Tag: Role Playing Games

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.

Posted in: Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 7: Everyday Heroes

Written by TardisCaptain

Yay, we’ve made it to Day 7 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be making a character for Everyday Heroes by Evil Genius Games. I’ve read on several reviews that this game is the spiritual successor to the D20 Modern, especially since Jeff Grubb had worked on both titles. I had picked up the PDFs on a recent Bundle sale (I can’t remember which provider currently) that not only included the core rulebook, but several setting books based off of different movies. These included Escape From New York, Highlander, Kong: Skull Island, Pacific Rim, Rambo, The Crow, Total Recall and Universal Solider. All inspiring movies that I never thought would have their own RPG books.

This is another generic rule set where you can use just about any world setup like the D20 Modern, GURPS, Basic Roleplaying and more. Before I would have made a character, the GM would have told us if we were playing in a modern military campaign, an espionage campaign, law enforcement/criminal underground campaign or a host of others. I’m going to pluck out of the air that this is a troubleshooting campaign. The characters are members of a team of troubleshooters who are privately hired by different individuals and organizations who are in need of help.

So hopefully this will be a fast build. The character creation information starts on page 20 and provides three approaches. The concept-first approach for when you already know what you want to play. The rules-first approach if you already know the game rules and you have a notion of what you want your character to do in combat. It warns that there is a lot of reading and searching for the various options. Perhaps I’d do this one if I was making a character for an actual session/campaign. The last option is the “Just Wing It” Approach for if you don’t know what you want. Just read some of the descriptive text for each class, background and profession and see what sparks the imagination. I’m feeling random today, let’s go with this one.

Now the book gives us six steps to make a hero. The first step is what is the concept of your character. While you are asked to answer several questions about your character. The Who, What, When/Where and Why/How of when they became a hero. I’m not certain I can answer these questions now, so I’ll com back to them. The Archetypes (the type of hero your character is) and the Class (the way you express your archetype) are available to choose from are listed. The Archetypes are Strong (uses physical powers to resolve issues), Agile (uses coordination to accomplish tasks), Tough (can outlast the problems that are thrown at them), Smart (big brains solving big problems), Wise (uses their wisdom and insight to find resolutions) and Charming (using leadership, charisma or manipulation to reach their goals). There is a table that lists the possible classes that match the different archetypes and and recommended ability scores. Looking over the list I’m drawn towards the Sleuth class under the Wise archetype.

The second step is to think about the background for your hero (there’s a lot of thinking at the start) which gives your hero an ability score increase (but we haven’t even rolled them yet?), skill and weapon proficiencies, equipment and a special feature. I had to go searching for the background chapter and read what was there and this is the upbringing of the character. There were some good ones, and some that made me scratch my head. But none of them really inspired me with the creation of my Sleuth. While there were guidelines for creating new backgrounds, that goes beyond the scope of this blog post. I plucked the Orphan since I needed to move on and wrote down the provided benefits the background provided.

Now we pick the profession for step 3. From what I’m reading this isn’t really the class, but it can match if available. This is the day job of the character. They are broken down by types (Academia, Customer Service, Journalism, etc.) and from there you pick a career (Librarian, Phone Support, Photojournalist, etc.). I looked for the one that was closest to private investigator. This career was listed under Investigative Services. I wrote down the benefits from the profession.

And finally we are generating the ability scores on step 4. Being a D20 game they have the standard STR, DEX, CON, INT, WIS and CHA. Some of these have already received bonuses from the above steps. To determine them, the game lists three options. A standard set (boring, but good if you needed a quick set), Point Buy (ehhh… lets think about this one) or rolling 4d6 and use the three highest to generate six scores and assign them as desired. I think I’ll stick with rolling as I want to roll some dice.

Archetype and Class are listed as step 5, but I thought we had already chosen them (for this character he is Wise/Sleuth)? So, apparently I’m gaining all of the benefits listed under the Sleuth. I also listed the equipment and filled in the hit dice and defense bonus.

Oh, I guess I need a name before I scan the character sheet. Found a random name generator for private investigators (I’m not certain I like this site) but it did give me the suggestion of Alex Carter. So I’m going with that. Here is the sheet. I didn’t really scan the second page as the only thing I had written on it was the equipment. The third page Had a lot of spots for background information.

Afterthoughts:

After seeing the benefits of flow charts earlier in this challenge, I really wish there had been a flow chart available here. I think it would have spread the process up much faster. There were benefits listed in one section, then different benefits for class listed in another chapter.

The character sheet is three pages long (my preference is two max) but the third page mostly seemed to be background information.

I… could see myself playing this game. While I was thinking about some of my standard homebrew targets (aka, what would the stats be for a favorite character from a video game), I don’t know if I’d want to jump into the Everyday Heroes homebrew pool just yet. I think I’d want to play it a few times as I’ve got several other modern RPGs that I could play and homebrew for already.

Additional Notes:

Thank you to LexTenebris on Mastodon who responded to my question yesterday about the length and detail in my Character Creation Challenge. One of the things he said was “It comes down to how much time you have and how much the process is compelling you at any given time. If it’s fun, document all of it. Somebody else is likely to find it fun. If it’s not fun, well, document how it’s not fun because that’s going to be helpful to someone sometime.” And you know what, he is right. I’ll have to make decisions when I sit down to generate the next several characters.

Coming Up Next:

Dark Places & Demogorgons

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 6: Basic Roleplaying

Written by TardisCaptain

OK, for Day 6 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to use the Basic Roleplaying 4th edition system by Chaosium that has a copyright of 2022. Now regular readers of my blog will know that I’ve talked about and used the Basic Fantasy RPG several times, but despite the similar names, these two systems are not the same. Basic Roleplaying is a generic system (like GURPS and others) where they give you the framework and the GM decided what universe place around it. I’ve heard of this for years as it was used for Call of Cthulu, RuneQuest, Ringworld (which I think I may have played once in the late 80s-early 90s), Elf Quest, Stormbringer and a few others. I had never owned a copy until it came up for a really good sale price one day on DriveThruRPG. I snatched it up thinking that I’d use it for this challenge. Then a few weeks later, Chaosium announced a newer edition called Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine. So that might have been why the first edition went on sale. So I’m not doing a mini-review of the latest edition, but I’m going to use it anyway.

Since this is a generic system that can be used for just about anything, I think I’m going to attempt to make a spy for an espionage game. Let’s see if the book can explain it to me cold.

A guide to creating a character is listed on page 22-23 (with further details on the pages before and after). It has been broken down into several steps. Step 1 is the Name and Characteristics. It even says “Write your character’s name at the top of the page” on the first bullet point under step 1 with the second bullet point being “Write your own name on the character sheet”. I’d laugh but having run a Star Trek club where we’d have people work on merit sheets for rank advancements and a lot of times they would forget to put their name on the sheet. So points for being thorough. Our modern day spy is going to be named Jacob Green and he’s a bloke. Yes, the steps asks you to pick the gender now, but states that it doesn’t have an advantage system-wise. Our characteristics are Strength (STR), Constitution (CON), Power (POW), Dexterity (DEX) and Appearance (APP) that require a 3D6 roll. Do I assign them or do them in order? (searches the book) OK, I can choose them as an option. Before I start rolling the dice I look up what the POW characteristic is in this game as it may or may not affect my decisions. Ah it’s like the Willpower characteristic. I rolled the characteristics and assigned them. Now there are two more characteristics that require a 2D6+6 roll to determine the score. This is for Intelligence (INT) and Size (SIZ), which I’ve written down. Now I can redistribute 3 points between the characteristics with nothing above a 21, of which there is no chance as 16 was the highest roll. I elected to make a few changes.

Step 2, Magic and Powers. The book actually states on page 19 that you can skip this step if you are not in a world of magic, mutations or super powers. Works for me, onto step 3.

Age and Experience. The default age is 17+1D6 and Jacob turns out to be 20 years-old. So perhaps he’s been recruited while in college? There is an option for Education that guides me to page 27 (quickly reads). Ah I see this as the last characteristic. Grasp of general knowledge gained through a rounded education system and can be used in modern or futuristic settings. The book talks about how the attribute is generated if using a point based character creation system (which is an option) but not by throwing dice. I’m going to assume its the 2D6+6 (which rolled really well actually, but that’s good if Jacob wants to be a smart spy)

Step 4 tells us to generate some characteristic rolls based off of the values we’ve rolled above. For example CONx5 = Stamina. I did the math and wrote these down. Step 5 is more derived characteristics and more math this and math that for things like damage bonuses, hit points etc. I wrote things down.

Step 6 is interesting. It’s personality and type option. I’m instructed to roll a 1D4 and consult the chart. Jacob Outsmarts his opponents to gain an advantage. That actually fits what I’m thinking of. I’m wondering if some GMs would let their players pick if they already had something in mind?

Alright, step 7 is the skill point allocation with ranges from normal game (i.e. more like real life) to Superhuman Game (lots of stuff) Let’s go with the second lowest of Heroic with 325 points to professional skills with a max of 90%. There is a personal point pool (INTx10) that I can use for anything that doesn’t exceed the above limit. That’s a lot of points to spend. I’m instructed to go to page 33 and choose a profession, and yes I found a Spy farther down on page 42. So that gives me the wealth range and the list of suggested skills. But in going over the different steps and skill descriptions, I can’t find how much my initial cost for the skills are during the character creation process. I’m going to go with the assumption that 1 skill point equals 1% that I add to the base chance for that skill. Gah, it seems so simple of a thing to quickly explain. I think I did this correctly as there was a number of skills selected that would be appropriate for an espionage agent, but I had the feeling that I had missed something here. But I don’t have time so I move on.

Step 8 is marked as optional, but it’s the distinctive features. With the App score of 10, there is one distinctive feature. Randomly rolled resulted in facial hair. Um…. OK. From the list I selected no eyebrows.

With the last step we equip the character. It states that Jacob already has clothes, pocket money based off of wealth level (which was what?), a personal item with an emotional connection (Um… his Grandfather’s pocket watch… yea), any trade tools or equipment that matches the profession (makes sense), any weapon the character has 50% or more (glad I took that score on Light Pistol), a vehicle (yay spy car, or at least something good looking). Interestingly enough, there was no spot on the character sheet to write down equipment other than weapons. So I think I’m done and ready to scan the character sheet. I didn’t scan the second sheet as it primarily dealt with superpowers.

Afterthoughts:

There are a lot of pages that you have to jump to in order to follow the process. Had this been a physical book, I would have ended up using lots of bookmarks. It was a little annoying trying to click on the right bookmark within the PDF as not everything had a bookmark. I wonder if this is smoother in the latest edition of the rules?

The percentile system looks interesting. It reminded me of the FASA Star Trek RPG that also used percentiles for their resolution rolls. I think I’d be interested in trying out this game in a one-shot or at a convention before I knew if I wanted to put more effort into the game (i.e. long-term game or homebrews). It looks interesting to play, but like GURPs, but I hated making the character.

Additional Notes:

When I was printing up a bunch of the character sheets that I was going to use in the 2025 challenge, some of them came up slightly off kilter. This is one of those sheets that did that. Other sheets did not (quite strange). So I had a soft copy of the sheet up while I was also working on this and it looks like nothing really got cut off the bottom except for some border lines.

Am I putting too much detail into the steps? Since I’m trying to play catch-up, I think that I’ll be making this a shorter blog post. But when I sit down to type, my fingers keep typing what my brain tells them to. I also stop to look up tidbits and details to make sure I’m presenting them correctly. What do you guys think of the detail that I’m putting into these posts so far? Please let me know by social, email or Discord. Thank you.

Coming Up Next:

Everyday Heroes

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, Doctor Who, Role Playing Games

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 5: Doctors and Daleks

Written by TardisCaptain

The Day 5 entry for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge is a little unusual. The game is Doctors and Daleks (D&D, get it?) by Cubicle 7. This is a Doctor Who RPG using “The worlds most popular roleplaying game system” (aka 5th edition Dungeons and Dragons) as it is put in the description on DriveThruRPG. I had picked up both D&D and Doctor Who RPG 2nd edition in a bundle sale, but I decided to limit the number of Doctor Who RPGs in the challenge to one this year.

Now I’ve created several other Doctor Who characters in past challenge entries. In the first challenge (five years ago), I created a character for the FASA Doctor Who RPG (that I still had my books for luckily) where I made a TimeLord called “The Baron”. Then later that month, I created a companion for him, a small-town police officer who was recruited by UNIT named Tim Bronson using the Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (1st edition) by Cubicle 7. As I quickly scroll through the descriptions of the different races, I wonder if I could make an alien companion for The Barron? Let’s see. I know there’s already a Sontaran that isn’t trying to gloriously advance the cause of the Sontaran Empire, but I’m drawn to this idea of The Baron having saved a Sontaran Warrior who had been taken over (psychically or something) and when he was freed, he discovered he had more free will than before. He was still efficient, but when around other Sontarans, he has to act more guff that normal.

But enough chit-chat, the chapter for character creation starts on page 20. A (sort of) character creation list has the following steps. Decide with your group what type of game they are going to play (A time lord is having an adventure with his own companions, not the Doctor or other canon characters as PCs). Decide on the core concept for your character (mostly done, see above), choose your species (Sontaran), choose your class (OK this will need more than a quick rundown), choose a background (what you were doing before you started your adventures), decide on the Time Machine your group has (The Barron has a TARDIS of his own) and some Finishing Touches.

There is a side-bar with some changes from 5th Edition D&D, everyone can understand the languages of others due to the TARDIS Translation Circuit. There are no alignments (so my car might drive off the side of the road) since the Doctor (or in this case The Barron) only travels with good morals. And Hit Points and Hit Die are replaced with Plot Points and Plot Die. Part of this reason is not all combat is physical. And finally there are different Tech Levels ranging from 1 (Primitive-Stone Age) to 12 (Beyond Comprehension) with our earth at TL5 (Space Faring) and the Time Lords at TL 10.

So when I finally got to the ability scores, it stated that I could generate them in any way that I desired, or I could choose from a set of scores already provided. Nah, I want to roll the dice today and I’m going to go with 4d6 drop the lowest die. I quickly look over the classes to see what their attribute minimums are. The classes are Charmer (fast talker), Empath (wise sage), Protector (guards their friends), Stalwart (dependable jack-of-all-trades), Thinker (brainbox), and the Trickster (uses cunning and guile). Yea, it’s going to be Protector so I made sure the ability scores reflected that.

After writing down a bunch of notes, I decided to start transferring what I already had (and locked down) over to the character sheet. While doing this, I realized I’ve never really played 5th edition much. When I have played it, it’s been at conventions where the characters are pre-generated by the DM.

I’ve moved to the Finishing Touches section as I’m trying to wrap this up. I had already picked a name of Vrogg (it sounded alien enough). But now the game asks 10 questions for your background. Where (and When) are you originally from? Vrogg was cloned on the glorious homeworld of Sontar. What is your family like? Family? A Sontaran warrior doesn’t have a family, but he does remember the others in his clone batch. Most of them have already given their lives for the Sontaran Empire. What was your childhood like? Vrogg was cloned at birth to full maturity. If he did have a childhood, it would have been glorious. What have you done in your past? He’s had the pleasure of serving in the Sontaran Battle Fleet for three years, serving in many countless battles. At least until that last one where he was separated from the fleet and rescued by The Barron. Owing him a life debt, he is serving with the Barron, until released. Who are your best friends? Friendship had no business in the Sontaran Battle Fleet. While he gets along with the other companions of The Barron, he has come to realize that they are people he has… met. What do you wish you could change? Vrogg would have wanted the outcome of his last battle before he was left behind to be different. Would this have resulted in his death, perhaps, but it would have been glorious. What are your best or worst memories? The sounds of the defeated Rutians crunching under his boot. What is your biggest secret? Vrogg doesn’t know if he will feel shame when he he comes back into contact with the Sontaran Battle Fleet. Until that time, he is attempting to serve out his life debt and will, as the Humans put it, “cross that bridge when he comes to it.” What is your biggest fear? Sontarans do not have fear. But he won’t walk on the recently mopped kitchen floor in The Barron’s TARDIS. Why are you traveling with The Doctor The Barron? The Barron rescued Vrogg when he was left behind, thus he owes a life debt to The Barron. There wasn’t really a lot when it came to equipment. Sure there is an equipment chapter, but not much detailing what a Sontaran warrior would have, so I wrote down some battle armor and decided to scan the first page of the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

The book didn’t really go into the character creation system or a few other basics which was annoying. There were several times that the reader was referred to the SRD and I spent my time going back and forth between publications. I’m wondering if the writers thought that everyone would know 5th Edition D&D. While there were several pages describing some of the differences between Doctors and Daleks and D&D, there really wasn’t a step-by-step guide. I wonder if a Doctor Who fan picked up this book and then was a little confused? Remember, system first when writing your RPG manuals.

Both Doctors and Daleks and the regular Doctor Who RPG from Cubicle 7 assumes that someone will be playing the Doctor. Has this really been the case? When I played with friends using the FASA system back in the 80s-90s, we always had original characters. The Doctor was usually a guest character at the most while we ran around having our own adventures. I’m wondering if this is really the case with other Doctor Who RPG sessions? I checked with one of my 80’s buddies and she confirmed that they just made up their own.

So, would I play this as a Whovian? Possibly. I’m not in a lot of games right now, but I’d consider it if offered or saw it available at a convention. I was really impressed with the 1st edition Doctor Who RPG by Cubicle 7 and I can’t wait to look into the 2nd edition. I may want to play one of those before I play Doctors and Daleks. There’s already a big resource of homebrewed material for the 1st edition DWRPG, which gives that a slight edge.

Additional Notes:

I did get some additional feedback on my Traveller character I made the other day. Apparently I had done some things wrong as the math wasn’t mathing. I may have to go back and try to make a Traveller character again when I’m not under the pressure to catch up on the challenge. I wonder if I’m putting myself at a disadvantage of not giving some games the time to really get into the system itself. But another part of me asks “Can this game be picked up and played on short notice?” Some are definitely yes, some are definitely no and others are in-between.

Please let me know if I’m missing your blog from the Character Creation Challenge listing. I’ve been trying to add them as I find them.

Coming Up Next:

Basic Roleplaying (Chaosium)

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 4: Castles and Crusades Reforged

Written by TardisCaptain

Still playing catch up, but here is the Day 4 entry into the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge and we are going to use another recent Kickstarter reward. This would be the 10th printing of the Castles and Crusades that was called Reforged in the Kickstarter campaign. Long story short, this is the C&C game with the OGL material pulled out of it. A trend that was seen in other RPG books like Basic Fantasy 4th Edition. And while I have created a Castles and Crusades character in a past challenge, I thought I’d use it again because I wanted to show off the book once more and test to see if the character creation process was still the same. With each printing, Troll Lord Games keeps the rules the same, but presents them differently and polishes them up for clarification and ease. So let’s see if there is, or is not any differences from the earlier challenge entry.

For those of you who don’t know, C&C is a D20 clone that uses the same attributes found in the oldest fantasy RPG, but uses a skill system called the Siege Engine. Instead of going into the differences, let me point you towards a very excellent video by Magehammer that explains it using index cards. This skill system has made me really want to try C&C in a campaign setting to see how well it works. I’ve played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons 3.5, and I know that skill system. But the Siege Engine seems to give players the option of “What do I want to do?” instead of “What does my character sheet say I can do?”

So the last time I made a C&C character, I rolled up a Knight, but didn’t make him a Halfling because I misinterpreted the rules (as per some feedback I received from it). As I was flipping through the book I decided that I’m going to make a Monk since I don’t think I’ve made one yet. And to make up for my previous mistake, I’m going to make him a Halfling Monk that wanders the countryside trying to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Yes, that isn’t listed as one of the “typical classes” for this race (as per page 95) but the mistake I made last time is that “typical” doesn’t mean “only”. And since I’m short on time, the Halfling Fantasy Name Generator inspired this character’s name to be Barakas Nimblebarrel. One of the primary attributes was selected by the class (the Monk uses CON and I selected STR as the second primary attribute)

The character creation process starts on page 12 (again, thank you for putting the system first in an RPG book) and while there really isn’t a checklist, it breaks down the process in two pages. Imagine the character (done see above). Roll attributes (the book states, roll 3d6 and assign as desired), done including the racial modifiers. Roll Hit Points (OK, I’m going to snag Optional Rule #1 since it’s listed right here and take the max HP at first level since that is how I like it) and the last step is Fleshing out the Character. This includes the starting money and buying equipment. When I compare these steps to the 7th printing, the appear to be the same. When I look at the class and race descriptions in the 7th printing I can see how the layout has been altered, but the information appears to be the same. However I did notice that the 10th printing has details for higher levels beyond 12th.

OK, I think I’ve got everything, the stats, the race and class information, the equipment. I’m sure that there is probably a thing or two that I might be missing from making Barakas table ready, but I need to wrap this up for the day. Here are the two character sheets.

Afterthoughts:

I wish the publisher did have a checklist for character creation. But I’m sure that if I was going to run this as a campaign (tempting) I’d probably put one together. I’ve offered to run a C&C game when one of my kids asked about a game, but I haven’t heard back if her friends could make it (the dreaded schedule curse).

I like how Dusk Vision (spelled Duskvision in the 7th printing) is laid out as compared to Darkvision in other OSR games. Dusk Vision will work outdoors, but not underground. Dwarves have Deep Vision, Elves have Twilight Vision (I wonder if it will let them see sparkly vampires?).

In this new version of C&C, Alignment has been changed to Disposition. I’m sure that if I read further into the rules (when I have time) I’d probably see more changes, but I suspect that they won’t disrupt your table.

Additional Notes:

While I’m still playing catch up, I’ve been on the look out for the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on BlueSky and Mastodon. I’m seeing quite a few entries. I’ve been re-posting them as I come across them and I’ve started following a few accounts. Thank you for using the hashtag, it’s made it easier to follow the other participants.

Coming Up Next:

Doctors and Daleks

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 3: Traveller 2nd Edition (Mongoose Publishing)

Written by TardisCaptain

For my Day 3 entry into the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I am using the latest version of a classic science fiction roleplaying game, Traveller. This is the edition that was recently released by Mongoose Publishing (at least the copyright on my Starter Set is 2017). If you wanted a good comparison, this version of Traveller is like Wizards of the Coast releasing Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. Yes there are older versions, such as the Classic Traveller, different editions like Traveller20 and retro clones, such as Cepheus Deluxe. All of which I’ve had the pleasure of using in past character creation challenges. But this version is the currently supported by Mongoose. To my knowledge, there is no special add-on to the name, like Traveller The New Era, or MegaTraveller, just Traveller.

I had picked up a Humble Bundle sale which contained the Traveller Starter Set, a book called the High Guard, a Central Supply Catalogue, a Companion, a Referee’s Screen and a few other items. As it turns out, the Starter Set is different than the Core Rulebook 2022 Update that Mongoose has released, but it should fill my needs for character creation.

So the Starter Set has three books, 1- Characters & Combat (image seen above), 2- Spacecraft & Worlds and 3- The Fall of Tinath (a starting adventure). There are also several character cards and sector maps provided. I’m not finding an ISBN, but that may have been on the actual box itself (which I don’t have). The only book that I’ll be looking at for this entry is the Characters & Combat. The Traveller Creation is detailed in the first chapter on page 7. It also talks about creating your character at the same time as your fellow players for group balance and cohesion. The character sheet is two pages long. Oh, there’s a character creation flow chart on page 10, I’ll run with that. I’m also thinking I need to decide what type of character I’m going to make before getting to deep into the process. I don’t think I’ve made a scientist character yet in any of my Traveller/clone entries. His name is Denton Wilkinson and he’s a member of the science team for some explorers. Let’s go with that.

As discussed in other systems based off of Classic Traveller, a character has six Characteristics. The physical characteristics of Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX) and Endurance (END) and the mental characteristics of Intellect (INT), Education (EDU) and Social Standing (SOC). These are randomly rolled with two six-siders (2D is how they list it in the book) and adding the results together. I get to assign the roll results to the characteristics. I’ve written these down on my notes.

OK, now the flowchart takes me to Background Skills, choose EDU DM+3 for the total number of background stills that you get before starting your career. But I’m confused, the example text says it would be 0 to 6 depending upon the EDU score. But the description for a Dice Modifier (DM) on page 5 says the number after the DM is added or subtracted to the roll. A DM of plus three added to the Characteristic Score of 12 would be 15 if I’m reading this correctly. Not finding anything else that would clarify this for me, I took a picture of the Background Skills description and sent it to a Facebook page for Traveller fans. This was the closest I got to asking a Referee. The group members explained that I was reading it wrong, the EDU DM is a +2 because of the score of 12. Add that to the +3 for the background skills and he starts with five total. OK, that makes sense now. Which I had this access with some of my other games. On with the show, five starting Background Skills with the level 0. I wrote them down on my notes.

Pre-education check is the next step. Denton is smart so he should be able to get into University. I also get a DM bonus for having a SOC of 9. I rolled an 8 which beats the target score of 7, so he’s in. I choose some additional skills (written down on my notes) and I get to increase my EDU by 1. Now did I graduate? Another roll results in an 8 that beats the target number (but I did not roll high enough to graduate with honors). I wrote down the benefits and skills that were earned. Rolling on the event during the pre-career education resulted in a Life Event roll (finds another chart) and that came up with Birth of Death (not Cake or Death? Oh, OK.) Denton’s father passed away while he was in college. As someone who had inspired him, he elected to go into field research like is father instead of going for some cushy corporate research position.

Now the flow chart says I start a new term. Specifically the first term that the character has in his career and it needs to be picked. Denton meets the minimum requirements for a Scholar-Field Researcher, so I don’t need to roll anything there, but he still needs to go through Basic Training. I write down these skills at level 0. Then the flow chart says I roll for survival (made it) and then roll for event, I rolled a 6 which gives me an advanced training if I rolled above a certain EDU rating, which I did. Woot, one skill goes up by 1 point. Next I roll to see if I advance and he did not. So I guess I’m still a Scholar level 1 (shrugs). OK, I add four more years to the character’s life and come back for the second term. Since this is not the first, there is no basic training, but I’m sticking with the career Denton has now. I’m going to pick from the Personal Development table and roll 1D, his Dex goes up by one. As with the initial career, I roll for survival (passed) and advancement (still no, hmmm… I guess he didn’t include the cover to his TPS reports). Now we loop around with four more years added and try again, this time I’m going for one of the Field Researcher skills, which earned me a Survival 0. Survival roll passed and advancement roll finally passed so he must have sucked up to the right boss. Onto the last term and we are picking from Advanced Education (earned Art 0) and Denton survived and advanced. He’s mustering out and if I’m reading this correctly gets two benefit rolls. They are some money, INT+1 and more money and a lab ship with 25% of the mortgage paid off on it. But now I have to roll on the outdated ships table in Book 2 (scrambles to pull that up). Wow, it’s 30-40 years old and has a ton of problems with it. I guess it’s held by duct tape and wires.

The last step on this flow chart is picking Skills Packages (which should be done with other players). I picked the Explorer Skills package and wrote down the skills. But now the flow chart is done and other than getting a ship, I have no equipment. (goes searching through book) I was really hoping that there would have been an Explorer’s pack or some sort of pre-generated go-to list of equipment to get done quickly, so I wrote a few things down that I thought my Field Researcher had and called it a day as it’s really late. Ugh, moving everything over from my notes to the character sheet and I see that the other characteristics haven’t been filled in yet (I don’t remember seeing them on any flow charts or lists). I’m ready for bed so I won’t bug the Facebook people tonight. I had downloaded the character sheet so they might be extras. Especially when Morale didn’t pull up on a quick search of the Character’s book PDF. I’m tired and done. Here is the character sheet, I only scanned one page since didn’t get any information for the second.

Afterthoughts:

I liked how they had two pages to explain everything that was on the character sheet (and what page it could be found on). But I had a different character sheet so it was slightly different.

I can see where there has been some improvement from the Classic Traveller and OSR clones (while there were still a few sections where I needed to ask questions). I could see myself playing this if the opportunity arises. I don’t know if I could home brew for it until after I’ve had a chance to play, and I don’t know how likely that is. But who knows. I think this would be my flavor of Traveller if I were to play a game.

Additional Notes:

More real life events have caused delays and it’s been bugging me. Nothing serious like a health wise or computer issue, but so far 2025 has decided to be a drag. I’m still playing catch up and I’m feeling like I’ve been letting others down as the person who came up with this challenge. So these additional notes may not be very big until I’m all caught up. I’ve already moved a few games around to see if I can get a few easy builds done.

Coming Up Next:

Castles and Crusades Reforged

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