Character Creation: Operation Perfect Blue

Man, this is a heartbreaker.

The Game: Operation: Perfect Blue
The Publisher: Cutter's Guild Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Operation: Perfect Blue has been on my shelf for a lot of years now. I've picked it up to read, but never really committed because it's never hooked me. But today I got stuck on the couch because Noodle crawled up behind my head and fell asleep and I didn't have the heart to stand up and dislodge him, so I read through it. 

The basic premise here is that you're controlling a secret espionage/revolutionary organization working to dislodge not a sleeping pibble-dog, but an evil mining concern drilling for Unobtanium (not really) on the planet Orna. The particulars of that aren't really where the game's heart lives, though. You play three types of characters: Executives that make all the financial decisions, build the base, hire troops, etc.; Field Team Members that go out and do stuff; and Pilots that control vehicles during Vehicle Combat (but it's really the vehicles that get the lion's share of the attention during that phase, I think). 

Evidently this game was meant to be a licensed X-COM RPG, and that explains a lot. The emphasis on base-building and resource management is something that a lot of RPGs don't (or didn't until relatively recently) put a lot of mechanical emphasis on. Nowadays, the Forged in the Dark system would be a perfect fit for this style of play, but Operation: Perfect Blue takes that style of play (resource management, base building, breaking game play into phases) and gives it that wonderful 90s/00s "fuck me there are subsystems everywhere plus this book is nearly 400 pages" spice. 

I don't feel like making three different characters, so I really went round and round about whether to make an FTM or an Executive. I think an Exec would be less work, but what's weird is that even though Execs don't go out into the field they still have all the same stats as an FTM or Pilot (see, if this game were made nowadays the roles would be consolidated or the Exec characters would be abstractions without stats, which would make more sense, but I digress). 

I guess the character that you'd play and engage with the system would be the FTM. The book tells us to expect these characters to die a lot, which bugs me because characters that are designed to have short shelf lives should be quick and easy to create (see also curse the darkness, or rather take my word for it since you can't buy my games anymore). Anyway, yeah, guess I'll do an FTM character.

No step-by-step chargen, the book does that stupid thing where it starts telling you how to make a character and veers off into game systems. Blah. Anyway, I guess in order to really get things going I need to choose a race. I think I'll be an Ornan, native to the planet where all this is happening. I will say that the racial descriptions devote attention to each race's physiology and culture to the point that I think they'd be interesting to play. Doesn't tell us much about their language, which is a shame. Anyway, as an Ornan I get bonuses to certain stats, like so:

Now, why they didn't just go with "Kn +5, MT +5, etc." rather than this hard-to-read weird-ass box arrangement, I'll never know. Anyway, I roll a d12 (ugh, someone doesn't understand probability) to get my value for the 7 stats and then apply the mods. That gives me:

Knowledge 8
Mental Tolerance 13
Leadership 9
Endurance 8
Strength 10
Agility 8
Speed 5

Hit Points and Critical Hit Points (HPs and CHiPs, respectively) are derived traits, based on one's Endurance, and they're different based on body part (uuuggggghhhh). Basically you have (Endurance x2) for your torso and (Endurance) in everything else, but it's explained really needlessly wordy-like in the book. Moving the fuck on. 

Skills...see, this is why an actual chargen section is nice. The book says you get Skills determined by your class, and then talks about raising them with Skill Points. OK, so far so good. But there's no mention of whether we get any Skill Points at chargen, and there's no example of chargen (of course, had to leave room for a hundred pages of weapons stat blocks), so I dunno. 

Let's pick a goddamn class. This is interesting; classes are in no way balanced, but that's because you have to buy them as your Executive characters. So a Civilian is effectively free, but they have shit in terms of skills. A Demolitions Expert is highly skilled, but they're a lot more expensive to hire and maintain. In terms of what I'm doing it doesn't much matter, so I'm gonna be a Sniper, because I like them. 

This is gonna be quick, because I don't think there's much in the way of decision-making (maybe this process is quick enough to reflect high character turnover). I'm level 1, my rank is Private, and I get 6 Aggression Points per level, whatever the hell that means. And then I get all this:

There's only one small box to write this on the sheet. Boooo. 

I guess that's mostly it, other than background. No naming or language conventions for Ornans, so let's call this guy Pellita (Ornans have fewer teeth than humans, but they're wider; I'm trying to think what that would do to their phonology but I ain't gonna go down that rabbit hole). Pellita is only 20, but was recruited and trained by Perfect Blue when they found him taking potshots at Triaxy soldiers with a slingshot (or the Ornan equivalent) and so he had a pretty good eye. Pellita doesn't seem to have the patience that a lot of snipers do; off the job he's excitable and impulsive. He can turn to stone real quick when he needs to, though. 

There, that's basically it. Finally get to take the sticker off this one.