Every now and again I pick up a game that utterly breaks my flow. Sometimes that's because, like Red Markets, I get so invested that I have to finish reading and digesting it. And then sometimes...
The Game: SHARP
The Publisher: Tidavar Farkas
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
Generic RPG systems confuse me some. I shouldn't say that; I understand their appeal. I just don't understand this one. It's supposedly a blend of WaRP (from Over the Edge), Gumshoe, and Forged in the Dark, but reading through it, I don't see a lot of the strengths of those systems reflected. But I admit that some of the problem is that if you're going to write a generic system without the "hook" of a compelling setting you need to make it accessible as heck. SWADE manages this, as does Cypher, in my opinion. This game, not so much.
There aren't any sample settings in the book, so I waffled over whether to even include it, but what the hell, I read it. And again, it broke my flow because instead of what I had going (read a book, make a character, flow seamlessly into the next book) I read SHARP and kinda spent a few days going "sure, I could make a character, but wouldn't I rather do literally anything else?" At least I got some dishes done. So if I don't do it, there's some sunk cost going on. Let's move along.
Character creation, the book tells us, proceeds in five simple steps. First step is consult with the GM, which is fine, but not applicable for me. However, the text does give me a jumping off point for a character:
So there's my setting, which leads us to step two: concept and name. I don't know why, but I'm finding the notion of "clockwork" more interesting than steampunk, so I want to lean into that for my character. Let's say my character, one Norton Bowers, was the scion of a noble house who insisted on going to war (see: Ralph Fiennes' son in The King's Man) and then wound up getting his legs blown off. His mother, a woman of great wealth and means, dumped a lot of money into having Norton fitted with cool clockwork legs. They work well enough, and if they're properly wound he can run and jump with nigh-Olympian prowess.
Step three is race, which for purposes of this setting isn't a choice at all, so ol' Norton's a human.
Traits! Here's where the rubber meets the road. I get 8 positive traits and 2 negative traits. They can be basically anything, but unlike a lot of similar games, I'm encouraged to theme a lot of them around one particular aspect of the character. That is, "athletic" is far too broad, but I might take "weight lifter," "rugby enthusiast", that kind of thing.
That in mind, I want a few traits to reflect my clockwork legs. So I'll take:
Clockwork Legs
Amazing Jumps
Kick in a wall
Lightning Fast in Short Bursts
I want some traits to reflect his background, too, so I'll take:
Child of Wealth & Privilege
Decorated War Hero
Steadfast in the Face of Danger
Conversational Polyglot (that is, he can hold his own in a few languages, but is by no means fluent and probably not very literate in any but English)
For my negative traits, I'll take:
Legs Have to be Wound (I'm picturing this as a laborious process, requiring either special tools or a lot of elbow grease)
Dreams of the War
Step five is motivations. I get three of them. Obviously King & Country is one, and Make Mother Proud is another. I kind of want something with a little bite, too, so let's introduce some survivor's guilt and make his last motivation I must be worthy of my survival.
And that's it, actually! I think Norton is in his 30s now, always smartly dressed, mustache neatly waxed, and much more comfortable in the upper class circles of his family than in the lower class circles of his comrades-in-arms. That's not because he thinks he's better or he looks down on them, but rather because being around such folks reminds him of the dirtier parts of the war, that ended with him crawling out of a ditch with his legs half gone.
I actually really like this character, the game's just a bit of a slog.
