Tag: Science Fiction

NOTE: Real world issues delayed the last two characters getting posted online.

And here we are to the final day of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. It was very rough for me at the end as a family emergency came up and delayed my last two entries. Today I am using the Anarchy: The Role Playing Game by Dicegeeks. This game is using the Open D6 system which I was able to play (a lot) in the Star Wars Role Playing Game from West End Games.

I picked up this game after reading about it in a series of newsletters about creating your own role playing game. Being a fan of post-apocalyptic games and the D6 system, I elected to check it out and to use it in the challenge.

The PDF is 65 pages long with the character creation process starting on page 10. The character sheet is one page long. The PDF is only bookmarked in the table of contents. The setting for the game is the United States that has twenty cities destroyed by nuclear explosions. The concept for the game is that the players begin the game alone three-years after the nuclear war and the winters it has caused has ravaged the planet.

Step one is to determine what your character was doing before the war. There is a list to choose from or you can roll randomly. Since I wanted to throw some dice, I let fate decide. This character was a college graduate student working towards a higher degree. Age is 28 and he was at an Ivy League school (both of these were part of the random roll charts.

Step two is what changed over the past three years. A roll of 1 resulted in a close family member or friend died from disease. I would assume that there would be a lot of that in a nuclear winter Earth. The RAW states work with your GM to create the details of the recent change. Talking with the voices in my head we decided that the character’s wife is the person who died.

Step three is the character’s goals that, if achieved, will be rewarded. There is another chart to roll against and the D10 (there is a different die for each time something needs to be randomly selected). A roll of 5 lists “Found a democratic town as a safe haven for any weary souls.” I think that the first thing the character would want to do is find a location that a town could be safely set up.

Now we are to step four where we set up the attributes. I have 18D to spread between the attributes of Dexterity, Knowledge, Mechanical, Perception, Strength and Technical. No attribute can be less than 2D or higher than 4D. Since this guy was almost done with his masters degree, I gave him high knowledge but lower strength.

Step five is to select advantages and disadvantages. The RAW states that a minimum of two disadvantages must be taken. I can skip any advantages, but it doesn’t give me a limit (which seems wrong) so I’ll match the plusses and negatives listed next to the advantages/disadvantages. Unlike the earlier steps, there is no random chart with the advantages and disadvantages. For the first time I had to go searching for the descriptions of the advantages and disadvantages (having the bookmarks on the left of the PDF would have helped here).

The skills are selected in step six. The RAW states that we get 7D to distributed (and a D can be broken down in to +1, +1, +1 or +1, +2). I went over the character sheet and gave him a lot of +1s and +2s.

Step seven is to determine the health points. 20+a STR roll. I wrote down the 26 health points.

Personal info is the next step. I consulted a random name generator and stopped at Marcell Freeman. I wrote up a brief physical description and a short background based upon what had been rolled above.

Step nine is the starting equipment and we are back to the random charts. All beginning characters start out with some clothes. Then I’m instructed to roll a D10 for each chart of Gear, Tools and Vehicles. This resulted in a sleeping bag, a hacksaw with two blades and two quarts of motor oil (uh… why?).

Starting weapons and armor is step ten. More D10s results in an axe and some motorcycle elbow pads. More D10 rolls for starting food and water resulted in eleven cans of spam (singing: Spam in my mailbox at work) and three gallons of water.

Step twelve determines the starting vehicle for Freeman. We are doing a percentage roll here. Freeman has an SUV that has 10 MPG and GHT of 30. What is GHT? The character sheet has something marked GIT under vehicles? I looked down at the vehicles section and it had some additional items, but nothing on the GHT/GIT question.

Step thirteen is to randomly roll for a personal memento. A D10 roll resulted in a music box. Probably all he has left over from his dead wife.

Step fourteen is to determine the current age of the character. Add three to anything determined earlier (28) results in an age of 31. Adding a single Fate Point is step fifteen. And the steps end here. I looked over the sheet and I noticed that I didn’t have any armor points listed. I looked at the equipment section and wrote them down. Here is the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

So I’ve played this system before and I’d be willing to play it again. I liked some of the random charts, but I wish that there had been some costs involved for obtaining other items. It sounds like there may be a lot of bartering or GM decision making to be made. I doubt I’ll get a chance to play this game, which is too bad.

Additional Notes:

I had a few people ask me how I was going to get Jeremy Clarkson into one of the characters after making Sir Richard Hammond and James “Captain Slow” May characters. I kept waiting for inspiration to strike. When none came, I decided to make the school that Marcell Freeman was studying at Clarkson University. I’m sure they have a great automotive study program.

I received an email from one of the participants in the Character Creation Challenge. He had been posting on his own website for the entire 31 days. I thanked him for his participation and added his site to the links list. In the future, if you are participating let me know as soon as you can. This way I can add the link with the other participants. Congratulations to everyone who made it to the 31 days.

Coming Up Next:

2024 Character Creation Challenge After Action Report

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.

For day 29 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I am using another game in the Tiny D6 line. Today we are creating a character for Tiny Frontiers Revised. Now earlier this month I created a character for Tiny Wastelands (by request) and in past years I’ve used Tiny Dungeons 2nd Edition and Tiny Spies. Part of the reason I selected this game on this day is for two reasons. I really like the system, and I knew that it was going to be one of my busier days and I needed something that I could whip up quickly.

The Tiny Frontiers Revised PDF is 162 pages in length. It was written by Alan Bahr and released by Gallant Knight Games. The character sheet is one page and the Explorer Creation steps start on page 20. The basics for the system is a standard test roll is 2d6 and if you roll a 5 or 6 you complete the task. If you have an advantage, you roll 3d6 and only 1d6 if you have a disadvantage.

The first step is to select a heritage (aka a race). These range from the standard Human, genially modified humans (called Gens) and more. With this being the revised edition there are more heritages to choose from including a hard-light hologram (I wonder if he’s a smeg head?) Each heritage gives you your starting hit points and a species-specific trait. I elected to go with a Gen character as it sounded interesting. I decided that he was a security officer born on the Control Ship Red Barchetta and was named YYZ-2112 since he was grown in a lab. Points if you can catch the popular band reference in the name and history.

The next step is to select three traits from a list of available options. There were no prerequisites or other barriers, if you wanted a trait, you got it. This allowed players to make a character that might be a big ox and still make him graceful and athletic. I didn’t compare the traits against those in the other Tiny games that I own. I’ll have to sit down and do a comparison one of these days.

Step three is to select the weapon group (and specialty weapon) that YYZ-2112 is proficient with. Since was a genetically modified warrior, he had a second one as well. This guy is going to be a gun specialists. Besides selecting the weapon, we also write down the equipment the character has (basically your weapons, your space suit or armor and an explorer’s pack). You also get 10 GalCreds (money).

Now we choose the family trade. This is what the character was doing before they went out into space. Uh, he was grown in a lab so the family was a training regiment. So YYZ-2112 is also a drill instructor.

The last step is to select a belief. This is represented in the form of a quote. I decided upon “I will train others to survive.” And after filling in a few spots, I scanned the sheet (then realized that I missed a few spots, oh well, I’ll get them filled in).

Afterthoughts:

When I was showing my daughter the artwork for this (and other Tiny D6 games) she loved it. She also loved that she could quickly grasp the system mechanics from the quick description. In fact, just after reading it, she asked if I would be willing to run a one shot of a Tiny D6 game for her and her gaming buddies sometime this summer. Hmmmm….. yes, and thank you for proving my point that if you can quickly explain the game mechanics, you can easily convince others to play the game.

Now that I’m thinking about it, perhaps a Tiny Wastelands game would be a good way to test this system out. I’ll have to think about which genre I want to run (I’ve already been told, no zombies, darn). They all sound pretty easy to set up and play.

Additional Notes:

The end is in sight and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. How are you doing with your Character Creation Challenge? If you are behind, feel free to catch up. You can make it. There are some participants who have gone into February to finish up. I just talked with my daughter who drew up the award logo for those who have completed the challenge and she is working on a new one now.

Coming Up Next:

Pathfinder 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.

As we near the end of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge, I am using the new Cowboy Bebop Roleplaying Game for Day 27. As a fan of the anime and the live-action series (curse you Netflix for the cancellation) I backed a Kickstarter to get the game launched. I wanted to use it in the challenge so I didn’t look at the PDF before today (I usually like looking at a physical book when trying to learn a new system).

I’m not going to go into the stats for the book since I will do that in an upcoming unboxing blog post. But the character sheet is only one page long and the character creation chapter starts on page 56 with the creation steps (which are different than earlier in the chapter) on page 74. They recommended that the characters be made when all players are together at the table before the campaign starts.

Let me be blunt. I have no idea how this game system works. I don’t understand the concepts. So I’m going to say that I think the character is done. Wayne Wolf (thank you random name generator) left a slum lifestyle and eventually found his way into the occupation of bounty hunter in an attempt to escape poverty (and the control of his family that he left behind). I really wish I could give you a breakdown of the character and what each item is that I wrote down, but I don’t understand it myself. So I’m just going to post the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

I sat down in a couch, after taking photos of the unboxing for a future blog post, and I attempted to read some of the basic concepts of the rules. I didn’t understand any of them. This in-turn, caused my confusion when it came to character creation. I’m saving my final thoughts on the purchase for the unboxing post that will come later, but I’m really scared that I may have buyers remorse. Before I officially declare that, I’ve reached out on the RPG.net forums to see if anyone else can help explain (or if they are feeling the same way that I do?)

Additional Notes:

I did have one person respond to yesterday’s post about Dungeons & Dragons Essentials. They stated that they had liked fourth-edition. When I asked why, their response was: “Game Play: Tons of character options, great background fluff and world building. Always something for every character to do. Design: the design of the game was tight, everything had a purpose from character options to lay-out. Plus the designers were not afraid to make new choices and throw out bad ideas in favor new ones. Not everything worked mind you. Combat was a slog and sometimes there was too much emphasis on where everyone was.” I agree very much on that last point. This was the first I had actually heard anyone say anything positive about the fourth-edition so I wanted to give some equal time. When I offered to run an OSR game for my daughter and her fifth-edition playing friends, the first words out of their mouths were “no fourth-edition.” Perhaps if I had been actively gaming during the fourth-edition era, perhaps I’d feel different. But just reading the raw rules and trying to make sense of them, I don’t see it as a system I’d want to use.

Coming Up Next:

Rolemaster Fantasy

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.

Day 23 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge and I elected to use the Starfinder RPG by Paizo. Now I actually participated in a Starfinder campaign in 2021 so I’m familiar with the system. But I didn’t create a character using just the book since we were all playing on Fantasy Grounds. While I will never let Fantasy Grounds soil any of my computers again (another blog post for another day), I did enjoy the game and the company.

I picked up my PDF of Starfinder at a charity bundle sale last year where I also picked up 2nd edition of Pathfinder (which will be used later in the challenge). When I had created the character we used the online tools in the virtual tabletop which did a lot of heavy lifting inserting information from multiple books. But I’m only going to use the core rulebook and follow the steps as written.

The PDF is 531 pages long with the character creation steps (actually listed this way) on page 14. The PDF is bookmarked (thank you). The core book has an ISDN of 9-781601-259561 and…. the cover price isn’t listed on the PDF. The character sheet is two pages long. The D20 core mechanic is based off of the Dungeons and Dragons 3.5 edition, but it is a stand-alone book.

The first step listed is to create a character concept for a science fantasy game. I already know what race I want this character to be, a Vesk. I had been trying to write up the racial Star Trek RPG stats for a reptilian race called the Tarn that came from a Star Trek: The Next Generation novel. But for the longest time I couldn’t find a good image of a sci-fi based reptilian race. There were lots of fantasy based images, but no sci-fi, at least until the Vesk arrived from Starfinder. They met the description of the race that had formed in my minds eye while reading The Forgotten War. So I’m going to give back by making a Vesk character. Looking at the racial description, I’m going to use the name “Sarangari.” Yea he’ll be a mercenary type character who is also a pilot.

Step two, choose a race. See above. I wrote down the stat information for the Vesk.

Next is selecting a theme. This represents a core aspect of the background and possible motivations. Again as mentioned above, Sarangari is going to be a mercenary. Reading the description the character gains an attribute increase and a knowledge skill.

Step four is selecting a class. Well it’s going to have to be soldier. I wrote it down on the character sheet, but they instructed me not to add the other abilities until I get to step six.

Now we finalize the ability scores. Each ability score starts at 10. Adjust for racial and theme adjustments. Then you have 10 more points to spread through out the abilities. I made my selections and wrote down the modifiers.

As mentioned in step four, we will now be applying the class features for the soldier. These include the base attack bonus and savings throws. It also includes the class skills and how many skill ranks I can use at the first level. I tried to make sure that I had everything written down.

And speaking of skill ranks, in step five we allocate the skill points (four) and also select the feats. This character only gets one feat at first level.

Now we are onto purchasing equipment. The book states we have 1,000 credits to start with. And wow, that doesn’t cover very much. I knew that I wasn’t going to get some advanced weaponry and equipment right away, but holy cow some of these prices. I know I went over, but I would have probably come up with some story to the GM how the 95 credit survival knife was a gift/inheritance/found or something. After weapons and armor, there was nothing left over for other equipment. Soooooooo I hope the GM has a good way to get us taken care of.

Final step is the finishing details. Alignment (Neutral Good), Deity (need to look that up) and the like. I filled in what I could.

Afterthoughts:

Because of how many choices there were and my familiarity with the D20 system, I kept trying to stop myself from jumping ahead in the process. I wanted to make sure that I was following the rules as written. Especially with all of the additions that the Starfinder system seems to have in it. I keep hearing it’s so players can make any character they want, but they should just stick to the basics for the core rulebook and add more with the additional books (of which Piazo has a lot). It seemed overwhelming at times in just the core rulebook. But I’ve heard fans of Starfinder and Pathfinder talk about how they liked having all of the different options and choices from the different books. So I can see that appeal if you are into that.

Would I play this game? Well I already have. And I’d play it again at a con or if someone wanted to run a campaign. Would I run this game? Probably not. There are a lot of other Sci-Fi RPG choices that are not overbearing that I REALLY want to try. Would I homebrew for this game? That’s a possible-maybe. If I’m playing in a campaign, perhaps I’d be inspired to homebrew something. But with the amount of stuff already rattling around my head, coming up with stuff just for Starfinder may be at the bottom of the list.

Additional Notes:

There is a participant in the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge who is posting his entries on the TardisCaptain dot Com Discord server using the handle of Zonrad. This person is using the Power Rangers Roleplaying Game to make ranger characters out of the teenagers from The Breakfast Club. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen that movie, but I’ve never had any interest in Power Rangers. After reading several of these entries, I’m eagerly awaiting the next one. This is the type of creativity that I love seeing from fellow RPG enthusiasts. Keep it up.

Coming Up Next:

Crypts & Things

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.

Welcome to Day 20 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge and today we will be using the Shadowrun Anarchy Alternate Ruleset. I picked up this book from a gaming swap meet at SaltCON last spring for a decent price and decided to use it for the challenge. I have a Shadowrun character from the first edition of the game. I don’t recall very much about that game. Back in the early 90’s the cyberpunk genre was all the rage in gaming and I think the gaming group was just trying out different versions. I know we played the original Cyberpunk quite a bit.

Shadowrun Anarchy was published by Catalyst Game Labs in 2016 and I had never heard of it before I saw the book. The hardbound book has 213 pages and the ISBN number is 978-1-941582-19-0 and had an original cover price of $39.99. Character creation starts on page 61 and there is a one page character sheet.

The first step is to create a character theme. I looked over the sample characters given and elected to go with another Street Samurai that is cybernetically enhanced. He was taken in by an orphanage at a young age and never knew his parents (they could be a plot point to re-appear in a future session). This orphanage trained kids to become adults that would help protect the neighborhood from different street gangs and corporate thugs. So he has a strong sense of community. I’m instructed to create a character name, which will be Spike. The last item in this step is to create some Tags for the character. One or two word descriptions. I selected: Human, Tough, Protective and Street Life.

Step two is to determine the game level. This is done by the player group and not the GM apparently. The decision will determine the character creation stats and range from Gang-level game to Prime-runner game. As a committee of one, I selected the lowest at Gang-level. This gives me 12 attribute points, 10 skill points, 6 shadow amps, 2 weapons and some gear.

Step three is to choose the metatype (aka race). I already had selected human which gives me +1 edge and +1 skill point.

The next step is to determine if your character is awakened or emerged. Basically does the character have magical abilities or the capability to enter the matrix (Shadowrun’s internet) with just your mind. Spike will not have either of these items.

On step five we assign our attribute points. The attributes are Strength, Agility, Willpower, Logic and Charisma. Each starts with one point and I have the 12 to spread around. Now that we have the attributes assigned, some additional stats can be generated such as the Physical Damage Track and the Stun Damage Track (which to appear to function like hit points).

I have 11 skill points to use in step six. There is also a free Knowledge skill that the character has (I selected local neighborhoods to go along with the character concept). Spike fights, Spike shoots and Spike knows how to ride his motorbike to help his neighborhood.

Step seven instructs us to select Spike’s shadow amps These are special powers that enhance the character and I have six points to use. I selected a natural one of Fear (he intimidates people), wired reflexes and cyberarms (both give some bonuses but take two essence.

Next we are instructed to select two positive qualities and one negative quality. I selected Toughness (all damage taken is reduced by 1), Tough as Nails +1 to the Physical Damage Track and Emotional Attachment to the Orphanage organization (they instruct him and he follows those instructions).

The gearing steps are next. Step nine is to assign armor. Since I had an extra shadow amp point left, I used it to get an armored jacket and step ten is to pick Spike’s three weapons. He has a vibrosword, the Browning Ultra-Power Heavy Pistol and HK-227 Submachine Gun. And in the last of the gearing up steps (eleven) is to select other gear. Up to four items of non-combat variety and two contacts. He’s got a Harley-Davidson Scorpion Bike, a commlink, stim patches and a ring that apparently was left with him when the Orphanage found him. As for his contacts, he has the mysterious head of the Orphanage (who seems to be well connected) and the leader of the local street merchants (they are the extra eyes and ears that he depends upon, and in return he helps protect them).

Next we have step twelve where we create cues for the character. These are phrases (quotes basically) that the character might state during gameplay. These sound like the personal quotes from the D6 Star Wars game from WEG or the Values from Star Trek Adventures. I wrote down some, but would probably ask the GM to let me come up with some on the fly while gaming (when inspiration strikes).

Step thirteen instructs us to create a character background. I thought we did that at the first step? I added some personal data (weight, height, etc.) and history (as seen above). The final step is tweaking where you can adjust things now that you have the character down on paper. Does something not look right or needs to be adjusted, do that here.

Afterthoughts:

I like how at the end of the steps it gives you a chance to adjust a few things. I’ve also loved the use of quotes to help define a character. The steps were pretty straight forward. I did have to do a lot of page flipping, but I was able to track some things down. The book did reference the 5th edition Shadowrun core book once to reference additional equipment, but I didn’t really feel like I was missing anything. This sounds like a rules-lite version of the game when I read the core die-rolling process. I’ve been hearing that this game might be played at a local game store or at SaltCON. I may have to check it out.

I don’t know if I’d do any homebrewing for this. The cyberpunk genre, while interesting to play, hasn’t started any creative juices flowing. So that’s more of a me thing than an issue with the game.

Additional Notes:

If you are still reading my posts after twenty days of the Character Creation Challenge, I thank you. I know that some have been entertained by this. Feel free to send me any feedback on the characters or the site in general. I am getting some creative ideas from my attempts (even the unsuccessful ones) and the entries of others. One I’m really intrigued by may even lead to my first homebrewed RPG system.

Coming Up Next:

Night’s Black Agents

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.

On Day 18 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge I elected to use Vintage Space: Retro Disco Sci-Fi Roleplaying. I don’t recall where I read this from, but this game is a retro-clone/refit of the FASA Star Trek RPG with some serial numbers filed off. So I thought I’d check it out and see how it stacks up.

The PDF is 70 pages long and lacks any bookmarks. The character creation process is listed on page six of the index but is found on page 12 of the PDF. There is no character sheet. Because of this I almost dropped the game from my list. But I remembered that in my early years of participating in roleplaying games that I just used a sheet of paper to write my characters down on. So I’ll whip something up on the word processor and see how it turns out.

Generating the character’s attributes is the first step. They are Strength (STR), Endurance (END), Intelligence (INT), Dexterity (DEX), Charisma (CHA) Luck (LUC) and Psychic Potential (PSY). These were the same attributes found in the FASA Star Trek RPG. However instead of using percentage scores, you have attributes plus skill added together for a number to roll under. To generate the attribute scores, some generic guidelines are listed, but on the next page it has the same guidelines adjusted with racial adjustments. So it would make sense to decide which race the character will be first and then follow those guidelines.

The races are Humans, Satora (aka Vulcans), Korrin (aka Andorians), Inush (Tellerites but dog based instead of pigs), Neyokso (aka Caitians) and Takka (an octopus based race that seems to be original). Since there are six of them, I rolled a D6 to randomly select one, which was Satoran. I rolled up the attributes and wrote them down on the home-made character sheet.

Next is the Hit Points. This is equal to your END attribute. Simple enough, I wrote it down.

Now the character is going through the Starfleet…. err…. Star Corps Academy. There I choose a division (aka department) to join which will determine the course of study. Yea pointy ear boy is going to be a member of the science department. I wrote down the skills as instructed.

Now if the character was just starting off as a newly minted Ensign, the training would stop there. While this is tempting, I think I’ll make this guy a Lieutenant who is the Chief Science Officer on a smaller vessel. So he gets to add one rank to any one skill for Lt. (junior grade) and one rank for full Lieutenant.

The next section was a character creation example. It seems to have followed what I read previously except that each skill point meant that I pick a specialty that would match the skill. I went back up through the earlier pages and I didn’t see that mentioned in the rules. I found some listed specialties later in the book. Also in the example is the note that each character gets one passion skill (interests or hobbies). If you use a specialty your character has, you roll 2D20 and take the best roll.

Because this character is Vulc…. Satoran I looked over the Psionic Abilities. Especially since I had a very high roll when generating the PSY score. The racial description stated that Satoran characters have unrestricted access to psychic education and training, but the section on Psionic Abilities states that you lose the Passions skill and one rank of a skill that is gained at the academy. But is that only for Non-Satorans? Would I list all of the psionic skills or just pick a number of them? It states that there are specialties, but again, how many will this character get? Uh, I’ll just note that the character has them.

The book then goes into some of the system explanations (roll a D20 wanting a low roll for success on both skills and savings throws). I finally made it down to the equipment section. The items your character has is dependent upon a requisition clearance level that is rank based, but there is no chart for the clearance levels. Ugh. There are several items listed. I’ll just write down what a Chief of Science who is a Lieutenant would have. I named him Troxtor and took a screen shot of the document.

Afterthoughts:

I mentioned the AI images (you can’t really call it art) in my White Lies 2nd Edition entry. While those looked like paintings with some emotion, the AI images in this publication were very distracting and pulled me away from the text. Once again the eyes were off on quite a few images (pupils of different sizes and looking in different directions, etc.) No image matched the others in a theme. You couldn’t look at multiple images and say “yes these are from the same in-game universe”. At least the White Lies book had some consistency. I think the worse part is how plastic and soulless everything looked. Characters had no emotion, nothing to express more than “I’m just an action figure in a pose”. Even the ships were just jumbles dumped into a pot and poured out into a bowl.

I wonder if this was an early draft? There was some minor errors that an editor would have caught. While I was going through the creation process and reading some of the sections, I got the urge to re-write some sections to make it smoother.

I can see where the FASA Star Trek RPG inspired this system. It’s not a direct descendant of the game that has a cult following, but the DNA is present. I can see where references were pulled from other shows with the serial numbers filled off. I would often say “Oh, those are Klingons from Star Trek and those are Cylons from Battlestar Galactica.” The system itself looks like it could work at the table pretty easy. I wouldn’t mind getting a few friends together just to try it out. I could even lead to some homebrewing. But it needs something more, it needs something to give it the extra kick needed to say “I want to play this game.” Clean up the character creation steps is something that I would recommend for a start. If there is an update or re-write of the game, I’d even pay a few extra bucks just to have a publication with real art that gives flavor to the universe.

Additional Notes:

Wow, just wow. Yesterday when I was checking the hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge on Mastodon, I came across a post by Lester Smith. He had posted on his blog about his involvement in the 2021 challenge and how it helped him to climb out of a bout of depression. Creating the characters got him back into writing and he has released several new roleplaying games including one called D6xD6 Dungeons. I decided to buy a copy to check it out. Then I started going through his blog. I eventually had to stop myself because I had items that I needed to get done. Mr. Smith had written the first edition of the Dark Conspiracy RPG and contributed to a lot of other works in the gaming industry. Now he is “retired” and just writes the stuff he wants to because he enjoys it. It sounds like a goal of mine. David Gerrold once said that he writes the books he wants to read. We’ll I’d like to get to the same level as Lester Smith and write the games that I’d love to play. I guess I was taken aback by hearing how the Character Creation Challenge had helped someone. It wonder if this is what Jimmy Doohan felt when he had helped save a fans life from suicide. Note, I’m not saying that Mr. Smith was at that level in his issues, but I got the same feelings that Mr. Doohan had when read this blog post.

I started this challenge to have fun and I invited others to participate in that fun. Having fun was the goal. But I should also remember that participating in the group activity called a roleplaying game can be very therapeutic as well. Even just the act of writing, drawing, painting, getting together, etc. for a game would be therapeutic. I guess I’m just awed.

Coming Up Next:

Fantasy Hero

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Here we are at Day 13 of the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge. Today I’ll be using Star Ace originally published by Pacesetter in 1984. Sometime in my gaming past, I had created a character for this game, but I never remember playing it. Perhaps we never got out of session zero where we were getting everything ready. In the post I linked above, I mentioned that the game wasn’t on DriveThruRPG or other sites that I could find. Buying a game that I would probably never play at Ebay prices didn’t make sense to me. A reader sent me a message after that post stating that the PDFs was available on the Paizo website at a reasonable price. So I snagged them. It only has the three books from the boxed set, but it would be enough for me to use in the challenge.

The three books are the Star Team Basic Training Manual, the Star Team Wilderness Briefing Manual and Deuces Wild, an introductory Star Ace adventure. The first two PDFs are kinda bookmarked. They only bookmarked the start of each chapter instead of the contents. But considering that these are scans of the original books, I guess that is more than what we could have received. The character creation process starts on page five of the Basic Training Manual. I’m instructed to use three ten-sided dice and I write my name next to Player on the character sheet.

Next we select a race for the character. I slipped down to the end of the chapter to read the descriptions. Crystal Clones (some sort of human/crystal hybrids) sounded interesting. The Humans (sounds boring). The Kleibor (Large humanoid polar bears with telepathy). Then there is the Traka (an agile cat like race). None of these really knock my socks off. So by a random roll (my decision) this character will be a Traka.

Next, I have to select three skills. Two of them have to match the Order I’ve selected. Uh, I haven’t selected an Order yet (goes and looks up what an Order even is). Hearts, Spades, Diamonds and Clubs (the card suites). OK, but what do they do? Ah, a few pages down finally describes them and they sound like the classes. Spades are the weapon specialists, Heart the techs, Clubs is the noetic skills (mental powers) and Diamond are decoy activities like deception and stealth (and for some reason called ducks). So Diamond it is. And I finally found the skills (I really wish the bookmarks were more precise) and wrote them down.

Now on step four we are finally generating the Basic Ability Scores. Roll 3d10, multiply the sum by 2 and add 20 for results between 26 and 80. Um… OK. I wrote down my results since in step five I assign them to one of the eight abilities. Strength, Dexterity, Agility, Personality, Perception, Willpower, Luck and Stamina. From these scores, other statistics and skill scores are generated (there is a lot of math in this creation process). This actually took us through several short steps.

Step nine is to find the base scores for each skill using the mathematical formula provided in each skill description. Then step ten states “Find the character’s actual scores by adding 15 to the base scores obtained in step 10.” Uh… I hope you mean step 9. Yea, I’m going with that (blasted lack of editing).

In step eleven we select a name (I wish they had given us examples) and a background. I plucked Balkor out of the air. As for his background, since the Star Aces are the Robbin Hoods of their time, yea he joined up because he wanted to steal stuff and give it to the less fortunate.

There is already some basic equipment (weapon, armor, starfighter) on the character sheet. But nothing else is listed in the character creation steps. Going back before the steps started I did see a note that stated that starting characters roll 2d10+10 for their starting chips (money). You also get a kit to a skill that you use. So I’m assuming I have a forging kit and a lockpick kit. None of the other equipment made any sense to my character. Ya know what, I’m tired of sloshing through this, I’m done. Here’s the character sheet.

Afterthoughts:

Since the game is the year 3512, I noticed that the rules didn’t treat humans like they would have been in the 1980s. Longer life span, slightly larger size by a few inches, etc. Too many times I see a game treat humans as they are right now. In a hundred years we should have better ways to stay healthy and expand our life spans.

The character creation process seemed to be all over the place, which was typical from games published in the 80’s. Certain steps were referencing other sections that you hadn’t selected yet. For example, picking skills that would match your Order, but you hadn’t selected an order yet. It made me want to re-write the steps so that everything flowed in order. Another example, the skill descriptions were after the starship descriptions? Personality and Perception both have the abbreviation of PER? (I think Perception is PEN? that shows up in some of the formulas) Who edited this book?

Playing or homebrewing for this game. Likelihood is very low. I wouldn’t turn down a session to try it out (it looked like there was a lot of chart consulting to see what type of results came up from your rolls). If I was really going to play or run a generic sci-fi game, there are a lot more that have caught my eye like Frontier Space or one of the Traveller variants.

Additional Notes:

I’m very thankful that Paizo made this game available on their website, but that site needs a lot of help. There are a lot of links to sections that have nothing listed in them. And when you order PDF copies off of the site, it is like pulling teeth to get the downloads to come through. I’ve never had this happen with other publishers where I’ve purchased directly from them. Not only was I having issues with Star Ace, but when I picked up a charity bundle that contained a lot of books for Pathfinder and Starfinder, I wanted to pull my hair out. I had sent their customer service an email and they responded right away. But when I sent some feedback on the lack of quality on the website, I never received a response. Shrug, oh well.

The past few days have been extremely busy. I wish I had set up a buffer just in case real life issues came up. But I was able to get through it. I’ve already seen one person drop out. If you need to back off but still want to complete the challenge, you can. Some participants would make multiple characters for a familiar system on one day. What ever you need to do, do it. That includes taking care of yourself. This is a project for fun, not an assignment to be graded by a teacher.

Coming Up Next:

Ninjas and Superspies

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.