Character Creation: The Esoterrorists 2nd Edition

Well, I was supposed to running Night's Black Agents today, but that got cancelled due to illness, so I shall instead make a character. It's appropriate, perhaps, that the character is for a Gumshoe game, but that wasn't intentional, I determined the game randomly. So here we go!

The Game: The Esoterrorists 2nd Edition
The Publisher: Pelgrane Press
Degree of Familiarity: None with this games specifically, but I'm pretty familiar with the underlying mechanics and with "members of a secret society protect the world from supernatural evils"
Books Required: Just the one.

 
So, I think that Esoterrorists was the first Gumshoe game, based on the intro to the book written by Simon Rogers. I've talked before about how I think that the premise of the Gumshoe system is sound, even if the reasoning behind it seems a little extreme (to wit, the premise is that if you treat finding clues in an investigative game like any other action - roll to see if you fail and fail means "no" - that the action grinds to a halt). I think that that problem is very much rooted in some deeper issues with what "failure" means in the context of an RPG, but I honestly can't fault the result; it's one of my favorite systems and it absolutely informed Chill 3rd Ed.

This particular game has the players assuming the roles of members of the Ordo Veritatis (which sounds like better Latin than SAVE uses, but that's how the cookie crumbles), a secret organization that operates in unconnected cells to battle the titular Esoterrorists. Magic and the supernatural need a foothold in the belief of the world before they become fixtures, so it's not just about fighting them, it's about keeping them out of the public eye and mind. Sounds good.

So, what kind of investigator would I like to make today? You get recruited into the OV by invitation or just stumbling across the world of the supernatural (but then vetted and psych tested, which is probably good), so I'm not necessarily an occultist by design. Let's see. I think I want to play a criminal of sorts. Reggie Blankenship was running pool hall scams in high school. He got expelled his senior year, got a GED, did a couple of years in college and then got expelled for selling exams and essays. He's done a bunch of minor cons, and was branching into identity theft when he got asked to create a legal identity for some old guy named Ezra. Reggie did some digging and found that Ezra had been creeping around for more than a century, and was all set to make the ID and then bug the fuck out when the OV showed up. Reggie helped lure Ezra into a trap, and then saw the benefit of having a secret organization having his back (legal fees!), so he joined up.

Next step is Investigative Abilities. As usual, I get a number based on how many players in the group, and I'm sure if I were actually playing Reggie there would be at least 5 players, so we'll say I get 20 points.

Well, starting with Academic Abilities, I'll take a point in Law (gotta know it to break it). I get a free point in Occult Studies, so that doesn't count against my 20. I'll take a point in Research, too (Reggie does his homework).

Down under Interpersonal, I'll take Bullshit Detector (duh), Bureaucracy, Cop Talk, Flattery, Flirting, two points in Impersonate, and then one each in Negotiation, Reassurance, and Streetwise. That puts me up to 12 spent, 8 left. Anything down under Technical?

Well, sure. Cryptography, Data Retrieval, Document Analysis, two in Electronic Surveillance, Fingerprinting, and Photography. One left. I'll put it in Languages, that's always useful.

And then 60 points in General Abilities. Yowza. Well, right off the bat, I want a decent rating in Infiltration, so I'll put 10 there (that means I have to put at least 5 in the next-highest). I'll put 8 in Athletics (it pays to be able to run in Reggie's line of work), 8 in Driving (ditto), 4 in Shooting (he knows how guns work), 8 in Surveillance, 9 in Health (plus one for free), 5 in Stability (plus one I get for free), 8 in Filch (duh) and 4 in Preparedness.

And that's pretty much it, actually. I think Reggie is a nicely nondescript fellow - white, average height and build, brown hair, brown eyes. He carries a wedding ring and wears it when it'll help with a con, and while he's not educated in any formal capacity he can fake knowledge of a number of different topics (plus he improvises well).

Interesting to me that this game doesn't use Drive, because it seems like it'd benefit. I think that for Reggie, the full scope of the problem isn't really apparent yet and he's looking to use the OV for whatever benefits he can get before taking off. At some point on his first real mission, shit is going to get very real for him.