James Bond 007 in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge

Greetings, January 14....

I GMd the hell out of this as a kid, but alas never got to play. Like many games of its era JB007 has an incredibly detailed character creation process that today felt onerous. Yes, I ended up with a very precise character, but the interaction of cost with appearance with the Fame system felt like a lot given how little we (as teenagers) paid attention to the Fame system in play. 

Anyway, JB007 is one of the few games optimized for single character play. It works well enough with a small group of agents, but it really sings with the solo hero, or perhaps two agents of parallel (or even opposing) factions moving to stop the greater threat of some third entity. But this is seldom how we get to play, so I'm instead building an agent with a very specific skill set that will hopefully integrate into another small group of agents with their own specialty. The thing to remember is that JB007 is not Mission Impossible, which is built for a small team with a complex plan and an unaware target. So much of JB007 is goading the opposition into making mistakes and then using your improvisational strengths to leverage those errors. 

Anyway, what I'm seeing is the teams Gambling/Disguise/Seduction person, the inside man. I could build From Rookie to 00 level PC, but I'd like to start at the Agent rank for this experiment, assuming part of a team of 2-4 agents. That gives me 6000 build points. Agents start at 40 Fame points

I immediately have to blow 320 of that on buying my Height and Weight – the more outside the norm you are, the more Fame Points you start with and the easier it is to recognize you. That's anathema to the disguise person, so I end up buying the second cheapest numbers (5'8" tall, 165 lbs.; I could have gone for the taller end, but it's easier to put in lifts for disguise than slouch all the time…), which means I start with a mere 10 Fame points (so far). Being Normal looking would also give me a minimum Fame expenditure, but if he's supposed to be the Seduction guy, and since this is James Bond, let's go with Striking. That's 80 more points so I'm down 400 Build Points and at 85 Fame 

JB007 Heroes have 5 Characteristics – Strength, Dexterity, Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence – and all of them start at 5 and go as high as 15. I don't think Oliver (Oliver Black. That's his name) doesn't need a lot of Strength and Dexterity side of things, that's what the other members of the team are for. Oliver's contributions will be on the Willpower, Perception, and Intelligence. I want to go pretty high here because the Characteristics are the basis for the other skills. I settle on 8 each for STR and DEX, and 12 WIL, 13 PER and 11 INT. 

There's some optional rules for characters: weaknesses and fields of experience. The former lets you scrounge a few points by taking compulsions or phobias appropriate to the genre. I've given Oliver a gambling compulsion for 100 extra points. The latter lets you define what you did before you were a spy, getting 20 build points, 6 fame points, and some Field of Experience (a yes or no skill that covers things that are kinda James Bondy but not James Bondy enough to deserve a skill; I took 5 years in Military Intelligence to get Board Games, Forensics, International Law, Military Science, Microphotography, and Political Science).

Taking a look at the sample character (Felix Lighter and Holly Goodhead) those Characteristics are about right.  The sample characters have 12-14 skills around the 20ish mark, so I'll aim for that. The skill list for JB007 is only 24 skills, tightly focused for the sorts of things James Bond does. Each skill costs 100 points to get at level 1, which adds to either one characteristic, the average of two, or, in the case of seduction, the average of WIL and your Charisma Skill. Everyone starts with 1 level of Charisma and Drive. 

I settled on a focus on Charisma, Disguise, Gambling, Local Customs and Seduction, boosting all of them to the 23 range. Fire Combat, HTH Combat, and Interrogation all go up to 17, and I have some back up skills in Drive, Cryptography, Electronics, Pickpocket and Lockpicking at 12-14. If I weren't planning the PC as being part of a larger team I might have spread the love a little more, but as it stands I think I'm good (other than a conspicuous lack of stealth, but if Oliver is in a room, odds are someone brought him there for some reason). 

A final explanation on how skills work – the GM assigns a difficulty factor, which is a multiplier to your skill. If you roll under that number you succeed, but the better you roll, the better the outcome. With Oliver's Seduction of 25 he will automatically succeed on a Difficulty 4 task, and will usually blow a difficulty 10 task out of the water. Most tasks are difficulty 5. 

I've commented before that this character build system is too persnickety for a contemporary design, but I didn't find it as bad this time. The 6000 build points could just as easily have been 600, so that made it feel more complicated. He idea of having to pay more to be average in physical appearance is in keeping with the genre, but 3 costs for height, weight, and appearance felt a bit much. I love how the skills in the game are the ones from the books and movies as of 1984, giving everything a laser focus on being Bond. 

2022 Character Creation Challenge 12) The Shadows of Yesterday

On day 12, we hit our first Story Game! 

This is a 2004 era Indy/Story game with some interesting aspects: it's meant for rapid advancement through relatively short stories; characters get experience points based on player-selected Keys, which are behavioral prompts, that the player can choose to abandon and pick a new one so the 'you get XP for your core activity' is totally keyed to role playing; PCs have their stories end when they achieve Transcendence, which is a level 7 success using a maximum skill of 4 +/- 3 Fudge Dice so while it's difficult to get it can happen at any time, and Transcendent characters become the story focus for the rest of the day before their story ends. It's an interesting and epic technique. 

The world of TSoY is post-apocalyptic fantasy – an asteroid hit the far side of the earth, caused a global winter, and carved out a moon 300 years ago; all the races in Near (where the story takes place) are recovering from 90% population loss – populated with some baseline fantasy cultures and races. My PC will be from Zaru, which is NOTASIA, as opposed to the NOTEUROPE culture, and Human as opposed to Elven, Goblin or Ratkin. I gotta give it to Clinton R Nixon because while the cultures are thin that's on purpose, and his non-human races are fascinating takes on the ideas. I still went with human because a character concept jumped up and hammered me between the eyes. 

The game has 3 Point Pools – Vigor, Instinct, and Reason – which power your Secrets and act as hero points for your skills. Interestingly you only get those pool refreshed by using them in enjoyable vigorous activity with someone else. Going out drinking all night with friends will improve your Vigor pool, as will accepting physical abuse if that's your thing. Spirited debates about philosophy will refresh the Reason pool. Again, everything in the game is focused on the Role-Playing aspect: if you want to get your powers back, reveal more of your character with someone else. You start with 11 points to split between these, min of 2/max of 7, though you can buy more later.

TSoY also has and 3 Innate skills – Endure, React, Resist – which are used for any passive actions in Vigor, Instinct and Reason respectively. The rest of the skill list is clustered by activity, so there are Artistic Skills, Outdoor Skills, etc. which are there just to make sense of things. The only place it matters is each culture has Cultural Skills, which PCs from that culture can try untrained and others can't do at all. You start with the three Innate skills at 3, 2, and 1 (Master, Adept, Competent), one other skill at Adept and 3 at Competent. Each skill is keyed to one of the pools, and you can spend points from the pool for bonus dice with that action in play. 

You need to select one Secret, which is essentially a character power or special ability that you power with pool points. This is pretty straightforward, but the game makes it clear that one play starts you have to find someone to learn the secret from. There's no Didn’t I Mention or eliding over it. Again, story focused. Each culture and species have their own secrets in addition to the general one. 

You need to select one Key – your method for earning experience points – and you always need at least one of these, but you can purchase more than one later. Once you abandon  a Key you can never take that one again. Again, there are cultural and species specific ones. 

Finally, you take 5 Advancements. Normally you get an Advancement with 5 XP earned (depending on how keys play out you could see 1-3 per session), so this indicates the character has some experience under their belt, at least a story or two. Pretty much everything takes 1 Advancement to improve or learn, so characters change quickly. 

In flipping through the rules I saw two Secrets – Secret of the Flying Leap and Secret of Knockback – that I quite liked, the idea of a hermit or outcast who magically pushed things away from them, and socially pushed away people, but had the Key of Love (a very Human key) that tethered them to one PC in the group. Reading over the Cultures I saw that Zaru had not just a Culture Secret that fed into this (Secret of Kinetic Redirection) but literally the skills of Clandestinity and Serve – how to be clandestine and sneaky, how to act as a servant – and the joy I have of playing sidekick/support characters for someone else kicked in. Gone was the magical hermit, in was the martial artist servant/bodyguard in love with their master. Yes, it's an old gimmick, but the point in this sort of game is to start with that and see where it changes. 

I started with Vigor 4, Instinct 3, Reason 4, and Endure 3, React 2, Resist 1 for my pools and innate skills. Other skills were Uptembo (the Zaru Martial Art) 2, Clandestinity 1, Serve 1, and Haggle 1. 

Secret of Kinetic Redirection and Key of Love ended the first stage. 

My 5 advancements went to 2 more secrets (Flying Leap, Knockback), raising my Resist to 2, and adding Sense Danger and the culture skill of Clay Moulding at 1. 

A lot in this game depends on the other players and their stories, and for this character more than most, but I'm happy with how Cyrus (one of the Zaru default names) came out. 

2022 Character Design Challenge 12) Gamma World 4th Edition

 Day 12 of the #charactercreationchallenge gets cryptic! Cryptic Alliance, that is....

In the same way I want to run an epic Twilight 2000/Psi-World/Cyberpunk game, I have had a chance to run a single session of my Reign/Gamma World crossover. In case you were wondering why these games were sorted this way on my shelf. I've never felt Gamma World has landed quite right in any of its systems because the initial concept of the game – the PCs are as tough and powerful as they are going to get and their goal is recover lost treasure and rebuild their communities – never translates to the mechanics used for the game. Everyone ends up leaning into the gonzo elements, which is fine, and fun, but I think is missing a trick of doing a bit of both. 

Anyway, this is the edition of Gamma World that looks like 2nd Edition AD&D. It's a smooth enough and clean enough system as far as it goes, has some technical improvements over AD&D 2E such as Ascending Armor Classes, etc., but it swings way away from that original design of the PCs not improving their personal power inserting a class/level system. Still, this is the one I have on hand (borrowed from a friend, along with the Jonathan Tweet _Omega World_ rules that are the first stab at D&D 3E inspired Gamma World that I won't be using for this challenge), so here we go. 

First up is picking a genotype, and in a longer campaign I'd probably go Pure Strain Human but for this, totally Mutated Animal. Picking Flying Squirrel as my base animal. This gives me some pre-set Physical Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution bases that are improved by a 2d4 roll (including whopping base 15 for Dexterity!). I end up with 12 PS, 23 (!) Dex and 11 CN. As good as I could have hoped. The other stats are 4d6 drop low and I end up with Mental Strength 11, Intelligence 13, Charisma 5 and Sense 12. Time to start wondering why my Squirrel is so disliked….

Mutations come next. Everyone with mutations gets 5 in this version, and a d6 roll is used to split them up. My squirrel, Doreen (I asked my daughter what she would name a mutated flying squirrel and she opted to borrow Squirrel Girl's secret ID.) is already somewhat mutated, being 1 meter long, with full speech capabilities and bipedal stance (so no bonus power for not being not at all human-like), and I end up with 4 Physical Mutations and 1 Mental. This is in addition to the Flying Squirrel template already having the Air Sail mutation and a 1d3 damage bite. 

Mutation rolls are Ultravision (see all energy types), Enhanced Senses – Hearing (double range and sensitivity), Size Change – Larger (50% increase in size, +5 STR, -5 DEX, and now she's 17 STR and 18 DEX and 1.5m high), and Carapace (um, what? OK. The dice say this covers her front and back and gives her a base AC of 17). Mentally, she has Telekinetic Hands, which have a 14 Dexterity and 5 Physical Strength. 

OK, so visually she's now a 5' tall flying squirrel with air sails between her limbs but a protective carapace on her back and torso. I'm imagining that as being much more flexible than a tortoise shell, something closer to mottled green snakeskin, but still doesn't extend to her head and arms, which are brown fur. 

Time to pick a Class, and I think the high dex and low charisma lend to the classic Laconic Scout. Doreen doesn't talk much, which some find off-putting. I mark down the Scout class bonuses, and evenly divide the points she has for class skills as they all look important. I've always been a sucker for the Ranks of the Fit cryptic alliance led by the mutated bear Napoleon, so as a mutated animal she's a shoe in for their 'reformed' branch. Picked some basic equipment  - knife, hatchet, and blowgun with some poison as weapons- and I think Doreen is good to go! 

2022 Character Creation Challenge 11) Reign

 On day 11 we reach for 11d10. Seems appropriate

 This is super simple. Reign has one of the best character creation methods out there – roll 11d10, look for sets, and compare those sets to the tables for major life training. Then find any orphan dice on one of three other tables for different events. Sort them in the order they occurred, write down what you get from them in terms of attributes and skills. Done. 

For example, my 11d10 produced 2x1, 3, 6, 4x8, 9 and 2x10

This means Lowly Beggar (2x1), Military Commander (4x8), and Noble Byblow (2x10), along with three life events that I'll pick as Someone Got Spurned (3), Vengeance Quest (6) and Gnostic Event (9). There are a mess of ways you could sequence these, but I went with 

Song Pak, a noble byblow of the Dindavarian court (2x10) was trained in the ways of the court (+1 COMMAND, +1 Sword, +2 Graces, +1 Status, +1 Wealth)…

But not in the ways of love. He fell hard for one of the women of the court and thinking his impressive beauty would see him through he pursued her (Beauty (3), Lie +1, Plead +1). When she settled on someone else, he was devastated, taking it as a blow to his honor and he swore to win true love (Mission: Find True Love).

He was alas so young and stupid that he assumed she was his only true love and he spent years mastering the sword to win her back, or at worst, challenge her romantic choice so she would be freed after his death. (+2 Sword, 2 steps in the Path of the Razor Heart, the Dindavarian Sword Style). 

Fortunately, his father stepped in before Song did something truly stupid and shipped him off to officer's school, where he excelled – seeing victory in the army as a way to prove himself to his true love! – and saw several promotions over several years. He learned tactics, strategy, and how to inspire men in battle. (+1 COMMAND, +1 Fight, +1 Ride, +3 Tactics, +2 Inspire, +2 Parry, +1 Endurance, +1 Sight, +1 Direction, +2 Strategy, +1 Lie)

His last battlefield was one against the Truil Tribesmen, where something supernatural happened – he has never discussed it (and I won't nail it down until I talk to the GM) but while it was a victory for Dindavara, it left Song shaken, and possessed of knowledge he'd rather not have (Lore +2, Eerie +2, Sorcery +1; I'm also adding 2 Truil school spells, because it's a by-campaign question whether there's a cost associated with them.) 

Song Pak mustered out, went home, carefully packed everything of value he owned at his father's house, and started a year's long pilgrimage around Dindavara's holiest sites. He ate, wore, and carried only what he was given in an effort to understand what he learned, and along the way learned many other things (+1 SENSE, +2 Plead, +1 Run, +1 Dodge, +1 Sight). Now that he has finally integrated what happened to him, he is ready to rejoin society. He's also realized, finally, that the girl of his youth is not, and never was his True Love. That search continues -as does the realization that so much of his life has been pursuing his family's approval, Craving he will never get rid of. 

Song Pak starts play with 

Status 1 (it's not much, but it's a start)
Wealth 1 (likewise; as long as he has low standard, he'll never starve, he can haggle to get better things, or make one larger purchase)
Beauty 3 (Any Fascinate or Graces roll has a minimum Height of 7)

BODY 2 (Endurance 3, Fight 3, Parry 4, Run 3)
SENSE 3 (Direction 4, Eerie 5, Sight 5)
CHARM 2 (Graces 5, Lie 5, Plead 5)
COORDINATION 2 (Dodge 3, Ride 3, Weapon – Sword 5)
COMMAND 4 (Inspire 6)
KNOWLEDGE 2 (Native Language 2+MD, Lore 4, Strategy 4, Tactics 5)

Path of the Razor Heart: with his Sword skill he can
* Pure Commencement: drawing takes no time
* Single Intent: when making a single attack, hits do 1 Shock to target torso regardless of other effects

Now, there's a bunch of other stuff you can do in Reign when it comes to forming Companies, which are the heart of the games design, but with just one player I'm going to leave this here. Song can easily move into politics, back into military affairs, or even become part of a wizard's circle. The GM has a big honking chain in Song's need for his family's approval to point him at adventure hooks, and Song's lifelong quest for true love might, or might not dovetail with those. Eventually a plot where it will work to his family advantage for him to woo someone who might be his true love will give him no end of advantages. 

2020 Character Creation 10) Cyberpunk 2020

Day 10 of the challenge! 

So I always wanted to run a campaign that started with Twilight 2000, followed by Cyberpunk 2020, where the explanation for why these disparate PCs are all so tight is that they survived the war together. Of course I would also add in Psi-World, so the radiation and chemicals from time in Europe also gave them ESPer abilities. This may just be me. 

Anyway, today's PC is Apikalia Keli'I, a 20 year old woman from Polynesian descent who spent her childhood with her mom and older sister with an aquatic pirate pack. When her mom died she was swept up by her father, who is in a stable, well placed corporate management job on the mainland. Her sister stayed behind and resents Apikalia for leaving. 

Maybe Apikalia's dad loves her despite her rash and headstrong nature. Maybe he just wants her because of her natural aptitudes. In any event she has learned to most value herself and her word, but this doesn't make her cold – she genuinely likes most people. Her most valued possession is her family diary, kept by both her parents during their courtship, then just her mom, and now her. She keeps it hidden in her closet along with her rows of neat, formal suits, the clips to control her long, straight hair, and her ever-present mirrorshades. When she's out on the street she upgrades to a jean jacket over her dress shirt and skinny tie. 

Shortly after her arrival someone in Dad's corporation tried to use her as a weapon against him, framing her for a theft. Apikalia slipped the frame and got her own back, helping her father reveal the guilty party (or the catspaw of the guilty party). This lead to her first 'job' at the corp and a $700 signing bonus, a financial windfall that let her set up her own funds away from her dad. Her father did provide her with a karate instructor so that she wouldn't be quite so helpless as she started wandering further from the corporate park. Unfortunately, the next attack on her (or was it at her) was more insidious, and she was laid up for weeks with a bioplague that ravaged her reflexes. She has sworn to help others affected by the bioplage. 

Welcome to Cyberpunk's lifepath system, where a bunch of dice throws builds your entire character background totally separate from your career. The only decision I made in there was what her most favored possession was, and the jean jacket to match the picture I found for her. You'd think this would be limiting as a player, but it's honestly freeing and gets you right into the extreme world of Cyberpunk literature. Her background was a little limited because I rolled "big wins, big losses" 4 times on the life events table, so there's no passion or romance in her background yet.

Now, on to the stats and stuff. The 9d10 die rolls clearly laid out who Apikalia is: Intelligence 10, Reflexes 4 (now 3), Tech 4, Cool 3, Attractiveness 3, Luck 7, Movement Allowance 5, Body 8, Empathy 10. She's a natural empathic genius, strong and lucky, but not gifted in other areas. Still, those two 10's explain why her dad wants her around, and makes it clear we're looking at a Corporate for a Role. She's absolutely a Corporate Reader, brought in to empathize with and understand people to better tailor the negotiations for sales, purchases, and acquisitions, and she's very good at it. 

Her Corp skills are Resources 8 (she's managing a small department), Personal Grooming 4, Wardrobe & Style 3 (she has a lot of ground to make up, but she at least fits in), Endurance 1, Strength Feat 3, Swimming 2 (she grew up a pirate and stays in shape), Human Perception 5, Interview 3, Leadership 2, Social 5, Persuasion/Fast Talk 5 (all needed for her job), Awareness 5, General Knowledge 4, Library Search 2, Stock Market 1 (not really her area….). We then add Handgun 2 and her Martial Arts 2 from the sensei background event so she's not totally inept in combat. 

On to her cyberwear. I know I have to keep this low – 9.5 or under Humanity Loss points – or she'll some of the Empathy that makes her so valuable. I know I want to add the contraception package, but that costs 0.5 (really, 1980's game designers?), so we'll use that once we see where we are. Unfortunately, her 2d6 roll for her cyberaudio implants – which I really want – comes up an 8. That leaves me just 1.5 points for other things. The critical Voice Stress Analyzer in her cyberaudio is another 1, and the Sound Editing is another 0.5 humanity loss. She's at 9.5 right now. No contraception for her. Her dedication to the corporation and her father means no safe sex for her. I'm seeing her crying in her room when she makes this decision, and then doing it anyway to get the promotion that gets her free from her father's finances. 

As always these things depend on the campaign, but I can see her need to help the people who weren't so lucky with that bioplague getting her onto the streets and in contact with the other PCs, and her empathy mixed access to corporate resources being of immense value.