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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 24: Metamorphosis Alpha 1st Edition

On Day 24 of the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge I’m going to be using the original 1st edition of Metamorphosis Alpha. Some sources state that this is the first science fiction roleplaying game. It was originally published by TSR in 1976 and was written by James Ward. I had picked this up in a bundle sale from Goodman Games where they were releasing some new material for this game. The first edition was included in the bundle.

In the original document (the PDF scan provided by Goodman Games had some weird page numbers) the Developing Characters section started on page 9. I’m instructed to roll 3d6 for several abilities down the line. These are Radiation Resistance, Mental Resistance, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength and Leadership Potential (if the character is Human). Since I’m going to make a mutant, I did not roll for this last one. Mutants roll for a physical mutation and a mental mutation. The book instructs me to roll a D4 to see how many mutations the character receives. There were 30 physical mutations and 12 defects (for some reason they were numbered together from 1-42). The total number of both mental mutations and defects came up to 45 (37 and 8 respectively). I’m going to vary from the rules and instead of picking my own mutations, I’m going to randomly roll because I feel that it would have happened that way in the game universe. For physical it was easy, the d4 gave me two mutations to ‘pick’ and I rolled a d30 twice (as long as they didn’t conflict and came up with Gas Generation (um…… no…. don’t say it) and Shapechange (that is how it’s spelled on the list). I rolled a d12 so the GM could pick the one defect and it came up with Near-nearsightedness. For the two mental mutations, had to get a little creative. I used the d30 and a d7 from my Dungeon Crawl Classics Dice Set #7 along with a d6 all rolled at the same time. If the D6 came up with a 5 or 6, then I added the D7 to the D30 for the final number. Yea, I’m probably putting too much thought into this. But for some reason, it seemed fitting. This resulted in Density Control (Others) i.e. I can slow other people down, and Mental Paralysis i.e. I can mentally disrupt the nerve centers of another being causing non-movement. If I do this for more than three melee turns in a row, the target will die. The ‘gm’ rolled a d8 to give the character the mental defect of Multiple Damage. Basically if the character takes any damage it could be doubled or tripled. Ouch.

Then the character development steps just end. The brief description combines both character creation and instructions for the GMs to “set the stage” and running a set of “continuing adventures and experiences”. I continued reading and it went into combat (wow, it looked complicated), random monsters, treasure. Oh, there was an original character sheet on page 29 (of the original document) but I’ve already printed out one that had come with the bundle for first edition. The sample characters shown in the development process don’t have any hit points, but the original character sheet has one. Ah I tracked it down under the Constitution description. Roll a D6 for each point of constitution the character has. And apparently it was explained under the example of a Human type character but not the other character types.

I guess the characters would find equipment in the adventure. Yea, this is really basic. But I have to remember that this was printed in the mid 1976. I’m going to give the character the name of Drixxian. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

In the 70’s several RPGs were written by those in the wargaming community and these rules seemed to follow the same format. Broken down by sections and sub-sections all identified with a letter number combination. It looked very technical, which isn’t a bad thing, but something I’m not use to seeing very often in my RPG books.

The scan provided by Goodman Games was the original text with some changes. If there was new information from an Errata, then there was a side note saying “See page ## for entries on ____”. I can see where Goodman Games was trying to make this a usable document. With how much care they had put here, I wish they had made bookmarks in the PDF.

I was getting the urge to re-write the rules when I see potential, but confusion. But I know it would be redundant since there are other editions already available.

Additional Notes:

So I posted my GI Joe RPG character on the Renegade Game Studios discord server and one of the games writers responded to me in two different posts.

“The art on the cover seems to indicate that it’s either their own “universe” or a comic series recently released.” The universe is based on Hasbro’s evergreen takes on the characters, which is basically “80s unless recently updated”. It primarily draws from the toyline lore, but dips into the various cartoon and comic series.

This is a solid concept and you went through the steps basically correctly, with one big misstep: Your Skills. When you increase an Essence Score, you get Skill Points that you can invest into Skill Ranks. So your Strength 2 means you should have two Skills at d2, or one Skill at d4 (or 2 Conditioning). You do have some Skill Ranks, but they don’t match the Essence Scores they’re tied to, so I’m not sure how you got them.

So apparently I missed a few items and the character of Spacebar should have some additional skills. This made sense because being a member of a special tasks force is usually filled by well-rounded individuals. But I also guess this is why making characters with someone who is familiar with the game would help. However before someone can become familiar with the game, they’d have to do the same thing I’m doing and crack open the book and read through the process. Again I want to say how grateful I am that the people who have worked on these games have responded to my posts. They do clear things up or lead to more insight.

Coming Up Next:

Twilight 2000 2nd Edition

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 20: Cyberpunk 2020

A game that I remember playing back in the 90’s is what I will be using for this entry in the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Cyberpunk 2020 that was published in 1991 by R. Talsorian Games. Past challenge entries using different versions of the Cyberpunk genre include Cyberpunk v3 in 2022, Cyber Generation in 2023 and Cyberpunk Red in 2024.

Section 1 on page 3 lists your Role (aka Class) and after reading the descriptions I really wanted to make a character that was a Fixer. This is a guy who can be a smuggler or information broker. Section 2 on page 25 is the statistics. There is an option for Character Points for the statistics depending on what type of game the GM wanted to run (Average to Major Hero games). But there was also an option to fast roll the stats by rolling a D10 (re-roll any 1 or 2 results) and place each score where you want it. I’m doing this. The Stats are Intelligence (INT), Reflexes (REF), Cool (CL), Technical Ability (TECH), Luck (LK), Attractiveness (ATT or ATTR on the character sheet), Movement Allowance (MA), Body Type (BT) and Empathy (EMP). I rolled these up and also wrote down the secondary stats based that were mathematically provided by the primary stats.

On page 34 is the first step of the Lifepath. Because Cyberpunk has a strong fashion sense (and I as a player do not) the first step is the Origins and Personal Style. I rolled a d10 to determine the clothes (Biker Leathers), hairstyle (Wild & All Over) and add-ons (Spiky Gloves). You can choose your character’s ethnicity or randomly roll it. Let’s see what the dice says. 0 = European. I narrowed this down to German just because.

Next step is the Family Background and this has an actual flow chart. The family ranking is Pirate Fleet (um… what?), both parents are still alive and the family status is OK. The character’s childhood environment is in a decaying, once upscale neighborhood. The roll for siblings resulted in this guy being an only child. I’m directed to move to step three: Motivations.

And here we are on the step three flowchart. This unnamed character is intellectual and detached. The person they value the most is a parent. What they value the most is power (insert Unlimited Power meme here). Using people like tools before discarding them is how the character feels about most people. And finally for the last random roll in Motivations, the character’s most valued possession is a piece of clothing. Onto the next chart.

Life Events is step four. I’m instructed to roll 2d6+16 for the character’s starting age of 27. This means for each year past 16 I roll 11 times on the Life Event chart. Oh boy, I’m going to my scratch paper and rolling them all up. Wow, there was a lot of rolling here. If you made a friend or an enemy you had to roll up their personal style using some of the earlier steps in this character creation process. Since there wasn’t really room for this on the second page of the character sheet, I just put down TBD on my notes.

The skills of my Fixer is next. There is a Career Skill Package and there are 40 points to use for these. There is also 13 points for non-career skills (as determined by INT+REF scores). I wrote down the skills I thought my Fixer would need.

Gearing up the character. The book says that the characters are mobile and you’ve got to keep your equipment portable. The starting funds are dependent on what level your special skill is for your role. And unfortunately I was running out of time for today. I had a few things written down, but I’d probably fill this out with several cyber enhancements and the like to make it more cyberpunkish. Oh, I don’t have a name yet. Consulting a random name generator I settled on Xenos.

Afterthoughts:

Turns out I had seen the lifepath first and thought it was the start of the character creation process. When it suddenly ended with no further steps I had to go back. That is when I realized that I started in the wrong spot, the lifepath was the end. So I was just a tad confused for a minute. I wish the organization from the lifepath had been used throughout the entire character creation process.

I liked how they gave examples using real life and fictional examples of what skill levels they had (example Ronald Reagan had a Persuasion of 7+, Sherlock Holmes had Awareness/Notice of 10+, etc.) on some skills. It helped when I was thinking about them.

I had quite a few good fond memories of playing this game. I wish that I could play it again. Even my wife was remembering a Cyberpunk 2020 game that we had played years ago with friends.

Additional Notes:

I had posted a link to the Character Creation Challenge entry for Shadow Ops on the publisher’s discord server. I wanted to share what the author’s response was in his own words.

“Thanks for doing this! I appreciate it! I think you were a little harsh on figuring out Combat Skills, though I will concede that I should have noted something about Combat Skills using score on p. 8.

I used Skill Set rather than Class because the term fit much better in the genre. In the fiction, people literally talk about their “skill sets.” Plus Liam Neeson has a particular set of skills, after all.

Overall, you didn’t seem to enjoy the process, which is unfortunate, but everyone has their own experiences and their own expectations about what the process should be.”

I thanked him for taking the time to explain some of his thinking to me. I could see where he was coming from with the Skill Sets vs Class line of thinking. I’m still planing to do a cover-to-cover read of the book when things are not so hectic later this year. But this is not the type of response I would have normally received from a larger publisher.

Coming Up Next:

Old School Essentials

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 18: Traveller The New Era

The Day 18 entry for the 2025 #CharacterCreationChallenge will come from Traveller: The New Era (I wonder if that title was inspired by Star Trek: The Next Generation?) I had won an online auction that had a ton of dead tree books for this game last year, so I thought that I’d use it for the challenge. I recall seeing a lot of ads and articles for this game when I picked up the Challenge Magazines (there were a lot of good Star Trek and Star Wars RPG articles within the issues). This game was originally published by Game Designers Workshop, but is currently being sold on DriveThruRPG by Far Future Enterprises.

For a game that I’ve never played, I sure do pick up a lot of Traveller products. I remember the original game being advertised back in my early D&D days. When I’ve posted Traveller characters from past challenges, I notice that the number of visitors to my website spike up. So there is a lot of popularity with this game. My past character entries have included the Classic Traveller, Traveller20, Traveller 2nd Edition and retro clones, such as Cepheus Deluxe. There was even a fantasy version called Swords of Cepheus and a fan made Star Trek adaptation called Star Trek: Alpha Quadrant.

So this game comes with a one-page character sheet and a one-page character generation worksheet. Hopefully this will help with the creation process. The book itself is 384 pages long and I can tell it had been used a lot. There were several highlights that a previous owner had made on certain rules and page numbers. They had even colored in some of the black and white artwork. I haven’t looked at any of the different supplements that came with this core rulebook to see if they have also been highlighted/colored. This is primarily a cold read as I’ve only flipped through the book a few times prior to the challenge.

Note: In the book, the character generation starts on page 15 and it looks like it is in a slightly different order than on the worksheet. For the purpose of this entry, I’m going to follow the worksheet steps.

Going down the character sheet, the first thing to do is pick a name and race. I did read up on the different races earlier today and I think I’ll stick with Human just because I’m still trying to catch up. The name will be Jarl Barkton because it popped up in my head.

Attributes are next on the worksheet. We start with Strength (STR), Agility (AGL), Constitution (CON), Intelligence (INT), Education (EDU) and Charisma. There are columns for roll, mods and final as things may change during the creation process. I’m instructed to roll 2d6-1 and assign as desired. There are two additional attributes of Psionic Strength (PSI) and Social Level (SOC). The PSI is the only entry on the worksheet that has a page number and when I read it, apparently you have to role play the encounter to get your PSI tested, so I’m going to skip it as I’m already getting a mental image of what I want Jarl to be.

Step 4 is the homeworld. The worksheet has several blank spots on it and when I look at the book on page 16 it states that the player or referee can name a starting homeworld that has already been created, or the referee can roll up a homeworld for the character. However, when I went to look at the planets in the core rulebook, the different sectors were all marked as “Referee only, do not share with players” so I guess I am rolling after all. It then took a second to track down the homeworld effects on the character which I added to the worksheet.

The careers are step 5. When I’ve made past characters using the similar systems referenced above, I never know how many four-year career terms I’m supposed to use when making the character. Looking over the careers I’m going to select Army (just because he meets the prerequisites). I stumbled my way through this process and I think I got it right. There are blank sections on the worksheet (Scndry Act is what?). The character did two terms in the Army then one as a Mercenary.

SFrom the careers I wrote down the skills for step 6 the initiative for step 7 and the age for step 8 (17+terms x4). Step 9 was the Jarl’s Hit Capacity per body part, step 10 is the character’s weight, step 11 is the load (carrying capacity) of the character, step 12 is the throw range and step 13 is the unarmed combat damage (all determined by math formulas).

The last step on the worksheet is starting money. You multiply the character’s SOC by the tech level for each term (three in this case) so 1,500 credits.

Well the worksheet is done and I did have to refer to the book quite a few times to get clarification. I didn’t come up with any backgrounds for the three contacts. As I was looking for the equipment I stumbled across the military academy section (Jarl did become a commissioned officer and was promoted several times) but it looks like he didn’t meet the prerequisites so… never mind. And actually I’m going to skip the equipment for now because 1- I need to wrap things up and 2- I would have heavily consulted with an experienced referee to see what type of campaign this would be. I’m going to go with the assumption that Jarl is the hired gun who is protecting the exploration team that I created in my earlier Traveller 2nd Edition and Stars Without Number challenge entries. I transferred what information I did have over to the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I really like the character generation worksheet. It’s all on one page. The only thing I wish they had added was the page numbers in the core book so I could quickly find the additional information that I may have wanted.

Some of the skills listed in the careers didn’t have skill descriptions that I could find (Determination, Spacehand were two I wanted to know more about). This was frustrating as I needed to know more about them to select or increase. Oh, I found out while transfering the data from the worksheet to the character sheet that determination and spacehand were skill clusters that I could have selected something specific in. Too late now.

While this was an interesting dip into the pool and I did read some of the game lore that was in the book (and there was a lot), I really don’t know if I’d play this game. I wouldn’t turn down an offer, but if anyone is going to have a game going, I’m expecting it to be the latest version of the Traveller RPG series.

Additional Notes:

Narak on BlueSky had created an entry using the Teenagers from Outer Space RPG. I got into a discussion with this person since I had used this system in last year’s challenge. They said “It seems like it be a great game to bust out for a silly gamenight, maybe between story arc of a serious campaign. It was fun lightweight character to build in any case! Kind of a less random, less shameful Maid RPG.” I had never heard of Maid RPG. Should I look in on it? Or is it something that I should avoid?

Coming Up Next:

OGL Wild West

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 14: Stars Without Number

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterthoughts:

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

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

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

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

Additional Notes:

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

Coming Up Next:

Shadow Ops

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 11: Terra Primate

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterthoughts:

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

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

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

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

Additional Notes:

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

Coming Up Next:

Star Wars: Edge of the Empire

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 10: See You Space Cowboy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterthoughts:

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

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

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

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

Additional Notes:

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

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

Coming Up Next:

Terra Primate

This article is open for discussion on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server. You can also email me at Carl (at) TardisCaptain.com or click on my social media links with any comments.

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

2025 Character Creation Challenge Day 3: Traveller 2nd Edition (Mongoose Publishing)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Afterthoughts:

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

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

Additional Notes:

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

Coming Up Next:

Castles and Crusades Reforged

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: Collecting, Conventions, Dungeons and Dragons, Horror, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars

SaltCON-Summer 2024 After Action Report

Loot from SaltCON-Summer 2024.

Well I thought the picture of the loot at the top was not so fuzzy, but I’m not going to re-take it now. Hey, I survived another SaltCON both as a player and gamemaster. It was fun, lesson learning, idea forming, friend making and just a little stressful. But I wouldn’t know a convention that didn’t have those.

I did get some loot at this con, but for a while I was worried that I wasn’t going to find anything. The game swap only had one person bring in RPG books and I ended up buying three items from him. The hardbound book Codex of Erde (an earlier edition of the Codex of Aihrde from Troll Lord Games) and two boxed sets of Dungeon Crawl Classic modules called “The Heroes Arise” and “The Saga of the Dragon Cult”. The modules in each boxed set would form a campaign that could take characters from first to high levels. The boxed sets were in really good shape considering their age with only one book showing any damage. I also picked up five token trays that I planned to use for my Star Trek Adventures game. These had been created by a local artist. The convention organizers gave me a set of dice as a thank you for running my games (they were purple, they went to my geek wife) and I also picked up a convention t-shirt. I love how they have a different design each convention.

For the gaming sessions I played in, this is how it went.

Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition- We had to find a lost puppy owned by the local magistrate. Unfortunately this lost puppy was a three-headed hellhound and was burning up the town. And, as fate would have it, we were not the only party looking for the wayward pet.

The One Ring– Set in the times between the events in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, our party had been hired by a not-so-trustworty dwarf in an attempt to find a treasure left behind by his recently-deceased uncle. I really liked the system as it worked very well with the Middle Earth universe that we were familiar with. I may have to pick up this system.

Star Wars D6- I missed out going to this game due to real-world issues and I tried to track down the GM to explain why (apparently no one else had shown up for the 9am game either). But the good news is that I was able to track down an AC tech to fix the air-conditioning unit at my house.

Stellar Odyssey– A RPG created by a Utah author. I had been in some of his games at past conventions and since I suddenly had an opening in my schedule, I signed up. This was a Star Trek inspired game where you play the crew of an intrepid starship doing missions for a planetary union. The emphasis is on social combat (with initiatives and different methods you could use to convince others to see your way/perform an action/etc.) with actual combat limited to a single die roll. The system made sense and really encouraged roleplaying. The starship stats (and how they could be used to enhance your dice pool) also made sense. I may have to use this game in an upcoming Character Creation Challenge.

Ter’Ra’Mentia- This was only an hour long intro session and I was the only person present in the time-slot. This allowed me to ask a lot of different questions without feeling guilty that I was taking away from the other players. I’m also a ‘hands on’ person when it comes to learning a game, so this helped very much. While I don’t know if I’d be able to pick up this game, I now have a better understanding of it. It’s basically a 2d12 system+skill points to beat a target number.

The Walking Dead- This was a scenario set in Utah. Which meant that the players were (mostly) familiar with the area. While it did end early (four players in a family had to go) I did get a chance to try the system. It felt like a game where dread was always around because even with the dice pools, we hardly got any successes. We didn’t have all bad luck, but it didn’t feel like we were in a cinematic cake-walk either. I don’t know how I’d feel about this. The constant wear-down of not getting successes might get old in a campaign. I’d probably have to actually try a campaign to see how I felt.

This is how the games I ran turned out.

The Star Trek Adventures game that I was going to run only had one person show up. It was probably the time slot that I had selected on a Sunday that did this in. I would have run this on a Saturday, but originally a family commitment would have kept me out for the whole day. When plans changed and I only needed to leave for the evening, it was too late to change the date. With the single player I sat down and explained the game basics to him. It was his first convention and I think he was excited to just try something more than Dungeons and Dragons and Pathfinder.

Basic Fantasy went better than I expected. I got to use a new GMs tool to help draw out the map of the bandit’s lair that the party was trying to escape from (I’ll have a review blog post very soon on this). Most of the players were use to 5e so I had to explain some OSR styles (running away is an option, your character may die if you are not careful, etc.) Well they took this to heart and actually worked together very well to facilitate their escape. While looking up a rule really quick, I reminded myself of one of the basic guidelines for running a game. Keep the flow going and don’t be afraid to make judgment calls instead of slowing down play by looking up rules. I had one player tell me afterwards that he hadn’t been a fan of the D20 games, but would play more Basic Fantasy if offered because he had fun in my game.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, getting together is one of the highlights of playing RPGs. On the first day I bumped into a GM for Savage Worlds. He asked if I wanted to go through a quick demo, which I jumped at since it gave me the chance to check out a system I had never played. Turns out this guy runs an RPG video blog on YouTube called the Ace Roleplaying Games Club. He even named dropped my blog in his own SaltCON after-action report. Thanks Mason.

Once again I’d like to thank the army of volunteers and coordinators for putting SaltCON-Summer together. While I was disappointed in the swap meet (I really wish more people would bring their RPG books looking for new homes) I could see how people were having fun over the weekend. Even the convention organizers. I got to meet up with some friends that I only seem to see at these conventions as well. That is an added bonus to attending the convention.

Also note to self, don’t forget to pack some antacid tablets in your convention backpack just in case the nacho cheese served at the convention center affects me again.

Have you been to any gaming conventions lately? 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 with any comments.

Posted in: Anime, Reviews, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction

A look at the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game

So on day 27 of the 2024 Character Creation Challenge I attempted to generate a character for the Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game. I had just received the hardback book from a Kickstarter campaign. I had backed it because I loved the anime and the live-action TV series and I always thought that it would be a great universe to run an RPG campaign.

The hardbound book is 270 pages long and is in full color. The ISBN is 979-12-80109-58-3 and was published by Don’t Panic Games. I love how the game company probably got this name from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, but I had never heard of anything that they had released previously. The game director (writer?) is Michele Paroli. The bulk of the images are pulled directly from the anime.

There is an introduction, six chapters and a glossary. The chapters are 1-Rules (how to play the game), 2- Session (three of them make an episode or single sit-down to play), 3- Characters (how to make one), 4-Hunters in the Solar System (all about the Cowboy Bebop universe), 5- On Stage (kind of a GM section that describes the bounties your players may go after, factions encountered, etc.), 6- Playing the Bebop (the characters seen in the show and episodes put into RPG form).

Here are some photos I took when I first opened up my Kickstarter package. There is a lot of good graphics in this book.

The RPG rules is pretty straight forward for a narrative game (more on that below), even if the description of the rules are not. These pages attempted to tell me the rules of the game. And I did not get them at all. I remember getting major headaches trying to put this together in my head. There is no simple “This is the basics” of the game. I’m of the opinion that I need to understand the basic concept quickly so I can try to talk my friends into playing a game. If I can’t understand the game, I can’t recruit players. I mentioned this in my “Biggest turn-off when checking out a new RPG” blog post. If the RPG is not based off of a common system (D20, GURPS, 2D6, etc.) then give me a simple explanation of the game mechanics. In Cowboy Bebop, your character has traits (a description of a character look or item) and you can try to use them in a session (named after a music style) and you get a d6 dice pool and you have to get a roll higher than 5, 10 or 15 (depending if it’s the 1st, 2nd or 3rd session in the game) and… I tossed the book aside in disgust. I even asked on the RPG.net forums if anyone else had looked in on this game, and only got one response two months later. I didn’t think this was a good sign for the game when thousands of posts are made in a day on this forum.

When I attempted to make a Cowboy Bebop RPG character in January, my goal was to do this Kickstarter review in February. After getting both frustrated and angry (I thought I had wasted my money on the book) I put the book in the “To do” pile and left it there for months. I would see the book and it would remind me that I needed to write my review, but I was still sore about how betrayed the book made me feel. A blog post that says, “Pretty graphics, lots of in-universe details, system sucks to high heaven” is a very boring review. I finally grabbed myself by the collar and said “finish this review because it’s blocking other blog posts that you want to publish”. So I sat down and gathered my photos and looked again at the book. Still feeling frustrated after another attempt to understand the system, I started searching online and came across this video review from The Final Frontiersmen. While he compared some of the game to Star Trek Adventures, he did say one thing that made a light bulb go off in my head. “The key points about this roleplaying game is it’s extremely narrative.” Too much narrative is not my cup of tea. I now understood that I had received my delivered pizza and when I opened up the box, instead of seeing piping hot cheese covering sausage and pepperoni on a layer of marinara sauce, I saw anchovies, artichoke hearts and feta cheese. If you like that type of pizza, or games that is 95%-99% narrative (practically done all by the players) then you may enjoy this game very much. I know there are players who do like these types of games. In the 90’s some of my friends were just digging the Amber diceless RPG that had come out at the time. But when I watched them play, it just seemed like group storytelling where they decided the outcome. Something that was popular in online sim groups, but had zero randomness (and in my mind, zero RPG soul). With how the Cowboy Bebop RPG was stuffed into this box, it was just barely a step above a sim.

For me, I’d prefer an RPG that has a simple system that is easy to pick up that gives the randomness of the dice. A good GM and good players can easily balance the dice of roll playing with the narrative of role playing. Star Trek Adventures and the latest Star Wars system that I experienced at the last SaltCON gave that good balance that encouraged player interaction that included a narrative with the luck of the dice. I remember my favorite Dungeons and Dragons DM describing how a dragon was defeated using combined results from the rolls we made. Other GMs have given the option of having the player describe the way the bad guy was defeated when they made the killing blow.

So now I can put this good looking book in my RPG shelf. And when I want to roleplay in the Cowboy Bebop universe, I’ll use this book for background information, but use a system like Frontier Space or Stars Without Number or a host of other science fiction based RPGs as the system.

One last thought before I close up this review. I’ve taken this as a “Lessons learned” moment when dealing with Kickstarters. The description for this game was a “d6 based system” and I assumed it was more like the Star Wars D6 game I had enjoyed in the past. I will not be making such an assumption again and I blame myself for not digging deeper. After January when I would read a gaming Kickstarter, if the system was not quickly explained to me in a sentence or two, I’ve asked the organizer for more information on the game. The last thing I want to do is open up the pizza box and see a pizza I have no desire to eat.

Have you had a chance to try the Cowboy Beebop RPG? What Kickstarter campaigns are you backing now? 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: Collecting, Conventions, Horror, James Bond, Red Dwarf, Role Playing Games, Science Fiction, Star Trek, Star Wars

SaltCON-Spring 2024 After Action Report

Loot from the 2024 SaltCON Spring

I survived my time at SaltCON Spring 2024. I was starting to wonder if I was going to get through it. First I was nervous before the start (did I have everything ready for the games that I was running) and I had to take a few breaks to make sure I didn’t get overwhelmed. March definetly came in like a lion with a big snowstorm (with thunder) on Saturday. Luckily my Convention Backpack kept all of my items safe in the nasty weather. But I made it and I enjoyed myself. I even had someone come up to me and identify me from this blog. If you read my blog and meet me in real life, welcome. This gentleman even wanted to talk about the recent Character Creation Challenge.

So how did the games that I ran go? I think they did quite well. Both sets of players told me that they had fun, which was the goal. My Basic Fantasy game only had two players, so I had them use two characters each. They were able to find the lost son of a Dwarf nobleman before he was discovered in an area he wasn’t supposed to be in. And they did it differently than the previous time I ran this adventure so it was interesting to see a different approach to the problem the party was presented with. I’m going to have to re-draw the map before I try to submit it for possible publication within the Basic Fantasy community. As for the Star Trek Adventures Game, I had quite a few laughs as the Lower Deck style characters had to deal with the Top Core (aka Top Gear in space) antics. I encouraged the humorous nature at the table by tossing pieces of candy to the players that got into the spirit of things. I really want to polish up this scenario as well and “publish” it for others to use. Both games had minor hiccups (the draw-able map didn’t like the markers I had brought for the Basic Fantasy game and I had left some papers behind for the Star Trek game) but we got through them.

A special pin just for the convention.

A new thing that SaltCON did this year was running a pin quest at the event. If you went to certain sections of the convention center, you could earn/buy/trade for a convention pin. Just before the Basic Fantasy game, one of the organizers handed me two SaltCON 2024 RPG pins which was a mimic hiding as a book (pictured above). I was instructed to keep one and to award the second to the player at the table I thought did best. As I had mentioned, there were only two players in that game and I thought they both did equally well having to balance two characters. And, in player fashion, they came up with solutions that I hadn’t planned for as a GM. Thank heavens for GM intuition and rolling with the punches. I even got to use the phrase “I’m allowing that because it meets the ‘Rule of Cool’ so go ahead.” When the game was over, I place the pin in the middle of the table and asked the players to decide who earned it. With how good they were, they both pointed to the other guy and said ‘you take it.’ So I made a GM ruling and had them both roll a D20 with the highest roll winning. I didn’t really get a chance to collect any of the other pins, but that was fine.

I also appreciated that the RPG coordinator made special posters advertising the different games. Since there were multiple Star Trek Adventures games, they were all on the same poster. But I really liked the poster they made for my Basic Fantasy game. When the end of the convention hit, I couldn’t find that poster (even thought I had seen it hanging on the wall in the convention center). I’m very grateful to the organizer who tracked it down for me.

The QR codes allowed you to sign up for the game or find out more about it.

As for the games that I played (or attempted to play), here is how they went.

Fallout The Roleplaying Game– Turns out I had the same GM as last year. She even recognized me from before. It was the same scenario, so I just ran my character as someone who would want to do what the others wanted to do (without spoiling anything). Luckily we got farther than we did last year so I was able to see some new material. I really liked how I just slipped back into the groove of this game.

James Bond 007– The same game master as before, but a whole new scenario. The GM recognized me as well and even handed me the same character that I had previously played. This and the way the system was set up made it easy to slip back into the game with no kinks. For a game from the 80’s with a little crunch, it ran pretty smooth.

Dreams and Machines– A new game that I was looking forward to since it’s the first in-house IP for Modiphius. I liked the world that the game was built around. The starter set components (characters were created by selecting a series of cards with stats on them) made it easy for a convention one-shot. The GM’s daughter made jokes about how the little girl in the starter set was going to die (spoiler: she didn’t). And I liked some of the changes to the 2d20 system (there were tokens for equipment assets that I was able to use in the middle of game play). But there were other changes that I really didn’t know if I liked or not. Momentum was split with spirit which also had to do with health. It was convoluted and is something that I hope doesn’t make it into the just announced Star Trek Adventures Second Edition (I’ll be blogging more about this announcement later). While I enjoyed myself at the table, I don’t know if I’ll actually be picking up this game.

Red Dwarf The Role Playing Game– All but one player knew about the Red Dwarf TV show, so we had just as much fun explaining things to her as we did playing. And she got really involved (she played a cat character). I got to play this universe’s version of Lister (a space bum). The GM had a waxdroid character prepared, but didn’t give it a name allowing the character to decide. So we were running around with a waxdroid of Winston Churchill who was always on the lookout for Space Nazis (not only did we find them, we kicked their fascists butts). I really liked how the system worked and while we struggled (hey were not exactly the cream of the crop in the space corp) it made sense. I really need to get my own copy of this game.

Star Wars Roleplaying– This was a little weird. Not only was I learning about a new system, but the GM was part of a group called RPG Sessions. This is a website that had online tools that could be used for this version of Star Wars and a few other games from the same publisher. While he explained the dice to us (there were a lot of new players to this game), we were primarily playing with these tablets. So instead of learning one thing, I was attempting to learn two. While the online tools helped, I felt that not rolling dice took away my enjoyment (and learning) of the game. However a special thing happened while we were on a mid-game break that I’ll talk about below.

The Witcher Roleplaying Game and Dungeons and Dragons 5th Edition. I ended up dropping out of these games. I was able to cross my name off the sheet for The Witcher (and there were several people signed up as backups which made me better). There was some nasty weather going on and I wasn’t feeling all too well. I didn’t want to be fighting the storm at midnight to get home. I also needed sleep which caused me to not make it for the early morning Sunday D&D 5e game. To the GMs, I apologize for not being able to make it. I really wanted to check out The Witcher system since I had picked up the PDFs in a bundle sale last year. Hopefully at a future con I can play this game.

Old School Essentials– We only had three players (one very new to RPGs) but we got to fight a dragon that we tracked down. Lots of good roleplaying in this session. Unfortunately all three characters ended up as piles of ash by the end of the game.

The GM for GURPS Star Wars– accidentally left his Star Wars material at home (I know the feeling dude) so we ended up with a pickup game of Dungeon Fantasy. This is also a GURPS system. However (insert Ron Burgundy “Well that escalated quickly” meme) we ended up not getting very far. In fact, we ended up not getting out of the starting building without setting the building on fire (yea, it went south really fast). The party ended up getting kicked out of the town. So the game also didn’t last very long. But the GM, knowing of my past attempts at making a GURPS character, offered to sit down and show me how the publisher had streamlined Dungeon Fantasy. I was able to make a character with the bulk of needed items to play in about 20 minutes.

As for the loot pictured above, I was able to pick up the following items. I purchased the 2024 convention t-shirt (loved the design). There were no general RPG dealers in the dealers room (lots of self-publishers, but nobody if I wanted to pick up a new book from a regular publisher). At the game swap I was worried for the first two days because there was a TON of board games, but practically nothing in the way of RPG books. There were more DVDs than RPG books. But while I was in the Star Wars game that I mentioned above, someone came to the table and reported that they had seen the Star Wars starter set with dice for sale for a very good price. Especially when they discovered that the very expensive core rulebook was included in the box. Since we were on break, I had the guy take me directly down there where I was able to snatch it up (cha-ching, bargain found). On the last day of the con, I came across the core rulebook for The Strange. This is a Sci-Fi RPG that I had been sent a supplement for in the Random RPG book club. Now that I have the core rulebook, not only can I use it in a future Character Creation Challenge, but if I elect to trade/sell/give the books away, I can do so in a set. The last item I got was The Walking Dead Universe starter set. This was a gift from the game coordinator for doing a good job running my games at the con. I was not expecting this and it was very much appreciated.

While I didn’t play as a Captain in the Artemis Bridge Simulator, I was asked to play an walk-on part as an invading Borg Drone. I think it shocked some of the players to suddenly have a LARP like experience happen in the middle of a networked computer game. Thanks guys for letting me play this part (and I didn’t hurt myself too bad when I fell down after being shot with a phaser).

Conclusion:

I am very grateful to all of the volunteers who helped put this convention together. I’ve really been enjoying myself and meeting people from all over the US (and Canada) who travel to the con. I had a lot of fun despite my being overwhelmed in the middle. Not only am I thinking about possible games to run for SaltCON summer, I’ve also talked with another long-time GM who is expressing interest in running a few games.

Have you been to any gaming conventions lately? 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 with any comments.

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