Character Creation: Diesel

Or "clockwise," if you like.

The Game: Diesel
The Publisher: I...actually don't know. Steven Pankotai, I guess?
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Diesel is a fun-looking sci-fi/western kind of dealie (and yes it takes inspiration from Firefly because if you're combining sci-fi and western it'd be hard not to). It bills itself as "high octane action with an emotional core", whatever the hell that means, but the game itself looks pretty nifty. Characters ("Diesels") are tricked out with cyber-implants but there's a lot of mechanical emphasis on those parts being maintained and what happens when they break down. I'm also kind of happy that the game doesn't include the older "you get less human as you get more implants" chestnut. Your "Organics" stat goes down, but that's just because you have less meat in there, not because you're somehow less of a person. 

I have niggles; there's a whole "reality blurring" thing that I don't know needs to be there, and honestly it was the least interesting thing about the game. I'm also not sure why "diesel" comes into it; surely these folks' implants aren't powered by diesel. But that's fairly minor and I think it'd be a fun game to try out. Let's make a Diesel! 

The book tells us that the first thing to do is to have a session zero and talk about the setting a little and conceptualize, and that's fine, but of course it's just me. So really we're gonna start with stats. I've got six of them, and the crucial one is Organics. It starts at 4, can't go higher during chargen (or really, like, ever, I think), and acts as a cap on the other stats. Later on in chargen I can pick mods, and once you cross a certain threshold in mods your Organics goes down, which of course resets the cap on your other stats.

So taking the sci-fi frontier vibe, and since I just watched Sisu not long ago, I think I want to play someone who is just trying to walk away with enough gold (or "Possibility," here) to set himself up. I don't want to go as full-on "John Wick style badass" as the movie, but I do like the idea of my character being someone with a troubled past. I have images of him drifting down a river for some reason. Let's say he was part of a military unit that got into a major scrape with some separatists who were stealing Possibility, but they got away with a bunch of decayed Possibility (which is cheaper in setting but unstable). Someone in the whole mess detonated it - my guy doesn't know who or how - and he was blown backwards and into the nearby river, surrounded by body parts of friend and foe (ew). He floated downriver and eventually stopped trying to swim, he just focused on keeping himself afloat. It wasn't until someone fished him out the next morning that he realized how badly injured he was, and how much of him needed to be replaced.

So that's cool, I think I'm looking at someone with a bunch of mods (there's apparently no limit on what you can take at chargen, but of course the more mods you have, the lower your Organics goes). So for right now: 

Organics 4
Know-How 4
Mechanics 3
Dexterity 3
Brawn 3
Personality 2

The game wants me to figure out Derived Stats next, but as we know from long years of doing Savage Worlds characters you do that shit at the end of chargen. So next I think we'll do mods. 

Now, if I want to keep my Organics at 3, I need to take no more than 14 slots of mods, but if I'm comfortable going to 2, I can take up to 24. Seems like a lot. Well, let's see what I want. 

I know I want Hauler Joints, letting me carry extra weight and move further. Aaaannnnd the PDF doesn't scale text, dammit. Oh, well. Moving on. 

I want a Reinforced Skeleton, which gives me the ability to wear heavier armor than I otherwise would. That also officially lowers my Organics to 3. 

Otherwise, I think there's just two more I want: Handyman (one of my hands is basically a multi-tool) and Thousand Cuts (I have a springloaded assortment of blades that I can pop out). They're bother 2 slots, so that takes me to 12. That means my Organics stays at 3, my Know-How drops to 3, but I'm otherwise good. Meat and Metal are both 3, Guard is 4. 

Equipment! Normally I don't bother, but I like the approach here. I get pieces of equipment equal to my Brawn (3), plus two more because of my Hauler Joint mod (5). I can wear Heavy Armor because of my Reinforced Skeleton, so I'm gonna say my guy has cobbled together some very clanky but very secure armor over time. I want a portable forge and a climbing kit (which I might use more for mining/spelunking, but the principle is much the same), and a pickaxe (counts as a big melee weapon).

And that's pretty much it! My guy goes by Flotsam Joe. His name isn't Joe, but frankly it's not important at this point. What life he had got blown up and washed away, and now he's just looking for...something that's his. Clank-clank.