10: See You Space Cowboy

Written by TardisCaptain

On Day 10 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I will be using the Cowboy Bebop inspired RPG, See You, Space Cowboy… by Tidal Wave Games. They describe this as a scifi space bounty hunter jazz fusion roleplaying game. The credits actually state that this is the 0th Edition, 3rd Printing. Interesting.

Now there is an official Cowboy Bebop RPG that I had backed on Kickstarter. I had used it in a previous Character Creation Challenge and wrote a review that you can read here. Spoiler alert, I did not like that system. I think that is why when I saw an indy game for this anime with the serial numbers filed off (and on sale at the time) I had to pick it up from DriveThruRPG. I had really enjoyed both the anime and the live-action series and thought it would make for an excellent RPG world to play in. Let’s see if this publication is much better than the official game.

The character creation section immediately starts on page 2 and the rules state that the creation is part of the game itself and should be done with the other party members in session 0. There they will create a group of Outlaws (this game’s term for the bounty hunters) with the Bandleader (aka GM) with a shared backstory. Since I’m doing this solo for the challenge, I’ll assume that the other “players” have set up characters that go along with mine. The first step is to come up with a name. And the book provides a d100 table of names if you can’t come up with one on your own. I’m game. Oh, it has options for First Name, Last Name and Middle Name or Pseudonym. I’m going to roll twice first and see what we’ve been given: 43 gives me Mortimer and 96 gives me Point. I’m going to keep it because it seems like a pun name. He’ll be Mort to his friends, but when he’s being serious, he’s Mortimer Point. Please tell me you see the pun?

Traits, the traits listed in this game are Muscles, Moves, Brains and Cool. The rules say they are each associated with a Break. This is a specific action the character can take if I’m reading this correctly. Think of Task = Break where you roll if there is a chance of failure. Each attribute is represented by a die from d6 to d12. You assign one per attribute of which I did so.

Next we have the Talents which is something the character can do really well. They are assigned to a trait that most fits them (example: a Lifting talent would fall under Muscles). While there is a list of examples in the book, players are encouraged to come up with their own. These can be specific to make the character unique, or general to make the character more versatile. When the character performs a Break where the Talent gets used, they get to roll an extra d4 to add to the roll results. The rules don’t say if you only get one Talent or do you get a Talent for each Trait. I wish there were some sample characters provided so I could compare. Luckily I was able to track down the discord for the publisher and they confirmed it was one per trait. Having spent way too much time on this step, I picked four from the examples provided.

After getting a few segments on how the rules work we finally get back to the character creation with Bonds. No James, just Bonds. During the pilot episode (is this in session 0?) starting with one of the players, they turn to the player on their right and say how the two character’s know each other. I can see this being good for party dynamic as I’ve played in too many online games where I hardly feel a connection with my fellow players. I’m going to pretend that my friend Dave is to the right and I think of something that connects our two characters. We were in jail together. Yea, that’s the ticket. If Dave agrees, then it’s set in stone.

Next we are told to draw a portrait. This is the first time I’ve actually seen this listed as a step. Yea, there is a spot on most character sheets, but never a step. Since I suck at drawing, I probably would have found a non-AI image on the internet and used that or bribed my kid into drawing one for me.

Money, money, money. Must be funny. In the rich man’s world. Apparently you don’t actually determine how much money your character has now, but it gives the players to determine what the currency is called in the game. I would have thought that the Bandleader/GM would have already come up with that. But it does lead into the next section. Debts & Regrets. Each character has one debt or regret that they must resolve. If they can clear a Debt in the game then their Talent die becomes a d6 instead of a d4. Resolving a Regret would allow the player to choose a Break and make it a Specialty where they succeed at that Break once per session. Once these are both cleared you can retire the character or select an active Goal (something you can fulfill) to be the final character arc before retirement. There is a random table that can be used or players can come up with one of their own. I’m going to roll a random Debt and I got a Space Mafia debt (how are these guys different from the regular Mafia?) Once I’ve taken care of this debt, then I’ll have a Regret added to the character.

Wow, I typed up more than I was expecting on that last segment. But moving on. Wounds is the health of the character. If the Outlaw receives 4 wounds they are in critical condition, another wound after that knocks them out. Then decided during character creation is what Addiction your Outlaw has. The book listed smoking (to give it the feel that we saw in the anime) but says that other vices could be selected. Honestly I can’t think of one right now, but I really dislike smoking, so I’m going to leave this blank right now unless this character actually gets used in a game.

Now the book starts talking about spaceships. The players are asked to come up with the name of their starship and how they acquired it. Do we own it outright or are we making payments on it. While I love starships and will probably enjoy reading this, this segment is for the group dynamic and not the individual character. So I’m going to move to the next chapter.

Gear, finally. Each character can only carry 4 things and has $250 to spend on gear. Actually I need to wrap up so I’m going to just pick four items that I think a gun toting bounty hunter wold have (the other players would have things like the restraints and stuff) and I think it just hit me that I practically made Jayne Cobb from Firefly. I scanned the first character sheet because I filled a lot of stuff in, the second page of the sheet had some kewl items like “Theme Song” and “Favorite Food”, but I hadn’t been instructed to fill those in. So I didn’t scan it.

Afterthoughts:

I really liked the Debt and Regret aspect of the game. It showed why the characters were hunting bounties, how they were not perfect and gave them some advancement without having to worry about experience points.

There were some segments in the book that were very well detailed, and others that could have used some additional information to polish it up. This did give it a little bit of indy charm that I liked, but it was still a little annoying.

I didn’t know what to think of the character sheet. It has lots of space for information (I don’t know why my printer printed it so small) but I just felt like it could have been a little bit better. It lists the things you can do under your Traits, but that is something that you’ll get to know pretty quick so it seemed like wasted space. If I run a one-shot or campaign with this system, I might come up with my own sheet. I’d probably also write up my own step-by-step character creation guide if I was going to run a campaign.

By far, I’d play this more than I’d play the official Cowboy Bebop RPG. With CUSC (the abbreviation they used in the game) I can see how the system can be run and how they kept the feel of the anime in the game without having to use some gawd-awful experimental RPG system that no one understands. I wasn’t getting the mental image that this was Traveller/Star Frontiers for Cowboy Bebop. It actually appeared to be a game for this anime series. Once I understand the CUSC system more, then I can see if my tactical and/or homebrewing brain engages. And the fact that it’s only costs US $5 on DriveThruRPG means that it would be easy to pick up.

Additional Notes:

I feel like I’m eating an elephant one bite at a time. Especially since I’ve had a lot of weird things pop up this month that have sucked away a lot of my time. Yes, I’m still chipping away at this challenge and no I won’t let it beat me.

Another thanks to LexTenebris on Mastodon. He explained that you can make bookmarks in PDFs do not make the file bigger and should not be skipped by publishers. While making an index for the back of the book takes up time, bookmarks can easily be generated. As a consumer, I agree on the bookmarks. But I want to express how grateful that I am when I see an index in a book where I’m trying to look up information.

Coming Up Next:

Terra Primate

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 9: Fantasy Age 2nd Edition

Written by TardisCaptain

I’ve been looking forward to the Day 9 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. I’ll be using a game that I received as a Secret Satan gift just last month. The Fantasy Age 2nd Edition core rulebook. Oh this thing looks beautiful. And the publisher is doing the smart thing by posting the basic game mechanic at the front of the book (see photo below). When it is explained to me very quickly, I can explain it to my friends for a possible game.

Now I’ve created a character for the 1st edition of Fantasy Age in a past challenge. There I made a Gnome Mage. For the 2nd edition, I think I’m going to make a fighter or a rogue based character. There is a new class called the Envoy, which is like a charismatic face-man/leader/jack-of-all trades, but I didn’t want to dive into that class today. If you are curious about the changes that were made in the 2nd edition of this game, the publisher had a good list on page 5 (again, keeping things towards the front for casual readers to flip through the book at the store and possibly buy).

So, the character creation steps are listed on page 10 with the pages following containing additional information for the player to use. The character sheet is two pages long and isn’t too cluttered graphic wise.

Step one is to create a character concept. How about an Orc Pirate? While I’ve made an Ork in a past challenge, that was for a comedy game. This is serious game with serious pirates. He had been rescued by the pirates after the character had been captured and was being hauled off for a crime he hadn’t committed. (note: the concept phase would have been discussed with the GM and other players to see what matched the party, but I’m going with a pirate theme today)

Next we get to determine the ability scores. These are the same abilities that were present in the 1st edition of Fantasy Age. They are Accuracy (your ability to handle ranged weapons), Communication (i.e social skills), Constitution, Dexterity (quickness and hand-eye coordination), Fighting (using melee weapons), Intelligence, Perception, Strength and Willpower. A preferred method and an alternate method to generate the scores were listed. The alternate method of rolling dice was the primary method in the 1st edition. The preferred method for 2nd is all abilities are at 0 and you have 13 points (called advancements) that you can spend up to a max of 3. The ancestries and backgrounds may alter these initial scores. I like having a balanced character so I made sure that every ability had at least 1, then I spent the remaining 4 points on the abilities I wanted my pirate to have.

Choosing an ancestry was next. While I’ve already selected Orc, I could have picked one of the other races. The book had the standard races found in most fantasy RPGs (Human, Hafling, Elf and Dwarf) but there were others as well. The above mentioned Orc, the Wildfolk (think beastmen with a head of an animal), Gnome, Goblin or Draak (dragon man). There are some sample names (I picked Harsk Redaxe) and I got to pick my first focus. This is a specialty that the character has. There are also two racial abilities that can be chosen from the list or roll 2d6 to get them randomly. I’m feeling adventurous so let’s roll. Fighting+1 and a new focus of Accuracy (Brawling).

Next, we have the character’s background. This includes a social class and what their career was in that class. I could randomly roll like I did for the 1st edition character, but I know that I want Harsk to be a pirate, so I’d probably ask the GM if I could just pick the Outsider social class and the Pirate background. I wrote down what that provided on my notes.

Now I’m looking up the Rogue information since it’s time to pick the class. This provides me with starting health, weapons groups, class powers, a talent and a specialization. I picked the ones that a pirate would have.

It’s the step where we pick equipment. Luckily it has the basics already listed, if you are a Rogue, you get light leather armor and two weapons. The standard equipment you already get is a backpack, waterskin and travelers garb. You also roll your starting money (silver pieces) based off of your social class.

The last couple of steps are basic ones. What is your defense and speed (calculated), name (see above) and goals and ties (we want the booty). I then transferred my notes over to the character sheet and scanned it for all of you lovely readers.

Afterthoughts:

I think I like the racial benefits being random. This way two members of the same race are not a cookie-cutter of each other.

It wasn’t explained in the character creation, but you get something called stunt points. When you roll doubles on your 3d6 you get to use a stunt. I’m at the end of the day so I don’t have time to read up on it now, but it sounded interesting to look into. And I do see a big blank spot on the character sheet where I could lists the favored stunts. I think it adds some narration options for the players to use in the game. Again, I’d like to see it in action.

This is another system that I really want to try in a campaign or possible convention one-shot. I’d probably know more then if I wanted to homebrew for a system like this. But with the way this book is laid out, I was able to get a character done pretty quickly. Which was a nice change after some (shudder) lengthy processes.

Additional Notes:

There have been a TON of characters posted by fellow participants on the TardisCaptain discord server. Lots of detail (one participant has even been uploading videos of his characters). I’d recommend checking them out under the #CharacterCreationChallenge channel.

Coming Up Next:

See You Space Cowboy

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 8: Dark Places & Demogorgons

Written by TardisCaptain

So, for my Day 8 entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to use the 80’s inspired roleplaying game Dark Places & Demogorgons Ultimate Edition Survive This!!. Not only could I imagine that I would be seeing some “things” that are “strange” in a game, but it also trying to find a mysterious pirate ship with your buddies in an underground cavern system, be tormented by a mysterious clown holding a red balloon, trying to avoid a sudden horde of zombies or just a roving band of meddling kids and their talking dog.

I had picked up this game last year when it was on sale at DriveThruRPG. I had heard the title before, but never really looked into the book. When I discovered that it was the latest edition from the authors and that it was set in the 80’s, I had to pick it up. Especially since it was a D20 based game. In the front of the book is a guide for life in the 80’s and how it compares to today (using a VCR instead of streaming your television, etc.)

The information on creating a character starts on page 9. There really isn’t a step by step guide, so we’ll try to follow along as best as we can. Being a D20 based game, there are the same attributes that we are use to. STR, INT, WIS, DEX, CON and CHR but there is one more as well Survival (SUR). This last one represents the character’s in-game ability to re-roll a failed attempt on each dice roll. But it costs you one SUR point each time. And the second roll must be taken no matter what. One point of SUR can be regained between gaming sessions. If you are playing a one-shot, the book recommends that you only get five SUR points. But we are going to go on the assumption that this is a character for a campaign. As per the rules, we roll 4d6 and drop the lowest die and then assign the scores to where we want. I’m making a character from the 80’s. I may be making one based off of myself (I already read down through the classes), so I know what I’m going to do. I rolled the dice and assigned the scores. Overall this guy is pretty average.

Hit points were next, roll 2d6 and adjust for a CON modifier. Luckily if it came up less than 5, you could bump it up to 5. I rolled a 7. If you reach 0 HP, then you are considered Out of Action and are unconscious until healed. Then you actually roll for your savings throw scores. 4d4 + any CON modifier for six different saves, but it doesn’t say if I assign them or just take them in order. I’m going to do them in order which is: Courage (a challenge to the character’s morale), Critical (roll if you take more than 50% of damage from your max HP), Death (rolled when you are below 1 HP), Magic (when targeted by), Mental (willpower or mind defense opportunities) and Poison (no, not the Alice Cooper song). I rolled these and wrote them down.

There is an optional rule of Alignment (I’m picking Neutral) and two percentile rolls for a random background. Sure I’m game. Heh, definitely not me in the 80s. An unhealthy fear of cats and my parents were doomsday preppers that have an underground bunker.

Alright now we’ve come to the classes. Quickly they are Break Dancer, Extreme Athlete (think skater boi or something similar), Final Girl (the one that is always alive at the end of cheesy horror movies), Geek (guess which one I’m picking), Goth (with several sub-goth archetypes), Hood (wrong side of the tracks slacker), Horror Connoisseur, Jock, Karate Kid, Kid Scientist (misspelled “Scientest” in the class index on page 18), Metal Head, Most Excellent Dude/Dudette (I wonder if that comes with a time traveling phone booth?), Nerd (smarter than the Geeks), Party Animal (no, not Spuds MacKenzie), Performer (musician), Performer (acting), Preppy, Princess, Punk Rocker, Snoop (think Velma) and two optional classes of Mystic and Psion (both have powers).

Since I’m taking Geek (I had to with the Weird Al song lyric in the description), I read through the description (yea that’s me) and wrote down the class bonuses and starting gear. The Geek gets two knowledge skills at +2 (I picked them) and several other skills at +1 (I also picked them).

Once I got past all of the other class descriptions (and the spell lists for the magical ones) we come to the Skills. I wrote down the ones that I thought matched me and/or the random rolls made above.

Now we get dumped into the Equipment chapter. I had some starting gear and some cash from the class above. The start of the equipment chapter doesn’t say if you use your money to buy anything else. I only rolled $22 (if I did it right) so I guess I’m not buying anything. But knowing me I’d probably be buying the Dungeons and Dragons books that they had listed in the equipment list.

Since the next chapter has information on how to play the game, I think I’m done with the character creation process. I transferred everything over from my notes to the character sheet, came up with a name and description and threw it into the scanner.

Afterthoughts:

I was a little annoyed that the PDF released in 2024 did not have any bookmarks. Does it make the file too big? Is there another reason this isn’t happening for recent publications? It was a little annoying when trying to find the information in the file.

I did like that they used quotes from 80’s music lyrics to describe the character classes. It was another way to connect to the decade. And a chef’s kiss for the Weird Al Yankovic lyric.

In the section about characters, they had segments on character creation separated by segments about game mechanics. Not the worse way to lay this out, but definable could have used a flow chart or worksheet.

Besides the misspellings, I also noticed that they had Piloting: Basic in the skills list, but there was no skill description on Piloting. There is no driving skill so I’m assuming that was it.

There is no spot for gear on the character sheet. The number of skills also exceeded the spots available on the sheet as well. If I was to run a game for this, I’d probably come up with my own character sheets.

I was getting the homebrew itches while reading these pages. If it wasn’t for the fact that I have a lot of blog and homebrew ideas already rolling around my head, I might try to make some for this game. But I may be more inspired if I get a game or two under my belt. I’m wondering if I should make this one of my one-shots for a future SaltCON?

Additional Notes:

I found a few more blogs that I added to the main Character Creation Challenge page. Let me know if I’m missing yours.

Coming Up Next:

Fantasy Age 2nd 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.

Back to Top