Character Creation: Flatpack

Well, I was supposed to be running my new All Flesh Must Be Eaten game today, but illness laid one of the players low and I don't like starting without everyone present, so here we are. I thought about doing something a little closer to the top of the list, but a bunch of them are D&D clones and I just don't have that in me today.

The Game: Flatpack: Fix the Future
The Publisher: Machine Age Productions
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one.

Flatpack is billed as "optimistic apocalyptic roleplaying," and I can get behind that. The early parts of the book talk about civilization being, well, largely destroyed, but the characters (WRENCHs) being the ones with the smarts and the gumption to fix it. There are also these things called Flatpacks, which are basically machines or buildings or complexes packed into a small, rectangular box, that our WRENCHs can find and put together.

The emphasis in the game is very much on solving riddles and puzzles rather than on combat (fighting is, in fact, not part of the game, and I don't see many RPGs like that, so that's cool). So how do we make a WRENCH?

Hrm, character creation seems to be written in-character. Not always a fan of that, but let's see. We start off with some questions and multiple choice answers. Check it out.

So, the first question is "you were a shoo-in for class president, when you heard rumors that your opponent has a plan to cheat the election. In order to out-cheat him, you..." And then six options. I want to look ahead and see if these answers tie into mechanics at all, hang on. Yes, they do. Groovy. OK, then I pick... d, turn to the school's bylaws. I'm thinking my WRENCH is research-focused, and/or likes to have his i's dotted and t's crossed.

Next question: Do you feel, right now, that your parents would say they are proud of you? Oof, that's hard. I'll pick f. maybe someday. Aw.

Third question: This is long so I'll summarize. You're dating the perfect guy, but he's a writer, and not necessarily a successful one. How's that gonna work out? I'll pick e., which, again, is long, but basically cooks down "you don't seem to understand him, so talk with him and try to get a glimpse into his world."

Final question: Um...

That's weird. The answers are similarly odd. I'll pick d., explain how things were so much better back in my father's day.

I was wrong, the final question is asking if my work environment were a bowl of fruit, what sort of fruit would I be. I will choose c., an apple, both because it's fall in Ohio so apples are in season, and because apples are nicely versatile.

So where does all this get me? Well, actually, the idea isn't necessarily to pick one answer to the questions, but to consider what answers give you strong reactions, which give you no real reaction, and which you can't ever see yourself choosing, and pick traits as positive, neutral, or negative (two of each) based on that. OK, then.

The traits are Wiles, Resourcefulness, Ego, Nostalgia, Curiosity, and Hope (WRENCH). I'm gonna take Ego and Wiles as negative traits (meaning that my character is kind of easily led), Hope and Resourcefulness as neutral, and Curiosity and Nostalgia as positive. Neat!

So, the rest of the character creation process is just doing group dynamics and playing a round of Two Truths & a Lie, where another player determines the truth or the lie. There's a slot on the sheet that says "Claim to Fame," but those words literally do not appear anywhere else in the book (grr), and there's no example of character creation (also grr). That's a little disappointing.

Well, let's do this: I'll do the two truths etc thing and then randomly pick one to be true. I'll say that my three statements are:

1. I've seen over 100 movies from before the Collapse.
2. I can dislocate my shoulder anytime I want.
3. I'm afraid of bugs. 

(If these seem kind of simplistic, it's because there's not really much attempt at setting, here, so it's hard to have anything to work with in the absence of a group.)

OK, so my hypothetical other player chooses the first statement to be the lie. I...actually want that to be true, because I think it ties in with my love of Nostalgia, so I'm going to reject that and say that the last one is the lie. That means I don't get to start with a Spirit point, but c'est la vie.

That's it for the structure bit of chargen, the rest is just making shit up. So I'll say that my WRENCH is named Bell. Bell grew up in what used to be Los Angeles, now flooded and destroyed in earthquakes. There were a lot of spare DVDs lying around, though, and it wasn't hard to have power sometimes, so he wound up killing a lot of time watching movies. Of course, that leaves him with a sort of skewed perspective on what the Time Before was like, but it also means he knows a bit more about history than most folks. 

I think Bell is fresh-faced and blond. He's got scars up and down his left arm (from the same accident that left him able to dislocate his shoulder). He has brown eyes and wears a blue knitted cap that his mom made him a long time ago.

And that's it, I think!