Character Creation: Hot War

I SAID I'D DO IT! WHY DIDN'T YOU BELIEVE ME.

Ahem.

The Game: Hot War
The Publisher: Contested Ground Studios
Degree of Familiarity: None.
Books Required: Just the one.

 

Hot War is kind of a sequel to Cold City, which I think is a really cool idea. In Hot War, the Cold War went, well, hot, there were nukes and also monsters, and now here it is 1963 in the south of England, everything is freezing, there's heavy shit going on, and Special Situations Group is trying to make things better. Of course, it's just as sectarian as any group of people.

I like the presentation of this game; it doesn't concern itself with who's the "bad guy" in the war, so much as what effect the war had. The game is presented basically "in character" through artifacts, which I find is a great way to create the world while preserving enough mystery that the GM has some room to stretch their legs (provided, of course, that the writing is solid and the fonts are fucking legible, which is something that other companies have occasionally struggled with). This looks pretty tight, though.

OK, so the first thing that would happen normally is that the players would figure out the particulars of the game, but I don't have a group, so I'll kinda skip that. Actually, there are a few examples, and I kinda like one of them - characters being involved in a devious Navy plot to steal a nuclear weapon from the RAF. That gives me some general stuff to work with. I kinda want to make a character like Tom in Lock, Stock, and Two Smoking Barrels, someone with their fingers in some pies who can arrange for contraband. If I need to make someone who works for SSG specifically, he could be undercover, or have kinda gone rogue like James McAvoy in Atomic Blonde.

Now, normally the group and I would have a discussion about our tone of the game (the one they come up with in the example is "post-apocalyptic film noir", which sounds awesome), and what kinds of scenes we'd like to see, but again, just me, so I'll move on to character creation proper.

Well, starting with Attributes, I get 5 points to divide up between the three of them, and they start with a free point. Action, Influence, and Insight - basically interacting with the world physically, socially, and mentally. I don't see my character as being particularly impressive physically - I think socially is kinda where he shines. 5 is my maximum, so if I put my Influence at 4 and my Insight at 3, that leaves Action at 1. OK, then.

Moving along to Traits. These are, as with Cold City, positive or negative facets of the character that kinda cover skills as well as personality and psychological makeup. So I should think about this guy a little.

Well, we'll say he was discharged from the Armed Forces right before the War really went nuts - theft charges and a shady trial that led to his being kicked out, but not seeing jail time. He survived the War and started selling and moving contraband and stolen goods, and then this whole "someone's trying to steal a nuke" thing came up and SSG came and found him, and basically said "look, there's no more 'trials' per se, you work with us or we just shoot your monkey ass" (only more British) and he said "yeah, fair enough." Let's call him Timmy Market (it's not his name, but he likes being known as "the Market").

So for my Traits, let's do this:

Dishonorable discharge from the Army (-) - Duh.
Many fingers in many pies (+) - Also duh.
Fighting is for chumps (-) - Timmy is a bit of a coward, and never saw combat in the Army. He prefers to run.
Knows which the wind blows (+) - Timmy is adept at recognizing power structures and how to survive them.
Known to be neutral (+) - Everybody knows Timmy is loyal to Timmy, which makes him weirdly trustworthy.

And now Hidden Agendas. Hmm. The first one is Factional, and I kinda pictured Timmy as working mostly for himself. But let's say he's working for the London Police, since they obviously knew about him and were in a position to refer him to the SSG. He's not a cop, of course, but they're the ones pulling his strings. So his Factional Agenda is "Give the police an advantage over the CDA" (that's the Citizens Defence Army). Timmy doesn't much care, but he's no fan of the CDA and it's what the Police want.

Then I have a Personal Agenda, which is, of course, what Timmy wants for himself. Timmy wants to become legit. He's fine trading goods forever, but he wants there to be a legal, respected system for it so he doesn't have to hide.

These are rated 3 to 9, and it looks like I can just set the ratings myself. High ratings are wider in scale, so I'm gonna say my Personal at a 9 (it's basically a setting-changing event) and my Factional at 4 (he wants to get it over with).

And finally, Relationships. As written I have to have four, but one of those is another PC, so I'm gonna skip that one. The other three are: someone representing my Faction (or the Faction as a whole); someone close to me, like an intimate relationship; and an antagonist or enemy.

Starting from the top, I'll take a London Police person named Bella Varlen. Bella is an Army vet, like me, discharged after the War (medical; she took some toxic gas and now has compromised lung function) and joined the London Police. She hates Timmy. She thinks (correctly) that he's a coward who'd cheerfully sell out his country and his mother for an angle, and that (also correctly) he can be of help in this op.

For my close relationship, I'll take Ollie. Ollie (her real name is Allie, but Timmy likes to call her Ollie after Oliver Twist, which Ollie doesn't understand). Ollie is 14 and is a talented lockpick and pickpocket, and Timmy entrusts her to snatch things that Timmy might need but can't or doesn't want to pay for. Ollie regards Timmy as a big brother; Timmy trusts Ollie in a way he does few others.

And finally, the enemy. There's a competing contraband broker in London named Bench. Bench doesn't hate Timmy; they actually do business on occasion, but while Timmy wants to make this all legit, Bench wants to make it more like gangland of yesteryear. He's not necessarily involved in the nuke deal, but he might be, and he would welcome the money.

I get 8 points to spread around, minimum 1, maximum 4. I'll put one into Bella (it's not something Timmy is invested in), 4 into Ollie, and 3 into Bench. (Note that if I had a group, these numbers would of necessity be different because I'd have another relationship to consider.)

And that's me done, actually. I have completed the games from this bundle! Only...like 200 more games to go.

Oh, hey, I just realized I used the surname "Market" once before. Maybe Timmy is a descendant of Homer.