Character Creation: Cortex Prime

Sounds like the MacGuffin in a sci-fi film.

The Game: Cortex Prime
The Publisher: Woof. Um, nowadays I guess it's Dire Wolf Digital
Degree of Familiarity: A fair bit. I've run a few of the games using the system
Books Required: Just the one

There's a lot going on here. Cortex has been a thing for a long time; it was the proprietary game engine of Margaret Weis Productions, which mostly did licensed properties. These included Leverage (which I've run), Marvel Heroic (which I've run), and Smallville (which I have not run). Oh, and Serenity and later Firefly. 

The problem, though, with licensed games is that the licenses expire, and then you can't sell 'em no more. So MWP ran a Kickstarter to create Cortex Prime, which was basically the Cortex system presented in a modular format. It did very well - 2700 backers, close to $85K - but it ran into problems. I'm not sure why or what specifically happened, all I know is that the estimated delivery for my pledge was April 2018 and I marked it received in May of 2024. 

The system was sold off, first to Fandom, then to Dire Wolf, and along the way one of the products was a bunch of Spotlight Settings (which were produced) collected into a softcover book (which was not). There's some bad blood, and I have no idea if the game is still getting any support. 

All of which is a shame, because it's a really good system. Like I said, I've run a few different iterations and read a bunch more, and there are slightly different permutations in each one. Marvel, f'rex, uses a "doom pool" to represent the growing chaos of a situation, and if it gets too big, the GM can spend 2d12 out of it and end the scene (this concept shows up in Wearing the Cape, actually). Leverage puts more emphasis on Skills, which Marvel doesn't really have in any meaningful way, and a heavy focus on flashbacks. And so forth. Cortex Prime presents all of these options and tells you how to put them together to make a game work the way you want, and it manages to do it in a clear, concise, and well laid-out book. 

Also, there are a bunch of settings for it (the aforementioned Spotlights), which...I have not read, because I have a life (I know, shocking) and I don't need to for this project. I went into reading Prime preparing to run the next phase of my superheroes game and thinking "eh, I'll check it out, but really I'll probably just run Marvel Heroic" to being excited about putting together my own customized version of Marvel Heroic that better does what I want the system to do. 

If I have a gripe, it's that there should be a building tool for making character sheets, since what's on the sheet varies greatly depending on what rules you use. But for the included settings (in the Prime book; I don't know if the Spotlights do this) there are custom sheets. Praise Jeezle. Not fillable, but you can't have everything.

So with that in mind, which setting would I like? My options are Hammerheads (a love letter to Thunderbirds), Trace 2.0 (a police procedural), and Eidolon Alpha (fantasy game in which you play an endarch, chosen of a powerful spirit). 

Gotta say, of the three, Eidolon Alpha sounds most interesting to me, so I'll make a character for that.  

So the first thing I do is pick an endarch archetype, which is which of the great eidolon spirits I'm down with. There are 10, but five them are antagonist only, so that helps. I think I wanna be a Chimera. That means I get the distinction Chimera's Mutarch. That gives me Fear, Fire Breath, and Shapeshifting as powers, and a couple of SFX (basically an area attack with Fear and I can spend plot points to rereoll defense rolls with Shapeshifting). 

Step two, I get one Role at d10, one at d8, and one at d6. Guess I should think about concept a little. I like the notion of a mad priest of fire, one whose idea of "cleansing" is "set everything on fire and see what people save." But part of that is because he knows that the Hydra cult (the Chimera's enemies) can be anywhere - they multiply quickly, and so the counter to that, as far as my guy sees it, is to be ready to burn it all. So I'll put my d10 in Priest, my d8 in Warrior, and my d6 in Scout.  

Attributes! I have d6 in all of them, and then I step up the highlight attributes from my eidolon and d10 role by one each. Let's see, for Chimera that's Grace and Guile, and for Priest that's Guile and Reason. I can then, if I'd like, step something down to step something else up. Hmm. I kinda do want a higher Courage, so I think I'll step Guile down to d8 and put Courage up. That gives me d8 in everything but Vigor, which remains at d6. 

Note my endarch distinctions, I did that. Oh, I get to unlock one of them. I'll unlock the Fear one, thanks.

Choose one role distinction. Does it have to be for Priest? Yeah, it should be. I don't love any of the ones listed, though. I think Prophet of Fire is about where I want him to be.

And then I get one more distinction that I make up. Hrm. I like the idea of him knowing that the Hydrans are dangerous from experience. His home was infiltrated and then overrun, but then a bolt of lightning started a fire and burned out the snakes. Of course, it burned the village, too, but that's life. His third distinction is Ready to Burn it All. 

Give him a name. The book suggests Greek or Hellenic names. I'll call him Meleagros, after the hero that hosted the Calydonian boar hunt (and was immortal if a particular piece of wood went unburnt...it didn't). 

Meleagros is now in his 20s, and has burns over his shoulders and arms. His hair is thick and black and lustrous (but remember, he's a shapeshifter), and he wears a robe clasped with a burnt piece of wood. He's perhaps a bit of a pyromaniac, but he's not going to set dangerous fires just to watch them burn. Not just. 

Cool, that's pretty much it! Looking forward to running this.