Tag: Role Playing Games

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 27: The Terminator RPG

Written by TardisCaptain

On Day 27 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to use another game that you can’t pick up on DriveThruRPG any more unless you had purchased it prior to September 2025. The Terminator Roleplaying Game by Nightfall Games. According to the Terminator Fandom Wiki, the publisher decided to end their rights by mutual agreement with StudioCanal. I didn’t know that until now and it may have explained why the game came up for sale when I had purchased it on DTRPG. The link I posted above goes to an Amazon listing for anyone looking for a copy.

I’ve always enjoyed the Terminator franchise and thought it would make for a good RPG campaign. I even remember reading articles with what-if scenarios like: “What if the series 800 model 101 infiltrator unit was accidentally sent back in time to 1886 instead of 1986?” I think that is what I like about science fiction stories and games. The “what-if” factor. In this game, it appears that you can play resistance fighters in the future war, or those who have been sent back to the 1980’s (or other times) to protect the timeline.

So the PDF I own has 232 pages in it. It was written by Andrew E.C. Gaska who also wrote the Planet of the Apes RPG, The Alien RPG and I even had a chance to meet at a past FanX: The Salt Lake Comic Convention. As I was reading the rules, I could see some of his fingerprints in the system based off the in-person conversation that we had at the con. The character sheet is one-page long and the character creation process starts on page 30. There are seven steps in total (with an optional eight step that I will not be using) to create a character. I’m going to make a member of the resistance who will be sent back to the 80’s to find and protect a target from being terminated.

Step one is to select a role. This could be considered a class or archetype. Not everyone in the resistance is a soldier (but everyone fights where they can). The options are Engineer, Grunt, Hacker, Historian, Medic, Pilot (ground or air), Scout and Strategist (aka generals). I made a Drow Hacker yesterday with Modern Necessities, so I’m going to go with Historian this time. I don’t think I’ve made one in any of my past challenge entries. Each role gets some initial stats, skills and a resistance ability. I wrote these down for my yet-to-be named character.

Next comes the stat generation. These attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Knowledge, Concentration, Charisma, Cool and Fate (which I was glad to see in the game). They range from 0 (poor) to 6 (incredible). Some of these stats already have a score thanks to the role selected above. I’ve been given 7 points to spend on the other stats. There is a max stat limit for the different roles and a chart is provided. For example, with his brains, this historian could have a score of 6 in KNOW, but only a 2 in STR. I didn’t know if I should make him general (1 point in each stat) or specialized? I think this is why I don’t like point buy systems. I decided to go with 1 in each category and added it to my notes.

Step three covers the Hope Points of the character. According to the book, this represents the faith that the character has in their own abilities and in humanity. There are three categories for hope points, Body, Brain and Bravado which are associated with a stat (example Brain has KNOW and CONC). I add the two associated stats together and then the category with the highest number gets 2 Hope points (in this guy’s case Brain, and the second gets 1 and the lowest gets zero. Since there was a tie between Body and Bravado, I was instructed to pick one. Now I’m confused. Besides the three points listed above from the values, it says that I have 3 more hope points to spend in any category (max 2) how I want? Am I reading this right? Slightly confusing. But I think I have the 3 more points to spend so I wrote them down on my notes.

Skills are the next step in the creation process. There are skills categorized by the stat would use them (e.g. melee weapons falls under STR). The range is 1 (skilled) to 4 (Specialist) with the max at creation time of 3 (Expert). Each Roll has a list of starting skills that begin at the rank of 2. I’m then given 36 points to spend on any skills with a chart of how much it costs to go to each rank. Ugh, again I dislike point buy. Yea they are good if you have something in mind or are homebrewing, but for just general character creation, I’m not a fan. First I picked some minimal skills that I thought a resistance member would have surviving in a robot apocalypse. I was able to get them spent and added to my notes.

Step five is the Traits that give the character some personality and possible hooks for the Director. I have zero points to spend on the traits, but if I take a negative trait, I’ll gain points. I’m getting a GURPS vibe here of all the negative things to get a bunch of points (something I dislike). I looked over the costs and descriptions and honestly nothing really pulled me in. Perhaps if this was random or required. I finally broke down and picked one good and one bad trait and moved on.

For step six we are doing the Figured Stats. These are stats that are calculated by other items noted above. Most have mathematical formulas. These include Hit Points (health of body), Willpower (mental strength), Movement (closing and rushing), Encumbrance and Initiative. Luckily after the descriptions there was a chart with all of the baselines and formulas for me to use when writing down my character notes.

And the last step (for me) is to come up with the Finishing Touches. Name (William Harden), background (was raised in an abandoned library so that is where he gained his knowledge and equipment (discussed with Director if the game is set in the future or if they traveled to the past naked). He’s naked to start.

There is a step eight, which is for the players who wanted to beg their Director to let them play a cyborg or fated (aka targeted by Terminators) character. Since I’m not using this according to the voices in my head, I skipped it. Here is the character sheet after I transferred my notes to it.

Afterthoughts:

They had the Terminator 2 font everywhere in this book. I think it was giving me flashbacks because that was one of the original fonts that we loaded onto our computers to make futuristic newsletters and flyers.

I like how they gave a one-word description of the different stat ranks. This would make it easy to homebrew stats for someone that I could have ported into the game.

This game uses a pool of d10s to determine success. One of the d10s has to be different from the others and it must role above the target number in order for the additional skill die to count. I kind of raised an eyebrow at this wondering how it would play at the table. Some of the target numbers were higher than 10, but you do add some modifiers to the roll if I read the system section correctly.

I know it sounds like I did a lot of complaining above. My issue is with the min/maxing of point buys. I wasn’t a fan of them in GURPS, and I’m not a fan of them in other games. I feel that it drags out the character creation process. Sure if you already have an idea in mind (which I didn’t) then it may help. While I hated making GURPS characters, I didn’t mind playing GURPS at the table. I wonder if I’d feel the same with this system? I don’t know if I’ll get a chance to try unless someone runs a one-shot at a con.

Additional Notes:

I’ve had some participants ask me if there will be a badge graphic for those who complete the 31 characters as we have done in years past. The answer is yes, my artists has been working on one and has sent me several prototypes for feedback.

I had a blogger reach out to me by emailing Carl (at) TardisCaptain dot com to let me know that they were posting their entries. I’ve added Skeleton Soldier Press Blog to the list on the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge page.

Coming Up Next:

The One Ring

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 26: Modern Necessities

Written by TardisCaptain

Another KickStarter game is being used for my Day 26 entry 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Modern Necessities is a series of sourcebooks that sets up modern day rules (or future and western options) for Old-School Essentials. You can read my review of the KickStarter reward at this blog post.

So this one is going to be a little weird. Because I’m going to be using the character creation steps from Old-School Essentials. But when it comes to the class, spells (if needed) and gear, I’m going to be using Modern Necessities. I have used OSE for a past entry in the Character Creation Challenge that you can read here.

So the character creation process in the OSE book is listed on page 18. As mentioned in the last entry, there are multiple creation methods, but to use my Modern Necessitites options, I’ll need to follow the advanced path where race and class are separate. Everyone sing along now. To generate the ability scores, roll 3d6 down the line. Got some OK stats between 10 and 14.

From these I can now check which minimums the character meets for the different race options. I used the Half-Orc in the 2025 challenge, so this time around I’m going to go with Drow. I don’t know if I’ve had a chance to make one yeet. I added the ability modifiers and racial benefits to my notes.

Now we are to the part where we can switch over to the new Modern Necessities book, picking a class. I’m only using the modern times book, not the western times (with the Single Action book) and futuristic times (with the Cutting Edge book). My choices are Crook, Detective, Exorcist, Face, Heavy Gunner, Hired Killer, Martial Artist, Medic, Ninja, Psychonaut (drug powered users of magic or mental powers), Sapper, Scout, Secret Agent, Sniper, Soldier, Survivalist, Tech Expert, Treasure Hunter (think Laura Croft), Vigilante (think Punisher) and Wheelman. There are minimums for each class which helped with my consideration. While this unnamed character could have been most of them, for some reason I was drawn to Tech Expert (which includes some technomancy abilities). I wrote down the information presented from the class and picked his first spell.

OK, returning to the OSE book where step four is adjust ability scores. This is where I can raise a prime requisite ability by 1 by lowering another ability (STR, INT or WIS) by 2. Unfortunately a 1 point raise wouldn’t do the character any good on their attribute benefits so I elected skip any adjustments. I then went to step five which is noting the ability score modifiers and step six which was noting the attack values utilizing the optional Ascending Armor Class since I don’t like THAC0. Step seven is noting the savings throws and class/race abilities (which I already had done).

Ah, finally. Hit Points. Tech Experts are like magic users so they only roll a 1d4. I’m glad that I rolled a 4 since this yet-to-be named character has no CON bonus. I then proceeded to the next couple of steps by selecting the alignment and known languages.

Step eleven is buying the equipment. I rolled the 3d6x10 and then went back to the Modern Necessities book to look at what was available. After picking up the gear I noted the AC, level and XP for the next steps.

Step Twelve is an optional rule for secondary skills. The OSE book had fantasy based secondary skills. I didn’t see a listing like this in Modern Necessities. Honestly I think this was an oversight since Modern Necessities was based off of OSE. Perhaps writing up one of my own could be a homebrew project? But that will have to wait until later when the challenge is done.

The last step is naming the character. Hey look, a favorite website has a Random Drow Name Generator. I was able to pull the name Xathel Dalla. I also went to the Random Hacker Name Generator and selected BL4NK. Now there wasn’t a special character sheet for Modern Necessities or any of it’s two side books (yet, hint) so I used an OSE character sheet and tried to fill in the blanks.

Afterthoughts:

I can see where these two books can fit in with each other. And in old-school fashion, I can see where there are gaps that a GM may have to fill in (example, they gave extras to the basic races, but not the Drow as I discovered while creating this character). Not that this is a bad thing, because it leads to homebrew opportunities.

Now I really want to try this one at the table.

Additional Notes:

On the RPG.net message board, there is a participant going by the handle of “Hunter” who is making a set of characters for “The Alpha Squad” using the Outgunned: Adventure RPG. This is The A-Team in 1933 Los Angeles instead of the 80’s as seen in the TV show. I need to give him a golf clap for this one because it is very well done.

Another reader made a purchase on DriveThruRPG after clicking on one of my affiliate links. Thank you, that will help with future RPG purchases. I try to pick up games for the next #CharacterCreationChallenge.

Coming Up Next:

The Terminator

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, Horror, Role Playing Games

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 25: The Walking Dead Universe

Written by TardisCaptain

As we enter the last week of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge I’m going to use another Free League game that I recently picked up. Day 25 is going to be The Walking Dead Universe which is my fourth of five games by this publisher in 2026. Now I had a chance to play The Walking Dead at a past SaltCON, but I really didn’t get a feel for the game for two reasons. The GM wasn’t on his top game (he had been up all night and was barely staying awake for the first game of the day) and 2/3rds of the players left in the middle of the game. If you are not familiar with The Walking Dead zombie apocalypse, it originally started out as a comic book. This book was adapted into a series of television franchises that was shown on AMC.

The PDF of the core rulebook has 180 pages. The character creation process starts on page 24 and there is a one-page character sheet. There are eleven steps in total for this process. The book states that we are building a character based upon the background and personality to become the foundation of it and their relationship with the other characters in the game. Well since I’m making this character solo, I’ll have to use the voices in my head to represent the other players. Hey, sometimes they have good ideas, and then there’s other times that they talk like I’m not even there.

So first is the Archetype (aka Class). This is what the character was doing before the outbreak that caused the zombie apocalypse. There are twelve of them that include Criminal, Doctor, Farmer, Homemaker, Kid, Law Enforcer, Nobody, Outcast, Politician, Preacher, Scientist and Soldier. I hadn’t given it any thought yet, but I think I’m going to go with Criminal because someone who had to stay one-step ahead of the law might be the person who stays one-step ahead of zombies and immoral humans. The book lists the key attributes, skill and talents. I’m also instructed to pick an Issue, Drive, Gear (random roll) and relationship to other characters. I wrote them down in my notes.

The next several steps are pretty quick because I had already selected them when I looked over the entry on the Criminal archetype. Pick a name (OK I hadn’t done this yet) which turned out to be Jay Dunn (thank you random name generator). Issue (picked from archetype suggestions) which is a flaw of the character and Drive (again from the suggestions) which is what keeps the character going in this world of the dead. No, not just outside the window, the world in the Walking Dead universe.

Next up is the Characteristics. These include the four Attributes that I can spread 13 points between them (min 2, max 4 or 5 for key attribute). These are Strength, Agility, Wits and Empathy and I wrote down my selection in my notes. Then there are the skills that are under each attribute (three each). I have 12 points that I can spend here with the lowest being 0 and the highest being 2 (to start the game) other then the main skill of the archetype (Strength in this case which can be up to 3). And then there are Talents which are special abilities that can help your character. They are listed in the Archetype and I need to pick one of the three listed. The last item in this step is the Health Points and each character has three. If the character loses all of them they are considered broken. The archetype also has you roll a d6 three times to get some random gear and gives options for the relationship with the other PCs (which I had already selected).

Next the game talks about Stress and Anchors. Each character gets two anchors which is someone that helps the character stay grounded. One is a PC and the other is an NPC. I’m going to leave these sections blank on the sheet only because I don’t have any other players or a GM to help me.

The last step listed on the list is to select a Haven. This is a temporary safe place (at least as safe as you can be among the walking dead). In the book it lists three possible starting Havens that have both positives and negatives. This could have been selected by the GM already (if they had something in mind for the scenario) or the players could talk it over. Since there are only three, I’m going to roll a d6 and it came up The Factory. According to the list on page 24, this was the last step. Let me transfer my notes to the character sheet and present it here.

Afterthoughts:

Because I like taking pictures of physical products instead of PDF books, the photo actually shows The Walking Dead Universe Starter Set that I had received as a thank you gift for GMing at SaltCON. But when I created the character, I used the PDF of the core rulebook that I had picked up from DriveThruRPG.

This appears to have the same RPG system as Twilight: 2000 I used earlier. Each number in the attribute (and skill) is the number of d6s you roll. Each six counts as a success which usually needs one to accomplish the task. If you don’t get any, you can push a roll (aka roll again) and take some stress. From what I recall, I didn’t like it when we were playing the one-shot because we hardly succeeded at anything. I don’t know, perhaps in a campaign and with an experienced GM, perhaps my thoughts on this may change. But currently I’m not really moved to run or homebrew for this system.

Additional Notes:

I had one follower tell me that they were interested in D.A.M.N.I.T. just on the name alone. And then another said it reminded them of Warhammer 40K. I’m not familiar enough with the Sci-Fi version of that game to know how accurate that is. I just barely made my first Warhammer Fantasy RPG character earlier in this challenge.

Davwj on the RPGGeek message board responded to a question that I had asked on my Swords and Wizardry entry into the challenge. “Matt and Frog God Games parted ways (amicably it appears) back in 2022 (link to comment from Reddit). Matt now houses all his games under his original Mythmere Games label including Swords & Wizardry both on his own website plus on DriveThruRPG.” I thanked him for the information. I’m not sure why my search skills failed me on DriveThru.

Coming Up Next:

Modern Necessities

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 24: EverReach

Written by TardisCaptain

Last year I had the opportunity to talk with the game designer for the sci-fi RPG, EverReach at SaltCON. He offered to send me a copy of his game to use in a future blog post. He also gave me the freedom to review the game as I saw fit. So, I am using it for today’s entry in the of the 2026 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Now, I had a chance to play this game with the designer at a past SaltCON.

So the PDF book is 324 pages and was released by Laughing Gnome Games. The ISBN number is 979-8-9925886-1-3. EverReach uses a system called the Luck Die System. To complete a task the player rolls 2d6 and another d6 known as the luck die, add any bonuses from skill, equipment and traits and try to meet or beat a target number. The player has a series of luck points and can replace one of the d6s that they just rolled with the results of the luck die.

The steps to create a character are listed on page 14. Create a character concept. Assign abilities. Pick a Genotype (think race). Select a character background. Select bonus skills and background. Select the character’s talents. Pick up equipment. Build a ship and finally finishing touches. There are little sub-steps or different methods in each step.

Step one is the character concept. As I’m typing this, I’m watching episodes of my favorite science fiction comedy series Red Dwarf. So I’m going to make a human engineering character that’s a little on the slobby and lazy side. Step two is assigning the attributes. The attributes used in EverReach are Brawn, Determination (mental fortitude), Wits (awareness), Agility, Intelligence and Presence (charisma). There are three methods that can be used to generate the scores for these. Focused (pick one at 4, one at 1 and the rest are 2), Balanced (Two attributes at 3 and all others at 2) or Point Buy (spend 13 points among the six attributes). Since this guy is one of the lower deckers, I went with balanced.

Now to select the Genotype of the character. In this gaming universe there are Humans, Metahumes (weak psychic humans), Spaceborn (humans designed to live in space), Heavy Worlder (humans designed for working on heavy gravity worlds), Reptilians, Avians, Felians and Piscine (genetically modified reptiles, birds, cats and fish) and Androids. Considering I’m making my own version of Lister, I briefly considered Spaceborn or Heavy Worlder, but I don’t think that really fit the concept I was going for, so I stayed with Human. I get to up two of the character attributes by 1 and I get to add +1 to Luck.

Step four is the character background. Where were they born, what type of upbringing and career do they have? We also select two personality traits and a character flaw. Sticking with the Lister theme I’m making the character from the United Kingdom. So he has the language of English and the trait of European. For the upbringing I considered Criminal, Urban or Rural, but I decided to go with Laborer. I wrote down the traits, social network and background listed. After seeing the list of Careers, instead of going with Engineer that I was thinking above, I selected Deckhand since he was a lower decker. This gave the character his first set of skills (rank 2), another social network connection and an additional trait. For Personality I’m instructed to pick two from the list provided (went with Optimistic and Witty) and at least one Flaw (Claustrophobic). I could have picked a few others to match the inspiring character but I didn’t know if it would have provided any additional positive traits.

For the bonus skills and background, I get to choose three additional skills at rank 2, bump two of my rank 2 skills to 3 and then select five skills at rank 1. I also get to choose one additional background talent, one additional social network. Um… are the background talents under the Talents chapter or in the Backgrounds chapter? This is probably where I would have asked the GM if we were making the character together at the table. There is an entire chapter on different talent types, but they appear to be connected to certain skills. I’m going to go out on a limb and think its one of these in the talent chapter since I haven’t seen that come up anywhere else. Under the Mechanics Talents there is a Robot Ally (since Lister had Kryten). No, I’m wrong, steps six (the next one) has the rules for those talents. I guess I’ll just skip this one for the time being.

As mentioned above, step six is to select the talents of the character. Each skill that has a rank of three gets a talent. Since Mechanics is at skill level 3, now I can take the Robot Ally talent that I had mentioned above (Welcome to this character’s Kryten). Since only one other skill was at a 3, I picked a talent for Subterfuge (Disguiser).

Equipment is the next step. The rules state that the character has a a choice of three equipment items that are always in their possession. There are other items that can be used during the game, but these three things appear to be signature items. I think I just pick three things that are not large and bulky.

Step eight is Building the Ship. Work with the crew (other PCs) including who owns it, who does what on the ship etc. Sticking with the Red Dwarf theme, I’m certain that this character has a small mining scout like StarBug 1 that’s owned by the company they work for. There is a whole set of steps just to design the ship. I’m not going to go into on this blog post because it’s already getting to long as it is.

The final step is the finishing touches. This includes determining speed, armor, shields, health, etc. It’s done by various mathematical formulas provided. I was confused by the second sub-step in finishing touches. It says to add the attribute bonuses+2x skill ranks to determine the bonus for your skills. But when I do a Ctrl+F on the document, nothing else comes up for attribute bonuses. I haven’t given a name to the character yet, so I’m going with Charles Craig. Glorified space bum who’s only working before he gets his big break (and hopefully the girl of his dreams) to retire on a farm on Fiji. I transferred everything to the two-page character sheet and scanned it below.

Afterthoughts:

I was wishing that the chapters and layout describing the characters was in the same order as the character creation steps listed on page 14. I was jumping all over the place in the PDF. It would have been helpful in the step-by-step guide to say (see page x for more information). Another issue was the AI images. They had the usual issues of merging body parts, plastic skin and more. Like the Vintage Space RPG that I had used in a past Character Creation Challenge, none of the images seemed to be related to each other other than being in space. It was really distracting.

Now usually when I create a character for the challenge, I usually say “I wonder how it plays at the table?” Well, as mentioned above, I was able to play it in a convention one-shot. We did a lot of pre-planning for our raid into the facility we were hired to break into. When we got to tossing the dice, I don’t recall thinking anything like “that didn’t work” or “that seems to be too steep for a success ratio” like I had in some other games. So with a good GM and players, this should be a game that can be used in a campaign. The GM is encouraged to develop house rules for their table if needed.

I would also like to point out, that in the same vein as Chris Gonnerman, Bill Logan, Mark Hunt and more, Patrick Buckendorf has done something that I want to do. Write a roleplaying game and get it out into the wild. Like others, I say I want to do it. But the actual act of getting it done and out is a major accomplishment that I hope to achieve some day.

Additional Notes:

In the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge the proper Top Gear crew came up in several characters. This year it appears that Red Dwarf is inspiring some of the characters that I end up using. Even if it’s towards the end of the creation process.

Coming Up Next:

The Walking Dead

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, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 23: Swords and Wizardry

Written by TardisCaptain

Day 23 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge and I’m using an OSR clone called Swords and Wizardry from Frog God Games. Specifically this is the “Complete Rulebook” version. I had picked it up on DriveThruRPG back in 2020 and I’ve been keeping it ready when I needed an OSR game for the challenge. I’ve got quite a few OSR clones and I like comparing them against each other. So let’s see how the character creation process works for this system.

There are a 144 pages in the PDF that I own. The character sheet is one-page long which looks kinda kewl. The character creation starts on page 7 with the generating of the attribute scores. I’m instructed to roll 3d6 in order. It is mentioned that the Referee may allow the player to move the scores around if this is a long term game or if you have something in mind. I’m going to let the dice decide what this character is. And with a high Intelligence (15) I’m making a magic user.

The next step is to pick a race for the character. I didn’t realize it at the time, but my last two characters for Underhaven and D.A.M.N.I.T. were Dwarves. So I’m going to select an Elf. No attribute adjustments in S&W, but there are some advantages that I wrote down in my notes.

Next comes the character’s alignment. The choices are Chaos, Law or Neutrality. I think this guy is going to be Lawful. Why, because he’s not a bad guy that’s why.

Rolling 3d6x10 for the starting gold to buy equipment is next resulted in 120 GP. I picked up the standard fair that I thought this yet-to-be-named character would need. No armor made the AC easy to calculate, and since it had both descending and ascending AC options, I chose ascending.

We’ve come to the end of the chapter on character creation, but I know I need to pick his spells. Apparently he only memorizes the spells allowed per day (one at 1st level), but can have up to eight spells in his spellbook. But I have to roll under the “Understand Spells” score from my 15 INT. And since I don’t have a name yet, the Elf Random Name Generator came up with Ivasaar Perleth.

Afterthoughts:

There wasn’t really a checklist for the character creation. It was just “now pick this from these descriptions” and move to the next chapter. I was use to this older format having played BECMI a while ago, so it didn’t bother me. But I could see how it would be confusing to players not familiar with OSR styles.

What I didn’t like was the 0.2gp costs listed on some of the equipment. Just tell me what it is in silver pieces, etc.

Some interesting tidbits in this OSR clone. I wouldn’t turn down a game, but as for running one, I’ve already got some others in mind.

Additional Notes:

I want to thank all of the participants and commenters on the #CharacterCreationChallenge channel on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. I’ve loved seeing your entries and interacting with you.

I don’t know why this game wasn’t showing up on DriveThruRPG. My copy was still in my library, but the book itself wasn’t showing up under the vendor’s page.

Coming Up Next:

EverReach

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, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 22: vs D.A.M.N.I.T.

Written by TardisCaptain

The game that I’m using for Day 22 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge is one that I backed on KickStarter. Because of how far behind I’ve been, I haven’t had a chance to write a blog post about it. So this will count as both. The game is called Dwarven Assault Mining And Neutralization Interception Team (D.A.M.N.I.T.) and is a sci-fi game about Dwarves in space. The characters are a part of a trouble team sent to clear dangers out of various space mining locations or fighting pirates. When I read the description it sounded like fun, and they weren’t asking for too much on pledges. There have been a few KickStarter campaigns where the game sounded interesting, but I didn’t want to spend to much for a game that I may only play once or twice.

The physical copy of the game I received has 34 pages, but the PDF extras added several pages more. One of the extra rewards was a 5th Edition version of the game if I elected to play it. For the challenge I’m using the creation rules for the original game. The book has an ISBN number of 2-370021-779178 and was written by Mike Lafferty and Chuck Rice. There is a ton of color art in this book by Jacob Blackmon, Jon Gibbons, Dean Spencer, Kristin Nokes and Rick Hershey.

This is a rules-light system for quick play between players and DM (Dwarf Master). There is a target number and the player rolls a d20 to see if they meet or exceed the TN. The advantage/disadvantage rule is in play within this system. From the looks of things, this is one of those games that I’d pick as my odd-ball one-shot to run at SaltCON. I’ve got a few to set up for the next several conventions since they run three of them a year.

There is a one-page character sheet. The character creation steps are provided in a separate PDF when you pick up the game from DriveThruRPG. There are seven steps in total to get a character ready for the table.

Step one is to pick a class from one of these options. Scout, Medic/Science Officer, Heavy Weapons/Pilot, Engineer or Dwarven Earth Alchemist (DEA Agent). This last class is a special alchemist that can also cast spells. While this last one sounds interesting, I’m eyeing the Scout since he is an infiltrator. The book states that all characters get 15 HP to start, a specific attack and three fixed skills.

The second step is an optional one if your Dwarf Master allows. Picking a personal skill to make the character different from the others. I randomly picked one from the list since the voices in my head said to do so.

A Perk is a unique ability that the character has. For step three, I’m instructed to pick one from the list that I thought would fit this unnamed character.

Steps four and five both deal with gear. Allocating gear points then buying said gear. 10 gear points is allocated per character. I decided to pick both a ranged and melee weapon (I was surprised that there wasn’t a dagger option).

Picking a name and background is step six. I used the online random dwarf name generator to dub this character: Hezan Copperhood. After his brother went missing on a previous D.A.M.N.I.T. team, he signed up to find out what happened to his kin, and dispense justice if needed.

And finally step seven appears to be another optional one as well. If the Dwarf Master give their OK, then make your own custom skill, perk, gear or spell. I like this idea that gives the player a chance to contribute something. I’m going to go with a family heirloom which turns out has a special function. The Ancestors’ Ring. This alien technology discovered by one of his forefathers on an exploration mission can cause silence for two rounds once per game. Do you think that the Dwarf Master would allow it?

After reprinting the character sheet (see below) I was able to scan it to wrap up this blog post.

Afterthoughts:

When I went to transfer my notes to the character sheet, I realized that I had accidentally printed out the sheet for the D.A.M.N.I.T. 5th edition game. So I quickly printed out the original character sheet if you are wondering why it looks different from the photo at the top.

I hope I did the gear right. I spent all of the equipment points before I realized that I could make my own special item at the end of the process. So I may have too much gear on this guy.

This game looks simple and straight forward. My games for the spring SaltCON are already locked in, but I wouldn’t be surprised if I try to run this for Summer or End-of-Summer SaltCON later in the year. I’m very happy that I backed this Kickstarter.

Additional Notes:

This is my third of four games used in the challenge that I had picked up from KickStarter over the past year. I should go back and count how many KickStarter games I’ve used over all of the years of doing the #Character Creation Challenge.

Coming Up Next:

Swords & Wizardry

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 21: Underhaven

Written by TardisCaptain

On Day 21 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge we are using the Underhaven OSR Heroic Fantasy Roleplaying Game. I had picked up this game from a Kickstarter campaign where I reviewed it here. I also gave a brief rundown of the system used and a brief background of the game world. There is a two paged character sheet used for Underhaven.

The character creation steps begin on page 58 and end on page 71. The first step is to generate the stats used by the character. They are Strength (STR), Constitution (CON) and Dexterity (DEX) as the physical stats. Then Intelligence (INT), Wisdom (WIS) and Charisma (CHA) for the mental stats. Being an OSR inspired game it uses the standard stats. However instead of rolling 3d6 (or 4d6) you distribute either d4, d6, d8 or d6, d6, d6 to each stat group. As mentioned in my Kickstarter review (linked above) a player would roll a D20 and a stat die to try to meet or beat a target number. I selected my stats for this character.

Next you select your Ancestry. The races available in the core rulebook are Dwarfs, Gnomes, Gray Elves (aka Emo Elves who were banished from the surface), Halflings, Humans and Zurkhas (aka Armadillo people). For this character I’m running a Dwarf and wrote down the traits in my notes.

On step three we select the character’s archetype (aka class) from one of the ten presented in the book. These are Artificer (aka Inventor), Cleric, Confidant (aka Face Man), Fighter, Mycologist (a mushroom searcher and apothecary), Ranger, Thief, Spelunker (Cave navigator), Verminists (spellcasters who summon swarms) and Wizard. Since I’ve never made a Spelunker before, I went with that class and wrote down the traits that came with it.

The Background is the item that is selected next. This is what the character doing before they became an adventurer. When the character uses a skill that they would have learned from the background, they get to add their Proficiency Bonus (+2 at first level) to the die roll. There was a few examples listed but it was very generic. “pirate”, “beggar”, “scholar”, etc. I had to think about this for a moment. What would a dwarven do before he became a spelunker? I fell into the trope and made him a former Smith.

Here we are at step five and we get to equip the character. I love the fact that the book is pretty straight forward. Choose up to 2 weapons, an armor that is allowed by your class and 3 pieces of gear that costs 25 GP or less. Then we get to roll (for the first time in the creation process) 5d6 for the starting gold. This can be kept or used to round out the equipment. I picked some equipment and rolled up 16 GP. With this I purchased some additional items that I thought my unnamed character would need.

The last step contains the finishing touches. Hit Points are calculated by the highest number of the CON die. And since the character is a Dwarf, he has a +1 to the starting HP, so 5. Defense is 8+max of DEX die (in this case 8) for a total of 16. If the character had a shield this would have been increased by 1, but nothing was listed for the type of armor (light, medium, heavy). I checked the combat section really quick and it turns out the type of armor worn gives a damage reduction. The Proficiency Bonus for a level 1 character is +2 (this can be raised when the character advances levels). Since the character is not a magic user, he doesn’t get any magic points (used in spell casting). I’m then instructed to record the ancestry and archetypes traits (already done above), give the character a name (um…. lets go with Thorronlir Whitbraid) and note a Fate point (aka the ability to reroll a failed roll). The character sheet is two pages, but I didn’t scan the second page since it was all organized for spell casting abilities.

Afterthoughts:

I liked the fact that they had an ending to the character creation process with a “You’re Done!” comment. There were too many times the writers would start the process without telling readers that they have reached the end.

The way they did the equipment allocation helped out quite a bit. A character should already have armor, weapons and some equipment. But I did find myself picking the most expensive items that I could before spending the randomly rolled starting gold.

I could see myself playing this game. Most likely a one-shot at an upcoming SaltCON. I could also see myself homebrewing for this game. For a game with a “locked in” world, there is a lot of sandbox play present.

Additional Notes:

In response to my Rocket Age entry with Ace Rimmer, a lot of feedback that I received was “Smoke me a kipper, I’ll be back for breakfast.” I’m glad to see that everyone got the Red Dwarf reference.

Coming Up Next:

D.A.M.N.I.T.

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 20: vs Ghosts

Written by TardisCaptain

Who are you going to call for the Day 20 entry in the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge? Um…. not who you think you’re gonna call. Today I am using vs. Ghosts. This is using a system called the VsM Engine that has been used in several small publications covering a variety of genres. I was actually wondering which one I was going to use for the challenge. When I thought about it, doing a game with the Ghostbusters serial numbers filed off sounded like fun.

The PDF that I own has 64 pages in it. The character sheet is only one page and looks pretty simple. Simple is very good for some types of games so let’s see if this makes sense. The character creation steps are presented on page 5. The first step is to pick a name and the book states you can pick something boring or something fun. So I’m going with Professor Proton. Because why not?

Next we write a Bio. Sure since we are keeping it silly. Professor Proton, is not really a professor. He just thinks he is. He may, or may not, have escaped from a certain type of hospital. He needs to stay out in order to continue his research to prove that the supernatural things he has seen really exists. Let’s run with that.

There are five attributes in vs Ghosts. Offense, Defense, Mental, Physical and Investigation. The first two have to do with combat. Mental covers knowledge, willpower or intelligence. Physical is self-explanatory and Investigation allows the character to look stuff out-of-the ordinary (aka clues). I’m given the point values of 6, 4, 4, 3 and 3 to assign as I see fit. Well this guy is more of a egghead than a body builder, so I put the points where I saw fit.

Now I have to choose Professor Proton’s gimmicks. There are good and bad gimmicks. For each good one I select, I also have to take a bad one and the game suggests just taking one of each. I’m going to go with Lucky (he’s been able to give them the slip so far) and Nemesis (those men in the white coats that keep popping up at the most in-opportune time).

The last two steps are recording the character’s Health and Traits. Since I didn’t take any gimmicks that alter it, Professor Proton’s health is 10 and traits are just things like appearance, personality quirks, etc. Apparently you don’t write down any equipment now (even though there is a space for it on the sheet) as it is acquired at the beginning of the gaming session. This is done by drawing cards and looking at the value of the card itself. Apparently no dice are used, just cards. When taking an action in the game, you draw the number of cards equal to the attribute used and compare the highest card value against a target number. I could use my 20-in-One Card Deck by Precis Intermedia that I picked up after I saw a GM use it at a SaltCON.

Afterthoughts:

The character creation was simple. The system seems simple. This could be easily used for a pick up game or a one-shot at a convention. Some of the other VsM games that I could have used instead of this one included vs Assassins, vs Empire, vs Pirates, vs Dragons, vs Moon Men and vs Wastelands.

Additional Notes:

I’m still looking for any blogs that are participating in the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge that I may have missed. Please let me know if you come across any of them. I’d love to give them some love for taking part of the challenge.

Got some family stuff coming up over the next few days. I hope that I’ve got my ducks in a row to get all of my posts up. But if I miss a day, I’ll try to get it up as soon as I can.

Coming Up Next:

Underhaven

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, Red Dwarf, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 19: Rocket Age

Written by TardisCaptain

Day 19 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge and I’m using a pulpy science fiction RPG that I had picked up in a charity bundle sale years ago. This game was published from Cubicle 7 called Rocket Age. It has Humans exploring the solar system with adventures on Venus, Mars, the moons of Saturn and Jupiter and more with a 1930’s attitude. It appears to be similar to the Doctor Who RPG that this same publisher released. Let’s dive in to see.

There is a one-page character sheet. The character creation rules are found on page 94 (after a TL/DR intro into the game universe) with a total of 257 pages for the core book. A summary is listed on page 95 and has four steps.

The first is what type of Sophont is your character. Well this is the games fancy term for race. My choices are Earthlings, Eurpoans, Ganymedians (both of these are from the moons), Ioites (a race that had their homeworld blown up by the Europans), eight different types of Martians (gee, I wondered what inspired this) and Venusians. I’m keeping it simple and sticking with Earthling. I’m told that I have 42 character points and the cost to be an Earthling is 1 of them. This also gives me the attribute modifiers and traits for Earthlings which I wrote down in my notes.

Step two is the occupation of the character. I looked at the choices and they are Citizen, Diplomat, Explorer, Merchant, Military, Miner/Scavenger, Native, Scientist, Law Enforcement, Europan Emissary, Deutsche Marskorps War Walker Pilot (Nazi cyborg mech drivers on Mars who left the service), Martian War-Priest, Rocket Pilot, Rocket Ranger and Venusian Harvitioi (wandering Venusian). Well the non-Earthling options are out. Again, keeping it simple, I selected Rocket Pilot which cost me 11 character points. I wrote down the attributes, skills and traits listed for this occupation in my notes.

On step three we now take the remaining character points (of which I have 30) and spend them on Attributes, Skills and Traits. Some of these have already been added from the first two steps above. The Attributes for a Rocket Age character is Awareness, Coordination, Ingenuity (aka Intelligence), Presence (aka Charisma), Resolve (aka Willpower) and Strength. These were the same in my Doctor Who RPG first edition entry. Also the same was the skills each character has. Athletics, Convince, Craft, Fighting, Knowledge, Marksman, Medicine, Science, Subterfuge, Survival, Technology and Transport. Traits are good and bad things about the character. The bad traits can give you back character points to spend elsewhere. I spent my points trying to make an Ace pilot.

What a guy.

The last step is the character’s story. What is their name and do they have a nickname. Pulling from one of my favorite shows, I’m going with Arnold “Ace” Rimmer. The image of the silver suited pilot from the Red Dwarf popped into my head. His friends are… well you know (or should know). The book also says that equipment is picked in this step. It just says, look at the equipment section and pick the reasonably logical items. It already stated that there was a ship connected to this character in one of the above steps so I’m marking that down as well. This looked like it was both vague and too much in some sections. So I’m going to skip it (other than I already wrote down the silver leather jacket and the ray gun). Here is the character sheet after I transferred my notes over.

Afterthoughts:

I repeat myself. Rule book first, lore second. Rule book first, lore second. When a gamer picks up an RPG book, they can (usually) tell from the cover what genre of game it covers (fantasy, sci-fi, horror, etc.) They want to know “How do I play it? How do I quickly explain it to my friends to try to get them to play it?” If you can’t do that near the front of the book, then most gamers are going to use a system they are already familiar with and adapt your lore for what they want. The lore did sound a little interesting from what I skimmed through, but I didn’t take a deep dive into it as I wanted to learn the system.

The bookmarks in this PDF were… weird. I finally had to go to the index and find the page number and tell my reader to go there. That’s when I realized I was skipping over 90 pages of fluff.

I had picked up this game because it was cheap in a bundle charity sale (I don’t recall which bundle service it was). But at the time I was thinking homebrew. Now…. I’m not certain. It’s pretty much fleshed out. The system is pretty simple (that I recall from playing the Doctor Who RPG). Roll 2d6 and add the attribute and any skill or trait modifiers to reach a target difficulty.

Had I known that I was going to make this character into Ace Rimmer, I might have adjusted some of the attributes and skills to make it more like him. But I didn’t want to go back and change anything. So don’t think this is my 100% interpretation of Ace Rimmer in Rocket Age.

Additional Notes:

I kept wondering why I had the thoughts of a Mallard character who was a Mage for my Dragonbane entry in the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge. Then it dawned on me that I had shared this video online years ago and I had to find it again. At the time I was thinking of my D&D 3.5 magic user in the last big campaign I played in.

Coming Up Next:

vs Ghosts

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

2026 Character Creation Challenge Day 18: Dragonbane

Written by TardisCaptain

And here we are on Day 18 of the 2026 #Character Creation Challenge and I’m using a game that I had a chance to play at a previous SaltCON. This is Dragonbane, a fantasy roleplaying game that originally came from Scandinavia and was called Drakar och Demoner. It was brought to the US by Free League Publishing that also released some of my other challenge entries such as Tales from the Loop and Twilight: 2000 4th Edition. I still have two more games from this publisher scheduled for later in the month. What are they? You’ll have to return to find out.

As I mentioned in my SaltCON report, one of the races that you can play in this fantasy game is a Mallard. Come on, I want to make a freeking duck character (look at the art above). And yes I promise he won’t be Howard the Duck, Count Duckula or Darkwing Duck. But I’m making a duck.

Ok, yes I’m calm. The rulebook that I had picked up on DriveThruRPG came from a boxed set. The rulebook has 116 pages on the PDF and the character creation starts on page 9 and contains 13 steps. There is only one page in the character sheet.

The first item on the checklist is to select (or roll) your Kin. Mallard. This is the race of the character. Mallard. There is a random table that you can roll a D12 on to decide. Mallard. An you can choose from Human, Halfling, Dwarf. Elf. Mallard or Wolfkin (which is a non-monster wolfman). Gee, what should I pick? Yea, the Mallard. But I will say I played a Wolfkin in the one-shot at SaltCON and he was very kewl. There is a list of possible names that I can randomly choose from, but I pulled some online options together to make Drake Grandfeather.

Step two is about the innate ability that each Kin has that is unique to themselves and uses a Willpower Point to activate. And the Mallards have two of them, so I wrote them down in my notes. One of them is called Ill-tempered. I wonder if this is for all the times we see Daffy Duck or Donald Duck wig out?

Next step is the character’s profession. This is something that they were before they started on their adventures. The ten options are Artisan (like a blacksmith or another type of builder), Bard, Fighter, Hunter, Knight, Mage, Mariner, Merchant, Scholar and Thief. I can randomly roll if so desired, but for some reason, I’m getting pulled towards the Mage. Probably because all of my other fantasy characters so far in this challenge have not been magic users. As a mage, there has to be a school of magic that Grandfeather follows with the options being Animists (everything has power), Elementalism (the four elements) and Mentalism (magic comes from within). All of them look good when I read the description, but eventually I went with Elementalists. I’m suddenly getting the thought that Drake Grandfeather is going to turn into an Obi-Wan type character. I wrote down the skills for this school of magic. There was another random chart for gear, but I decided to go with the one that had the staff. Now, the other professions get a heroic ability, but with the power of magic, mages do not have this. I was also instructed to pick three rank 1 spells and three magic tricks (which sounds like cantrips).

There are three age ranges for step four. Young, Adult or Old. Each one has a different number of trained skills and possible attribute adjustments. There is another random table and for the first time I’m going to let the dice decide. It came up with Adult, so no attribute changes, but 10 trained skills.

Despite the names already being listed under the Kin (and I picked one above) the next step is to select a name and a possible nickname (suggested by the profession). Or you can let the nickname come up in play. Well I already have a name in my notes and I’d be willing to let the nickname come when the time is ready.

Step six is the attributes of the character. They are Strength, Constitution, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower and Charisma. The primary attribute for the Mage is WIL. The book instructs me to roll 4D6, drop the lowest die in order of the attributes. Once this is done, I can swap two scores of my choosing. Had there been some age adjustments, they would have been made at this time.

On to step seven and the Derived Ratings. This included Movement (decided by Kin and AGL score), Damage Bonus (one for melee and one for ranged weapons), Hit Points and Willpower Points. WP is used for magic and the abilities of innate and heroic. This is the same as the WIL score.

Next comes the Trained Skills. I can pick six trained skills from my profession (there are eight to choose from) and four more other trained skills. Every skill has a base chance that is determined by the attribute score (chart provided). The trained skills are twice this base chance. It took me a second to confirm what went where, but I think I got them all down.

Step nine is the Heroic Ability, which the Mage does not have due to his magical powers. but there is an optional step ten to choose or roll a weakness. I’m going to go ahead and roll just because I haven’t dropped a lot of dice so far. And if fate was with him, his weakness is Craving Knowledge. Sometimes this can be distracting or more important than his friends.

Now we are onto the starting Gear. This was already determined back with the profession. There is also an optional Memento, or an object of great sentimental value. Normally it may not be very helpful, but once a session a memento can be used to recover and additional condition during a stretch rest. Randomly rolling a D20 resulted in this being an old pewter tankard. Sure, why not. Perhaps it has the name of his favorite tavern on the side.

Not on the list for character creation, there was a brief discussion on encumbrance, then we moved onto the last step of Appearance. There is another random D20 chart if I elected to use, which came up with Thin and Wiry. Sure, why not. He’s a scrawny duck. Also not on the list is now a description of the Experience the character may gain during the adventures. I think I’m done with the process so I transferred everything over from my notes to the sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I kind of liked the ability generation instructions listed above. While I was rolling in order, I kept wondering which roll I was going to swap out for the character’s primary attribute. I had to make a decision instead of stat dumping.

I also liked that every skill had a base stat based off of the ability score. Sure my mage may not be acrobatic, but he can still try if needed.

I remember enjoying this game when I played a one-shot at SaltCON. Things made sense. The character sheet made sense. We were able to run the combat without feeling confused or frustrated. So now I wonder how this would work in a campaign? This is probably one of the few non-D20 based fantasy games that I’d probably play (don’t know about run yet). Rolling low on a D20 is the goal in this system.

Additional Notes:

I’ve noticed a few trends in the other 2026 #Character Creation Challenge entries. The first is that fans of the 80’s Masters of the Universe cartoons are making characters based off of that series. The second is a lot of Star Trek and Star Wars characters. Some are using officially licensed products (Like Star Trek Adventures), but others are making characters from these universes using other systems. All of these have been interesting reads.

Coming Up Next:

Rocket Age

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.

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