Character Creation: Terror Thirteen

Happy Thanksgiving Eve! Here's a character from a game that has nothing to do with Thanksgiving. Gobble gobble.

The Game: Terror Thirteen
The Publisher: Anansi Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, and it's a free download

Terror Thirteen is a horror game that focuses, according to the book itself, on Gothic horror, dark romance, and Victorian-style stories. I can get behind that. Horror is a many-splendored thing, and a focus on a particular flavor of horror (or at least some knobs you can tweak to focus things yourself) is a good idea.

Reading the book, Conflicts are determine who gets narrative control, which is fine, kind of works similarly to Misspent Youth. Reading the example of play (and thank you from the bottom of my little heart to the author for an example of play that actually illustrates how play works), it looks like the Narrator's stakes in a Conflict might run up against that old bugaboo of investigative games, the old "if you don't win you don't find the clue," but that's a real superficial reading, so I might be wrong. What I did note was that consequences for Conflicts and so forth translate to Statuses, so if you go off by yourself you've got the Alone Status, and doing that can add Hope to the pool, which is a shared resource to influence die rolls. Likewise, there's a Terror Level that rises, and once the Terror Level hits 13, the Greater Evil (OMG So Many Capitalized Words) can awaken. Tension mechanics in horror games are cool. 

So! With all of that in mind, how does chargen work? It's point-buy! Sweet Christmas, my favorite! And there's not one but two examples of chargen! The setup for the example characters is 1931 London, and the characters given are a psychiatrist and her brother. I believe I shall make a character within this paradigm, how about. 

In contrast to the more straight-laced and, one might say, stuffy characters that we're introduced to, I believe my character will be an enthusiastic participant in the Bright Young Things movement. Likewise, I have a theme song courteously provided by Michelle ("Needles & Pins," The Searchers).

(Older song, but by no means contemporaneous with the setting.)

The song suggests to me someone who has gone through a break-up and either been transformed and learned from the experience, or who is getting some extreme sour grapes. Maybe both. I shall say that my character is, like many Bright Young Things, a socialite and comes from money. His name is Wendall Bateman (his friends call him Wendy). 

Let's assume Wendy is an Average Joe, and as such is built on a 100-point base. Costs for things are in a handy table: 

And I don't have to worry about Occult Skills or Dark Powers 'cause I can't take 'em. 

Stats! 3 is Average, and I've got four to think about: Body, Mind, Soul, Charm. I'm thinking Wendy needs Charm to be high and the others can be pretty much average, so let's just Charm to...is there a max? There is, it's 5, although one of the example characters goes to 6 in one of her Skills (booo). Well, assuming they mean it about the maximum, I'll put Charm there. That costs 22 points (16 for the first four, 6 for the fifth). Ugh, spendy. Average in the other three would be 36, for a total of 58 points spent. 

Skills! I can't take Occult Skills, so what do I want?

Art 2
Art History 1
Athletics 2
Bluff 2
Boxing 2
Debate 2
Endurance 3
Etiquette 3
Firearms (Large) 1
History 1
Literature 1
Music 1
Perception 3
Philosophy 1
Put-Down 3
Riding 1
Seduction 3

That's 32 points, and it gives me a smattering of fairly useful things, plus some things Wendy's better at by dint of going on drunken nighttime adventures in London (I like the idea of him being able to play the dozens and win social combats). I've spent 90 points, ugh, getting low.

Backgrounds! I think Wealth is here somewhere and I need that...yep, that's a Background. I think Wealth 2 is plenty (hey, second rich character in a row). That leaves me 8 points, because the other Backgrounds are kinda eh. I do need to buy some Bonds, though, so let's think about Wendy's story. 

Wendy, in contrast to another young hedonist character I made not long ago, isn't jaded or nihilistic or in too big of a drug-fueled haze. He's young - just 19, let's say, and he's out with his friends all the time, going to fancy dress parties or otherwise galavanting around London. I think he was courting a young woman named Patricia, and they were talking about getting married (their families didn't seem to disapprove), but then one day, Patricia wrote him a letter saying they had to break it off and she could never see him again. He doesn't know why, but he's heard rumors that she's remained on her country estate, and has been seen with a very well-dressed, but unknown, young man, possibly from the Continent (there's a hook, Narrator). 

Now, I could take Patricia or my broken heart as a Background, but I'd rather have her as a Bond, because there's a system for resolving those in a few various ways. So I'll take Patricia, My Lost Love as a 4-point Bond, leaving me 4 more points. I'll put two into a Bond with the Bright Young Things movement, and the other two...hmm. There's no Streetwise Skill, but the book does say that the Skill list isn't exhaustive, so let's take 2 points in Streetwise. 

That's all my points, then. Wendy is young, smooth-faced, sandy-haired. His father died in the Great War, and his mother never really recovered, so he's not terribly close to most of his family. He likes them well enough, but they do seem melancholy a lot, and he was a brimming optimist before Patricia broke his heart. Now he's...a little more circumspect, a little wiser, and still smarting a little, but still totally down for dressing up as a mongoose and going on a treasure hunt. 

And that's it!