Character Creation: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl

Voof voof, comrade.

The Game: The Very Good Dogs of Chernobyl
The Publisher: 9th Level Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I love games like this. It's such a specific concept, it probably doesn't have a great deal of replay value, but man, "you play the dogs of Chernobyl fighting Lovecraftian horrors," what a hell of a pitch. And let's be real, it's $15 for the book. You'd spend that on a movie ticket alone. 

So anyway, that's really the pitch for the game. Characters are a pack of doggos (very good doggos), who live in and around the town of Pripyat. There are monsters in the woods that leaked out through a tear in reality, and the humans don't really have much of a clue. Humans mostly try to shoot you, and some doggos actually remember the time before all this when humans took care of doggos, but some were born in the aftermath. It's got the potential to be a truly tragic game, though you could make it a straight horror game without much trouble. 

First thing we'd do, normally, is choose a pack. Pack basically describes the dynamic of the PC group, and it does matter mechanically because you can roll your pack die if more than one dog is helping out, but since it's just me I shall skip it. 

Next we pick role: Hunter, Courser, Elder, or Guard. I dunno. I don't really have a concept, so I suppose I shall go to my music library and randomly pick a song. Just a moment.

Oof. OK, then. This is a song about living in the moment and recognizing that nothing will ever be the same as it is now. Let's just lean into the damn tragedy, here. My doggo is an Elder (which, annoyingly, doesn't at all indicate how old he is; there's a different choice for that, and I feel like the writers knew it was a bad choice of words because it's called "Expert" in one place in the book). 

My character's name is Mitya. Mitya was already old when the doom came to Pripyat, and had pretty much resigned himself to snoozing most of the rest of his life. And then he wound up living through horrors he never expected as his humans were forced to flee and the young human he'd watched grow from a baby sobbed as they forced him into a truck. Mitya has thought many times about lying down to die, but he just doesn't have it in him to give up until his pack is out of danger...so, pretty much never. 

I picture Mitya as a bloodhound, which I don't think are common in Ukraine, but whatever. Some kind of hound. Anyway, the next choice is Generation, and Mitya is Wyse (meaning he was born before the disaster and lived with humans). He gets the Remembers edge from that.

Next up, Breed. I want Mitya to be big, so I think I'll pick Borzoi. That means I get to pick an Edge from Agile, Fast, Gentle, Quiet, or Smart. Hmm. Not Agile or Fast, not at his age. I like Gentle, actually.

Calling! This is the place Mitya has in the pack. Is that not the same thing as Role? WHO KNOWS. (There are some kind of ill-defined things in this game.) I think Mitya is either a Guide or a Shadow, and I think Shadow is interesting for a dog so big. I'll take Hiding as his Edge.

And that's really it. Mitya is a great big Borzoi, mostly white with black patches. He's really good at lying still and letting everyone forget he's there, and he's really good at staying quiet for longer than you'd think. Mitya remembers the days before all the fire and smoke, and he's given up trying to teach the pups about it. He encourages them now to find the joy they can in the days they have, because sure as summer follows spring they'll end, something will change, and all they'll have is what they can remember. 

And on that cheery note, we're done!