Only a few more weeks in this absolute trash fire of a year. You know, the last several years have been pretty god-awful for me personally (some of which is purely my doing, granted, but a lot of which isn't), but 2020 has just had almost no unqualified joy. Like, Trump getting voted out is great...but he still got a frankly huge voter turnout, and he should never have been elected in the first place. We're likely to start seeing a working vaccine soon...but like, we need one, which sucks.
Anyway, none of this remotely relates to the character I'm making and I frankly don't know what I'm on about, so fnah.
The Game: Tomorrow Knights
The Publisher: Spectrum Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, with the RPG or the source material
Books Required: Just the one
I don't think this game is for sale anymore; anyway I don't see it on Spectrum's website or on Z-Man Games (whose logo also graces the book). But that's not surprisingly; licensed games often don't hang around long.
Well, anyway, the tone of the game seems to be somewhere between superheroes, sci-fi, mechs, and noir. PCs are mercenaries, or at least they can be? I have to say, the early bits of the book explain the world pretty clearly, but the setting doesn't seem terribly juicy to me. Maybe that's just because I haven't read the comics, I dunno.
Anyway, I need a concepty sort of thing. One of the options (it's a Perk, actually) is to play a character recruited into the US Doppelganger Project (TELL IT TO QUEEN DOPPELPOPPELUS), and I think that's potentially a fun gimmick. Let's say my character has a really impressive memory (hopefully there's a trait I can take for that), and got brought into the USDP because he wound up committing a bunch of stuff to memory that the agency (UCC, maybe?) really didn't want to lose. Rather than have him put it all down on paper, they made him cloneable and tried to train him up as a spy so that he wouldn't die (but like, if he does, it's OK). His real name is Jerry Moore, but his nickname is "Do-Over."
So that's concept, then. Next step is to spend points on traits and perks. Let's assume 30 points.
Traits are either easy or hard. Easy traits start at 0 and go one-for-one from there, while hard traits start at -3 if you buy them at all, and go up from there. Maximum of 5 in a trait, in any case. I can also lower easy traits to as little at -3, but I can only get 5 points back doing that. Let's see now.
Looking ahead, the cloning thing is 8 points, so I'll buy that, first. 22 points left. Looking at traits, I'd want Athletics, maybe Driving, Finesse, Firearms, Stealth, Unarmed Combat, Investigation, Knowledge, Literacy, Numbers, Willpower, Disguise, Empathy, Etiquette...those are all easy traits (none of the hard ones seem really crucial). Taking 1 in each of this would cost 14, which would leave me 8. Seems workable so far. Any other Perks I simply must have? Not really, though Organization makes some sense, so I'll put 2 points there to show that I get some backing from UCC. 6 more, so I'll bump Knowledge to 2 (it goes down if I die and get cloned), and I'll bump Stealth, Unarmed Combat, Firearms up to 2 as well, and with the last 2 points I'll take Investigation to 3. Oh, crap, there's a Perception trait, and I just blooped right over that. That won't do. OK. I'll lower Artist, Streetwise, and Survival to -1, and take Perception 3. If I wanted to specialize Perception in Photographic Memory, I'd have it at 2/4 (meaning I have Perception 2 at anything other than Photographic Memory, but Perception 4 in that application). Sure, why not.
Next step is to add 2 to any remaining points to get my starting Seamless Points, so, uh, that's 2.
And now, hooks! These are, as the name implies, story hooks, and they can be minor, moderate, or major. They give me Seamless Points, 1, 2, 3 respectively, but I can only take 5 points total. Let's see. I would kind of like the fact that I'm a clone (I mean, I have to have died at least once) to be a hook. I'll take Nemesis - there's a Yakuza enforcer who's risen up through the ranks who killed me once before. The fact that I'm still alive caused him a major loss of face, and he really wants me dead. He's learned I'm a clone, though, so he's taking it slow, because he needs a way to kill me such that I can't come back. I'll call that Nemesis 3.
And then because I like giving my hypothetical GM some wiggle room, I'll take Unknown at 1. Some minor issue that I don't know what is yet.
I get Numbers + 1 x $1000, or $2000 to start. As usual, I'm skipping the shopping list.
Otherwise, I'm pretty much done. Jerry is a pretty nondescript looking guy; brown hair, brown eyes, in shape but not ripped (you know, like a spy should be). He's always willing to factor dying into a plan, but it's a last resort, since it screws with his mind and memory. Also, dying is scary no matter who you are. Jerry works for the UCC as a data collector and field analyst; he's trained in combat but that's not his forte. He's also not a purely loyal company man - he knows the UCC does some shady shit, but he's under the impression that the good outweighs the bad. He's the sort of character who would be susceptible to being turned to a scrappy underdog resistance (which would probably screw with the whole "clone" thing, but maybe not).
That'll do it!
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