Rune in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge

For day 28 I down some mead and put on a horned helmet for the #CharacterCreationChallenge!

This obscure gem of a game came out in 2001; just as the rest of the world was leaning hard into D&D, Atlas games was commissioned by Humanhead Studios to build a TTRPG based on their video game RUNE. The result was a glorious love letter to pure kick-in-the-door-and-kill-orcs role playing that also acknowledged that the GM tends to get bored with that style of play before the players do, so the game is designed to pass the GMing duties around the table. Everyone is tasked with coming up with snippets of the dungeon and adventure – for which they have point budgets commensurate to the PCs power level – and once the GM is done with what they have prepped play hands over to the next player to become GM. 

Yes, it shifts the burden of world and adventure building evenly around the table. And yes, I'm OK with that because the lazy shiftless players should pick up the slack sometimes! 

Character creation is pretty simple in concept, a little more complicated when you're pre-calculating your various combat attacks in advance, and it's nicely crunchy in the base combat focus with real effects from choosing weapon, armor, and shield types. It's a nice balance of complexity and avoiding getting stuck in the optimization weeds.

Characters have 8 attributes – Strength, Stamina, Dexterity, Quickness, Intelligence, Perception, Presence, and Communication – and knowing a game about dungeon crawling Vikings are going to prioritize some things the last four attributes cost half as much as the first four. 

There's 30 some odd skills in the game, divided into Combat, Exploration, and Social (with an outlier in Divine Awareness), and the writer (Robin Laws… did I mention Robin Laws wrote this?) handily calls out the 8 non-combat skills that see the most use in play, and remind you in the rulebook that there are considerable penalties for not knowing a skill, so it's better to spread points out. Secondary Skills cost half as much as Primary skills, with the distinction being made on how useful the skill is for kicking in doors and killing orcs. 

Both skills and attributes are bought with the same pool of 60 points, so it helps to have looked over both lists a bit. I decided to design Vifgus the Fat, a large fellow with surprising dexterity, above average for a Viking social stats, with a skill for spatial awareness and mapmaking. (the Mapmaking skill is a great dungeon crawl addition; you roll against it to find your way back out of the dungeon, and possibly to sell your finished maps for money to other Vikings; no need for the player to make actual maps!) 

STR +1, Sta +2, Dex +2, Qik +1, Int +1, Per +1, Pre +2, Com +1

He's a big, voluable fellow who fills up space and leaves an impression. It's possible to purchase negative attributes, but the rulebook advises against taking any negatives for the first fours and no lower than -1 on the others. I decided to keep everything positive, even if that means not maxing anything out at +3. Tis is the equivalent of a lot of 12-15 scores in D&D 3E, which feels right. This costs 34 points so I have 26 left for skills

I put at least 1 into all the recommended skills (except Divine Awareness), as well as 2 into Demeanor (he knows how to best present himself, 1 into Carouse, and 3 into Mapmaking. That leaves 8 for weapon skills and being a sword and shield guy, I take Single-handed Weapons (which includes shield proficiency) at maximum +3 and Throwing Weapons at +1. 

Hit Points and Wound Threshold come from comparing attributes to a couple of tables and I come in middle of the road for a Viking adventurer. Last up is selecting equipment. I get some free gear for my Mapmaking and Traps skills, 3 common weapons, 1 common armor, and one common shield if I want it. As a Single Weapon fighter I don't have a ton of options for common weapons, but snag Viking Broadsword and Short spear, as well as a Throwing Axe if I need it. I add Studded Leather armor and a Round Shield and that brings my load to 5.5, out of a 6 maximum to be unencumbered at +1 STR. Perfect. 

Figuring out the combat stats for my attacks – which factor in attribute, skill, weapon, and armor for initiative, attack, defense and damage – takes a few minutes but it's the sort of logical implementation of the weapon speed and reach tables from AD&D that it makes you weep that it wasn't included there back in the day. And we're done! 

Does this seem a little minimalist? Yes, but RUNE is deliberate that all your special ability crunchy bits be purchased with victory points earned in play. These are gifts from the gods and they're not going to bestow them on just any horn helmed warrior. YOU MUST PROVE YOURSELF TO THE GODS! So things will get more complicated in play. 

Traveller in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge

 On day 27 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge I take to the spaceways of 1977! 

I've been noodling with Traveller a lot lately as it's what my play group has voted upon for 2023 when we finish our Mutant City Blues game, but I've seldom made a character myself. So lets rectify that. Like some of the older games I've been looking at this month, Traveller uses the character creation not just as a mini-game (and a harsher mini-game than most, since you can die in character creation as a counterweight risk against pushing the system as far as you can) but as a simulationist tool. 

Once you roll your PCs stats you have to select service to join, but joining requires a die roll, with the chance of access being specific to each branch, with bonuses based on whether you meet the branches preferred criteria. (if you miss your first choice you're randomly assigned to one as a 'draft', which may put you back in your first choice. Once you're in, you serve a series of 4 year terms, with each term having a chance of your dying in action, getting a commission, getting a promotion once you're commissioned, and being able to reenlist. Getting a commission in the Navy is notoriously difficult but much easier if you're from a high social class, and promotions are slow. Getting a commission in the Army is much easier, improved with Endurance, and promotions are quick. The rules of the universe are played out in PC creation; this is all very old school, and reinforces the rules of the setting over designing your exact hero.  

Since your characters starting skills and resources (aka mustering out benefits) are dependent on how long you serve, there's a pressure to keep going, but there's always the risk of death, and older PCs start to see reduced stats. Traveller is the game of middle-aged heroes starting their second career. In my case we're looking at Zann McClintock, Solomani citizen of the empire. 

The Stat rolls were Str 4, Dex 6, End 7, Int 7, Edu 7, Soc Status 2. Weaker than average, not terribly coordinated, average otherwise and born into the lowest possible social strata. I'm picturing him having been born in the tent cities of a refugee camp of some ecologically devastated world suffering a civil war inside the Empire. 

Looking at his stats an the tables, I decided on Army as my first choice, not least because with a 7 End he makes I in with a roll of 3+. When the imperial army stepped in to end the conflict and rescue the survivors Zann saw his future, and joined as soon as he was old enough. 

The first set of rolls saw him survive his first 4 year term, get a commission and a promotion – he ends is first term at age 22 as a Lieutenant – and makes it through on reenlistment. This term gives him 4 stall checks, as well as an Rifle +1 and SMG +1 for being in the army and being a lieutenant, but with an EDU of 7 he can't access the 4th Advance training table. I put 2 of those on table 1 to get a boost to EDU, but instead get +1 Strength and Gambling. The other two rolls go on the service skills and advance training, and get Gun Combat+1 and Electronics+1. The Gun Combat needs a specialization, and even Zann's low Dexterity hits their minimum level, but I settle on SMG, so I have Rifle +1, SMG +2, Gambling +1 and Electronics +1 at the end of his first term. Is low Social Status didn't matter in the field, clearly, with the quick promotion to Lieutenant and training in electronics, but he did learn some of the more poncy members of the army never really learned to play cards or dice. 

The second set of rolls shows Zann nearly not making it through: target for Army Survival is 5+, and I roll a 3… but his 7 Edu gives a +2 on the roll. Whew! He does not manage a promotion this year with a second roll of 3, but he easily reenlists. His one skill this year gives him my desired +1 EDU. I imagine this as Lt. McClintock barely surviving a horrible conflict and spending much of this term in recovery, taking classes to improve his education during this time and set him up for future success. He's now 26 years old.

His third term he survives, receives a promotion easily (roll of 11, +1 for his EDU), and reenlists (roll of 11). Quickly becoming Captain McClintock, his two skill rolls on the now accessible second Advanced Skills tables produced Tactics twice. Returning to the field Zann serves under a commanding officer who takes him under her wing, pouring tactical knowledge and expertise into his head and giving him plenty of chances to practice it in the field. He's now 30

His 4th term shows him easily surviving and making another promotion to Major. I was going back and forth as to whether to have the 30-34 period to be his last, but I decided to roll for it, and missed it. His two skills in this term were spent on the Personal Development table to try to bring up that DEX, but it instead netted another +1 STR. A roll on the Advanced education gave another +1 Electronics. (I nearly went with the second advanced table again which would have given him +3 Tactics total, but I'm happy to be a little more diversified). At age 34 he's out of the army, due to the retirement of his mentor and the intervention of another senior officer who still saw McClintock as his social inferior (and who had lost a lot of money to him gambling). 

Now to the mustering out benefits. He gets one for each term, and another +2 for his rank. These can be on the benefits or cash table, and with his Gambling skill the cash table rolls are at +1. He ends up with another +2 EDU (which I see as his last 2 years in his last term being spent in officer training programs, which means his failure to reenlist came as a great shock), and a pair of passage vouchers to get him around the galaxy – these he's pocketing, with the Low Passage one being his way out if he ever finds himself again at rock bottom. The 3 remaining rolls on the cash table are very much in his favor, and he leaves the service with 70,000 credits in his accounts. Enough to make a start. 

Major McClintock is a skilled army officer, exceptionally good at large scale combats and electronics, who can hold his own briefly in a firefight. He's clawed himself up from the humblest beginnings and is always prepared for finding himself back in that circumstance. I've given the GM a potential benefactor in his last commanding officer and a potential rival in the officer who blocked his reenlistment. Despite his lower-than-average stats he's a worthy addition to any Traveller team. 

The character sheet for this one comes from the website Polyhedral Nonsense, who listed it as a work in progress, but I loved it so much I used its unfinished state for Zann's sheet. You can check out the site here

Spaceship Zero in the 2022 character creation challenge

On day 26 of  the #characterCreationChalenge my essential salts are reconstituted in Universe 2

Spaceship Zero is a 2002 game modeling a very Buck Rogers meets Call of Cthulhu setting where the people who accidentally destroyed the last universe are now the only hope for a human rebellion against the Hydronaut invaders in this universe. It leans hard into this concept, with special powers that really drive the play style (the Escapes Slave Girl template gives other PCs action bonuses when she swoons for them or hangs on their leg), and it’s really a setting that needs player buy in. With that buy in the biggest risk being every player deciding to be a super intelligent cat, dog, or monkey with a Robot PC to open cans for them. 

As such I’m playing a Robot PC who explicitly looks like Robbie the Robot (a standard Robot power is immunity to chokes and nerve strikes; it’s called “has no neck”; They aren’t fooling around on the genre emulation). There’s more than a dozen templates filling all the archetypes that fit in this game to steer players in the right direction. Each template has minimum and maximum scores for the 4 skills (Brains, Brawn, Balance, Bravado, all rated 1-20), and you have 50 points to distribute. Robots are supposed to be strong (minimum Brawn 12) but I lean way in with a 20 Brawn, a 12 Brains and 9 in the other two, high enough to avoid penalties. 

PCs get 1-4 “zero skills” where you get a bonus (roll 3d10 rather than d100, and place two in the order you prefer) and Robot comes with Technical Know How. Looking over the charts you can pick one of the combat skills, one frequent and one less frequent non-combat, or three less frequent non-combat.  I take the middle option and add Lore: Earth Invasion History (he was awake and monitoring events while the crew were in essential salts suspension) and Medicine. My idea is that as a JOAT robot he need to be able to step in as a doctor, pilot or engineer as needed, as well as being an information repository. 

Like Twilight 2000, SS0 does skill selection in rounds:

A) There are a bunch of skills that start at double their base attribute and I fill those in. 

B) I have 225 template points to spend on Robot skills. I boost lots of things to 33% because the mechanics have your skill as difficult baseline, with easy tasks being at *3, so that gives me 99% with simple functions. [Edit: it turns out I red this wrong and that multiplication is only for attributes; skills get flat bonuses, oh well....]

I then have 25 points to spend on any skills. Being a stickler i raise a lot of things to 20 or 30 because rolling a 0 on a successful skill check gives you a Zero Point that acts as a hero/drama point. Make sure you can get them!

Then I get ANOTHER 120 skill points from my 12 Brains. Those go to round out the rest of the skills I need to be my Jack of all Trades idea, plus a ton of points on Heave so my super strong robot can be really super strong. 

Like T2K this feels like a game what an open ended sandbox but a set end point: sooner or later you have to defeat the Hydronauts or get enough humans away to escape and form a new colony. The oppression of things being as bad as they are at the start has to lift for the game to feel long term fun to me, and even with that I don’t know id play this game for longer than a year. But it’d be a fun year! 

Zorcerer of Zo in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge

Deciding not to mess with the Ogre Queen on day 25 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge

Back in the oughts Chad Underkoffler was producing some fun and innovate games and settings using his Prose Descriptive Qualities system. PDQ has something like a FUDGE structure in your character is defined by qualities that are Poor [-2], Average [+0], Good [+2], Expert [+4] or Mastery [+6], but rather than FUDGE dice you roll 2d6 and apply any qualities that make sense for the action, trying to beat a target number (usually 7). 

When the character takes damage, they reduce the ranks of their qualities, but can select the order (so if you lose ranks in a swordfight they don't have to come off of your Good [+2] Swordplay but might reduce your Expert [+4] witty repartee. You have to zero out everything (all qualities reduced to poor, then something goes below poor) to definitively lose a conflict, and qualities are pretty flexible – you might be better off taking the hit to Swordplay and then state you're fighting defensively while you mock and berate your opponent with your Witty Repartee, which will do damage ranks just as fast as sword hits will. 

Whatever quality you take your first hit to in a session becomes your story hook for next session. If you keep taking your Good [+2] Love for Princess Gwendolyn as your first hit, Princess Gwendolyn is going to come up somehow each session. 

It's a great, loose system for story that doesn't drive the story to specific outcomes. 

Zorcerer of Zo is one of those settings. It's a mash up of Oz and fairy tales and dozens of other things, but the primary concept is a tweaked Oz, with the green capital city and the four colored realms, but also fairy tale elements from around the world. 

For my character this time I went back to a classic and found the Charles Perrault version of Sleeping Beauty (https://thefairytalecentral.com/the-missing-fairy-invite-sleeping-beauty-commentary/) and found some lovely things: that the prince's mom was literally an Ogre who the king married for her money; that the Mother in law tried to eat her grandchildren; that there was no birthday deadline on the 8th fairy's curse. I've been going back and forth on what aspects of this to take for my character, but since the ZoZ setting already has a canonical sleeping princess (Morphea) I'm going with the idea of a princess blessed by the faeries where the last fairy doesn’t change the curse to sleeping, but pushes off the time. Yes, she's going to prick her finger on a spindle and die, but "Not until she has lived a full life". 

What does "a full life mean?" I don't know. The king and queen don't know, but they also know they can't coddle her away.  Crepuscula herself, upon learning the curse, agreed, because with the temper of an angel includes a righteous anger that cannot be contained. So she's roaming Zo, with the help and protection of her bodyguard, the former ostler of her father's castle and knighted when Crepuscula chose him for this job Sir Chauncy. 

Once upon a time in the Zantabulous land of Zo there was a PRINCESS from GIALLO named CREPUSCULA whose many fine qualities included 

Good [+2] perform all music with utmost skill

Expert [+4] do everything with wonderful grace 

Expert [+4] features and temper of an angel

Good [+2] Bodyguard, Sir Chauncy (who has Good [+2] Bodyguard, Average [+0] Ostler, Poor [-2] Knightly Graces)

Poor [-2] Will prick her finger on a spindle and die after living a full life. 

Maybe next time I do something with Prince Charming possibly being half-ogre….

HERO 5E in the 2022 Character Creation Challenge

For say 24 I revisit the queen of the cryptids in the #charactercreationchallenge. 

Having done Champions 2nd edition I decided to move on as a test to HERO 5th, the other hero system game I have on my shelf. The much higher degree of detail on the powers and (especially) skills and talents, along with the much higher number of points to accommodate those changes, leads to not just the usual hero system paradox of choice where there are no guardrails to spark character ideas from the setting, so you're really helped by having an idea walking in, but the point economy being somewhat inflated. 

There are so many more points being sloshed around and so few set guidelines on where they should go with so many possible overlaps. For example, your PCs actual defensive ability is a mix of their Speed (which gives them more actions to default to), Dexterity for base Combat Value, Combat Maneuver and skill level choices, Armor, Resistant Defenses, Damage Reduction, etc. etc. that unless you're familiar with play it's really hard to know what's "good". This is less pressing in 2E where there were fewer points and options, but 5e PCs have nearly twice the points, but are supposed to be the same relative power level. That makes it really hard to balance. 

As a test, I took one of the heroes I made in my personal "campaign in a month" challenge from last year.

and built her in 5E to see what I got. The V&V PC, Ragk-Na, Queen of the Cryptids, was from a lost civilization with the knowledge areas of Government/Bureaucracy and Crime with super high charisma, reduced intelligence, and a disintegration power That got me to a sort of Conan-as-70's Hulk/Swamp Thing, someone not terribly bright who travels around and always sides against the local oppressor. From that we have the disintegration ray as barbarian combat. 

The Southern U.S. holds a hidden subterranean culture of cryptid humans, the last offshoot of the Neanderthals who had made it to North America via unknown means some 40,000 years ago. The Neanderthals settled in a deep cave complex running from north Alabama to the Florida panhandle. Ragk-Na ruled her tribe, and through her ferocity and cunning conquered all of their neighbors, forging an empire. Unfortunately, while she was smart, she was careless and misled by her genius (Int 6!) shaman-advisors into acts that impoverished some to the advantage of others. The rebellion left her shaman advisors in charge and Ragk-Na fleeing to places where none would follow: The Surface! 

Ragk-Na was lost among the magic of the people of the surface world, but the "Inherent Savage Nobility of the Cryptid Race" makes her compelling, and her advantages over humans make her a fierce combatant. She has ruminated on her mistakes, and her rough hewn honor makes her an impressive judge of human character. If Ragk-Na does not join in a conflict, you're probably on the wrong side. Compared to humans she's not terribly smart, nor capable of long-term plans, but she's honest and has learned to be just. She can speak, and has learned some English, but Neanderthal vocal structures are limited so she doesn't talk much, relaying on her face that conceals no craft or malice, her gestures and her clear empathy to get her point across as she moves from town to town across the American South and Gulf Coast, helping people deal with physical and moral threats. Shell-Crown of Rulership or no, she is every inch a queen. 

Ragk-Na is as strong and tough as humans can get without extensive training; she's stockily built, comparatively agile and radiates a quiet dignity or a terrifying presence based on circumstances. She's also capable of incredible combat ferocity:, armed with her beloved crystal-bladed spear and hatchet she is more accurate than all but superhumanly trained fighters, and can go into bursts of the Battle Rage of the Noble Savage and raining down blows that will destroy pretty much anything not made of super-alloy and lay even the strongest foes low. 

Moving her to hero made a lot of shifts, major and minor. I had to nail down a skill set rather than the broad AOKs, but while that was somewhat irritating it didn't take too long. The development of Neanderthal Martial Arts took longer, and there are some things, like her Defensive Move, that were added not because they were in the original conception but because they were in the rulebook and looked cool and I had a couple more points to what I budgeted for combat skills. I'm pretty sure her combat skills are solid – with the skill levels she has a OCV 10/DCV 8 with Offensive Strike and does a base of 7d6 damage to which she can add weapons, along with a decently high set of defenses – but depending on the campaign this could be too high or too low. 

Then we get to powers. Enhanced Senses is easy enough for her incredible judge of character (though this is probably more powerful than the original version), the Mental Defense and increase PRE and EGO when dealing the Cryptids both capture her fairly well. And a couple of dice in Luck because I've got the points. 

Weapons are where it gets interesting. In V&V she would just have whatever weapons I said she had, and they'd be normal gear and give an increase to hit and damage. In super-heroic HERO I have to work out the point cost for them. But I just don't want to spend the time on that, and I have points sloshing around, so I give her a Variable Power Pool for her weapons. My original pool had been 26 active, 13 control, with a the control needing a Focus, limited to weapons, and possibly with charges for any ranged attacks. 

But I have a million points sloshing around. And I don't want her to have to make skill checks in the middle of the fight to swap weapons, so I make it "cosmic", i.e. no time to change, no roll. (At this point Ragk-Na only had a Speed of 4; since I ended up with 10 points left I moved it to 5, and kept a half phase action on her changing her pool, but points sloshing around). I also boost the number of points to 30 AP.

Because of how I bought this, with the focus not on the control cost, I can put a focus on any individual power, lose the focus and not lose the points. For practical purposes she wouldn't be able to just use the same point array, but disarming her doesn't make her weaker. Plus, the limitation goes from 'weapon powers' to 'crystal weapons', so while she does most of this with killing attacks, HTH attacks, etc. it also opens up a vast range of other 'powers' that could be done by 'crystals' in a comic book sense. That means dispels of magic effects, missile deflections, force walls of using the crystal blade of the axe as a shield, etc. etc. While she never _has_ do so this, she _can_ and her versatility is now huge. 

Her potency is now much higher. She can take a HTH Killing Attack at 20 points with 0 END cost (30 AP), which with her STR turns into 40 AP. And if she makes an offensive strike with the weapon element and damage class boost its 65 AP, or 3d6+1 killing attack. (Or she can hit them with the haft of the spear or flat of the axe for 13d6! Is this too much? I don't know. 

Her disadvantages (though I really like the Champions Now formulation of Situation) I had the advantage of the other character I made last February as people to be hunting her, but I added some friendly cryptozoologists as her support cast. Not as weird as a Gerber 1970's character, but it grounds her some. 

I like the character concept a lot, but it's hard to say whether she's well designed.