Character Creation Challenge 31: There Is No Spoon

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

31: There Is No Spoon

And finally, an RPG that was first trialled on the RPGnet forums, where I saw this challenge.

(Bias note: I was there. I’m in the Playtesting and contributions section.)

There Is No Spoon is the completely unofficial RPG for The Matrix, created by Steve D. It covers rebels in the Matrix itself, rather than having any rules for the Real.

D6 based, it has one stat, Matrix representing your ability to hack or otherwise influence the artificial reality on the fly, and a selection of skills which start at 3. Roll versus Matrix and a skill on two separate dice - double successes are best, then Matrix successes, then skill successes.

Recreating a test character...

Apostate

Apostate

Players have six points to spend at character generation. One point will buy one point of Matrix; everything else can go towards Cool Stuff.

Matrix 3

Gun Fu 4

Kung Fu 4

Perception 4

Characters also have a Deal, a defining trait, and a Fate as determined by the Oracle, which the GM decides. So be ready to have your concept go sideways in a plot twist.

Deal

Lost the will to live and just looking for a way to die with meaning

Apostate doubted the world before he was brought out, later than was ideal. He was going to be a father and wondered what kind of world he was bringing a child into, before getting caught up in the strike that led to his escape. Now he wonders if love, family and everything that was supposed to make life worth living even exist. So now he fights the great lie. But maybe something can make him believe...

Character Creation Challenge 30: Dead of Night

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

30: Dead of Night second edition

(website)

(Bias note: I know the artist.)

Dead of Night is a movie-style horror game mainly meant for one-shots, with Attribute+2D10 based resolution and a Survival Point mechanic where spending grants benefits but increases danger and leaning into danger is a good way to get them back. It sets out its stall early on by calling its character generation chapter “Creating Your Victim”.

It has short example hooks for every subgenre and four ready-to-go movies complete with pregenerated victims and special rules, but going with a classic slasher...

Theo

Genre-referential film student

Character Creation Challenge 29: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

29: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay fourth edition

(website, starter adventures and characters)

(Bias note: I know the art director.)

29 is the average a human has in a percentile statistic they’re not particularly good at in WFRP...

WFRP is the classic grimdark fantasy RPG, which looks like Renaissance D&D but plays more like Call Of Cthulhu with its apocalyptic cults and various risks to life and limb. The fourth edition goes back to basics, complete with a revamped and heavily supported update of the classic Enemy Within campaign.

The first edition had pretty random character generation, notably with Careers ranging from Beggar to Noble. The first edition Character Pack includes tables to randomise all the way down to birthplace, family members and name.

I haven’t had a chance to play the new edition yet, so let’s see how random I can go...

Olaf Bauer

Human Herbalist

WandaVision 4

Our first good look outside...

Character Creation Challenge 28: Star Trek Adventures

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

28: Star Trek Adventures

(website, quickstart)

Having made characters for Star Wars, Doctor Who, Buffy and The One Ring, following the challenge starter’s example with Star Trek. I’ve played all the official games from FASA’s onward and seen a lot of different approaches to the setting and style.

Star Trek Adventures has a fairly straightforward system involving multiple D20s and D6s, with a lot of options to help each other and gain other bonuses, such that characters feel competent from the outset but some of the dice rolling feels unnecessary.

Characters are created by a short lifepath system. I’ve created a character for one series before and chose a human because nobody else at the table did. I played the captain for the same reason.

So going a bit further (though not as far as the options for creating a DIY species or a non-Starfleet character) and rolling the random species table for the TNG era.

Lieutenant Commander Tak jav Krer

Tellarite Chief Engineer

The Nevers news

Screenwriter Philippa Goslett is the new showrunner for The Nevers.

Character Creation Challenge 27: The One Ring

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

27: The One Ring

The second edition of The One Ring is coming to Kickstarter soon, so looking back at the first edition which I haven’t had a chance to do anything with since the playtest. (Bias note!)

Following several official Middle-earth RPGs, including the second RPG I tried to run and bounced off hard, it’s quite light and focuses on travel as part of the adventure and on the importance of hope and fellowship against Shadow and despair.

Character generation is playbook-ish, with Culture deciding a Blessing, starting skills and a list of specialties, and then one of six Backgrounds determining starting Attributes, a favoured skill and some character features, before adjusting a character by Favoured Attribute and Calling (class) and spending any previous experience (10 by default) on skills. The process is quick and straightforward.

Halla, daughter of Halfdan

Barding Treasure-Hunter

Character Creation Challenge 26: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

26: All Flesh Must Be Eaten revised edition

(website, quickstart)

26 letters in the alphabet, and the last one is Z. And among geeks, Z stands for Zebra. No, wait. Zombies.

I already covered Cinematic Unisystem with Buffy, All Flesh Must Be Eaten uses original Unisystem. More specific skills, no Drama Points. It also splits Life Points and Endurance Points to reflect fatigue and exhaustion separately from injuries, suitable for a survival game.

It also has a more involved paranormal power system, though less so than the first Unisystem game WitchCraft and its sequel Armageddon. AFMBE also has several supplements expanding it into other genres with a sprinkling of zombies on top of pirates, Westerns and space opera. I’m going with the core rules and the default zombie apocalypse.

Kristen Danner

College newspaper reporter

Character Creation Challenge 25: Vampire: The Requiem

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

25: Vampire: The Requiem second edition

(website, quickstart)

25, because it has five clans and five Covenants in the core rules (as well as a sixth Clan later on and talk of other Clans and Covenants).

(Bias note: I know the then line developer.)

Vampire: The Requiem second edition started as Blood And Smoke: The Strix Chronicle, a second edition in all but name, before the then owners agreed to a full second edition. Introducing Touchstones for Humanity and features like Aspirations both in and out of character, it influenced the subsequent fifth edition of Vampire: The Masquerade.

It’s a modern horror game about vampires living among us, this edition having a stronger focus on their interactions with humans - they risk losing Humanity by avoiding contact with people as well as harming them, and also by experiencing things humans can’t like surviving a mortal wound.

The five clans are archetypes, each with a unique Discipline, and variety is added by various Bloodlines and by the religious and political Covenants which often coexist in a game’s city setting.

I’ve run this edition for players familiar with and new to the game, but haven’t had a chance to play it...

Joshua

Drifter

100 years of robots

Karel Čapek’s play R.U.R. premiered on January 25th, 1921, giving us the word Robot.

Character Creation Challenge 24: Verge

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

24: Verge

A game created in 24 hours.

There are a variety of 24 hour game writing challenges out there, the one from 2003-2005 still has its site up and RPG Geek ran a few years as well, but I found this one by looking up 24 Hours on DriveThruRPG.

A fantasypunk RPG by FU creator Nathan Russell, set in a vast nameless City with a half baroque and half Gothic aesthetic, this 2009 game runs to 16 pages plus an advert. It reminds me of A|State and the mix of grime and tricorns predates the computer game series Dishonored.

Blake

Street tough

Character Creation Challenge 23: Psi*Run

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

23: Psi-Run

I was going to try The 23rd Letter for day 23, but I don’t own a physical copy and it isn’t available on PDF anywhere I can find, so taking my first look at a different game about Scanners style psychics on the run from sinister agencies hunting them.

Psi-Run is a narrative game designed for one-shots running about five hours, or miniseries of shorter sessions.

“The characters, called Runners, have psychic powers and amnesia. The one thing they know for certain is that they are being pursued by their former captors, called Chasers. Over the course of the game, the players roll dice and assign them to categories, called Risks, in order to achieve their goals, answer the questions about the Runners past, use their psi powers, avoid harm, and avoid recapture by the Chasers.”

The amnesia angle nudges it towards Scanners meets The Bourne Identity.

Characters start as partially blank slates with a lot of questions. More details get filled in during the game.

--

Runner

Batman: The Animated Series retrospective

Heart Of Batman, a feature-length history of the Animated Series. Via Cartoon Brew.

Character Creation Challenge 22: Come Dice With Me

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

22: Come Dice With Me

“A role-playing game inspired by a competitive dinner party show”

Kieron Gillen, writer of the “trapped in a fantasy RPG” comic series DIE and its RPG spinoff, created a party game and dropped it online free.

“Each player generates a contestant in a filmed reality show competition where they are all trying to host the best dinner party. Each contestant takes a turn throwing a party, and then is scored by the other contestants. The contestant with the highest score wins. While the contestants are competing to throw the best dinner party, the players are collaborating to make the most entertaining TV show.”

The game comes with random tables for character traits and professions (it needs D6s, and has tables set up with 6 sets of 1-6, so if you need a character trait or profession this page may be more generally useful. and a location table as well) but I'll set the game in Edinburgh because it's on there.

Chet, health writer

WandaVision 3

With WandaVision episode three airing, Disney+ retroactively reveals titles and synopses for the first two. Not that I’m any the wiser.

Character Creation Challenge 21: A L I E N

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

21: ALIEN

(website)

A game I read in 2020 and which is set in the 2100s.

A L I E N is a new, fairly light system for the setting, unlike the heavily tactical ALIENS RPG released in 1991 by Leading Edge Games. I talked about it here.

The game presents the setting after the first three films (and the prequels) in a time of uncertainty when human contact with the Xenomorph is still largely unknown. The background material draws from the expanded universe and its divergent timelines, notably other versions of ALIEN³ and the Dark Horse ALIENS comics which were initially set after the second film with alien contact becoming widely known and a threat to humanity as a whole. So you have options if you want the threat to be known or unknown as play begins. It also includes some other things out there in the dark (including the Harvesters from the Leading Edge game!) and its first big adventure introduces another.

It also has two play styles, Campaign and Cinematic, determined by how long you expect the game to run and how long you expect the characters to survive.

Cinematic adventures default to pregens complete with conflicting agendas and secrets, so I’ll make a Campaign character, for the Frontier Colonists framework. I’ll make a human rather than an android, which have different rules, notably not being affected by the Stress mechanic. Picking from the short list of playbook-style Careers...

Franks

Roughneck

Character Creation Challenge 20: REIGN

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

20: REIGN

(website)

A game with a strong political focus.

REIGN is on one level a regular fantasy RPG based on the One Roll Engine, but also a game about political factions. As well as each player creating a single character by point buy or random rolls, the group also creates and controls a Company, a group with some power in the realm from a military unit to a political faction. Character-level actions give bonuses to Company-level actions as they move against other Companies.

Imagining a four player group, I control a quarter of the Company points budget, but imagining this game was my idea I’ll go first and decide what kind of Company we’re in. Let’s start with two points each, not the smallest (one) or biggest (three) of the starting options.

The Inner Circle

Self-proclaimed inner circle of one of several possible heirs

Might

How much your group can accomplish through the application of violence.

Treasure

Your group’s fiscal wherewithal and fiduciary infrastructure. Also, cash.

Influence

Soft influence. Persuasion. The stuff of eavesdropping and smear campaigns.

1 here, as I’m thinking of an intrigue game.

Territory

Land, property and people who do what you say.

Sovereignty

The loyalty of your followers and their initiative in pursuing your will.

1 here, as a Company has to have at least 1 Sovereignty to function.

The Inner Circle starts with some internal structure and a smidgeon of influence. The next likely buy would be Treasure, and perhaps then the Company can start being granted land and acquiring loyal troops.

For there is always light.

For there is always light. If only we’re brave enough to see it. If only we’re brave enough to be it.

Amanda Gorman, The Hill We Climb

Happy birthday Buffy!

Buffy is 40 today! For one of her listed birthdays. Two of which are in successive shots in I, Robot... You Jane.

She shares this one with Dolly Parton, who executive produced the show, and Edgar Allen Poe, who didn’t.

Character Creation Challenge 19: Doctor Who

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

19: Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (Cubicle 7)

(website)

(Bias note: I playtested the first edition with a particular brief to look at the flexibility of character creation, and I’m in the Special Thanks for the Vortex system Primeval RPG.)

Cubicle 7’s Doctor Who Roleplaying Game (formerly Doctor Who: Adventures In Time And Space) has had several editions since its end-of-2009 original release but they’re mainly tidying up typos and offering character sheets for new characters rather than major rule changes. I’ll use the most recent 2015 version with Peter Capaldi on the cover (there’s no Jodie Whittaker edition at present).

It’s aimed at introducing young players to RPGs, with a good amount of help for new GMs as well. 2D6-based, it shows a strong influence from Cinematic Unisystem (Buffy The Vampire Slayer) with characters of different power levels balanced by narrative-influencing Story Points. Its most distinctive feature is the initiative system ranked by what you’re doing, where talking goes first, then running, then doing anything else that isn’t fighting, and then fighting.

I’ve run games with new incarnations of the Doctor and their companions, with other Time Lords, with people drawn into a TARDIS searching for its pilot, with modern Earth groups investigating mysteries locally, and with other ways and reasons to travel space and time. This character is for the latter...

Walker

Drifter in the timestream

Scion: Dragon and Masks Of The Mythos

Two, yes, two Scion sourcebooks in one Kickstarter! Dragon is a new game subset with a new character type, Masks Of The Mythos a sourcebook with a new unhallowed Pantheon.

Character Creation Challenge 18: Black Seven

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

18: Black Seven

(website)

(Bias note: I know the creator)

Black Seven is a game about stealth missions, breaking them down into multiple stages as many RPGs do combat while abstracting everything else.

And coincidentally, the inside cover is a “redacted memo” dated January 18th 20--!

Breaker

Character Creation Challenge 17: TOON

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

17: TOON

I restarted running a game tonight, so something very light.

TOON is the third RPG I ever ran after Fighting Fantasy and a disastrous attempt at MERP, and that pretty much set my rules-lightness preferences going forward. Greg Costikyan went on to design d6 Star Wars, so this has an important heritage too, a major step in genre emulation.

Cap’n Quack

Character Creation Challenge 16: Kids On Bikes

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

16: Kids On Bikes

(website)

And a game I own but haven’t done anything with. A “teen” day seemed like a good time for a game about kid and teen heroes.

By the time Kids On Bikes came out the genre of the same name was well established, and already had some prototype RPGs like Little Fears, so I was a bit surprised when it had options for playing adults as well as children and teens. (This does reflect the modern genre flagship Stranger Things where each season often has the kids, teens and adults pursuing the same problem separately for half the episodes.)

It’s also designed to work with one-shots with suggestions for ongoing series, so character creation is mostly picking from a playbook and questions about character connections. And it begins and ends with collaborative creation, starting with the setting and the town and ending with the central powered character (like E.T. or the young Eleven) who is created and controlled by the group.

I’m doing town creation here as it’s the most straightforward bit to do solo beyond picking a playbook.

Midville, Iowa

1. Our adventure takes place in… Midville, Iowa

2. The industry our location is best known for is… corn, but there’s also an auto trade hub

3. Our town is famous for… hometown of the Tigers QB

4. Our town is infamous for... the Miss Midville Pageant vote fraud last year

5. Economically, our town is… (prospering, floundering, stagnant, etc.) getting by

6. A notable local organization is… (Duplicate in a five-player game) Thunderbird Auto

7. A notable local landmark is… (Duplicate in a three-player game or five-player game) the wildlife park, home to a herd of bison

8. Our school’s sports team is called… Rockets

And one rumour about the town... Thunderbird is looking to pull out. Of course, this rumour seems to come around every summer, but this year people seem worried...

Character Creation Challenge 15: Over The Edge

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

15: Over The Edge third edition

(website)

Over The Edge is a rules light system with a lot of flexibility, built to run a game of surrealist fiction with a base setting not unlike William Burroughs’ Interzone from The Naked Lunch.

This is its third edition, I haven’t played or run it since first. It’s even rules-lighter than the first and second.

But I’m doing it here now because WandaVision premiered today, a lightly surreal TV series with more going on than appears on its sunny surface.

One of Over The Edge’s first edition campaign hooks had the player characters discovering that they’re player characters in an RPG and reality breaking down around them. So it’s about as close as I can find to an RPG for what I think is happening in WandaVision.

There are also RPGs with reality at an extra remove where the PCs are actors or gamers and can influence the stories they’re in, which could also work, but I want a character who’s stuck in a false reality rather than knowingly visiting.

I also can’t find an RPG for a straight-up sitcom where everything turns out fine at the end of every episode (unlike Fiasco which is weighted towards everything routinely ending in disaster and isn’t really built for recurring characters) and for an actual sitcom game like WandaVision’s influence Bewitched I might use TOON or Risus, but OTE still works for its loose character definitions although you’d have to cut out the Strikes mechanic for damage.

Every OTE 3 character has a Question Mark for something they usually are, a Main Trait, a Side Trait and a Trouble.

Maddie Merlin

Starting at a new job in a new city and certainly not a witch

Level 2, Expert

Fight 1, Sway 1, Weird 2

Question Mark

Sensible?

Main Trait

Witch (as a Main Trait, she can move objects with her mind, cast long-term spells, and possibly influence the reality she appears to live in)

Side Trait

Blending In (covering up her supernatural abilities and trying to act normal)

Trouble

Starting to think everything else isn’t as normal as she thinks either

WandaVision

WandaVision has started with the first two episodes (of nine) around classic sitcom length. They really went all in with the styles.

Character Creation Challenge 14: Trail Of Cthulhu

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

14: Trail Of Cthulhu

(Player’s Guide, website, free resources including adventures)

And after Call Of Cthulhu, the same character in the GUMSHOE love letter Trail Of Cthulhu.

(Bias note: I know one of the publishers.)

GUMSHOE was created for investigative games, to avoid the bottleneck of somebody missing a vital clue. Skills are divided into Investigative and General, and PCs always find the key clues.

Jerome Talbot Jr.

Professor of History

Cults Of The Blood Gods

Cults Of The Blood Gods is out now for Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition, featuring the religions of the Damned from a handful of adherents to a global force, as well as rules for the Hecata, the sort-of-united Clan of Death. And some setting material about Edinburgh. (And St. Louis, where I set my last long game. Neither of them resemble my personal versions but they both provide good setting hooks in a couple of pages each.)

Character Creation Challenge 13: Call Of Cthulhu

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

13: Call Of Cthulhu 7th Edition

(website, quickstart)

It kind of had to be a horror game for Day 13, and I’ve already done Vampire: The Masquerade and Dread (and Buffy) so going back to the founding horror RPG Call Of Cthulhu.

While I own various books for it I haven’t had a chance to play 7th edition, so I’m curious to see how much has changed.

The quickstart still contains The Haunting as its introductory adventure, which has been in print for decades, so some things remain familiar, if not comfortingly so...

Recycling a name from The Cthulhu Hack game in the autumn:

Jerome Talbot

Professor of History

Sounds Like Hell at 1000 posts!

And still barely into the first act of the second episode!

Character Creation Challenge 12: UMLAUT

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

12: Umläut: Game Of Metal

(Bias note: I know the artists, though not the designer.)

“Vicious Demons. Mighty Axes. Flaming Skulls.

These things adorn the covers of hundreds of Heavy Metal albums every year.”

A game where you create a band instead of a single character.

Umläut is designed for one-shots with a three hour timer, with players’ Bands battling for the approval of the Audience and the Glory that follows, Statistics rising and falling, and each Band’s saga ending in fame and fortune, success on their own terms, obscurity, or the kind of thing they make documentaries about years later and half the Band refuse to participate.

Bakersville

Next-generation West Coast grunge kids

Character Creation Challenge 11: Relics

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

11: Relics: A Game Of Angels

(website, quickstart, Twitter account complete with a long list of random forms and Relics)

Bias note: A game I playtested and could soon be working on.

Relics is an indie RPG of fallen angels on modern Earth, looking for answers about why Heaven is closed and collecting items with fragments of divine power for a possible future conflict.

It has tarot card based resolution using the Fugue system from Alas Vegas, and part of character generation is deciding what happened when the characters first met. I’ll stop before that point.

“You can go through this process with a concept already in mind, or you can go in with a blank slate and let random results prompt your imagination.”

Having done the former in playtesting, I’ll do the latter here.

Thorn, planter of the garden

Character Creation Challenge 10: Dread

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

10: Dread

A game with a questionnaire instead of numerical statistics.

Dread is a horror game that uses Jenga as its system, with an increasing chance of characters being taken out of the game when the tower falls on their move. It’s mostly set up for one-shots, though it’s possible to do a longer game, and character creation works by the host (GM) choosing thirteen often leading questions for the adventure and possibly for each character.

With no GM here I’ll fill in Character 1 from one of the pre-written adventures available on the site, Beneath The Full Moon. Spoilers ahead!

Doug

Philosophy Major regretting going on a camping trip

Conpulsion: Grimoire, April 9th-11th

Conpulsion 2021 has a date, a theme, and a logo. It will be happening online.

Character Creation Challenge 9: Masks: A New Generation

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

9: Masks: A New Generation

(website includes a core playbook PDF)

A game with playbook-style character creation.

Playbooks were the big hit of Apocalypse World and the following Powered By The Apocalypse games, where you pick an archetype, choose which of a small selection of stat blocks, skill spreads and powers you want, and in some you can even go with a checklist for names and descriptions.

Masks: A New Generation is about the growing pains of a team of teenage superheroes, with playbooks like the positive Beacon and the mystical Doomed (both the Teen Titans and New Mutants have one) and since I’m not at a table I’ll roll a D10 to choose a playbook. 5 gets me the Janus - the character most concerned about their double life, the only one with a Secret Identity section in their rules, and the sample character art wearing a Spider-Man style full face mask with eye spots.

The Flip

Character Creation Challenge 8: Jim Henson's Labyrinth

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

8: Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game

(website, example of play)

A totally new game to me!

It felt apt for David Bowie’s birthday.

A rules-light game, with most of the book given over to a modular adventure, as the characters try to get their Goal back from the Goblin King before the clock strikes thirteen.

Basically roll 1D6, unless you have a helpful Trait where you roll 2D6 and pick the best or a relevant Flaw where you roll 2D6 and choose the worst.

Elizabeth

Character Creation Challenge 7: Leverage

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

7: Leverage

(OOP due to its licence ending, but a new form of the system is available through Cortex Prime)

A game I have the whole run of, have once played in a one-shot and have never gotten players for.

The game of the con and heist TV show (whose creator John Rogers later wrote a largely systemless con and heist advice chapter for FATE Worlds), it would be great for its use of flashback mechanics as short-cuts to heist planning and retconning “of course I did that!” alone, but I also love its use of the character-class style roles as stats.

It has a two-step option to create most of your character and then decide final steps during the first session, with other players assigning some tags along the way, as well as an option to just do it all yourself. I’ll go halfway to prepare for a Recruitment Job intro session.

Marcello

Thief

Character Creation Challenge (D)6: Star Wars

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

I’ve done a game I worked on, my first game as player and GM, the game I ran my favourite series with, the game I’m currently playing and the game I’m currently running. So, next... the next game I might run. And D6 based for Day 6.

6: Star Wars: The Roleplaying Game D6, first edition

(recently remastered and reprinted for its 30th anniversary, but no official PDF or quickstart, descendants like D6 Space and Mini Six should give you an idea though)

With a D6 dice pool system descended from Ghostbusters and which influenced the likes of Shadowrun and the Storyteller System in turn, D6 Star Wars also added a lot to the original Expanded Universe, and ideas and references appear in the current canon as well. Apart from Chopper due to the Droid rules being odd, you could make the cast of Rebels by picking templates straight from the book.

I’ll DIY a template rather than choose one directly.

Vannik Dahl

Bodyguard

Jackie's Dreaming

A Changeling: The Dreaming 20 Bundle in aid of Jackie Cassada’s partner Nicky Rea. All money from this offer after payment gateway fees goes to help Nicky through a tough time.

Character Creation Challenge 5: Vampire: The Masquerade

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

5: Vampire: The Masquerade 5th Edition

(quickstart, website)

The game I’m currently running, specifically the new edition. I haven’t had a chance to play it since the playtest. V5 makes some major changes to the Storyteller System, notably Hunger Dice replacing both Blood Points for power use and the Botch system for bad rolls, rising half the time you use many vampire powers so spiking unpredictably.

The changes start with character generation, where you assign set numbers rather than pools. So for example with the nine Attributes you take one at 4, three at 3, four at 2, one at 1. As someone who always avoided leaving an Attribute at 1 in previous editions it gives me something to go on my Experience Point shopping list right away.

It goes in a few steps which are all pretty straightforward but it’s good to check what works well with what, like which Attributes are often rolled with a given vampire Discipline power.

This is a character I have in mind for a chronicle I hope to play soon. It’s a classic setup for a social character.

Paris

Clan Toreador

Club promoter, anarch supporter

MET Vampire Volume 2

Mind’s Eye Theatre launching a major companion to their current Vampire: The Masquerade LARP rules. Note the FAQ that this isn’t a V5 update, though it does take some of its ideas and logo, like the current rulebook was influenced by V20 but included its own metaplot developments and the like. The basic electronic option is a specific app rather than a PDF, this may change.

19 years on the RPGnet forums

The current RPGnet forums launched 19 years ago today. They’re my first daily port of call online, home to the original TWH Actual Play writeups (yes I know I should back those up) and the community of literally several readers they built up, as well as various play-by-post games, the plot hook inspired by song title and other list threads and the birthday requests, and the source of some lifelong friendships.

Abyss

Abyss, Kickstarting now. Fighting monsters in an action horror style via PBTA, from lead writer Alison Cybe.

New Gamemaster Month

New Gamemaster Month is back for 2021!

Character Creation Challenge 4: ICONS

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

4: ICONS Superpowered Roleplaying: The Assembled Edition

Another random generation system with much more varied results than Fighting Fantasy, ICONS is a pretty light 2D6-based superhero RPG influenced by the original Marvel Super Heroes. It has a point-based generation sidebar, which I used last time I actually created a character, but the random tables can give you interesting ideas.

EREBUS, Lord Of Darkness

The Great

Catherine The Great from the creator of The Favourite. Expect nice costumes, wit, and sudden bursts of violence. Huzzah!

Character Creation Challenge 3: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

3: Buffy The Vampire Slayer (revised edition)

(demo at the BBC Cult TV page, which shows most of the system including most of the Drama Points)

The game of the series this blog is named for, the longest game I’ve ever run. So this was gonna happen.

And outside of play-by-post games I’ve only ever gotten to play it for one run of about six weeks. So I tend to jump at the chance to play a Hero type rather than a White Hat, the two main character power options balanced by access to Drama Points. And while I have entirely too many Hero ideas, for simplicity I often go with a Vampire Slayer. But I went with a slayer for my last PBP, and this character appeared as an NPC in my last game as Director...

Abigail Marsden, emo teen bearer of an inherited mystical burden

Type: Hero

Description: (eye-roll emote)

Example quote: “Whaaaaaat?”

Character Creation Challenge 2: Fighting Fantasy

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

The RPG I started with.

2: Fighting Fantasy

Falchion

Swordsman

Skill D6+6 = 10

Stamina 2D6+12 = 18

Luck D6+6 = 9

Okay, not the most interesting reading.

2A: Advanced Fighting Fantasy 

(quickstart)

Character Creation Challenge 1: Trinity Continuum

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

1: Trinity Continuum

(Storypath System Preview)

Dr. James Musa

Neptune Foundation frontline doctor

Look into your heart and you will see...

I just rewatched Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves for the first time in some years. It’s your basic summer family adventure movie with a bit of fantasy and some jokes, and the weirdest thing about it now is that it didn’t have an obvious sequel hook. What were they thinking?

New Year, New Place, New Plot

Someone I know just moved to a bigger room in the same apartment building and was commenting on how much even this move involved. Which got me thinking...

You move, and when you start unpacking you find things that aren’t yours, in the boxes you packed yourself.

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

31 Day Character Creation Challenge

Generate a starting character for an RPG every day for a month.

Some I know well, some I don’t. Some random, some point-based, some other methods.

The tricky part may well be coming up with names.

1: Trinity Continuum

2: Fighting Fantasy

3: Buffy The Vampire Slayer

4: ICONS Assembled Edition

5: Vampire: The Masquerade V5

6: Star Wars D6

7: Leverage

8: Jim Henson’s Labyrinth: The Adventure Game

9: Masks: A New Generation

10: Dread

11: Relics: A Game Of Angels

12: Umläut: Game Of Metal

13: Call Of Cthulhu

14: Trail Of Cthulhu

15: Over The Edge

16: Kids On Bikes

17: TOON

18: Black Seven

19: Doctor Who Roleplaying Game

20: REIGN

21: A L I E N

22: Come Dice With Me

23: Psi-Run

24: Verge

25: Vampire: The Requiem 2

26: All Flesh Must Be Eaten

27: The One Ring

28: Star Trek Adventures

29: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 4

30: Dead of Night

31: There Is No Spoon

Over this month I’ve created characters for games I know inside and out, and games I’ve never read before. I’ve used point buy, random tables, and other means like lists of questions. I’ve made individuals but also groups and a town. Some have taken a couple of minutes and some have taken a couple of hours. I’ve seen other entries create parties for games and introduce me to games I’d never heard of. I saw someone go with an idea to try the same character across different systems. I’ve learned quite a bit, and I hope I’ve passed on some learning as well.

And, naturally, I want to play some of these characters.

Happy New Year!

Best wishes for 2021. And hello to friends in mainland Europe.