Character Creation: Netherstorm

Sure, let's do a character. It's too hot to do anything else.

The Game: Netherstorm
The Publisher: Thunderhead Entertainment, which has a web site, but when I click on the link it asks for a password, which is weird.
Degree of Familiarity: None. Can't even remember where I bought it
Books Required: Just the one

Netherstorm makes me sad. Not because it's a bad game, or has any offensive content or whatever. What makes me sad about it is that it's yet another in a long series of games apparently created by very enthusiastic, well-meaning people who have only ever played D&D, and, worse, assume that that's all anyone else played, either.

I've beaten this drum before (but fuck it, ain't like anyone's listening - strange kind of freedom, that!), but wanting to self-publish your own game is awesome. But, like, get some variety in your head first? The basic premise of Netherstorm seems to be "we want to give the players total freedom to make whatever kind of character they want," but there needs to be a "within this very sparse fantasy world" tacked on the end there.

Seriously, the book is 122 pages, and of those, about a half-dozen are devoted to setting. The titular Netherstorm gets a page. There's just not much here, and the system is your basic, bog-standard, simulation kind of thing. And whereas a game like, say, Cairn, while the system isn't anything special, presents a setting that's well-realized and interesting enough that I want to run it (and, indeed, I am starting a campaign), this one kinda just...sits there. It's a game that looks like it came out 25 years ago, but it was published in 2014.

Anyway, that's enough of that. Let's do some chargen. I'm meant to start with a concept. Again, there's almost nothing about the setting in the book, and all I really know is that it's a fantasy world with occasional Netherstorms, which are weird, mystical calamities that leave people gibbering. With that in mind, I think I'd play someone who's seen a Netherstorm and is trying to figure out what they really are and how to stop them. My character had a fairly privileged upbringing - minor noble, maybe - and then his lands and people were devastated by the storm, and he was forced on the road with nothing (or maybe he's got extended family that can help him, but they don't really believe him when he talks about crazy killer storms).

That's enough of a concept to start, because the next thing is race, and that'll probably inform a lot of the particulars. Let's see. We've got fey (no thanks), humans (bet they're diverse and adaptable! Oh, yeah, and other races don't like them. Eh), big things with multiple arms, weird goat people, sentient animals...oh, hang on. I do like these Peuroma guys. They're reptilian folks who get their whole life stories tattooed on them. That's pretty cool.

OK, so these guys went to war against humanity because humans were warring against another race, and the Peuroma and the multi-armed guys got sick of it. They basically roasted the humans, and took over their villages, so that's gotta have some interesting tension (or, it would, if there was any real attempt at setting here). So that's fine, I'll say my character, Tlilit, is the eldest son of a family that captured a village during the war and built it up into a pretty impressive little city. So maybe less "noble" and more "governor" as far as the family function? Either way, Tlilit hadn't really gotten a chance to take over any important functions where the storm hit.

I get six automatic points in disadvantages...and there is no place to write those on the sheet. Groovy. Well, I'm an Open Book (because my whole life is tattooed on me), Strength costs more, and I get a penalty to Survival because my people are a citified people. I don't get any advantages automatically, but I have to take six points, because as far as I can tell I can only use disadvantage points for advantages. Problem is, they're all boring as shit. Well, I'll take a cost break to Reason and Focus, and to the Language Literacy and Stonecraft Skills.

Moving on to Backstories. Oh, wait, holy shit, there's a form-fillable sheet up for download that actually has the right stuff on it. Where the hell did I get this one, then? Weird. Anyway, Backstories are basically more ads/disads, and again, I can take bad ones to balance out with good ones. Sure. Well, I'll take Blunt, because Tlilit comes from privilege and isn't used to censoring himself. And I'll take Pointy End Up twice, so I take a penalty to polearms and two-handed weapons. That only gives me 3 points, but the advantages are all pretty boring, too, so I don't think I'll need much. I do want Mason, continuing in this "stone craft" thing that I've got going, and I'll also take Equestrian.

And now on to Attributes, where I have to roll percentile dice to see how many creation points I get. Sigh. Sure, I roll a 63, which gives me 120 points. I start with 10 in each Attribute, and buying points costs 2 points each (except Strength costs me 3, and Reason and Focus cost 1, at least until I get about 20). Boy, an example of character creation would not go amiss!

Anyway, I think I want higher Reason and Focus, obviously. I'll leave Strength at 10.

An aside: I just took about 15 minutes to look through the book to get a sense of how the system works. It's a percentile, roll low system, which is fine, but fucked if it ever says that. There's a sidebar in the introduction that tells you how to roll a d100 or multiples of d10, but never says what that roll means in context. Likewise, there's a great big skills list, but the only system information I can find is building spells (which looks kind of interesting, but I'll have to look closer) and combat. In no case can I find how to actually play the game and use the system. What the hell is going on.

(Core book is PWYW, so I'm gonna download it and see if anything's different. And...nope. Jeez. This is a new low.)

Anyway, back to poor ol' Tlilit. Strength at 10, sure. Supposedly 8-12 is average, but since we're working with a percentile system, I think that's a big load of horseshit, but I've only got so many points. Let's bump Agility to 15 (costing 10), Endurance to 20 (which costs 20; total of 30 spent). Focus and Reason we can jack to 30; that costs...jesus, hang on, that might be too much. 20 points gets them both to 20 (since they cost less), but getting to 30 would cost 30 points for each one, so all in all it'd be 40 points for each of them. Yeah, too much. Let's just leave them at 20; that means I've spent 50.

Suppose I just leave the rest at 10? Suppose I do. Bunch of derived traits, I'll fill 'em in, the formulae are on the sheet. Skill Bonuses, likewise, are based on Attributes, so I'll just do those, too. You know what, I'll go back and up Magnetism to 20, so I've spent 20 more points, putting me at 70, 50 more points to go.

OK, so now Skills. Natural Skills get the bonus automatically, Trained ones only get it if I buy a level. Each level is 1%, which is ass on a stick, but whatever. I get 5 levels in Stonecraft and Ride from my advantages.

Ugh, this is awful. Buying skill levels is one-for-one up to level 20, which makes the Skill bonuses all but useless because the cost can't go below 1 per level and I'm already running low. Fuck it, let's get this over with. I guess I should take some points in Stonecraft and Language Literacy, so let's waste 10 points in each of those. 20 points spent, to 90 points total, 30 more to go. Ain't taking any spells, I suspect.

You know, let's just dump 10 into Etiquette, 10 into Leadership, and 10 into One-Handed Weapon because you know this game is all about combat, and move the hell on with our lives. Out of points, what a shame, no need to figure out the magic system.

At this point I could pick a deity, and worshiping a god can give you skill levels, but I'm not feeling any of them, really. Actually, I can see Tlilit going in for D'Nudleen, the god of intelligence and deviancy, because supposedly he brokered peace between warring gods, and now there's this storm thingie. That gives me 5 levels in Stealth and Language Literacy.

Fuck me, am I done yet? All except Equipment. Which, y'know, I'm gonna skip it.

OK, so, Tlilit is a Peuroma on the young side of things. In human terms, he'd be in his early 20s, but I don't know if they age like humans and I don't much care. He's a coppery sort of color, lighter on the underbelly, and so his tats are blue-black (shows up better). He's got tattoos for his family's legacy, but on his back - that's his history. He's got tats representing his training and accomplishments (such as they are) as a stoneworker, and his most recent tattoo is of the Netherstorm destroying his home. He's left plenty of room, though. He's still got a future ahead of him...he hopes.

And that's me done, thank goodness.