Character Creation: Zombie World

I'm running this game on Saturday, so I should make a character. BRAINS.

The Game: Zombie World
The Publisher: Magpie Games 
Degree of Familiarity: Never played this game, but I've played/run plenty of PbtA games and I'm well familiar with the genre
Books Required: Just the one. Less "book" and more "set of cards"

Zombie World is a card-based game, again, but unlike the last few games I've done it has a custom deck. And, unlike a lot of PbtA games, it doesn't use playbooks.

So, the first thing I'd do in a group would be to create an enclave (available sets include Prison, Hospital, Amusement Park, Farm, Caravan, and Mall). I don't really need to do that to make a character, though, so I think I'll skip it.

The first step in creating my Survivor is to deal out four cards: one Past (representing who I was pre-Rise), two Presents (representing who I am now and what my function is in the enclave) and a Trauma (some reaction to the bad shit that's happened). Normally my Past and Trauma would be secret until I reveal them in play.

My Past is Litigator. My Trauma is Amoral. My Present options are Visionary or Contrarian. Hrmm. That actually all goes together nicely. Probably not the sort of character I'd choose to make, but that's fine. Let's pick a Present. Both of them are pretty cool as far as their systems go, but I'll take Visionary because I personally can't stand contrarians.

Next I do Stats. I get 3, 2, 2, 1 to split between Savagery, Steel, Soul, and Survival. Well, I think given that I'm driven and amoral, Survival should get the 3. I'll put the 2s into Steel and Soul, leaving my Savagery at 1. That's fine, I don't see this guy as the "bashing in heads" type (though I do note that when Amoral gets revealed in play, I'd gain +1 Steel).

At this point I'd introduce my character to the other players and then we'd figure out relationships, but since it's just me I'll just tie everything together and finish up. So!

"Sonny" D'Anato was a public defender pre-Rise, and hated it. It's not that he hated his clients - he was pretty down with the whole "everyone gets their day in court" thing. It's just that he had a caseload of 212 when the zombies came, and that was three or four times what it should have been. He remembers very, very few of his clients, and he knows that he dropped the ball on multiple occasions. And it didn't make him idealistic or passionate, it just made him cold and hard. He's tried to lose some of that hardness now that the world's ended and he's got the capacity to help make justice in the enclave (because shit yeah, we still need a justice system) work fairly, but he has trouble summoning the same enthusiasm for fairness that he used to have. He still thinks it's important, intellectually, he just has trouble feeling it.

Sonny is in his 40s, black hair going silver at the temples. He was chubby before the Rise, but he's lost all that weight and looks maybe a little scarecrow-ish now. He's got flinty blue eyes. He keeps a silver pinky ring in his pocket (it doesn't fit him now that he's lost weight).

Looks good!