To me, "Balam" will always mean "werejaguar." The Institute is so deep in mean that I can't say his name. Help me say his name, Tad.
(Holy shit, that's obscure.)
The Game: Era: Balam
The Publisher: Shades of Vengeance
Degree of Familiarity: None, and yet, it feels so familiar
Books Required: Just the one
There are a bunch of Era games, they're all little zine-like things, and they (apparently) all use a kind of serial-numbers-filed-off version of the early Storyteller system. To wit, gather a dice pool composed of Attribute + Skill, roll that many d10s, count results on a variable threshold with a variable number of successes, rolling more 1s than successes means a botch. Actually, my initial read was that rolling any 1s meant the roll was a failure, because of this:
See? Also, I said most of this before when I did a character for Era: Deadwest and I suspect I'll say it again when I get around to the other few Era games. I could just bang them all out in a row, I suppose, but eh.
Anyway, in Era: Balam, the basic conceit is that humanity sent out space probes, one of them landed on an inhabited world, malfunctioned, declared war, and that civilization is coming after humanity in a perfectly justified case of "these fucking aliens are dangerous, we should kill them off before they come back and finish the job!" Our PCs, however, are humans. Humans have spread throughout the galaxy, the main base that's near to these aliens is on the titular planet Balam, and the idea is that we must protect Balam lest the aliens take it and learn where Earth is.
And like...huh. On the one hand, the "aliens" are very much in the right, here. On that other hand, "humans are the real monster!" is a somewhat clichéd as far as this kind of sci-fi goes, and I think the only way to make this game interesting is to have the PCs be the humans. But is this little 50 page zine equipped for this kind of theme? I don't know, "theme" isn't even mentioned. Let's make a pilot!
Step One: Your Pilot. I'm meant to begin with a one-sentence backstory and a quirk (it's called a "quirk," but it's a flaw). Hmm. Is it possible to do a Tom-Cruise-in-Edge-of-Tomorrow kind of thing, where I've been exposed to the aliens in some way and come out changed? Rather, I know it is, but do the mechanics support that? Well, heck, let's assume they can, and use that as my backstory. Let's therefore tie my quirk into that. The systems behind quirks are really spotty (some of them are basically "I dunno, the GM gives you a bad thing sometimes"), so let's say my guy is Changing. Sometimes his bioelectrical systems go haywire. When he takes damage, he has a 50% change of giving off an electromagnetic pulse strong enough to stun whatever ship he's on. I think it'd be fun if he didn't know about that at the start of the game, just that he's been getting little brain zaps of late.
Step Two: Your Craft. My ship, y'see. First thing I do is pick a "main module," which has "1 slot" next to it, but the chargen section doesn't seem to tell me what "slots" are in this context. Nope, never defined in the book. Nice job, guys. (I mean, it's pretty clear that ships only have so many slots, but how many? Do they correspond to the spaces on the character sheet? WHO KNOWS.)
Anyway, the main module determined what kind of ship you're flying. Fighter Module is fine. I fill in the numbers it says, and a few other ones; it doesn't look like I have any other actual decisions to make here.
Step Three: Attributes. This is where the White Wolf influence really shows. Three categories (Potence, Defence, and Reaction). Potence and Reaction have three traits in them, Defence has 2, I get 6/5/4 to split up into the categories. It looks like Reaction has the traits I'm most likely to need, so let's put my primary there, my secondary in Defense, and that leaves Potence with only 4 to split up.
I get a free point in each of these, so starting with Potence: I'll put one into each and then a second one into Intelligence. For Defence, I'll put two into Stamina and three into Willpower. And then over in Reaction, I'll put 3 into Dexterity, one into Wits (might regret that), and two into Luck.
Step Four: Skills. Same drill, 11/7/4 prioritized between three categories (Personal, Technical, Interaction; have I mentioned it bugs me when different categories or traits are different parts of speech?). I'm thinking Personal gets the 11, Interactiveon gets the 7 and Technical gets the 4.
Personal: Well, I'd better be good at Gunnery, so I'll put 3 there. Then I'll put 2 into Investigation, Stealth, Survival, and Zero-G.
Technical: Two in Navigation, one in Computer, one in Science, done and done.
Interactive: How about two each in Persuasion, Seduction, and Esteem, and one in Intimidation.
Step Five: Derived Stats! I...fill 'em in. Mostly they're set values. Defence is the lower of Wits and Dexterity, Initiative is Wits + Willpower, knew I'd regret that low Wits rating.
Step Six: Stuff. I get a Spacesuit and Engineering Equipment standard. Do those take up Cargo slots? WHO KNOWS. There's no place else on the sheet to write equipment so let's assume they do. Anyway, then I get 3 basic items.
Let's take Automated Scanners, Emergency Medical Unit (that's new; he's not been feeling himself of late), and a Computational Targeting Interface (which allows me to use Intelligence instead of Wits for targeting).
And that's it! We'll say my guy's name is Vallo Compton. Compton looked like a pretty normal human pilot - white, brown hair, brown eyes, just kinda standard and bro-y - and then he had the run-in with the alien after his Paladin crashed and now he's...changing. His eyes have gone blue and the shade is getting lighter. It's still within the bounds of human coloration for now...
That'll do it!
