Character Creation: Oh, Excuse Me

I mean, I assume it's pronounced "burp." Or "brap", which isn't better.

The Game: Basic Roleplaying Universal Game Engine

The Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Degree of Familiarity: I've played earlier editions, and it's not like it's dissimilar from Chill
Books Required: Just the one, though it is a doozy

So, my first problem here is that BRP (too much eggs) by itself doesn't have a setting; it's a generic rules engine. But there are a bunch of very basic skeletons in the book, and since we just watched a screening of Notorious hosted by Guillermo del Toro last night (you're jealous, admit it) we'll do:

(I am aware that Notorious is not precisely noir, but it's in the right period and it hits a lot of the right notes.)

So! Let's assume that my character is going to get drawn into some kind of plot, and whether that plot includes overtly supernatural shit is just going to have to be revealed in-game, so I don't know anything about such things to start. 

We've been listening to a podcast about Roald Dahl as we're driving around, and the dude had a pretty interesting life (that is a massive understatement, go check out "The Secret World of Roald Dahl"). I'm not going to base my character on him entirely, but I definitely want to make someone who's an ex soldier, and just for fun let's make him like 6 and a half feet tall (Dahl was a big guy). We'll name him Friedrich Rauter. He's American, but his parents were born in Austria. They'd long been in the US by the time the war broke out, but that made Friedrich both useful and kind of reviled in the service - he was fluent in German as well as French, he was fit and tall and blond. Maybe he did some espionage kind of stuff during the War, maybe not, since we're assuming this game is set postwar it doesn't much matter. Let's say he was born in 1920, so in 1946 he's 26 (math!).

Oh, in case it matters, let's assume we're making this character at the Heroic level.

Right, now we roll for some characteristics. We're rolling 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Power, Dexterity, and Charisma. What's Power? Oh, willpower and magical shit. OK, then. Well, rolling some dice, we get: 16, 8, 10, 12, and 12. I'll put the 16 into Strength, the 8 into...ugh, I don't know. Power, I guess? 10 into Dexterity and the 12s into Constitution and Charisma. I hate random stats. 

Oh, and just to hammer it home, we get more random! 2d6+6 for Intelligence and Size. Rolling, we get 8 and 8, so both Size and INT are 14. 

Default age is rolled, but I like my choice so I'm gonna say he's 26. Fight me. That doesn't change anything. 

Derived traits are filled in automatically by this sheet, magic! Except damage mod, for some reason. It's based on STR + SIZ, which for me is 30, meaning my damage mod is +1d4. Hit points is (CON + SIZ)/2, or 13. Major Wound is half that (7, since you round up).

Personality type! I can pick (or roll, but I'ma pick) one of four personality types, which then gives me a bunch of Skill bonuses. I'm gonna say Friedrich is Cunning. That means I add 20 points each to Appraise, Bargain, Disguise, Insight, any two Knowledge skills, Listen, Research, Sense, Spot, Stealth, any one Technical skill, and to any one Combat skill. Cool. I think I'll determine my Knowledge and Tech Skills when I do the actual Skill bit, but for Combat I'll take Rifle. 

Speaking of Skills, I'm to pick a Profession. While Friedrich isn't a soldier anymore, he was most recently, so I think that makes the most sense. That gives me:

And then as a Heroic character, I get 325 Skill Points to throw around? Oh, but just for Profession Skills. And then I get INTx10 (140) points for whatever I want. Cool, cool. So what's my base chance for Weapon skills? It just says "weapon specialty." Oh, I guess that just means whatever points I put into it. Why not just say "0", then? Eh, what do I know. 

OK, so let's do Professions first: 

Brawl
Climb
Dodge

First Aid
Command

Firearm (Rifle)

Firearm (Pistol)

Firearm (Machine Gun)

Language (English)

Language (French)

OK, so. If I want fluency in Languages, I need at least 50%. I start with a base of...oh, wait, 70. No problem. I'll put 10 each into English and French. Brawl starts at 25, I'll put 30 points there (50 spent).

Climb can stay at 40%, Dodge starts at twice my Dex (so 20), so I'll throw another 10 in there. First Aid starts at 30, I'll put 20 in (80 spent, still fine). Command starts at 5%, so if I want any kind of score there it's gonna eat some points. Hell, let's put 50 in there. And then weapons, man. 

Actually, hell, I've got 195 left. Let's put 75 into Rifle, 50 into Pistol, and 30 into Machine Gun (but I'll take Machine Gun as my Cunning bonus, so it becomes 50). That's 155 of my 195 I had left, leaving me 40. I'll go back and bump Brawl to 75% and put the last 20 into Climb, I guess. That means my Skills after Profession look like this:

Brawl 75%
Climb 60%
Dodge 30%

First Aid 50%
Command 55%

Firearm (Rifle) 75%

Firearm (Pistol) 50%

Firearm (Machine Gun) 30%

Language (English) 80%

Language (French) 80%

OK, let's apply Cunning bonuses. Not a lot of overlap, actually, just Weapon (Machine Gun). Just have to find the base scores and add my 20. OK, sure, so doing that, we get:

Appraise 35%
Bargain 25%
Brawl 75%
Command 55%

Disguise 21%

Dodge 30%

Firearm (Pistol) 50%
Firearm (Machine Gun) 50%
Firearm (Rifle) 75%

First Aid 50%
Insight 25%

Knowledge (Business) 25%

Knowledge (Law) 25%
Language (French) 80%

Language (English) 80%

Listen 45%

Research 45%

Sense 30%

Spot 45%

Stealth 30%

Technical () I'm gonna swap this out for Fast Talk, which gives me 25% there

Good grief. OK, now I get 140 points anywhere (though probably they aren't going much beyond the Skills I already have). I see Friedrich as selling art and antiques since he's back from the war, so I think I want to bump my related Skills. So let's put Appraise to 45%, Bargain to 50%, Knowledge skills to 50%, Insight to 50%, Spot to 50%, Fast Talk to 35%, that leaves me 20. Well, let's take Knowledge (Art) at 45%. Oof, that's a lot of numbers. 

OK, having finally finished Skills, what else? Distinctive Features, Equipment, Finishing Touches. OK, well, I don't feel the need to do Equipment, and the rest I can just do descriptively. (There are also a lot of optional rules, and if I were running this game I'd probably use Passions for a noir game, but there's no slot for it on the sheet so I'm gonna skip it.)

Friedrich returned from the war and his mother wanted him to settle down and get married, but he isn't really ready for that. He got a job at an antique dealer and estate sale coordinator - mostly moving stuff at first (Friedrich is big and strong), but his boss, Tommy Green (very much a pseudonym) figured out quickly that Friedrich not only spoke languages that opened some doors but was actually pretty smart and learned fast. For his part, Friedrich has been going to the law university's law library and learning business and estate law. He's not sure exactly what he wants to do, but he finds the things that people keep in their attics endlessly fascinating. (That should get him into trouble.)

And that'll do it! I...do not find this system fun!

Character Creation: BRP

I am hella behind on characters for the project, mostly because I've had a pretty awful couple of weeks, but never mind that. As of this coming Sunday, I should be up to 41 characters to keep my "once a week" thing going. As of right now, I've done 36 this year, so I'm what, five weeks behind. If I can manage to do a couple extra before the school breaks (Thanksgiving and Xmas), I can get caught up.

Not that anyone really cares, but I care about my silly little lists.

Anydangway, today's thing is:

The Game: Basic RolePlaying
The Publisher: Chaosium, Inc.
Degree of Familiarity: Almost none. I don't think I've ever played this edition, but I know I played some Call of Cthulhu back in the day.
Books Required: Just the one, but read on.

  

So, I want to say first that I'm doing this game today because Greg Stafford, the game designer behind Pendragon, RuneQuest and a lot of others, passed away yesterday. I never met Greg and I'm actually not terribly familiar with his work, at least firsthand - I've played Pendragon but never RuneQuest, and I think that the only game I own that he worked on is BRP, which sounds like an oversight on my part.

But in any case, this tribute by John Wick kind of puts into perspective the influence that Stafford had on the hobby. Again, I don't know, I never met the man and I have only limited experience with his work, but watching all of the outpouring of love from folks I do know over the last couple of days makes me think he's someone whose work I should know.

In any case: BRP. BRP is, like GURPS, a system that can be applied to a variety of games. (Incidentally, as I'm reading the book, I note that it was used in Nephilim, which Stafford also worked on.) As such, before I make a character I really need to have a setting. There's a chapter in this book about settings, and looking through it, it's got a lot of bare-bones ideas for settings (mostly, but not entirely, framed as historical eras). I think I'll make a character for a Western setting, just because apart from Deadlands I haven't really done that.

Step One: Name and Characteristics. Never sure how I feel about naming characters right off the bat. Well, I kinda want to make a cowboy, and I was interested to learn that the word "buckaroo" is an alteration of the Spanish word vaquero. Turns out a lot of cowboys were of Mexican or mestizo extraction (or black, which is something you don't tend to see in Westerns, dammit). I think I want my character to be mixed race, originally from Louisiana and then moved to Kansas after the Civil War (figure on this being 1880 or so, so figure my character was born in 1858, roughly, a few years before the War broke out). His name is Levi Matthews.

For Characteristics, I roll 3d6 for Strength, Constitution, Dexterity, Power, and Appearance. One of the suggested optional rules for Western is to choose what value goes to what Characteristic (rather than just assigning them in order), so I think I shall do that.

My rolls are 6 (ugh), 13, 16, 11, 9. Well, something's getting a dump. Hmm. Well, the life of a cowboy isn't really conducive to having a low CON or STR or DEX, so I'm thinking that the 6 is gonna go in APP. I'll put the 9 in POW, the 11 in STR, the 16 in DEX, and the 13 in CON.

Now I roll 2d6+6 for Intelligence and Size. I get 12 for INT and 16 for Size. I have an option for an Education roll, but I'm think Levi's education would be pretty spare (or rather, his formal education would be), so I'll skip that.

Step Two is Powers, and if I was running this game, I might include some magic or something, but for now let's assume we're playing a pretty straight Western and skip it.

Step Three: Age. Oh, wait. I'm meant to roll for this (17 + 1d6). OK, sure. I roll a 5, which means I'm 22.

Step Four: Characteristic Rolls. Derived traits. Well, some, and there are more in the next step. Effort is STR x 5 (55), Stamina is CON x 5 (65), Idea is INT x 5 (60), Luck is POW x 5 (45), Agility is DEX x 5 (80), and Charisma is APP x 5 (30).

Step Five: Derived Characteristics. Like it says. Damage bonus is STR + SIZ and then look it up on a chart, so +1d4. Hit points is the average of CON and Size, or 15 in my case. Major wound is half that, or 8. Power Points I'll skip because I'm not using powers. EXP bonus is half my INT, or 6 (but I don't see a place on the sheet for it). MOV is 10 units per round, so that's easy enough.

Step Six: Personality. Oh, this is interesting. It's less about personality and more about how the character approaches problems - physically, with technique, outsmarting, or persuading. I think that Levi is pretty clearly most comfortable being physical, so I'll take that option. That gives me 20 points each in Brawl, Climb, Dodge, Grapple, Insight, Jump, Ride, Sense, Stealth, Swim, Throw, and any two Combat skills. I'll fill these in later, when I do the rest of my skills.

Step Seven: Skills. Well, hey. So, I pick a profession, and then I allocate points into professional skills. Let's assume we're playing a "normal" game in which the characters are mostly normal people, and I get 250 points for said professional skills. Is "cowboy" an option for profession? Hot diggity, it is.

My professional skills are Craft, Firearm (Rifle), Knowledge (Natural History), Knowledge (Region), Listen, Navigate, Ride, Spot, Throw, and Track. Neat. I can't start higher than 75%, but I already have 20 in some of these, so.

Brawl 20
Climb 20
Craft
Dodge 20
Grapple 20
Insight 20
Jump 20
Knowledge (Natural History)
Knowledge (Region)
Listen
Navigate
*Ride 20
Sense 20
Spot
Stealth 20
Swim 20
*Throw 20
Track
*Firearms (Rifle) 20
Firearms (Pistol) 20

That's where I start. Let's add 55 to Ride (boosting it to max), which takes me down to 195. I'll put 35 into Spot (160), 40 into Track (120), 30 into Rifle (90), 25 into Knowledge: Region (65), 30 into Listen (35) and the other 35 into Craft.

Step Eight: Distinctive Features. I'll say that Levi has a slight cleft palate that (of course) is uncorrected. As such, his speech is often unclear, and so he doesn't talk much and he eats very slowly and carefully (it's one reason he's thin). I'll say, too, that he wears a length of cloth around his face when he rides, to keep himself from inhaling too much dust.

Step Nine: Profession. Hang on, I thought I did this. Oh, wait, I did, this is just the stuff I get based on my profession. Rope, rifle, horse, etc.

Step Ten: Name & Finish. I did the name already, so that's basically it.

That was actually really painless, all things considered. I worry that the numbers are too low (you know how I feel about systems where starting characters are useless), but I'd have to play it to know; it's been too many years.