I mentioned yesterday that I was reading a couple of RPGs, one of which didn't have a default setting. I'ma do that one today.
The Game: Mettle
The Publisher: Planarian Games
Degree of Familiarity: None
Books Required: Just the one
Mettle is another RPG that I got in a bundle, and it's another "looks perfectly playable but eh" type of game.
The danger in making a setting agnostic game, I think, is that people who are wedded to a particular system that they hack into whatever setting they want already have that system. Maybe it's 5E or some other form of D&D (whatever, some people juggle geese), maybe it's Fate, or SWADE, or whatever. But the appeal of those games, at least in part, is their ubiquity - there's a lot of support for them, meaning if you want to hack 'em you're not alone and there are resources to draw on. So why choose a largely unknown system to hack, unless that system does exactly what you want?
I don't know. Mettle, like I said, looks perfectly playable, but it doesn't do anything I haven't seen before.
Well, let's do this. As mentioned, there's no default setting. There's an example adventure, which is billed as Gilligan's Island meets Matango. Since I'm a little pressed for time, I'm just gonna use that setting, but make my own character (the example characters are takeoffs of the Gilligan's Island cast, natch).
The setup here is very much Gilligan's Island - seven people wind up on a beach after their ship capsizes. I think I'll lean into the horror a little, and take some inspiration from another "capsized on a desert island" movie, Sweetheart. I'll say my character wasn't with the original group, but instead was marooned on another nearby island. After a harrowing few weeks of barely surviving, he managed to lash some planks together and strike out for land, only to wash up on this island. I think he's grizzled and weathered and looks older than he is; he's really only 22! (Maybe he was on the beach from Old, too.) His name is Dodd.
So, the first two steps of chargen are name and appearance, and I've got those done already, go me! Descriptors are next. I've got five of them: Focus, Frame, Motive, Nature, and Poise. I think I'll use the array method of assigning them numbers, so I get 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 to throw around. I also need to add "tags" to each one (Aspects, basically). Let's go through these!
Focus is occupation, lifestyle, suchlike. I figure Dodd's most important characteristic is his harrowing couple of weeks as a castaway, and I think that's better enumerated by Frame than Occupation, so I'll put my 2 here and say that Dodd has Gaps in his employment history.
Frame is how physically powerful Dodd is, and I want that to be high. I'll put the 4 here, and call it Extreme survival skills.
Motive is exactly what it sounds like. In Dodd's case, it's make it back to the mainland, no matter what. I'll put a 3 here.
Nature is force of personality and will, and this is gonna be Dodd's strongest point. He is way too intense, and I'll put the 5 here.
Finally, Poise is dexterity-type stuff, and I've got a 3 left to put here. I'll tag it younger than he looks.
And now, Backgrounds. These are brief phrases that indicate how Dodd has spent his life, and I could assign some in play, which is cool. Here's the thing, though. The book seems to think that 5, 4, 3, 3, 2 adds up to 22, because it talks about the "standard 22 point character". Those numbers actually add up to 17, however. So assuming the math is right and I get Background points equal to half my Descriptor totals, and we round up, I have 9 points to throw around. I can't have any individual Background higher than 2 (my Focus rating).
Well, Dodd has survived for weeks on his own, so I think that's a good start. I think I should probably have some reference to his pre-castaway life, so let's say he is or was a world traveler. He knows how to prepare fish (maybe he worked at a sushi place?). I'll put 2 into each of those, and leave the last 3 unassigned.
Last thing is Resources, and that's both physical stuff and intangible things like contacts and debts. I think Dodd has a survival knife and a pair of ratty shorts and that's it.
I guess Mettle is set at Motive + armor, and I got no armor, so that's just 3. And that's apparently it for chargen, so that's Dodd, ready to wake up with the rest of the castaways and be totally in the wrong genre...until the Lichenoids show up.
