Character Creation: League of Seekers

If I heard this title in a vacuum, I'd think it was a pulpy adventure game in the vein of, well, Adventure! or Temples & Tombs or something. Actually, in a vacuum I wouldn't hear anything at all, but you know what I mean.

The Game: League of Seekers
The Publisher: FeralGamersInc? Broken Rat Games? 
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

This game Kickstarted in 2018, it was apparently on DriveThruRPG at one point because it's in my library there, but it's not available for sale anywhere I can see on a cursory glance. And like...yeah, I can kinda see why. 

It reminds me a lot of Dark Aeons, another thoroughly mediocre Lovecraft-inspired game. There are some kernels of interesting stuff, but for the most part it's not doing anything new, and holy hell does this book need an editor. Lots of sentence fragments, misuse of "effect" vs. "affect", and Strong Bad seriously needs to sing the author his Rhythm & Grammar song about "its" vs. "it's." Interestingly, there is no credited editor. 

But never mind that. The game starts out with a timeline that takes us from AD 730 all the way to AD 1765. I think what we're going for here is something like Unhallowed Metropolis where the supernatural has basically taken over, the history talks about "spheres" opening, but it's never quite clear what those mean. Actually if I wasn't as familiar as I am with Lovecraft (and I'm by no means an expert), a lot of that chapter might miss me. 

So we're playing characters who are "Called" or "Awakened" or "Spunky", I forget what the title actually is, and we're working to help protect people from bad shit. And that's not the only way it's like Chill (which is not mentioned in its list of inspirations, and I find that very suspect) - the game system is roll d%, shoot for lower, graduated success based on how much below your stat you roll.

There's some cool-looking artwork in the book, anyway. Cover's pretty dope. Not sure if having "I'll kill you" in funky letters at the bottom of the cover is really in-tone, but whatever. Let's make a character! 

I got all excited because I saw "life paths", but although you could call this chargen system a "life path" system, it's pretty anemic. Better than nothing, though, and it means I don't have to figure out a concept before starting. 

So first we roll to see if we're a peasant, middle class, or noble. Got an 80% chance of peasant, but let's try it...hey, 95! I'm middle class! I could also be a member of the secretive Akhua sect, but it sounds too much like "Hawk Tuah" for me (I'm kidding, I just don't want to bother with the weird shit today). 

I'll note this stuff down later, I know better than to write anything on a character sheet in a lifepath system until things firm up a little. 

My Dark Knowledge starts at 1d6%, whatever that means. Hey, rolled a 6, that's as much I could know!

I get "Logical" as a Trait, and then I can pick Educated, Respected, or Fencer as a Talent. Hell, let's take Fencer. 

Now we roll for a few things:

Birthplace: Town. (As opposed to a city.) I get Commerce 10, Travel 10, Eloquence 1, Fitness 1. 

Education: Church School! That's an interesting combination with Fencer. I get Arcane 1 and Dark Knowledge d6%...hang on, 5, putting me up to 11, meaning I get a point of Insight (again, whatever that means). 

Early Career: Officer. Well, that makes more sense with Fencer. I get Melee, Toughness, and Sneak 10.

Now we do a Tale of Horror! The way this works is that I get a writing prompt, and I take it an run. I can use it to justify a 5% bump to three Skills, but every one after the first also requires a 5% penalty to a Skill (all justified by the Tale). 

Rolling, my prompt is: "As the moon turned red my own men began to change before my eyes...". 

Well, this implies that we were out on campaign or something. Let's say that I was in command of a platoon or whatever, and I'd sent out scouts the day before to find supplies. They found a small lake that contained what seemed to be clean water, so the men camped by it and drank (I and the other officers stuck to our wine, thanks). The lake, it turns out, was connected to...something. The water changed them, they grew...parts that weren't human or even mammalian. The other officers went mad or were swarmed and killed, but I got on my horse and got the hell out. 

So what Skills are implied by this? I think Travel (which covers horse riding), Stealth (because I got away), and Willpower (because I got away and didn't go crazy) all make sense. I need two penalized Skills, though. Let's say Memory (much of his brainspace at any given time is taken up by what he saw) and Diplomacy (talking to people just doesn't come naturally anymore). 

I get a Statement, which just gives me a bonus in a particular situation. Let's say that "I am well-traveled," which gives me a +10% when "recognising other cultures." I don't think "recognize" is the verb you want here, friend. "Oh, look! That culture is German!" Well, whatever, what's next.

Derived traits! Well, guess I should total my Attributes n' shit. Eloquence, Investigate, and Learned start at 4, Fitness, Subterfuge, and Occult at 3, and Conflict and Mind at 2. I get +1 Eloquence and Fitness 'cause I'm from a town, Arcane 1 from my schoolin'. 

Skill Totals: I...huh. I guess how this works is that, for example, for Eloquence, Learned, and Investigate, I get scores of 20, 20, 30, 40, and 50 that I can put into the Skills. There are 5 Skills linked to each Attribute, so presumably I get that spread in each of those categories? This is never explained, and there's no summary or example of chargen. 

Ugh, fine, that means I have to do this for nine different Attributes. Let's start with Conflict (skipping Arcane because evidently I don't get anything in those Skills). I get 5, 5, 10, 20, 30, which is pathetic, but whatevs. I'll put my 30 into Melee, obviously, since I can fence. I'll put the 20 into Ranged, the 10 into Explosives, and 5 into Thrown and Unarmed. I also get a +10 to Melee, so that's 40. 

Eloquence, I get 20, 20, 30, 40, 50, with a -5 in Diplomacy. I'll put my 50 into Etiquette, my 40 into Diplomacy (making it 35), my 30 into Languages, that leaves 20 in Commerce and Deceive. 

Fitness! 10, 10, 20, 30, 40, with a +5 in Travel and a +10 in Toughness. I'll put my 40 in Travel (45), my 30 in Toughness (40), my 30 in Resistance, that leaves 20 in Acrobatics and Athletics. 

Investigate! 20, 20, 30, 40, 50, let's put 50 into Notice, 40 into Search, 30 into Research, 20s in Track and Detect (side note: Detect, Notice, and Search are all discrete skills? Just...why?). 

Learned! 20, 20, 30, 40, 50. Well, 50 into History, 40 into Academia, 30 into Theology, 20s in Mythology and Medical. 

Mind! 5, 5, 10, 20, 30, with a -5 to Memory and a +5 to Willpower. 30 into Cunning, 20 into Willpower (25), 10 into Memory (5), leaving 5 in Dream and Logic.

Occult! 10, 10, 20, 30, 40, why on Earth is this higher than Mind for a Middle Class person? Was "middle class" even a thing in the 18th century? Anyway, 40 into Demonology, 30 into Folk Tales, 20 into Cults, leaving 10 in Divination and Xenology. 

Subterfuge! 10, 10, 20, 30, 40, with a +10 in Sneak and a +5 in Stealth. What on Earth is the difference between Sneak and Stealth? Oh, there isn't actually a Sneak Skill. Probably it was called that at some point and just never changed, must actually mean Stealth, which means I get +15 there. Cool. 40 into Stnealthk (55, making it by far my best Skill), 30 into Tinker, 20 into Forgery, 10s in Disguise and Steal. 

I get a d4 as my experience die and...OK. Every time I get a critical success or failure, I can roll my XP die and bump the Skill by that much. I actually kinda like that. But the die size is based on Mind + Learned. This means that bookworms are better at improving everything, including, say, combat Skills, and who gets a crit isn't meaningfully different, because you get a crit fail by rolling 99 or 00, and a crit success by rolling under the Attribute linked to the Skill you were using (so at best a 5% chance). 

Anyway, my Damage Bonus is also a d4, my Insanity is 12...wait, do you mean Sanity? 'Cause there's no Insanity Trait on the sheet. Whatever. Reason is "the first number of Willpower" JESUS CHRIST DO YOU MEAN THE TENS DIGIT? Ahem. That's 2 for me. Injury is the "first number" of Toughness (4), Wounds are 12 (but that's true for everyone), and Insight is 0 but 1 for me because I have Dark Knowlege (wwooOOOOooooo). 

Now I get a superpower! I'm Awakened, so I get something quasi magical. It's random, so...03 gives me Corpse Tongue, which keys off of Mind. Great, my lowest Attribute. That means I have to roll under 20 to use it. What's it let me do, anyway? Communicate with corpses and ask basic questions. Well, that's not the worst thing I could have rolled; my guy did see a lot of death. 

Oh, Languages. My Learned is 4, so I speak two, obviously English and French (and I probably should read Latin, too, but there's no way to simulate that and I do not care that much). 

OK, so: Jonathan Nelmes attended church school but didn't really have the temperament to be a vicar. He wound up enlisting and becoming an officer through a combination of luck, cleverness, and fencing skill, and when he was finally given his first squad (I'd figure out what war or campaign he was in if I cared, but a) the history of this world is a little screwy because of the monsters and b) I don't) that's when the "everyone's a bug" thing happened. 

Jonathan used to be very put together and clean-cut. He's...rather let himself go. Scraggly hair, uneven beard, dirty hands, he still wears his uniform but it's dirty beyond recognition. Somewhere in here he discovered he can (unreliably) talk to corpses, and that hasn't helped the old mental state any. 

Right, good, done, not a fan of this one. Also there's no reason this sheet couldn't have been a single page.

Character Creation: Midnight of the Century

Cheer up. The world's about to end in ten minutes anyway.

The Game: Midnight of the Century
The Publisher: By Odin's Beard RPG
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

Midnight of the Century is a game I wanted to like more than I do. I do like it, mind - it's an investigative horror game that actually does do something different than Chill. It's designed to emulate the dark investigation stories of the 90s, stuff like Millennium, Se7en, Silence of the Lambs, and so on. You're playing Investigators who are tracking down serial killers, but there is also a "you're part of a shadowy conspiracy" and a "by the way, the world is ending" component to the game. Setting-wise, there's almost nothing about it I dislike. 

System...eh. I mean, I think it's probably fine. It's OSR-inspired, but not actually OSR, so it's not like...what the hell was that weird game that the author gave up on? John Silence. Anyway, the stats aren't the standard D&D ones, so the creators obviously put more thought into it than "iunno, rulings not rules". I think I would like it better if it were something like Gumshoe or Forged in the Dark, but that's a personal preference thing. 

The thing that I get hung up on is that the book says it works best with one or two players plus a GM. I...never have only two players. If I do, I cancel the game and do something else. Four is my sweet spot, three is OK with the right game (I ran a whole Slipstream campaign with three players, but it definitely changed the calculus of designing encounters), two or one feels weird to me. And I like this setup of this game so much, I'm sure I could probably figure out making it work with more players.

For now, however, let's make an Investigator, which is like an alligator, only investi. 

I actually do have something of a concept, here; it's a character I've had in my brain for a while but never had the right game for it (and frankly probably isn't a character I'd actually play unless everyone at the table was super cool with it). My idea is someone who was a serial killer, but then had a brain tumor removed from his head and became "cured." It sounds like something that would have happened on Criminal Minds, and in a setting where demons exist, I can also see doing a kind of Malignant thing with it and having the tumor actually be a demon or something. My character doesn't need to know anything about demons, of course, just that he used to have these urges, he acted on them a couple of times, got caught, did time in prison, was diagnosed with brain cancer, and had a lot of sciencey people (from the Ouroboro corporation, in setting) poking at him and theorizing that the tumor fucking up his ability to feel...much of anything, but certainly empathy was responsible. And then he had brain surgery, and wound up being able to remember what he did but to appreciate it like a non-psychopath. 

So after his second suicide attempt, he wound up reading in the papers about an active killer in the Pacific Northwest (where this game is set by default) and contacting someone he'd met from Ouroboro with some insight. Ouroboro pulled some strings and got him released to their custody, but he's basically on permanent house arrest. He's enthusiastic about the work (tracking down killers), partially because he's got skin in the game in a way a lot of other investigators don't, but also because he expects - wants - for one of these bastards to kill him someday. 

There, that's appropriately bleak. There's a table with random names in this book, so let's use it! Rolling a d100 twice, I get...42 and 42. Huh, what are the odds. (1 in a 100, Matt.) Anyway, that gives me "Gregory Howard" as a name, which is fine by me.

My age is 30+4d6...a roll of 15 means I'm 45. Let's say he was in prison for the last 10 years, so he was killing in his early 30s. 

Traits! These are game stats (that's next), these are physical and personality traits. I'll roll them randomly, but I reserve the right countermand anything stupid. 

Physique: Lean. That's fine.

Face: Bony. Aside from rolling two 1s in a row, that's fine too.

Skin: Scarred. Obviously I didn't make it out of prison unscathed, which makes sense.

Eyes: Shining. I...huh? I don't think that tracks. I choose to pretend I roll a 7 instead, giving me "searching" eyes.

Hair: Matted. Sure, that's fine. 

Speech: Blunt. Yeah, that's good. Greg isn't interested in playing around. He knows what other people think of him, they're right, he is a monster, so what if he doesn't have the urge to do monstrous things anymore. 

Virtue/Vice: Cautious/Aggressive. First of all, those don't work for Greg, and second, they're almost antonyms. Let's try again. Ambitious/Cold. I'm OK with "cold," but "ambitious" doesn't work for me. Let's take "upbeat," just because it's such a juxtaposition. Greg is jovial and dry, but that's part defense mechanism for himself and partly for others. If he's never serious, if his humor is kinda gallows, then other people can hate him and that's just easier. 

Clothing/style: We've got an 80% chance of being "corporate" here, and...look at that, I roll within that margin. Eh, Ouroboro probably dresses me anyway. 

Stats! Body, Mind, Will, roll 3d6 in order and then swap any two. This gives me: Body 14, Mind 10, Will 15. Well, I'm gonna swap Body and Mind.

Specialism! Class, more or less. I want Greg to be a Profiler, his insight is valuable because he can think like a killer. That gives me +2 Mind.

Psych profile! More random tables, but I'm probably gonna pick these. But let's see. 

How did you become a profiler? Yeah, "cancer-induced serial killer" isn't on the random table. Why did you leave the agency? Oh, right, this assumes profilers are LEOs. OK, I'm going to skip these questions because they don't apply. 

Bonds! I get three, again rolled randomly, and this time I think it's fine to do so. My Connection Bond is...a lover. Oh, hell. Yeah, I'm OK with that. Her name is Kelly Martel (another random name). Kelly is one of those serial killer groupies who wound up tracking Greg down after his "release" and making contact, and she is literally the one person Greg ever lets his guard down to. My Haven is...a tattoo shop! Yeah, Greg has some prison tats (some of them given against his will) and he's gone into Gone Baby Gone Tattoo (owner's a big Violent Femmes fan) a bunch to get them covered up. And, finally, Vehicle...hatchback. Yeah, that's fine.

Equipment is just common sense plus the stuff my specialism gets me, which is...a picture of Kelly, some painkillers, and some latex gloves. And then I get a pager, a notebook and a pen, and a flashlight. I think I'm also required to check in with Ouroboro every day. 

And that's it! Greg is a white guy in his mid-40s, a bunch of tats on his arms and scars on his face. He's lean because he doesn't eat much, his hair is matted because there's a bunch of scar tissue on his scalp and his hair grows in weird. 

I think, again, that provided the other players are cool with it, Greg would be an interesting character study in silly things like "forgiving yourself" and whether it's possible to atone for doing something terrible. 

Character Creation: Legend of Ghost Mountain

WhoooOOOooooo a mouunnntaaaaaiiinn

The Game: Legend of Ghost Mountain
The Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Degree of Familiarity: Never played this, but I know SWADE pretty well
Books Required: Legend of Ghost Mountain and SWADE

Obviously inspired by wuxia fiction, Legend of Ghost Mountain has the players taking on the roles of Ghost Wardens. Basically they're people who became enforcers of the titular mountain, going out into the Empire and beating up ghosts so that they fly back to the mountain and get through the Hell Gate and get on with the business of being tortured until their souls are "lightened" enough that they can be reincarnated. (Which sounds horrific, but on the other hand, a lot of Western mythologies just have you getting tortured forever, full stop, so this is probably better.)

It looks pretty cool, actually. One thing I'm a little iffy about is that PCs start at Veteran, and I get why they're doing that - Wardens are supposed to be on the badass side. On the other hand, doesn't that kinda mean there's nowhere to go? Maybe it would have been better to just scale things so starting characters have the correct amount of badassery. But I haven't read the GM portion of the book, so I freely admit I'm talking out of my Hell Gate here. 

The book says that Ghost Wardens tend to be haunted (in the figurative sense), so I need some trauma in my past, here. Let's say my character is from the North and his village was wiped out by a clan of Horse Lords. The survivors fell back to the city of Sanctuary, and one day my character (let's name him Sky-Eyes Bo) saw a band of Ghost Wardens headed back to where his village was. He stole a horse and followed them, and had to watch them put to rest people that he'd known all his young life. "Put to rest" here sometimes meant helping them achieve whatever they were holding onto, but mostly it meant beating the ectoplasm out of them.

Sky-Eyes went back to Ghost Mountain with the Wardens and worked his way up from there. He was probably allowed to go because he knows about horses, but whatever works.

Cool, that'll work. Let's do chargen proper! My Race is human, obviously (I mean, I could be some kind of devil, but I don't wanna). The SWADE book actually says to do Hindrances next, so cool, we'll do that. 

Well, I'm gonna say that Sky-Eyes has a habit of gazing off into the distance. We'll just call that a Quirk. And I think I'll go ahead and lean in to his backstory and take Wronged as a Major Hindrance (it's basically Vengeful on steroids), and say he's out to get the Horse Lords. That's...there's a lot of them. Finally, since I'm from the North I need land, lots of land, and the starry skies above, so I'll take Claustrophobia (Minor).

Now we do Traits. Well, I'm going to get a bunch of advances, but I think I want to start playing to my strengths, so I'll put Agility to d8, Strength at d4, the others at d6.

Skillz! I get the usual starting skills (Notice, Common Knowledge, Persuasion, Athletics, Stealth) at d4, then 12 more. Obviously I want Fighting, but I want to do thrown weapons, too, so I'll jack Athletics to d8, Fighting to d8, Riding to d8, Survival to d6, and Thievery to d6.

Derived traits, whatever, I'll do those at the end. Edges! I have to take Ghost Warden. Now, do I get that free or do I have to take it? Just says it's required, so I guess it eats my free Edge. Grr. That means I need Martial Artist as well. Oh, but I can take these things with Advances, my guy didn't start as a Ghost Warden. OK, well, then I'll take Beast Bond as my free Edge. And then I get my four "points." I'll buy Occult d4, I'll put Spirit up to d8, and I'll put Notice up to d6.

Neato. And now we get to do Advances. Helpfully, there's slots on the character sheet, so I can keep this straight pretty easily.  

OK, I get three Advances under Novice. I will bump Agility to d10, buy Martial Artist, and bump Fighting and Athletics to d10.

Four Advances under Seasoned, and that would put me to Veteran, so I guess just those four. Well, obviously I need the Ghost Warden Edge, so that's first. I'll take the Throwing Mastery Edge so I can whip knives at ghosts. I'll bump Occult and Stealth to d6. And then...hmm. I feel like I should take my Attribute bump. Yeah, I'll knock Spirit up to d8.

And then I could spend money if I wanted, but I don't. Sky-Eyes Bo carries lots of little throwing knives and chakram, and is used to riding in to battle, hurling stuff at foes, and then riding off before they get their bears. 

Sky-Eyes is small and wiry, like a jockey. He's got the long white hair (used to be black, but turned white when he became a Warden) done up in a braid that's common in the North, and his eyes are brown with perhaps a greenish hue at times? He's adopted the dress of the Ghost Wardens, but he has a pair of rabbit-fur gloves that he's patched and rebuilt many times since he was a boy. 

That'll do it! 

Character Creation: Cerebos: The Crystal City

I don't...think someone snuck mescaline into my coffee today.

The Game: Cerebos: The Crystal City
The Publisher: Penguin King Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I really like the premise of this game. It's surreal, it's got at least a toe in magical realism, and it's about self-actualization as depicted by resolving touchstones. It also does a couple of things that are pretty original: your character has a goal determined by another player and you don't know it right away, and after the first leg of the journey (everyone's on a train, that's a constant in the game, though the form of the train and the conductor are up for grabs) one player becomes the "Seeker" and the others become "Saints" (trying to help them reach their goal) and "Demons" (trying to prevent them). 

Yes, that effectively means there's a "main character," but y'know? For a game like there that's only going to go two or three sessions, I don't think that's a bad thing. 

Now, there are a few things I'm not crazy about, and they most cook down to this game not being terribly accessible. It starts off with a comic that is complete gobbledygook if you haven't read the book already, and the language in the game itself is...not by any means incomprehensible, but it's one of those games that I feel would have benefited from some straight, clear, unobfuscated explanation of what the hell is actually going on. 

But would that have fucked with the tone too much? I think it's perfectly playable, though it would require a closer reading (and I'm not thrilled with how small the text is in the printed version). It would really require the right table, but most of the best games do. I dunno. It's one of those games that I wish I could reach across time and assemble a group picked from the people I've played with over the years. Maybe we could play it on a train, to make it really meta!

Anyway, let's make a character. This is a pretty quick process, which is good, because I want to play more Zero Company. Actually, it's a two-step process: Pick three touchstones, pick a name, fuckin' done. (Were I actually playing this game, there would be more, because as a group we'd decide on the conductor and another player would give me a goal.)

As I'm thinking about concepts, I'm finding myself interested in the idea of person or animal that is part of an endeavor, but has not concept of what that endeavor is, or indeed that they're even in it. Think of the horse wearing blinders or the sled dog in the middle of the team, or, hell, to get a little weirder with it, the pace car in a race. I don't think I want to actually be a car (or a horse, for that matter), so let's say that my character is a man, probably in his 40s, curly hair that's greying at the temples and dark skin. 

Touchstones can be just about anything, and they're attached to Traits, which are pretty open-ended. They can be skills or memories or just aspects of the character. There's a table of random touchstones; I might dip into that, but I want to bring across the concepts I'm thinking about. So I'll say my guy has a pair of very dark sunglasses (Trait: Patience) and an empty bottle of sunscreen (Trait: Lived in an island paradise).

For the last one...you know, instead of rolling on the table in the book, I'll roll on a table in The Weird. Rolled 08...ooh, one of the options is "mobile phone loaded up with cursed videos." We don't have to read "cursed" as literally, supernaturally cursed, it could just be the more internet-y definition of the word. I think the phone is clearly not his - like, it's pink and blinged out. Since Traits really run the gamut (some of the ones in the Cerebos book include "The Dead Do Not Feel Pain," "Intermediate Geomancy," and "Big Enough") I'm going to call this one "Hold This a Minute."

All I need now is a name or a title. Let's call my guy "the Constant." (That's not a Hitman reference, it's closer to the idea of a mathematical constant.)

And that's me done!

Character Creation: Nebula Chaos

It's called "space opera," but you never hear a fat lady sing. 

The Game: Nebula Chaos
The Publisher: Polyhedra
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

So, this is nothing really special - it's a space opera game that is heavily, heavily inspired by Star Wars (the title is even kind of synonymous), but also drawing on other properties in the genre. It was made for about $2600 on Kickstarter, there are only six updates on the campaign, and you know, it's very clearly made with some heart.

Some jank, too, and I'm not crazy about this:

Like, if you can't say "shit" then don't half-ass it and type in this stupid Youtube-thumbnail-ese (only slightly better than the Tiktokese dialect of internet speech, which gives us shit like "seggs". Yes, I am old). But minor complaints about writing style aside, the game looks perfectly playable. Let's make a chaotic nebula or whatever!

A bookmarked PDF, did I just win the fuckin' lottery? 

OK, so we start off by assigning base stats. Said stats are Power, Dexterity, Personality, Intelligence, and Will. What's average? Well, an "easy" difficulty is 8, so a point or two in a given stat is probably enough to be considered average. What kind of spacey person would I like to make? 

There are a bunch of different species of alien, but unlike many RPGs that use alien (and fantasy) races, any given members of a race don't necessarily have the same characteristics. That is, a bot might have Exoskeletal Structure, but not necessarily. I'm not sure if that holds up in play, but I like the idea. I think I want my guy to be an Extratareptile, because I think that's lots of fun to say. The book says they are cold-blooded and warm-hearted (I am reminded of Sissix in The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet). 

Let's say my Extratareptile is a face, but kind of fussy and uptight, rather like C-3PO. I picture him as having very long, delicate fingers with pointy (but not especially sharp) nails, and a kind of iguana-like face. Let's name him Fullim (/fulIm/, though there are some aspirant sounds that exist in his language that other species find hard to say, or even hear). 

Right, so, Fullim's stats. Obviously Personality needs to be high, as does Intelligence. I'll put both of those at 4, leaving 12 points for the other 4 stats. 3 in each? Nah, let's leave Power at 2 and jack Intelligence to 5. 

Sub-stats! HP is 12, EP is equal to Will, so 3. Speed is 25ft. 

Ability points! I get 10 of these. One of the recommended ones for my species is Infrared Vision, which I kind of like, so I'll blow 3 AP on that. Oh, I can take Traits, which can give me points back, and I want the Annoying Trait. Like the expression of it - I roll a d3, and on a 1 I take a PRS penalty, which is about right. That gives me 2 back, so I'm still at 9. 

Well, let's take some Skills, then. Language is a good one, and since I'm a reptile, not a robot, I'll say that Fullim is actually multi-lingual rather than having some kind of translation power. Languages are 1 point each, so I'll spend 4, specify one of them as Thungrarian (the language of the Empire), and leave the rest blank, because in play it'd be smart to see what languages are needed and then say that he speaks it. 

I figure as a lizard, Climb makes sense, right? Oh, definitely need Diplomacy. Hang on, there are a bunch of social skills and I can't afford that many. OK, let's trim back two Language slots, and then take Diplomacy, Sense Motive, Con/Bluff, and Perception. 2 points remaining. Any other Abilities I want? Oh, shit, yeah, I want Sincerest Apologies! Once per session I can apologize and reroll a PRS check.

Items! Since these are arranged in Tiers, not money-cost, I'll go ahead and figure it out. I get 2 Tier 1, 2 Tier 2, 1 Tier 3, and 1 Personal. 

For my Tier 1s, I'll take a spacesuit (seems wise) and a lighter (making a fire is a good idea when you're cold blooded). For my Tier 2s, I'll take...ah, hell, these are mostly weapons. Well, let's say I get 2 Tier 3s instead? Nah, those are all weak, too. Well, I want a hoverpack, anyway.

I think that'll do it, actually. Fullim is green of scale, yellow eyes, tall and thin. He doesn't have a tail and he's a little annoyed that people keep asking (the creatures humans evolved from have tails, but no one ever asks them). 

Character Creation: WFRP

The book actually says it's pronounced "Wuffrupp", which feels weird to me for some reason.

The Game: Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay
The Publisher: Games Workshop, published by Cubicle 7
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one

I kept looking at this cover trying to figure out if it felt familiar for any specific reason, or if it's just well-known enough that I've seen it around, and then the words "Grim & Perilous" hit me and I remember that Zweihänder: Grim & Perilous was basically a clone of this game. Anyway, I tried to read the setting and both the font and the prose failed to keep my interest, so I'm just gonna make a character and hope the chargen section gives me enough context to know what I'm doing. I do know that Warhammer generally has a big following and a lot of lore, which largely doesn't interest me much.

Ooh, some of this can be done randomly with tables! Groovy. Let's start with Species. 22 gives me...human. Yawn. (In fairness it's a 90% chance for human.) What does "human" mean around here, are we diverse and adaptable? Wow, those aren't mentioned, that's new. 

Next up, Class & Career! Rolling, I get 88...Rogue/Witch! Sweet! I'll keep that, and that gets me 50XP, whatever that means. 

Oh, neat, what it means is that since I kept my first roll, I get rewarded for not jiggering around with the chaos. Same thing happens for Attributes, moving on!

Attributes! I get 2d10 + 20 for most of these. Do I need to do 'em in order? No, I don't need to, but I get a bigger XP bonus if I do. Well, let's just see what happens. Characteristics are the ones that get the 2d10+20 roll, so let's do that. 

Weapon Skill 27 (not off to a great start, here)
Ballistic Skill 29 (c'mon now)
Strength 27
Toughness 34 (better)
Initiative 33
Agility 35
Dexterity 32
Intelligence 28
Willpower 32
Fellowship 32

Well, looking ahead at the Witch career, I don't see anything that's a glaring problem, so fuck it, let's keep these results and get another 50 XP bump. 

Wounds are determined by a formula that I won't bore you with, but it works out to 11.

I start with Fate 2 and Resilience 1, and then 3 extra points to split between them. Well, let's just hedge our bets and make both values 3. That sets my Fortune and Resolve at 3, as well, since those start equal to Fate/Resilience. I get a Motivation, which helps me get Resolve back, but I'm not sure exactly what I want, there. Being a witch is illegal and will get you burnt (if you want to do magic legally, you gotta be a wizard) and the section on the Witch career mentions the idea of a noble that discovered inherent magic and then ran away. I think that has legs, but I want to go a little deeper into chargen first. 

Oh, I get 5 Advances to split between three Characteristics determined by Career, which in my case are Weapon Skill, Toughness, and Willpower. I think I'll put 2 each into the first two and the last one into Willpower. 

Skill and Talents, then! I get to pick 3 Skills from my Species to get 5 Advances (which basically just means "add 5 to the controlling Characteristic"), and then 3 more to get 3 Advances. Just a moment.

Hmm. Now I need to conceptualize a little more. The idea of "noble who discovered magic and fucked off" is interesting, but suppose I wasn't a "noble" so much as a soldier or hunter or village leader or something? Lower class, is what I'm saying. Not like the people around me would be any less devout to Sigmar and thus willing to burn me. 

With that in mind, let's put my 5 Advances in Leadership, Ranged (Bow), and Language (Bretonnian). I'll put 3 Advances into Melee (Basic), Lore (Reikland), and Cool. 

And then I get to pick a Talent from that list and roll for 3 more. Sweet. Let's pick first. Doomed, Savvy, Suave? Oh, Doomed is actually pretty cool. I mean, it does exactly nothing for my character, if if my character dies in a manner consistent with his Doom, my next character gets an XP bonus. I think if I were going to play my Witch in a campaign, I'd take it, so what the hell. My character is Doomed to be burned as a witch.

Right, now I get three random Talents. Lightning Reflexes, Ambidextrous, and Savvy. Let's look those up (though I suspect I know the gist at least of the first two).

And now, Career Skills/Talents.

I get 40 Advances to split up between those 8 Skills. I can put 5 in each, but would I like to? I need to see what these are, actually.

OK, so it looks like the only magic I'm going to be able to do at this level is Petty. I'm actually OK with that, so I'll make Petty Magic my Talent. That gives me 3 Petty Spells, but I'll do that later. For now I need to do the Skillz. 

I'm gonna put 1 Advance into Channeling, so I can actually use the Skill. I'll likewise put 2 into Language (Magick), since that's what I'll use to cast spells. That leaves me 37 Advances. I'll put 7 into Stealth (Rural), 5 into Cool, 10 into Endurance, 10 into Intimidate...that leaves 5. You know, I'll put 3 more into Language and 2 into Channeling, how bout. 

Trappings! I get candles, chalk, doll, pins, and then a bunch of stuff for being a Rogue that I'm not listing. I would like a bow, but that's too expensive and I've only got 8 brass pennies to my name, so clearly my guy was driven out of whatever town he lived in and hasn't done very well since. 

I do get spells, though! Let's check 'em out.

Well, I'm on the run, so food and water is probably a concern. I'll assume I can catch food, but I'll take Spring so I can call up water. I want an offensive spell, so I'll take Shock (lets me touch someone and stun them), and I'll take Bearings so I can avoid getting lost. 

Details! Let's name my guy Wilryn. His family name is "Just", but he's stopped using that since the whole "driven away" thing. Let's generate physical characteristics randomly, why not. 25 years old, 6'1", black hair, grey eyes. 

And then we've got 10 questions to flesh out the character. I'm game. 

1. Where are you from? Wilryn is from a small town on the Bretonnian border (which is why he speaks their language so well). Herding, hunting, some farming, big enough population that traveling merchants stop by.
2. What is your family like? Wilryn's family has historically been village leaders, judges, and other folks in charge, hence the "Just" surname. He's the only one who's ever demonstrated any magical talent. 
3. What was your childhood like? A bit of pressure to live up to, but nothing he couldn't handle. Wilryn was shaping up to be personable and clever, and his father was thinking about taking him into Bretonnia next season just to see what things were like.
4. Why did you leave home? Wilryn started demonstrating magical ability, and that might have led to him going to college for Magick, and then that fucking Priest of Morr did the ritual and said he was doomed to be burned as a witch! Leaving seemed better than burning.
5. Who are your best friends? Wilryn had close friends in town, including a girl (Luxee) from Bretonnia whose family settled in town. Probably never going to see her again, dammit. 
6. What is your greatest desire? To go home. Maybe if he could become a great hero. Or, hell, actually become a wizard? But that's gonna cost money he doesn't have.
7. What are your best and worst memories? Wilryn went hunting with this father and they got stuck in a storm, so they huddled up in a shelter they made, cooked foraged mushrooms over a fire, and sat there quietly listening to the rain. Wilryn came away from that experience with a respect for his father he couldn't explain; he'd always seen him as this even-handed but severe judge, and seeing him testing a mushroom to see if it was overdone just...softened him somewhat. That's his best memory. His worst, obviously, is fleeing his home.
8. What are your religious beliefs? Probably did venerations to gods of hunting and plenty, maybe occasional prayers to others as necessary, but if you'd asked him pre-banishment he'd have said he wasn't a priest. Now...he's not sure whether the gods want to hear from him.
9. To whom, or what, are you loyal? Wilryn is still loyal to his family and town. He doesn't blame them for driving him away. Secondarily, Wilryn tries to be a good and fair person, because it's what his father would expect. 
10. Why are you adventuring? We've covered this; Wilryn is trying to find a way to fix his doom and go home. 

Wilryn strikes me as the poster child for "meet your destiny on the road you take to avoid it." He'd be interesting to play. 

Character Creation: They Came From Beneath the Sea!

Sure, why not, not like my mental health has been rocky the last few days.

The Game: They Came From Beneath the Sea!
The Publisher: Onyx Path Publishing
Degree of Familiarity: It's complicated
Books Required: Just the one

They Came From Beneath the Sea! (hereafter abbreviated to TCFBTS) is kind of akin to It Came From the Late, Late, Late Show in that it's modeled on bad sci-fi horror movies that one might have watched on network TV at midnight if one were of a certain age. It's a comedy game, but it's one that actually pays mechanical attention to how one might be funny at the table, rather than just writing the game in a wacky sort of voice (to wit, characters have Quips that they can use during play to gain bonuses). 

Now, the aquatepillar in the room: TCFBTS was my last writing gig from Onyx Path before they entirely cut ties with me. They violated their contract with me and never sent me my free copy (I got this PDF in a bundle), though they did pay me, and they hired other people to go in, "rewrite" my stuff (what they actually did was change out the flavor text and revise the sentence structure, much as a freshman comp student might copy from Wikipedia before AI would do it for them), and then made noise about how they were going to do that with all of the other work I'd done for OPP. That is, of course, ridiculous; even if I thought anyone involved with OPP knew exactly what parts of any given book were mine, between WW and OPP I have something like 2 million words of game stuff to my name. At OPP's extremely crappy pay rates (.02 cents a word for new hires, last I knew, though of course my info is cold) that's still $40,000. It is, as they say, to laugh. And they've lost the rights to pretty much everything I ever wrote for them, so it's moot now anyway.

And that all kind of sucks, because frankly, I had a good time working on this book. The writing team was great, we had some lively discussion about various aquatic monsters (which I don't seem to have anymore because it was through a Google Group and I don't think my email archived it), and it was so different from anything I'd written before. I was particularly proud of Uriah Herrmann, the mad scientist (whom they cut entirely) and the Thaumocs (which they didn't), but both of those were mine originally. You can still see the original draft with all of my stuff intact here.

For reference, here's the flavor quote and opening paragraph I wrote:

And here's what was actually published:

Anyway, that's what I mean by "it's complicated." Let's make a character for this fun and not at all problematic game! 

(No, seriously, the game is fun, I played it at a con, and to my knowledge there's nothing actually problematic about it, now that my name's off it.)

Now, this is weird. There are two examples of character creation. There's one in sidebars accompanying the steps, and then another one at the end of the chargen section. Wonder what happened there.

Well, anyway, Step One: Concept. Hmm. You know, although the titular creature in The Blob didn't come from beneath the sea, the tone of the movie fits pretty well (I mean, it's better quality than a lot of the movies this game is aping, but still). The lead character, played by a young Steve McQueen, is a kind of hooligan/greaser sort of character, but stands the hell up at the end when it's time to be the hero. I think that's not a bad start. Let's name my greaser Arnold Cadwell, but everyone calls him "AC" (won't go so far as to call him "Ace," that's a bit much).

And then I need three Aspirations (two short, one long), but the twist here is that they're my Aspirations for the character, not the character's Aspirations in-game. I...think I like that better, actually, especially for a game like this that's more than a little meta. Well, if I were actually playing AC, I'd want him to try to tell the authorities what was happening and be shut down. I'd also like him to take part in a drag race. Long-term, I'd want him to stand up and be a hero. 

Step Two: Path. This is...involved, but not in a bad way. Basically there are three facets to Path (Archetype, Origin, Ambition), and they all contribute to the character's, well, path, but also do mechanical things like give you Cinematic powers and what not. Let's start with Archetype.

Hmm. Of the ones listed, I guess AC is mostly an Everyman, but I kinda wish there was one more specific to "greaser." Or maybe that's something I could squeeze into Origin? Yeah, that actually makes sense, and I don't want this to take all day (or else I'd make my own Path; there's actually instructions on doing so). 

Anyway, I get to associate four Skills with my Archetype. Let's pick...Athletics, Pilot (since that's what you'd use to drive), Command, and Integrity...no, I think I want to save Integrity for Ambition. Let's make my last one Survival. 

So then we do the same thing for Origin and Ambition. For Origin, I'll pick Larceny, Close Combat, Aim, and Culture, and for Ambition, we'll take Integrity, Enigmas, Persuasion, and Empathy. 

Now I get 3 dots for the Skills in each of these Paths (ah, the Capitalization is Nostalgic). I'll distribute them thusly:

Athletics 1, Pilot 1, Command 1
Larceny 2, Close Combat 1
Persuasion 2, Enigmas 1

Step Three: Skills. I get six dots to put anywhere. Neato. Let's put...one more into Close Combat and Athletics. Two more into Pilot (I want AC to be a kickass driver). One into Humanities (he goes to class sometimes), and the last one into Integrity (I want the seeds of heroism). 

Step Four: Attributes. The usual Physical/Social/Mental breakdown, but also an axis of Approach (Force, Finesse, Resilience). You get a favored Approach, which bumps the three Attributes in that row up a dot, and you get 6/4/2 to distribute in the others by prioritized category. 

Well, for AC, I think Physical/Social/Mental is the obvious choice. Let's just spread the Physical dots evenly (given me 3 across the board), we'll put two into Presence and one each into Manipuation and Composure, and then for Mental we'll put one each into Cunning and Resolve. I think AC's favored Approach is probably Force, which bumps up Intelligence, Might and Presence by one.

Step Five: Trademarks. These are basically Aspects. Well, kind of. I don't know if they get used against you in the same way. But either way, they're attached to Skills or Attributes, and you get a bonus when they apply. I get two for Archetype and one each from Origin and Ambition. 

Well, for Origin, I give AC "From the Bad Side of Town" and tie it to Larceny. From Archetype, I'll take "Natural Driver" and tie it to Pilot, and "Underestimated" and tie it to Composure. And for Ambition, I'll take "Natural Leader" and tie it to Command.

Step Six: Relationships would require a group, which I ain't got, so skipping it.

Step Seven: Finishing Touches. There's a weird amount of mechanical stuff in this step; normally it's just wrap-up. Well, whatever. I get three Tropes, two from Everyman and one from wherever. Just a moment. 

Well, from Everyman, I'll take Grit & Determination and Elbow Grease. A lot of these are a little more grown-up than I think is right for AC, but those two work. I'll definitely take Spotlight from the Mouth Archetype. 

And finally, I get Quips. These get drawn from various decks. As an Everyman, I get one from Vows, Defiance, and Tough Talk and one from Quit Your Griping, and then one from a deck of my choice. Just a moment. There are 19 of these in a deck (weird), so I'll just roll a d20 and ignore "20." 

I get: "Like the math whiz said, count me in." (I like that for AC.) "I like drinking water alright, but fighting in it is something entirely different..." (Not bad, though a little wordy). I'll draw my last one from Why so Glib?: "Don't look now, but we've got dinner guests!" 

Sounds good! I picture AC as about 17, appropriately greasy black hair, leather jacket, oil-stained white t-shirt. 

Character Creation: Dragon Slayers

Can't beat the classics.

The Game: Dragon Slayers
The Publisher: Gila RPGs
Degree of Familiarity: None, though I've run Slayers, which is at least a similar design philosophy
Books Required: Just the one

As with Slayers, this game's predecessor, the idea here is that you're a party of adventurers who are having...adventures. The big gimmick is that every class has different combat rules, but they're all printed on the character sheets and my experience with Slayers was that as long as you have players that will read their own damn sheets (not always a given, I'm sorry to say), it works just fine. That comes at the expense of setting - the setting here is basically "it's high fantasy, you know, you've played D&D, get at it" - but as with D&D, it wouldn't take much to build enough of a setting to play it. And, the cool thing about this game is that almost anything printed for D&D (or any high fantasy game) could pretty easily be converted, because the strength of this game is its design and unique rules. 

So let's make a Dragon Slayer!

First we choose a class. Gotta say these all pass the Chupp test, because all the mechanical bits would be fun to fiddle with. Speaking of fiddling, let's make a Bard! Their particular mechanical wibble is that when they take class actions, they have better effect when the rolls come up matching or sequential. Sounds fun. Also, as I think about it, you don't tend to see bards in RPGs with instruments that require bows, because then your hands aren't free, but here I think it'd work just fine. 

Right, next we set Hero die to d4, easy enough. There's not actually a spot for that on the sheet, but that makes sense since it's a party-shared resource.

Choose two advances! I think I shall take Practiced (my Perform pool goes up to 4d6) and Pick Up the Pace (my Tempo effect, which increases or decreases the Speed of other folks, is increased by 1).

Choose a talent! I'm gonna take Trickster (twice per session I can give an opponent disadvantage on a roll). 

Skillz! One at d10, one at d8, everything else at d6. Well, I think Deception should be the d10, and probably either Athletics or Negotiation for the d8? Let's make it Athletics, I don't think my bard is much for negotiating; he'd rather just play a song and have magic happen.

Choose a knowledge domain! Ooh, History or Settlements? Let's take Settlements, my guy knows the territory.

I get a magic item and a consumable. One of the listed magic items is a "focused gem" that gives you a step up to a particular skill while you're carrying it; I like that but I'm gonna make it a pitch pipe that increases Negotiation. Plays a note on the pipe and people are just a little more willing to listen to him and, potentially, taaaaaalk sloooower. 

For the consumable, I'll take Bottled Wisdom. When he uncorks it, it'll tell him a secret relevant to the current situation (after which it's just a bottle).

Nothing left but details. My bard's name is Hereweald Brae, and I think if I had a group I was working with, he'd have hooked up with them after getting run out some village for running some con. Maybe promising to teach all the children in the village bard magic in a quick and easy manner. 

Character Creation: Broken Tales

Not broken tails, which would be a very specific and much sadder game.

The Game: Broken Tales
The Publisher: The World Anvil
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, though I also have a copy of Scottish Fairy Tales nearby

Broken Tales is a really well-made game, from a production design standpoint. How it plays at the table, I don't know, of course, but it looks like it'd work just fine. But the premise is the intriguing bit. Here we are in 18th Century not-Europe (it's inspired by, but not, the real world), and the fairy tales have broken. There's backstory and a reason for that, but the important thing is, the antagonists in the tales have had a chance for redemption, and the protagonists become bitter and monstrous. There are a bunch of pre-written scenarios, and they're all darker takes on classic fairy tales (and if you know how dark those things are to begin with, you can see how fucked up that is). 

I will say this for Broken Tales - it doesn't take the easy way out. It's not mechanically complex, but narratively speaking, it might be one of the most involved games I've seen, especially in chargen. To expand on that a little, there are a lot of "narrative focused" games that either use that idea as an excuse to present minimalist or flat-out bad mechanics (looking at you, World of Darkness) or don't provide enough support on the narrative side of things and wind up just saying "iunno, make it up, I guess" (lots of OSR games, lots of story games, anything written by John Wick). Broken Tales does the work. It's a demanding creative load for everyone involved, but it gives you plenty of support (with examples, praise be) on how to do that work. 

Would I run it? I'd love to, but it would require either using the pregens (which, in fairness, there are plenty of) or really devoting some time to pre-game stuff. If I was gonna do it, I think I'd want to do a couple of sessions of chargen and a session zero/first scene within a few days of each other, just to build some momentum and cement some of the ideas in people's heads, because theming is so important here. 

For today, however, we're gonna make a Hunter (oh, right, PCs in this game work for the Vatican doing supernatural hunter stuff, which I thought was kind of at odds with the game at first, but really given how individualized all the characters are, some framing device is important). 

Step One: Collect Sources of Inspiration. Basically this means "pick your fairy tale." I'm going with my family's roots and choosing the Scottish tale of "The Red Etin", which you can hear in a lovely Scottish accent here:

I'm using the titular Red Etin as my character, obviously. 

From the story, I'm meant to pick meaningful words, phrases, and passages, which then become the Keywords for my character. So what jumps out at me about the Red Etin?

• Red Etin of Ireland, once lived in Ballygan
• Fears no man
• Keeps herds of sheep, swine, goats, and two-headed four-horned monsters
• A powerful giant with three heads and a cruel, unforgiving nature
• Has a magnificent castle and multiple servants
• Seek but and Seek ben, I smell the smell of an earthly man. Be he alive or be he dead, his heart this night shall join my bread
• Offered freedom in exchange for answering riddles (note: in the version I read, these "riddles" are presented as things an educated person would know)
• Tapped the boy with a wand and turned him to stone
• There's one predesintate to be his mortal foe
• Woman in Green (a disguised fairy) gives the boy a magic wand and all the answers to the riddles
• Laughed at easy prey
• Shrank as his riddles were answered
• Heads chopped off with an ax
• People in his lands see him as a monster
• Has multiple women kidnapped and imprisoned (including King Malcolm's daughter)

Step Two: Tell this Hunter's Backstory and bring them to their Breaking Point. Here, we're writing a short story using these Keywords, and then flipping some of them to make the Red Etin a protagonist. In particular, I'm asked to consider:

The Red Etin of Ireland, who once lived in Ballygan, has nothing and no one to call his own, but for the two-head, four-horned beasts that follow him. He was once wealthy and owned vast tracts of land, but was attacked by a gang of three roving ruffians. He engaged them in a contest of riddles for his lands and castle, figuring that they were not educated enough to know the answers, but they had been told the answers ahead of time by the Woman in Green, the Red Etin's enemy. The boys beat him with metal wands and cut him with an ax and left him for dead. He abandoned his lands and wandered until he found the Order, and joined as a Hunter. He is much smaller and weaker than he was, but he still fears no man. His also smart and well-read, and a master of riddles and wordplay.

So Red Etin's Breaking Point is that he was set upon by three thieves and ruffians (rather than the three goodly lads who were only guilty of wanting to have their cake and eat it, too). 

Step Three: Detail the Hunter's Descriptors. These aren't a million miles from Aspects in Fate, though they're often a paragraph rather than a phrase. They help define a Hunter's skills and abilities, as well as their flaws. These are meant to be in first person, and I use them to build Gifts in the next step. 

Let's start with something that acknowledges the Red Etin's status as a former landowner and, in effect, noble. I think we can fold in his knowledge and education here, and I think his cruel and unforgiving (and rather arrogant) nature can come out here. So:

I am the Red Etin, and once I owned a magnificent castle and vast amounts of land. I am sensitive about what I have lost and bitter at how easily my servants forgot me. The two-headed, four-horned monsters who once acted as guardians to my castle now follow me, and I can call them forth if I am threatened.

I am no longer the fearsome, three-headed giant I was, but I still fear no man and I still command some magic - my silver wand allows me to turn others into stone pillars, and can extend itself into a rod I can use as a weapon. I have lost much of my physical strength, however, and without my wand I am largely vulnerable. 

I am very well-read and well-educated, and lived a long time before losing everything. The Order relies on my knowledge and wisdom. I enjoy testing others on their academic knowledge, and scoff at those who can't keep up with me in conversation.

At this point the book stops giving me steps, but the next thing to do is create Gifts. I get two regular gives (which have ~2 Archetypal Effects and at least one Archetypal Cost), and one Dark Ego Gift, which can have any number of Effects, but always has an Activator Cost (because it's something I have to push myself to use). Each of these are tied to a Descriptor, of course.

For the Red Etin, I think I want his Dark Ego Gift tied to the wand. That feels like this the thing he'd really have to push himself to use. As such, I shall start with the first Descriptor. Clearly what happens here is that the Red Etin summons those horrifying monsters to protect him, and lo and behold, there's an Allies Archetypal Effect I can pick. 

I think what makes sense here is if the Red Etin whistles for these monsters and they chase threats away. There don't need to be, like, a lot of them, so let's say he can summon up four or five of them, they're scary and can cause wounds, and they'll get in the way of attacks. As for a Cost, I think he probably can't do this often; maybe there's a use limit Cost. Or, ooh, maybe he can't do it in civilized places since the monsters aren't "real" animals? Oh, Once Until Next Interlude, perfect. So we'll phrase it thusly:

Herd of Beasts: Once between Interludes, you can whistle and call forth a four two-headed, four-horned monsters to defend you. Each beast has the Descriptors Fierce and Loyal. Each beast can either absorb a Wound for you or inflict a Wound on an enemy. 

Cool, now let's think about the "very well-read etc" Descriptor. Obtaining Information is the obvious first Effect choice, here; the Red Etin just knows a lot of stuff. I also want some kind of Effect to represent him lording knowledge over others. Manipulating NPCs, maybe? Nah, I don't think I want to stipulate a particular effect. Let's say +2 Additional Successes, which is a big deal, but we'll limit it to information the Red Etin has read about...oh, wait, no, let's limit it to Defense checks. The Red Etin can use his knowledge to protect himself, but not for offense (rather, he can, but not with the extra success bonus). 

Once Lived in Ballygan: You can call upon your knowledge of history, theology, and other academic pursuits to gain any information that the Storyteller thinks you would have read. Also, if you can use this knowledge to protect yourself, you gain +2 Successes on Defense checks.

And finally, our Dark Ego Gift, the Silver Wand. The Cost here is that I have to do something that connects me to my villainous past, so in the Red Etin's case, I think he needs to be the terrifying master of the house, even if he can't be the giant. So maybe if someone fails to answer a question for him, he can turn them to stone? And then I think turning it into a weapon and striking someone to just straight up do damage is good...hmm. Maybe it has to be someone who's been weakened in some way, as the Red Etin preferred to victimize people who were afraid or weaker than him. We'll say he can use the wand as a weapon, but if the target is afraid or has been degraded or defeated or something, it does extra damage. 

The Silver Wand: You are not the giant you once were, but it still lurks within you. If someone fails to answer a question of knowledge or a riddle you pose, you can tap their head with your wand and turn them to a pillar of stone. Once per Scene, you can also use the wand as a weapon against anyone who is afraid, belittled, or degraded (you don't need to have inflicted this condition but you must be involved), gaining +2 successes. 

Next we determine the reserve of Soma (trait we use to power stuff). It starts at 6 by default, and can be lowered if my Gifts are really uber or raised if they're a little weaker. I don't see the need to change it, honestly, so 6 it is.

Equipment! There's a system for this, but honestly I don't think the Red Etin is going to be carrying much, because he lost everything. So he's got: the silver wand, faded clothes, sheepskin boots, half a cake. 

And since he's not really the Red Etin anymore, we'll call him Red, the Former Giant. He's a small, slight old man, but he carries himself like a lord. He's got two ugly scars on his shoulders (where his other heads used to be). 

That'll do it!

Character Creation: Lichoma

I had Cael pick a letter, and they gave me 'L', so I grabbed this game. I mentioned the name, and Cael opined that it sounds like something you get diagnosed with in your 80s. The game says that the title is a portmanteau of "lich" and "carcinoma," so Cael wasn't far off.

The Game: Lichoma
The Publisher: Bogfolk
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one, though "book" may be the wrong word

It's a box, actually, containing play mats and cards and other cards and other other cards and a couple of little booklets. Figuring out where you're supposed to start took some time (and frankly would have been easier with the PDFs, but I was sitting on the couch with the physical game), but I got there. 

So, Lichoma is a "meatpunk" game, and what's interesting is that this isn't the first or even the second such game I've read; you've also got Extreme Meatpunks Forever and Bilge. Actually, Belly of the Beast, too, has some meatpunk aspects, though more "meat" and less "punk." 

Basically there's this city called Wen, this all takes place in a horrifically dystopian world where people are harvested for their bodies, I think? See, the setting is not especially well-described. It's very strong on vibes, but, as I've said with other games, I did feel a little adrift while reading it. I'm not the only one, either. One of the comments on the game's itch page is someone saying "I don't know how to play this game." 

I could wax philosophical about how part of a game being accessible is a strong explanation of what the hell it actually is, and whether or not that's necessary for a game that is 100% not going to be someone's first foray in TTRPGs. I don't think I will, though, because I'd rather just make a character and then go sit on the couch some more. 

There is an actual play (linked here) in which the first four minutes explain the game better than the game itself, so that's...not great, I think.

Right, so there are six factions, each of which corresponds to a district of Wen. Now, what does it imply that I'm a member of one faction but have body parts from others? No idea. Let's just pick a faction randomly. Joytown! Suits me. 

Right, so now we pick a card for each of the factions, which makes up my "faction deck." "Faction" was a weird word choice here, I think.

OK, there we go. And then there are some tables I can roll on, so I'll do that. Game even includes dice, that's nice of it. I am a...Naive Thieving Nobody. Given the cards I drew, that sounds about right.

I confess...my room is a mess. I am addicted to...Mutilation (ew). Using the handy list of random words, my name is...Grub Lord. 

Now, there's a slot for "job" on the character "sheet", but no slots for addition or confession or any of the other stuff I'm asked to roll for, so y'know what? I'm going to assume none of that is important, because if it were, it would be on the sheet and it would matter in the game. HOPE I'M NOT A FACSIST OR SOMETHING. 

The more I look at this, the more I'm convinced that playing this without one of the game's creators there to show you how the fuck it's supposed to work would be, though not impossible, extremely trying, and frankly I don't have the spoons. Grub Lord feels like a spindly, sneaky fucker to me, but probably with some kind of delusion of importance. Maybe he's got a blazer.