Character Creation: Rapscallion

Or "hip-hop onion," if you prefer.

The Game: Rapscallion
The Publisher: Magpie Games
Degree of Familiarity: None, and although it's PbtA, there are a lot of moving parts so it'd be involved to play
Books Required: Just the one

As might be evident from the title (puns aside), Rapscallion is a game wherein you play pirates...kinda. Real-life pirates, as anyone who's tried to run or create an RPG about them knows, were murderers and thieves and, well, people who would get pretty fuck-darn cancelled nowadays! OOOOH THOSE PIRATES. 

I'm being silly, of course, but the truth of the matter is that the game really wants to have its cake and eat it about this subject - it wants to be pirates, it wants the pirates to be criminals (else they aren't really pirates), but it doesn't want them to be, y'know, pirates in the Poison'd sense of the word. And actually the game pulls it off fairly well, I think. The vibe, enemies, and level of supernatural shit in the world are all levers that the table can adjust, meaning that if you want the East India Trading Company to be a factor they could be, but you can also keep things very fairy-tale and abstract and talk about The Law and The Ocean in iconic, mythic terms. 

It reads as much like Blades in the Dark but Ocean-y as anything, except the structure is narrative-based rather than mission-based. Mechanically it reminds me of games like Masks and Thirsty Sword Lesbians; lots of specific subsystems for different types of characters. It also has a bunch of moving parts for things like harm and death, and I think it'd work fine at the table. The cheat sheets look like they cover everything. 

All of this to say, I'd totally run this game, but I'd want a group that was willing to get into the dirtier parts of the system and the setting because I think that's where the fun of the game would lie (for me, at least). I also really love the idea of Death as someone who shows up sometimes, pats you on the back, and says "Not ready? Cool, I'll be back around."

So let's make a pirate. As with many PbtA games, I need to pick a playbook. There are nine, they all mostly pass the Chupp test. My favorites are the Matelot and the Navigator. Do I wish to play a beast with a temper or a dude who's one bad day away from walking into the ocean? In the game, I mean. 

Actually, no, fuck it, I'm gonna pick the Chirurgeon, because I suspect I wouldn't be able to actually play one in a game (some of my players have issues with body horror). The Chirurgeon gets to perform surgery on other characters and, like, make them better. (Really.) I can groove on the mad science aspect of it.

Having chosen my playbook, I choose my oddity, which is kind of a sub-playbook, I suppose. I can be a barrowdoctor (a member of a dark order of doctors; this one doesn't appeal much), a jack-of-the-dust (an alchemist and cook), or a wight (undead, vampire-like creature). Decisions, decisions. I love the idea of being a cook/chemist, but the wight feeds some something strange and that's kind of a cool notion.

I think I'm gonna go with wight. I have this notion of my guy eating "the shells" - the hard, outer, crunchy, inedible things. Sometimes that's literal shells of crabs and shellfish and the like, and sometimes it's glass, jewelry, rings, armor, and so forth. Being the wight sets my stats at Blood 0, Vinegar 1, Polish -1, and Spitfire 1, and then I get a +1 to add wherever I'd like. I think I'd like my guy to be a little more physically capable, so I'm gonna add it to Blood.

I get the surgery and alchemy moves to start with, and then I get to pick one more. Hrm. Miskatonic (which allows me to use Vinegar instead of Spitfire to perform a ritual) sounds cool in theory, but a) those two stats are the same for me and b) it's a downtime action and that's less interesting. You know, I think I'll take hypocritical oath; I get a heavy bonus to help and a big ol' penalty to hinder my crewmates. 

Next I pick kit. I've got three basic choices plus some options in my surgery bag. Let's see now. Ooh, I want the middle choice:

The medical degree is real, the cane conceals a blade, that's easy. For my surgery bag, I'll take bandages, threads, and bone needles and bloodbags and syringes. For my alchemy tools, I'll take collections of organs in jars. 

Name and look! The name isn't my real name, of course...it would be on my medical degree, but let's say that the name bit of the degree is splotched out with a big inkstain ("ink," by the way, is a big deal in this setting, as the best stuff is made from leviathan blood and is magical). So let's say everyone calls him "Dr. Stain." 

As for look, he's pale and has red eyes. He always looks hungry, and his knuckles and joints crack constantly when he moves. 

And now we've got four questions to answer:

1) Stain learned the trade in proper college. I think he was very idealistic and very serious about helping people (hence the Oath), but before receiving his degree, the bursar of the college framed him to the Law. He broke out of jail (probably with some help, and here I'd ask for another PC to get involved), killed the bursar and retrieved his degree, but his name was inked out in the process. And then he fled to the sea.

2) Stain's grand medical idea is to free the world from pain. Pain - and fear of pain - is the great driver of betrayal and woe, and if we could be certain of avoiding it, then surely we would not need to harm one another so much.

3) Stain's ideal is, erm, pretty lofty. I think that his attempt to free himself from pain involve self-surgery on his brain, and it wound up turning him into this. That's not something he can or wants to replicate, but he feels he's on the right track. There's a poison extracted from a very rare sea snake that he thinks would make a good basis for the pain-cure. (At this point, I'd hand it over to my non-existent GM to tell me more.)

4) This last would probably refer to PCs, so I'ma skip it.

And that'll do it! I feel like the crew probably knows to leave Stain alone when he's in a mood. You can find him by the refuse pile, crunching up crab shells or whatever. The good news is that they know he's not likely to eat them, right? 

And that's it! I'm just gonna scan in the front page, since the second page just has dots bubbled in.