Tag: Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 8: Star Trek Alpha Quadrant

Written by TardisCaptain January 8, 2024January 9, 2024 1 Comment

For Day 8 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I will be making a Starfleet Officer for the Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant roleplaying game. What is Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant? It is a fan-made conversion of the Cepheus Engine System Reference Document for Star Trek. It originally started as a conversion of the FASA Star Trek RPG, then evolved to cover all of the shows (up to Star Trek: Discovery) that had been released by 2017. Several years ago, the publishers of the Prime Directive rules wanted to make a “Traveller” version of their game, but it hasn’t appeared yet. So for fans who want to play some sort of Trek with the 2d6 system, this is probably going to be up your alley. Steven J. Ege, the author, did state that Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant is not compatible with other 2d6 style games.

Now this isn’t the first time I’ve used a fan-made Star Trek RPG in the Character Creation Challenge. Previously I had covered Far Trek and Where No Man Has Gone Before. I have also covered the original Little Black Book version of Traveller as well as Cepheus Deluxe release. So I’m interested to see where this goes.

The Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant PDF has 160 pages with the character creation checklist on page 11. There is no character sheet in the book, but luckily I found a fan made character sheet on the Polyhedral Nonsense gaming blog. This sheet has four pages with the first being stats and skills, second page is equipment and weapons, third page is character history and the last page is any telepathic skills. I discovered that there are a lot of good character sheets on the Polyhedral Nonsense website.

OK, let’s light this candle. The first thing the checklist states is that the characters begin at the age of majority (usually 18 in Humans). But with the Q’s consent (Q is the name of the Game Master in ST:AQ) the character can start at 19 or 20. The character is entering Starfleet Academy. After discussing with the Q what positions and ranks that the character will take you can dig into the attributes. Thinking about this, I want to create a character in the time of the Original Series. Looking at the different alien races available (there are several basic ones that are mentioned in the front of the book, then a lot of races listed later in the publication) I selected Denobulan and named him Lt. Commander Tropp. He would be the Chief Engineer on the USS Valley Forge, a Constitution-Class starship.

Next we generate the attributes for Tropp by rolling 2d6 and assigning them. They are Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Endurance (END), Intelligence (INT) and Education (EDU). For those of you wondering, INT is the intellect and the EDU is the learning and experience. Traveller/Cepheus players may notice that there is no Social (SOC) attribute. The author of AQ did state that he had to make some changes to make it fit the Star Trek universe. I’m assuming that dropping this attribute was one of the items he was referring to. I rolled my dice and made the racial adjustments and wrote down the attribute modifiers.

Step three is to select the background skills that Tropp had before he entered the academy. The rules state that you divide the EDU score in half and that is the staring number, in his case 4. These skills would be of rank 0 (semiskilled) and I had to choose two from the education category and two from the development category.

Now we enter the academy and gain several skills from the curriculum. This includes core, candidate school, outside electives and advanced study. While this took a moment, I was able to complete the task.

Step six is the cadet cruise. I rolled a 2 on 1d6 to represent that Tropp participated in two six-month cruses. At the completion of the cruises, he has graduated from Starfleet Academy and now holds the rank of Ensign. To be a Lt. Commander, Tropp needed to go on nine tours of duty (from rolls and various modifiers). This time allotted resulted in several skill rank increases, which I wrote down.

The steps now indicate that I should come up with a background for the character (which I would if this was really going to be played). The Universal Character Format at the end of the steps can list equipment, but no rules were listed at this time to any allocation. I snuck down to chapter 4 to read about the equipment and it described some equipment types, but didn’t really say if you started with anything. In most Star Trek games, your equipment would be what is available on hand. So I didn’t bother with any on the sheet. This meant that I only wrote on the first character sheet for this challenge. I’m certain that at least three of the pages would have been used in a campaign.

Afterthoughts:

This book was pretty thorough and covered the bases that you would find in a standard RPG core rulebook. These include a “What is roleplaying” section and how the core rules worked. You wouldn’t need any of the Cepheus books to play this game.

The lack of a character sheet concerned me. I was very grateful to find the Polyhedral Nonsense release. Their character sheet is also fill-able which may be of interest to some players. Since I was going old-school with my entries, I had mine printed out to mark up with a pencil.

Another concern was the use of graphics in the book. Since this book was never going to be printed for copywrite reasons, the author could use the images as he saw fit. There were some pages where a full color image in the background with white highlighted lettering over the top of it. It made it difficult to read.

I liked how the PDF was bookmarked. This made it easier to jump to a section to look up information. I also appreciate that major and minor characters from the Original Series and The Next Generation have been stated out. When talking with Star Trek fans who haven’t had a lot of experience with RPGs, they might create a character by saying “He’s good with computers, just not as good as Spock.” or “He’s just as strong as Worf.” I can take the provided stats to give them a starting point.

There is also a FASA to AQ conversion guidelines in the back of the book. While reading, I could see a lot of FASA influences in this publication. I could easily see myself homebrewing for this system just as I want to for Star Trek Adventures, Far Trek and Where No Man Has Gone Before.

Additional Notes:

I had a couple of readers report to me that they had heard of The Dark Eye and even owned a copy, but they hadn’t had a chance to do anything with it. So I guess this European game has made it to the states. But because they hadn’t tested it out yet, they couldn’t tell me about how the game plays at the table.

Coming Up Next:

Monty Python’s Cocurricular Mediaeval Reenactment Programme

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 7: The Dark Eye

Written by TardisCaptain January 7, 2024 1 Comment

We have reached our first week in on the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge with Day 7. Today I’ve elected to make a character for The Dark Eye. The version that I own is a hardback copy printed in 2003 by a company called FanPro. From my research, this appears to be the 4th edition of this game. The earlier editions had been very popular in Europe. Apparently this game was started when a German publisher was snubbed over the German translation of Dungeons and Dragons, so they ended up making their own RPG. I wonder if it has blackjack and hookers? There is a 5th edition of this game that was recently published by a company named Ulisses Spiele.

I had picked up this book at a game swap at SaltCON-Summer for a decent price. I figured that I could use it for the Character Creation Challenge. There is 184 pages in my book (which includes the map and character sheet at the back) and the ISBN number is 1-932564-02-0. The cover price listed is $29.99. On page 14 is a breakdown of the character sheet with the character creation steps listed on page 22.

Enough chat, lets get to creating. New characters start out with 110 Generation Points (GP) that are spent through out the character creation process. There are option to buy more points by taking disadvantages or restrictions. The first step is to think of a concept you’d like the character to be. Talking with the Highlord (aka Gamemaster) would be needed here to make sure the concept would match the campaign (for example, no underwater basket weavers). There is a background world already created for the game and most of the options are based off of those works. I think I’m going to keep things simple and create a mercenary type fighter who is looking for someone to help pay for his next bar tab.

The next step is to select your race, of which there are only three. Human, Dwarf and Elf. But in step three you select the culture your character came from. Now we’ve got some variety. These are based on historical cultures found in medieval/renaissance times. They borrow form Viking, European or Middle Eastern cultures and give some examples. This guy is going to be a Thorwalian (aka Nordic Viking type) which is going to cost 10 CP. He will have blonde hair and blue eyes. I rolled his height to be 177 centimeters (5’8″ basically). Then the rules stated that his weight would be the number of his height in centimeters minus 95 to equal greatpounds. Uh…. what? If I’m reading this right, he would only be 82 pounds and that doesn’t sound right. Screw it, he’s 190 lbs. because I understand that weight. I started ignoring the fluff and concentrated on the game stats that the race came with. I wrote them down in my notes for the character and finally selected a name of Halmar. Before I elect to stop lets move onto the next step.

This step would be cultures. Luckily there was only one for Thorwalian, so I wrote down the items the character received and took off the 10 CP it costs.

Step four is the profession, aka the job that Thorwalian does. Since some of these had already been talked about earlier in the creation process (haphazardly) I knew that he was going to be a Mercenary. I spent the 10 CP and noted the minimums that I would need to be of that class… er… profession.

It was at this point when I actually found a step-by-step guide on page 36. So I stopped slogging through the other fluff and just started using these guidelines.

OK, so far what I’ve done has matched what is on this step-by-step guide and I have 80 CP left to spend. Next comes buying the attributes. These are: Courage (CO)- Strength of nerve and willpower. Cleverness (CL)- Intelligence and logical thinking. Intuition (IN)- Deciphering clues and quick assessments. Charisma (CH)- Personal magnetism. Dexterity (DE)- Best use of the hands. Agility (AG)- Body coordination and grace (i.e. dexterity for the non-hands stuff). Constitution (CN)- Yea we know this one. Strength (ST)- And we know this one as well. Social Standing (SO)- status in society and reputation. All attributes other than SO range from 8-14. SO ranges from 1-12. I’m still having to flip back and forth in the book to make sure that I have it correct. I made sure to buy my minimum needed for Mercenary (counting what I gained from my Thorwalian adjustments) and averaged out the remaining CP for the other attributes. This left me with exactly 0 CP after all was said and done.

Step six was the advantages and disadvantages. I already have two disadvantages from selecting Torwalian. I’m assuming the points gained from these disadvantages were already calculated in the CP costs that I’ve already paid. If I take any additional advantages, I need to take an equal number of disadvantages so that I’ll still be at 0 CP. I looked over the two lists and selected the Rapid Healing advantage (as recommended in the mercenary description) and the rage disadvantage (Thorwalians get 18 points instead of just the 15 for taking this disadvantage. This leaves me with 8 CP left that I’m going to go back and raise some of my attributes.

Now to step seven and we talk about talents. I believe these are just skills. There are some talents that I already received from my race/culture/profession. There are some basic talents that I get at zero if they hadn’t already been bumped up from the gains in race/culture/profession descriptions. The character sheet had some of the talents listed, and a lot of blank spaces afterwards. Ugh. I then calculated up how many points I had to spend on new or advancing talents, and decided to skip it at this time since I was running up against a deadline.

Now there are some base values for thinks like health and endurance and attack and stuff. I calculated these and wrote them down on the sheet. But then I started running into terms that hadn’t been provided (what the smeg is GE?). Skip! Equipment was given from my profession, then there was an odd calculation to buy more, but since there is no place to add it to the character sheet, I skipped it.

There was also a 20 questions to flesh out your character and choose a name (I already did). I’ll look at this later since this has taken longer than I expected. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I was very grateful for the character sheet breakdown just before the character creation steps. Quite a few times I’m searching over the character sheet wondering where a specific item is located. After this listing was a very good breakdown on how the system worked (what the attributes were used for, how they were used in an attribute test, etc.). I was able to get a quick grasp on the system. It was making me wonder how it would play at the table.

When describing the different steps of the character creation, there was a little bit of info-bleed from the different steps. I think it would have made it easier to keep them in their proper lanes. I was starting to think that certain steps were combined together when they were not.

They had to come up with some interesting measurements that may not have needed to be used. A pace is basically one meter or yard. Is this a European thing? I’ve only heard meters used for this type of measurement on British TV shows. And what the smeg are greatpounds? Are they pounds that people really like? Even Google gave me a shrug when I asked.

There was also a LOT of page flipping through the book. I was using a lot of physical bookmarks (and praying that the referenced pages were correct, which one was not). There would definitely need to be a re-write of the character creation steps to make everything flow smoothly. Which I then found halfway through on page 36. Gah!!!!

There is no place for equipment on the character sheet. I would have been writing these items on the back of the sheet had this been for an actual game.

Will I play this game? Well some of the concepts sounded interesting. But I think I’d probably borrow the best parts for a homebrewed system instead. At the start of the process I was impressed with the system, then it slowly descended into frustration. I’m not really a big fan of point based creation systems, especially when there are a lot of skills. Let me roll some dice please.

I wonder if the latest edition of this game will be any better?

Additional Notes:

There has been a participant who has posted quite a few Dungeon Crawl Classic characters on the TardisCaptain do com discord server. I’ve played DCC at a con, but never played in a campaign yet.

I haven’t come across any new blogs or message boards participating in the Character Creation Challenge. If you see any that I am missing, please let me know.

Coming Up Next:

Star Trek Alpha Quadrant

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 6: Tiny Wastelands

Written by TardisCaptain January 6, 2024

For Day 6 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge I am making a character for the Tiny Wastelands role-playing game. Previously I’ve created characters for Tiny Dungeons 2nd edition (2022) and Tiny Spies (2023). After the Tiny Spies entry was posted, someone had requested that I make a character for Tiny Wastelands. I had place it in my notes, but failed to write down who had requested it. So thank you for the request, I hope you enjoy this.

The PDF is 194 pages long. The “Making a Survivor” guidelines start on page 20. The character sheet is One page. The first step is to select an Archetype. This is the equivalent of a character class. The options are Normals (every day people), Mutant (self explanatory), Scavenger (wanderers searching the wastelands for useful stuff), Survivor (Normal humans that have been through some stuff and toughened up), Wanderer (Think nomads), Crazy (Nut jobs still alive after the apocalypse), Fixer (Mechanics basically) and Tyrants (Leaders who take over lands and people by force). I thought this last one would have been an NPC only archetype. Having read through the list and descriptions, I’m torn between Survivor and Wanderer. But I elected to go with Survivor.

Next on the list is selecting three traits. These are items that the character is really good at. The Archetype gives you a trait already (in this case, Always Prepared for the Survivor). Looking back, my tiny Spies character had four, but my Tiny Dungeons character only had three. Re-reading the blog entries, the Tiny Spies had an extra trait due to the Archetype that was selected. So I’ll just pick two more traits.

Now we select a weapon proficiency and mastery. These are weapons that you are proficient with and I selected the Heavy Ranged group. For the mastery, it is the specific weapon in the group and I selected Assault Rifle.

Next we will equip our survivor. The character creation steps say that it is assumed that we already have a weapon of our choice (the assault rifle mentioned above) and standard armor or clothing. Your character also has 10 clix (money, credits, moola, etc.) and a Survivor’s Kit containing some basic equipment. I wrote these down.

Pick an name and description and some background info. Stewart Barlow was a carpenter by trade before the bombs fell and killed his family. He is 6’0″ with black hair, a full beard and brown eyes. He’s always looking around like he’s expecting something to come out after him.

The last step is to select a Drive. This is a statement that the character lives by and may often say. Considering how nervous Stewart is he often stays “Been caught off guard once, never again.” I believe that I have everything filled in, so here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I did see some editing mistakes in my copy of the PDF. Example on page 30: “See Scavenging Items; pg. XX” So hopefully with this being a PDF on DriveThru R PG, they can update this. The book also mentioned blasters (sci-fi trope) when I assumed they meant guns. When I went to write down my Drive on my character sheet, I noticed it was listed as a Belief. I believe that these may have been hold-overs from other releases of the Tiny RPG line.

I liked how they used quotes and references to different media (not just post-apocalyptic shows) to reference different aspects of the game.

As I’ve mentioned with Tiny Dungeons and Tiny Spies, I really want to see how this rules-light system plays at the table. I’ll probably have to run a game myself to make this happen.

Additional Notes:

A reader on the RPG.net forums responded to me about the Top Secret S.I. character sheet comments that I had made. They had also agreed and had already done so. They had shared the updated design with me which knocked it down to two pages. I’ve saved them for possible future use. I love seeing how a game has inspired someone to be creative.

I also ran my first Star Trek Adventures game (prepping for an upcoming convention) and I also received a Kickstarter reward. Both will be detailed in upcoming blog posts.

Coming Up Next:

The Dark Eye

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 5: Top Secret S.I.

Written by TardisCaptain January 5, 2024 1 Comment

Day 5 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I will be creating a character for the Top Secret S.I. system. So I’ve been waiting a long time for this entry. There is a little bit of a tragic backstory with me and this game. In the early days of my involvement in the role playing hobby I played a lot of Dungeons and Dragons. While a friend would have a copy of the original Top Secret espionage role playing game, we never had the chance to play.

When TSR released Top Secret S.I. in 1987, I picked up the original boxed set. Then I picked up the High Stakes Gamble expansion (I walked a long way through Tucson, Arizona to get that box). I lost count but eventually I had the majority of books for this system. But, I never had the chance to play it. I kept this collection when I (foolishly) sold off my D&D collection in the mid 90’s. As I move, and I moved a lot, I kept that collection with me. After one move, I couldn’t find the box. There is a saying that after 3-4 moves it’s the equivalent of a house fire. So somewhere along the line I lost the contents of that box. I kept hoping that I’d open up one of my many storage boxes (something I’ve been planning to get rid of) and I’d suddenly find the collection again, but I had my doubts of seeing it again.

I started looking at re-acquiring the books. However they are not available anywhere except for Ebay. And since these books were popular, they are usually expensive. I lucked out in 2023 when the first boxed set came up for auction at a reasonable price. Sure the box was hammered, but the books and other contents were in good condition. It even had the original dice still sealed in it’s bag. While I’ve kept the box in the shipping package, the books I’ve been able to use to create a character.

In the boxed set there is a Players Guide, an Administrators Guide, an Equipment Inventory, a GMs screen, some cardboard character standees and a foldout map of several generic locations. The Character Dossier (character sheet) is four pages long. There is a character creation summary on the font of the GMs screen with the process listed on page 5 of the Players Guide.

There are seven attributes for a character. STRength, REFlex, INTelligence, WILlpower, CONstitution, MOVement and DEXterity. These are generated by rolling a d6 (for the tens digit) and a d10 (for the ones digit) and adding 10 for the first five attribute in order. After I rolled these, I added them all together. If they didn’t reach 275, I could take the difference and spread them through the different attributes as I saw fit. Luckily my total all together was 290. For MOV and DEX (the secondary attributes) I was instructed to add STR and REF and divide by 2 (for MOV) and REF and INT divided by 2 (for DEX). Whee I love extra math steps in character creation. (not)

OK for step four I’m instructed to determine my character’s sex, nationality, hair color, eye color, general appearance, name, handiness, native language and age. Whew. These are all items that I choose (other than Extremely Ugly, Extremely Attractive or Ambidextrous as they are advantages that I’d have to buy). Nick Tanner was born in Arizona, USA and speaks English as his native language. He is 6’1″ with black hair and blue eyes with no extra-ordinary features. He is right-handed and is 24 years of age. On to step five.

The reality rule? If you want to really round out your character, determine his psychological profile? Loyalty, sanity, cruelty, etc. Let’s see what the book says. Ah, the reality rules make the game more realistic, but may slow down game play. Looking at the section for the psychological profile, it has suggestions, but no tables to roll against. Since the reality rules appear to be optional, I’m going to skip them in favor of getting the basic characteristics down. If this was for a campaign (and not under a time crunch) then perhaps I’d dive deeper into these.

Advantages and disadvantages are step six. The standard is to select one of each (there is a point based reality rule option). There is quite a list, or I can make up my own as long as they make sense (and both items don’t cancel each other out). From the list I selected Toughness and Phobia (spiders).

Next we choose the background for the character. This is basically what the character has done for a living besides being an espionage agent. There are several packages available to choose from (or I could make my own). They only had four career packages listed which were pretty generic. So I picked Entertainer. The original idea was that this character was going to be an athlete (wrestler) and that seemed to be the closest one. From the background we get the number of skills known in each category (Mechanical, combat, etc.), starting money and level of career.

And as you probably guessed, the skills are next. There are a set that I can choose from and they are pretty basic as well. If I understood the background information, I have a set of skill points to spend in different categories. I selected the skills I through the character would need. But I’d also be working with the GM to make sure that the background of the character would be viable in the campaign they were setting up. Knowing the Spanish language isn’t going to help if most of our missions are going to be in the Orient, etc. While getting my skills, I noticed a major issue (see Afterthoughts below) so I tried to make the skills match what I thought they should be. It was confusing, but I think I got the basic gist of it right.

The last step is purchasing equipment. But the next chapter is “Playing the game” with basic rules. The index shows no equipment in the players guide, so now I have to pull out the equipment book that came in the boxed set. And that states it’s for administrators (aka the GM) only. I looked through it and just decided that this guy has a pistol and a few spy trinkets that wouldn’t normally be cared by an every-day individual. I really would have been pressing on the GM for guidance on this part. But I’m thinking that the character is mostly done. I didn’t scan the last page since it was cover identities.

Afterthoughts:

Considering how many times we see the typical, “criminal is recruited to be a spy” trope in shows, they didn’t have any criminal options within the character creation. I wonder if this came up in any of the expansions. It had been so long that I had read them that I don’t recall.

The skill costs probably needed some work as well. As an “Entertainer” I had to spend two skill points in the mechanical category. The first (which was a per-requisite for other skills) cost 1 point. All of the other skills costs more just to get to level 0 (basic knowledge of the skill). So I’d have to dip into the extra skill points just to spend my mandatory two. Yea, that would have been homebrewed out if I was GMing this.

The character sheet could also be improved slightly. I don’t know if I’d ever get a chance to play/run this game in a campaign, but if I did, I would consider re-making the character sheet. I’ll have to see if anyone made any videos showing this game in play just so I could see how the system works. It’s a percentage based system (roll under to succeed) so it sounds like it should be simplistic.

Additional Notes:

I’ve really been enjoying reading the various entries on social media and the different message boards. I’m also happy that several of you are posting on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. I’ve seen several veterans returning and quite a few new participants as well. These have included some very interesting ideas. There is one person who appears to be re-creating the Scooby Doo gang in different RPG systems.

Coming Up Next:

Tiny Wastelands

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 4: Fantasy Quest

Written by TardisCaptain January 4, 2024January 5, 2024

Welcome to Day 4 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today I am creating a character for Fantasy Quest, the solo RPG that was presented in the 1982 book, Dicing with Dragons. I reviewed this book last year and discovered that it contained an RPG to help introduce readers to the concept of playing a roleplaying game. From what read, it sounds more like the solo Tunnels and Trolls adventures that were also popular during that time-frame.

I’m not going to go into the statistics of the book itself since that is basically covered by the review. The character creation instructions for Fantasy Quest start on page 16. The character sheet is only one page.

The first thing we are instructed to do is to pick a character name. For this guy I’m going to call him Alric Hinman. The three characteristics that make up Alric are up next. These include Combat, Strength and Fortune. Combat is the character’s attack and defense ability. Strength the physical power of the character but also includes his health. While the Wound Factor isn’t an attribute, there is a section on the sheet for it and it represents how much damage your character can do when a successful attack is made. It starts out as a 1d6 since Alric already has an ordinary sword. Fortune is a luck score basically. All three are determined by rolling 3d6 and adding them together. I did this.

Now we are instructed to equip the character. As mentioned above, Alric already has a sword. The rules state that he already has a normal shield, a backpack and some rations. I’m instructed to roll 3d6 for the number of gold pieces that the character starts out with. As for any other equipment, apparently it is found through the adventure.

So I think I’m done because the next section starts talking about combat. It’s pretty simple, the initiative is listed in the description of the encounter. If you are attacking, roll 3d6 and if you roll matches or beats the Combat Factor (CF) of your opponent, you hit him. You roll the damage of the weapon you are using which is subtracted from their Strength Factor (SF). When a combatant’s SF reaches zero, they are dead. Your character can eat a ration to regain two SF points. Your character can find equipment and magical items along the way. It’s pretty simplistic, but was written to go through the solo adventure “The Eye of the Dragon.” Now that I have a character, I’ll probably attempt this solo adventure after the challenge is done. Here is the scanned completed character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

The system and creation process was pretty simplistic. But I wasn’t expecting much as this was presented as an example of solo roleplaying. I’ll have to go through the adventure and blog about it later.

Additional Notes:

On the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server I had a reader ask if they could create a starship as a character. My answer was a resounding “Yes!!!” The Enterprise, the Millennium Falcon, the Serenity, the Galactica. They are all characters in the show. I had actually been toying with the idea of doing 31 ships from different RPGs. It would give me a chance to create another ship using the FASA Starship Construction rules. But I still have several different core systems to go through (and keep stumbling across new ones). So one year I’ll do that, but not this year.

Coming Up Next:

I finally get to create a character in Top Secret S.I.

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 3: White Star: Galaxy Edition

Written by TardisCaptain January 3, 2024January 3, 2024

My Wednesdays are usually pretty busy. So when I was prepping for the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge, I made sure that my Wednesday’s entries were systems that seemed simple. I hope that I have chosen well for Day 3 with White Star: Galaxy Edition. A sci-fi based roleplaying game using swords and wizardry inspired rules. It appears to borrow from Star Wars, Cyberpunk, the Borg from Star Trek, Firefly, Flash Gordon, Aliens, Transformers, Guardians of the Galaxy and more.

White Star: Galaxy Edition is written by James M. Spahn and was published by Barrel Rider Games. There is no copyright date in the document itself, but it was added to DriveThruRPG in 2017. There are 336 pages in the book and the character sheet is four pages long. The character creation rules start on page 11. So I’ve grabbed some dice and let’s get to it.

Being an OSR inspired game, the standard D&D attributes are present and can be rolled in order with 3d6. But on page 12 there is a house rule that states you can roll Heroic Attributes by rolling 4d6, dropping the lowest die and placing the scores to the attributes that I wish to use. I’m electing to go this route. Even without the extra die, my rolls were much better than they were yesterday. Since I knew I wanted to play a Jedi… err… Star Knight, I placed my best attribute in Wisdom.

Instead of using Good, Neutral and Evil alignments, this game has a house rule that uses Star, Nebula and Void respectively. Your starting credits is 3d6x10, which is pretty standard in OSR games.

There is another optional rules for “Serials” which helps generate a background for the character. Since I was in a dice rolling mood, I decided to try it out. For Homeworld I rolled Low-Gravity (resulting in +1 Dex but -1 Str). With Family I rolled a 5 so my family actively attempts to act against you (weird, but it may lead to an idea). For his Youth experience I rolled a 3 for Refuge (I can find food and water in urban environments on a certain d6 roll). Next was his First Adventure which was a 2 for Stowed away on a Starship (hey this gives him a remain silent option on a d6 roll). Next is an Adversary and I rolled a 2 for a Former Lover who is jilted and out to get revenge on the character (well that comes out of the blue for what I was thinking so far). If you have an Adversary, you’ve also got to have an Ally. On the Allies table I rolled a 6 which gave him Corporate Benefactor (Hmmm…..). The last item is a Critical Event and a 4 was rolled. This is “According to an Alien Mystic or Star Knight, you have a great destiny” which results in an automatic success in one savings throw each level. Now this fits the concept I’ve had so far. In the shades of Traveller, the character could have died had I rolled the wrong critical event.

The next chapter (I’m just following the flow of the book) is the Character Classes. There are standard sci-fi related options to choose from. As I mentioned above, I had already selected Star Knight. From the description, these are a kind of space cleric that has meditations instead of spells. At first level there is no meditations that I can select now (just like clerics in OSR). There are some limitations to weapons and outfits/armor, but wielding a Star Sword earns a +2 to all to-hit rolls and he receives one at first level with no cost. There are also some other optional classes that the GM may or may not allow depending upon the campaign.

I was finally able to scroll down to page 89 where the Skills were listed (and listed as optional). I’m going to be adding the skills to this character sheet. Each character gets three skills, one standard with the class and two selected by the character and they have a rank of 2. These are also adjusted by the attribute modifier. You would roll a d6 and if you roll under your skill, then you succeed. There are rules to increase or add to the skills through the campaign, but no skill can have a rating higher than 5. After reading the descriptions, I added the two optional skills to start with. All other remaining skills have a score of 1.

The next chapter covers Equipment. The first thing it breaks down is the money values. Credits, Sub-Credits (10 equals a Credit) and Chits (1,000 equals a credit). Some equipment items are listed, but not available unless acquired through the campaign. Since I thought I had to roll it above, I already know that I have 120 credits to spend. I picked up some light armor (using the ascending armor class system) and a laser pistol. Then I filled in the rest of what I thought this character would have needed to survive.

The next chapter went into “Playing the Game” so I’m assuming the character creation process is done. I made sure to fill in any blank spots. Since I didn’t have any Meditations yet I hadn’t filled in the last two pages (and thus didn’t need to scan them). Before I throw it in the scanner, I think I’ll name and give a brief background to this character.

Jenker Slix belonged to a family that had survived their original homeworld’s destruction. They eventually settled on a low-gravity world in the Rukkar system and tried to re-create their culture from there which included arranged marriages between clans. Much to the dismay of his future bride and his family, Jenker felt no connection to her and left Rukkar. Something was drawing him to the stars and he stowed away on a starship that belonged to Ortho Greengar, a corporate executive who was conducting business between worlds. When the starship was attacked by pirates, they didn’t know that Jenker was onboard. This gave him the advantage to rescue Ortho and some of his crew so that they could take back the ship. When Master Kli’nik of the Star Knights arrived in response to the distress call, he felt something in young Jenker and invited him to join the order as his apprentice.

Afterthoughts:

I really wish that the PDF had some good bookmarks. They are present, but they only go to the front cover, the first page and the back cover. That’s not really going to help guys. Another thing that would have helped would be a character creation checklist. I also had an urge to re-make the character sheet. The one provided wasn’t bad, but lacking in some areas (no space for money, do we need four sheets?)

I was actually surprised how the Serial optional rolls helped me develop a background for this character. I only knew that I wanted to make a Star Knight when I started. I’d like to see how this system plays out at the table. It may be interesting to run or play this particular roleplaying game.

Additional Notes:

So I was able to add three more links to blogs participating in the Character Creation Challenge. One of these, Grim Tokens, had an entry for a game called Transit RPG. The character you create is an AI controlled starship. Being a big Treknologist who loves starships, I was enthralled by this entry. I’ve added the game to my DriveThruRPG wishlist. I love being introduced to games that I didn’t know was out there.

On the TardisCaptain dot Com discord server I had someone respond to my Hackmaster Basic entry. They were not aware of the basic edition, but did confirm that the 4th edition was quite complex and crunchy. They mentioned that a player had spent 90 minutes just to roll up a character, only to have their stupidity kill the character off 45 minutes later. Some of these “There I was…” stories are great.

Coming Up Next:

Fantasy Quest (via Dicing with Dragons)

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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 2: Hackmaster Basic

Written by TardisCaptain January 2, 2024

For day 2 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge I’ve elected to use Hackmaster Basic published by Kenzer and Company. This game was the system used in the RPG inspired comic series “Knights of the Dinner Table” and appears to be a D20 retro-clone.

Now something I have to caution here. The physical copy that I have is a promotional book from 2009. It has a red stamp on the inside stating “not for sale”. Someone was giving them away online (I don’t recall which social media service it was) and I was able to snag a copy. The DTRPG link above for Hackmaster Basic allows you to pick up a free copy of the rules from 2012. From what I’ve seen, the character sheet is different (I scanned mine in to use). So if you grab the book, don’t be alarmed if anything looks different from what I describe below.

My physical copy is 192 pages long which includes the two page character sheet found in the back. There are quickstart rules with character creation on page 7 and chapter one has more detailed character creation rules on page 13. I’m going to pretend that we are playing a quick one-shot game and we are all rolling characters from the quickstart. I’ll then compare the later rules afterwards.

As with most games, you start making a new character by rolling your ability scores. For Hackmaster they are STRenght, INTelligence, WISdom, DEXterity, CONstitution, LooKS and CHArisma. I’m instructed to roll 3d6 plus a percentile down the row for each ability score. DEX was a good roll at 15/41% but WIS sucked at 6/11% (so not a Cleric) but the other scores were pretty average.I’ve written these down.

Next is the starting honor for the character. Take the ability scores above and turn them into decimals and add them all together. For example, I rolled and 11/51% for the STR ability score, this would be counted as 11.51. Once I’ve added them together, round it down to the nearest whole number and divide that result by 7. This resulted in an Honor score of 10.

Now I get to choose the character class. Yea, as you probably guessed, it will be a Thief. According to the quickstart rules, I get to add 2 to my DEX score.

For the race, I selected Human. Simple and easy. This lead me to the initial Hit Points. I get 10 for being Human and I add my CON score (not the percentage) plus a 1d6 (Woot rolled a 6) for my class for a total of 26.

There are proficiency and skills in this game. The quickstart rules instructed me to write down the base skills for the Thief and roll for some additional skills. The additional skills were Appraisal (gems) and Fast Talking. I wrote these down. For the skill mastery scores, I look up the related attribute (or lowest if there is more than one) and roll a d12 and add it. This is a percentage score when done. So for Sneaking I added 17 + 5 (that I rolled) for 22%. I filled in my skill mastery scores.

The next step is to roll for one quirk and one flaw from the provided charts. These are both percentages and I ended up with a Superstitious quirk and a flaw of Flatulence. Heh, it could be amusing. I’m not certain what superstition he would have. I’d have to think about it or let it come up while roleplaying.

In the quickrules, the equipment is determined by the class. I wrote these items down. Next comes the combat statistics. The book actually has us reference the regular character creation rules for this information. The quickrules didn’t make much sense, so I just looked at the regular character creation rules for this information. That still didn’t make much sense either, so I just bumbled my way through this.

For the final tweaks, they wanted me to note what I had rolled for HP (luckily I had that written down above) the luck points (that apparently only a thief gets) and the Threshold of Pain. This number is half of my HP rounded down (so 13). If I get hit for 13 or more points of damage in one blow, the Hackmaster can have me roll a trauma check to see if I succumb to pain. What ever that is.

The last item is to pick a name. I’m going to name this character Cid the Kid. Even though he’s not a kid, the nickname has thrown a few towns guards off of his trail in the past.

I did a quick flip though the character creation chapter. You can re-arrange your attributes if needed, but it may cost you later in the creation process. The different races have racial ability modifiers. You pick your skills through build points (which is lowered if you re-arranged your scores). There’s a little bit more crunch in this than I was expecting. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

From the looks of the sample PDF at DriveThruRPG, there is not a quickstart character creation section in that version. So if you download the free PDF you’ll be using the regular character creation rules.

I liked that I could use the d12 in the character creation. That is a die that doesn’t get a lot of use in most systems. I disagreed with the use of the lesser attribute number when finding the skill mastery score. Perhaps an average of the two scores should have been used instead. It would involve more math, but would have made it more reasonable IMHO.

I can see why the quickstart rules were pulled from the 2012 version. I don’t know if they really helped since you still had to refer to the character creation chapter anyway. Now that I’ve completed the character, I wouldn’t mind seeing how a session goes in play. As for using or homebrewing for this game? Like FantasyCraft, I wouldn’t turn down an opportunity to play, but there are other games that I may reach for first if I was running a game.

Additional Notes:

A was able to add a ton of blog and message board links to the Character Creation Challenge page. I’ve also started noting who has participated in past challenges as well. Please give them a visit and read the good stuff that they have provided. For you Reddit /rpg visitors, I’ve created a thread there for others to post their characters as well. Just another option.

There is a very active Fallout 2d20 RPG community online. I was able to get some good feedback on my Day 1 entry for the system. They thought I did a pretty good job using just the rule book. I was told that the TN and Tag portions of the weapons on the character sheet is for the player reference. I would add “Small Guns + AGI” Since I could only tag one more skill as the character advances, I should re-evaluate my tagged skills. Apparently there are not a lot of vehicle rules in the RPG at this time (come to think about it, I don’t recall seeing a lot of vehicles in the video games either). Another suggestion given to me was taking several of the single points I spread across several skills and combine them into a specialty and to add the DR scores that my vault suit provides. I was grateful for the advice that I would have picked up during a session zero.

Coming Up Next:

White Star Galaxy 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.

Character Creation Challenge, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Video Game

2024 Character Creation Challenge Day 1: Fallout

Written by TardisCaptain January 1, 2024January 8, 2024 2 Comments

War. War never changes. But it may use a different dice system to determine the outcome.

So let’s start this thing. Welcome to the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. If you haven’t read up on the idea, click on the link above. Feel free to join the large online community that is participating in this event.

For the past several years, the first game that I create a character for in the challenge is a game that I’m really excited about. In 2022 I created one for Dune: Adventures in the Imperium and in 2023 I used Alien. I had my first chance to play Fallout The Roleplaying Game at SaltCON-End of Summer last year. I remember being very impressed. I’ve made a character for John Carter of Mars and I had played Dune and Star Trek Adventures, but there was always something that I felt that I was missing about the 2d20 system. I don’t know if it was the presentation or the GM, but it all clicked somehow. Since I was really excited about this game, my daughter purchased the book for me from a black Friday sale. Ding, here is my first day already taken care of when I started my list of what games I was going to use..

For those of you not familiar with Fallout, it is a series of video games about a post-apocalyptic world where survivors hid in underground bunkers (called Vaults). After several decades after the bombs drop they come out to a changed world. This has become a franchise with various games and merchandising (where the real money from the movie is made) and soon to be a TV series on Amazon Prime. I’ve attempted to play a few of the video games, with some success and some flat out flopping. But the game world is very well thought out. When I started gathering interest in this series, I started watching some fan-made videos that explain the world and history. They may prove useful to anyone wanting to run an RPG in this series.

The core book is hardbound with 429 pages in full color. The character creation starts in chapter three with the details on page 50. There is a two page character sheet.

Step one is to select the origin of the character. This is basically your race (such as Ghoul (humans suffering from prolonged exposure to radiation), Super Mutant (mutated human big and bulky) or Mister Handy (robot freed from programing) or starting group (such as Brotherhood of Steel (religious knights trying to recover technology), Survivor (humans that survived on the surface) or Vault Dweller (humans that survived in a vault)). Since the first video game I played (Fallout 3) had me starting as a Vault Dweller, I wanted to try another one. This comes with the trait, Vault Kid.

Next comes the attributes. They were pulled straight from the video games. S.P.E.C.I.A.L. or Strength, Perception, Endurance, Charisma, Intelligence, Agility and Luck. These all start with a score of 5 and I have 5 additional points to allocate. I can reduce a score if I wanted to but only to 4. I made my selections and wrote them down.

Skills is what I select in step 3. Like the attributes, these come from the video game (it was practically a computerized RPG). These skill include Athletics, Barter, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Explosives, Lockpick, Medicine, Melee Weapons, Pilot, Repair, Science, Small Guns, Sneak, Speech, Survival, Throwing and Unarmed. In this 2d20 system, you tell the GM what you want to do, and they let you know what attribute and skill you add together for your target number. If it is an easy task, you may only need one (or even zero) successes. If it is a more difficult task, it may require three or four successes. I was instructed to pick three skills to be my “tagged” skills. These start with a base score of 2 with the rest starting at 0. I then add 9 plus my INT score to come up with a list of additional skill points that I can allocate. For this character it will be 14 in total. My three tagged skills are Small Guns, Sneak and Pilot. I then allocated my points.

Each character gets a perk. Something that gives him an advantage. There is a large list available to pick from (some with minimum requirements). Think of the Dungeons and Dragons v3.5 traits. By this time I was starting to think of a possible backstory for this currently unnamed character, so I looked for a perk that I thought would fit him and wrote it down.

For step five we get to discover our derived statistics. These include how much the character can carry, damage resistance, defense, initiative, health points and how much damage he can do in a melee fight. I wrote these down.

The last step is to choose the starting equipment. I’m very grateful that starting packs were made available (depending upon your position with your origin). You also got a trinket, which is a special item that you own. I could make one up, pick from the list or roll for a random one. Since I haven’t rolled any dice yet, let’s see what the dice gives me. A postcard with an address. Interesting. Next is the tagged skill items. The skills I had tagged above came with their own special equipment items. I wrote these down.

There were still a few blank areas on the character sheet. What is my luck points (I think it’s the same as my luck score when starting out). What is TN and tagging in the weapons description? I had to track down some equipment information and I think I found most of it (especially since there is a carrying capacity within the game). I think I’m mostly done with the numbers side of the character, but I know I would have asked a few questions if I was creating this character in a session zero.

Ragnal Walker was born in Vault 47 (I don’t know if that number has been used in the game yet, so subject to change) and was one of the standard kids that got into trouble while growing up. While he didn’t have the smarts to be a doctor or scientist, he was always getting into places he shouldn’t be. In order to keep him out of trouble, the leaders instructed that he be taught how to drive some of the vehicles available to the vault for use in the outside world. While the leaders mostly kept the hidden vault sealed, they knew that they needed to trade with one of the other vaults several miles away. This loose relationship helped keep both vaults running. On one return trip, the caravan was ambushed by a band of raiders. Walker was able to fight his way out of the attack and headed back to Vault 47 on foot. A day later he discovered that the same raiders had just come from the vault and had destroyed it after the raid. Walker had to make a decision, start a new life out on his own amongst the surface dwellers (whom he had little contact with) or try to make it to the other vault to see if they would take him in. His adventure starts.

Here is the character sheet. After I had scanned it, I realized that I hadn’t added my vault kid trait onto the second sheet. So I added that afterwards.

Afterthoughts:

Unlike some of the other Modiphius products, Fallout is avoiding the “pop up” syndrome where you get distracted by the side notes in the book. This made it very easy to read (and I found myself reading more than I needed for character creation). While the creation process wasn’t 100% smooth, it wasn’t a frustrating ball of mess that I’ve experienced in other games.

Do I want to play this game? Oh yea. Do I want to homebrew for this game? At the least I’d like to write up something about the state I live in since I’m familiar with the area. As mentioned above, I’ve played this at SaltCON and I’ve signed up for another session at the next convention in March.

Additional Notes:

I’ve already had a ton of people reach out to me regarding the 2024 Character Creation Challenge. Several of you were looking forward to this event. Thank you, it is nice to know that my efforts have been appreciated. I hope that you all remember that this is for fun, so have fun with it.

A lot of blogs were added to the links section at the Character Creation Challenge page. I’ve also stumbled across another fan run message board for Alternity that apparently has an active thread running since 2021. Another participant has elected to post his entries on the TardisCaptain discord server (under the Character Creation Challenge channel). You are not required to use it, but it is there if you don’t have any other options. And (of course) you can email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain dot com or tag me on one of the social media platforms that I use.

Coming Up Next:

Hackmaster Basic

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.

Archer, Character Creation Challenge, Comic Books, Conventions, Doctor Who, Dune, Dungeons and Dragons, Horror, Movies, Music, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars, Video Game, Website

Moving from 2023 to 2024

Written by TardisCaptain December 31, 2023January 11, 2024

Stack of character sheets printed out for the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge

2023 was a weird year to say the least. I was able to see a ton of concerts including several that I wanted to check off of the bucket list. These included Duran Duran, Love and Rockets, The Cure, Garbage, and Depeche Mode. I was able to see a live show that featured some of the comedians from “Who’s Line Is it Anyway” (the show had a different name probably for copyright reasons). I’ll be getting the photos for these up in the photo albums.

For the first time in a long time, I had the opportunity to attend a gaming convention. SaltCON Spring, SaltCON Summer and SaltCON End-of-Summer. I know at the beginning of the year, I stated that I only wanted to participate at this event and not volunteer. Well, after much thought and discussion with others, I’ll be running two games next spring. One will be a one-shot for Basic Fantasy RPG that I already had written up and did some polishing on. The other is a Star Trek Adventures: Lower Decks inspired game where the crew will be meeting the cast of Top Core (a sci-fi parody of the BBC show, Top Gear).

I’m still watching a ton of movies at home thanks to the many streaming services that I have access to. In the theater I did enjoy Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I also saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I also enjoyed this movie and I hope that the ending would lead to another sequel. But I wouldn’t be disappointed if there wasn’t one. My youngest is a Five Nights at Freddy’s fan so we had to go see the movie in the theater. Not knowing much about the video game series, I thought the movie was OK and I wasn’t bored. In 2024 I’m looking forward to seeing Dune: Part Two, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, Godzilla X Kong: The New Empire, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.

Television wise I’ve been soaking up all of the various Star Trek franchises (Picard knocked it out of the park and I demand more Lower Decks). The Star Wars episodes have been good as well. I’m sad that Archer is ending, but I’d rather have it end on a high note. What We Do In The Shadows has also continued to entertain me. MST3K season 13 was a blast. I watch so much TV that I am unable to list them all here. On the weekends I’ve still been enjoying Svengoolie and Creature Features. I’m really looking forward to the new Doctor Who episodes after the great introduction from the 60th Anniversary specials and Christmas episode. The Fallout TV series has also caught my attention. I did cancel my Peacock account because there was nothing on it to watch (and I’d go months forgetting it was even there).

Reading wise I’m still going strong on the Star Trek and James Bond comics. While I’m also enjoying the Star Wars comics, I had to move from buying the physical books to a subscription to Marvel Unlimited due to the high cost of the individual issues. Too many Star Wars comics to continuing to buy them all.

I may have made a mistake with my video games. I set up both a Steam account and a GOG account. So I’ve been getting deals on lots of classic games that I use to play. I’ve been trying to play a few others as well such as Fallout New Vegas and a couple of other hidden gems that were tossed my way. But when it comes to time crunch issues, the video games get put off to the side pretty fast. I need to make sure that I’m spending some enjoyment time playing these games.

I want to get some writing done in 2024. I’ve talked about it, but I need to sit down and do it. Hopefully the Basic Fantasy scenario will be good enough to submit to the BFRPG community for consideration. While I also have some fan projects in mind, I’d actually like to have a few publications that I could legitimately sell online.

Keep an eye on this blog for what happens in 2024. Now off to the USS Ticonderoga New Years Eve party. Tomorrow I dive into the deep end of the pool with the Character Creation Challenge.

What did you enjoy about 2023? What geeky things do you want to do in 2024? Tell me about it. 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.

Character Creation Challenge, Dungeons and Dragons, Role Playing Games, Spy-Fi

Prepping for the 2024 Character Creation Challenge

Written by TardisCaptain December 24, 2023January 11, 2024 2 Comments

Some of the games that I plan to use in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge

For the three previous years of the Character Creation Challenge (in 2021, 2022 and 2023), I’ve prepped ahead of time to make the challenge a little bit easier. Especially since I try to use a wide variety of games in January 2024. I’ve already had some people reach out to me using various methods to let me know of their participation. Please let me know, Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com if you plan to post your characters up on a blog. I’ll link to it from the Character Creation Challenge section of my website.

If you are posting on any of the social media websites, please use the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge so that other participants can find them. I love seeing what other RPG fans have come up with.

The photo above shows the physical books that I’ll be using. Some have been gifts, others were picked up at local gaming conventions or found at thrift stores. I also have a collection of games purchased from Kickstarter, DriveThruRPG, HumbleBundle and Bundle of Holding.

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

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

My entries will be blog posts on this website. Then I will post links on my various social media sites along with the three main roleplaing message forums at RPG.net, RPGpub and RPGgeek.

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

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

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

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

You can also post your characters on my discord server in the #Character-Creation-Challenge channel. 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.