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