Character Creation: The Means of Magick

Like the means of production, you see.

The Game: The Means of Magick
The Publisher: Wannabe Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I wasn't kidding, actually. This game is an urban fantasy sort of thing that has us in the post-Industrial Revolution, except that said revolution involved Magick. There are several megacorps that basically run everything, including Presto! (which is basically magickal Amazon). I especially like the FAI, where are AIs that have physical bodies and sort of went rogue, but live in the wilderness and obey strange bits of their programming (like, say, having to count every grain of wheat scattered in front of them. They're robo-faeries, basically). 

I'm iffy on the system, though. It has you succeeding on all of your actions but marking stress every time, and once you're out of stress, shit breaks. It feels like it would give the GM a lot of control over which parts of an adventure a player would succeed at, without any of the tension that comes from the possibility of failure. But then again, I do like "ticking clock" kinds of systems, and as always, the true test of a system is at the table. 

So let's make a character and see where we land. 

Step One: Choose Your Background. There are a bunch of examples listed, though it wouldn't be hard to make one up. I don't think they mean anything mechanically, but they're good jumping-off points. Let's see here.

I like NDA breaker. Basically I know something about Normal Corp (they develop drugs and other magi-tech, lots of shell companies; basically they're magical Disney or Google, I think) and they would rather I didn't know. I'm given three questions to answer:

What do you know about Normal Corp? Let's say my character knows about "The Bubble." It's a complicated shell game of dummies corps, risky investments, and loans propping up loans that, if poked in the right way, would hit the bottom line pretty hard. The Bubble was the brainchild of some magickal accountant and it's meant to bring about amazing profits in a year or two, but right now it's pretty fragile. My character found it (or maybe just worked it out based on the figures), and Normal Corp figures it's probably better just to shoot me and call it good.

Feels like I need a name at this point. Let's call him Elijah Scanlon ("Eli" is fine).  

What did you leave behind when you escaped? My own financial schemes. My character was a stats guy and had come up with something like the Bubble himself, so it's really not fair that this is going to get him killed. He left behind the complicated mesh of finances he was planning to present so, insult to injury, he can't even use it himself or sell it to Presto! or whatever. 

Who else did you tell? My guy was having drinks the night before he presented this to Normal Corp and he got a little sloshed and told everybody. OK, maybe not everybody, but like, at least a dozen people who were in that pub. Some of them were Normal Corp employees. Some of them were probably corporate militia. (There has been the occasional second thought.)

Step Two: Choose an Archetype. These do have mechanical effects. There are a bunch of examples; let's see if Eli fits any of them or if I have to make something up. There's no "financier" or even "finance bro" Archetype, but I like "finance bro" so I think I'll try and make that work. I'd need a Special Trait, a Stress Break, and a Narrative Flaw.

Special Trait is a little mechanical tweak that makes me excel. Actually, is money, like, a Thing in this game? It seems like it should be. And indeed it is! Wealth is a whole subsystem. So let's say Eli manages his money well and has accounts in hard-to-find places. We'll say his Special Trait is that given a few days to make calls and move money around, he can make a moderate Wealth purchase regardless of his actual Wealth rating at the time.

Stress Break happens when Stress hits 0. They're pretty potent, but I don't have a good enough sense of the system to figure one out. I think I'll steal the one from the Influencer Archetype: If you stress break during transactional dialog, reset to half your Stress. You can continue the dialog, starting back at d4. 

Narrative Flaw is easy: Hubris. Eli is good with money, and he thinks that makes him more valuable than it does.

Step Three: Skills. I get three; looks like they're binary. I also get a Learned Skill (something I'm assumed to be working on "off camera" and an Opportunity Skill (something I want to learn; when I have a chance to do it "on camera," I add the Skill). 

Well, I know I want Knowledge (Finance), and I probably should have Investigation, too. 

Man, I hate these Skills. You've got stuff like "Feint" and "Juke," but also "Give 'em the Chair!" C'mon, pick a tone, pick a level of granularity. Argh. Anyway, I'll take Dodge as my third Skill. For my learned Skill, I'll take Athletics, and for Opportunity, I'll take Balance. 

Step Four: Calculate your Stats! These better not change later! They won't, looks like. I get a dot in the Finesse pyramid and two in the Willpower pyramid, assuming I'm right in thinking that I just get these from how many Skills I have. That gives me modifiers for each Stat (+1 as a base, and then another +1 for each row I have dots in, so I have +2 in Finesse and Willpower). Speed, Concentration, and Stress are all figured using combinations of these, and they're on the sheet, so yay!

And that's really it! Eli is on the run but hasn't really figured that out yet. I think the first session would involve Normal Corp coming to have a "chat" with him, and him developing the Balance Skill as he Neo's his way along a ledge or something. 

Eli is a pretty nondescript white guy. Dark hair, brown eyes, on the skinny side (he prefers to think of himself as "lean"). 

(Notice I didn't do anything with the actual magick system, because it's never mentioned in chargen so I couldn't be bothered.)