Character Creation: Dark Ages: Fae

With nothing in particular on my mind, I shall jump right into chargen.

The Game: Dark Ages: Fae
The publisher: White Wolf
Degree of familiarity: Lots! In addition to developing the book (and basically conceptualizing it from the ground up, though not alone) I played it for a while when John ran it. I played Hound, who shows up in the fiction before Chapter Two, and as the character illustration on p. 75.
Books required: The Dark Ages: Fae book, and either the Dark Ages: Vampire book or the free Dark Ages rules download.

 

OK, so check it out. When I got the gig as Dark Ages developer, I knew right away I wanted to do a DA version of Changeling: The Dreaming someday. But I wasn't sure how the powers-that-be at White Wolf, who apparently had never really liked CtD (this turned out to be not entirely true), would dig it. I didn't put it on the docket for my first year (2003; the 2002 lineup was already in place when I was hired, which was 9/11/01, if you're interested), because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do right off. That was the year I did Dark Ages: Werewolf, and while I think it turned out OK, there's so much I'd have done differently with just a year of experience under my belt.

So anyway, the next year I sent in my lineup for 2004. This would have been in fall of 2003, which was after we knew about the Time of Judgment, but before we knew that Dark Ages was dying with it (remember, the initial plan was Dark Ages would continue). So we wound up doing four Dark Ages books in 2004, and one of the Dark Ages: Fae.

As with almost every book I've worked on, there are things I'd do differently. Yes, the powers are a little over the top. Yes, we should have paid more attention to fae society than we did (in my defense, I thought we'd get a Companion someday). But the fae-creation rules laid some groundwork for Changeling: The Lost, as did the seasonal Courts, and so I'm glad for the way it worked out.

That in mind,

Let's see. I've made several DA characters. My Werewolf character was English (rather, a wolf, but living in the British Isles somewhere), my Mage character was Italian but living in France, my Vampire character was...unspecified, actually, and my Inquisitor character was French. Wow. Didn't realize I'd kept so much to Western Europe. OK.

Making a Fae character, though, isn't like making a character with a more terrestrial background. Changelings, sure, grew up among humans, but firstborn and inanimae did not. I still need my character to be playable, though, so I flick through Dark Ages: Europe and hit Ari's section on Hungary. Reading up on how Buda-Pest was growing like a weed in this period (mid 13th century, remember), I jump over to the Encyclopedia Mythica and find this charming legend, the Liderc. This industrious little beastie asks for work, and eventually drives you crazy asking for stuff to do.

My Fae character, then, is going to play on those legends. I know I want Liderc to be firstborn, so I'll enter that right now. Liderc fought in the War of Seasons, kind of; he was more a sprite at the time. Never on the front lines, but "fought" in a supplemental way (helping with supplies and the like). More an industrious goblin sort of creature. The War pretty much annihilated the fae in his area, and he's been paying more attention to humanity ever since, and has grown to appreciate the way they just consume everything around them, building the land and the trees and the world into their cities. They do it with ideas and gods and spirits, too, and Liderc feels that maybe the humans can give him a place in their lives, so that he won't die the way his fellows did when the Oath-Truce ends. That makes his agenda Humanist, from where I'm standing.

Court is a little trickier. Spring and Autumn both want to work with humans (or use them), and since Ledirc is, in legend, a demonic sort, I'll take Autumn. He was Sained into the Autumn Court by some of the few fae still in the area, and since he was so keen to watch them work, they tasked him with sticking close to working folk, craftsmen, farmers, etc., and seeing if they were useful.

I need a Nature and Demeanor, huh? Well, Ledirc's a Survivor by Nature; he wants to outlast the rest of the Fae, and screw the Oath-Truce anyway. The Demeanor he puts on is Follower, which isn't in the Dark Ages: Vampire book but screw it. He does what he's told, but it's not that he's not capable of acting on his own, it just that he finds it more expedient to play the role of obsequious little sneak.

Right, that complete Step One, so now Step Two: Attributes. 7/5/3 split, and I think Ledirc needs high Mental stats, so we'll do Mental, Physical, Social.

Mental: I'll jack Wits up to 5, put Perception at 3 and leave Intelligence at 2. He's a skilled builder, but not so great at problem-solving. He's used to using magic for that.

Physical: Three dots into Dexterity, one each into Strength and Stamina. Although, I might want a higher Stamina, since he can work tirelessly. Hmm. Yeah, I'll switch out a dot of Dex for a dot of Stamina.

Social: Average across the board. No, wait. I'll leave him Appearance 1 and put Manipulation up to 3.

Step Three: Abilities. 13/9/5, nothing over 3 right now. Skills are definitely primary, followed by Talents. That leaves Knowledges last.

Skills: 3 in Crafts, and my Area of Expertise is Carpentry. Three into Stealth, two into Survival. Two into Animal Ken (he likes chickens and other domesticated animals), two into Commerce, one into Etiquette.

Talents: Two points into Alertness, three into Athletics (I see him hanging from trees, clinging to bridges, that kind of thing), two into Brawl, and two into Kenning. I fucking hate Dodge as a separate Ability, have I mentioned that? Shit. OK, I'll swap a point from Brawl into Dodge, just so it's not empty.

Knowledges: One each into Enigmas, Hearth Wisdom, Gramarye, Linguistics and Seneschal. For my languages, Ledirc speaks the Fostering tongue and Autumn Tongue for free, and I'll take Hungarian (whatever version the peasants of 13 century Hungary would've spoken) for my extra one.

Step Four: Advantages. I get 5 dots in Backgrounds, so let's check those out. I think Ledirc's going to want some dots in Oaths. I'll put 3 dots into Oaths for now. I'll split my other two into Resources (Ledirc has amassed a little treasure trove of stuff he's stolen from people) and Contacts (a gossipy woman that Ledirc listens to as she chatters with her friends).

As a firstborn, I get Mists 4 and Weaving 2 to start with.

Now for the fun bit: Dominions! As a member of the Autumn Court, my favored is Dusk, so I get a -1 to the difficulty of using Dusk. But let's see what we've got. OK, I want Ledirc to have some nasty magic behind him, I want him to be able to speak to animals and I want him to be able to call on his Court's magic, so I'll take one each of Dusk, Night and Dawn. That gives me six cantrips, since with Weaving 2 I get two cantrips in every Dominion I know. They all have to be level 1, of course, unless I start raising Dominions with freebies, so I think I'll hold off on cantrips until I've spent those points.

I start with Willpower 4. I get one Echo, and I have to build my faerie mien yet. Let's do the Echo first.

Echoes are things that can, potentially, turn a Fae to stone, but it's more likely to just make them itchy. Actually, as a firstborn, Ledirc suffers more severe Echo effects than other Fae. I think I'll take "being scolded like a child" as my Echo; it plays on the "given an impossible task" thing from the legend.

Right, now Features. I get four, because my Mists rating is 4. I picture Ledirc as being small, black-skimmed, ugly (pointy, goblin-like ears, warts, snaggled-toothed). That gives me Faerie Size (Lesser), Skin Hue (black), Repulsive Countenance, and I think I'll take Scent, too. Ledirc smells like sawn wood and body odor.

OK, freebies. I buy up Dodge to 3, first off. Brawl goes to 2. That's 6 points spent. I'll spent 4 more and buy Intimidation 1 and Gramarye 2. That leaves me 5. I'll spend 1 point and take the Cherished Merit. While I'm at it, though, I'll take the Demonic Flaw (he looks pretty demon-like), so that gives me 3 back. I'm at 7 points left. I'll spent all 7 to buy a second dot in, let's say, Night.

I've got Oaths to consider. I could do several Iron Oaths (that is, forged between me and particular humans), or one Stone Oath (forged between me and a community). I like that better. We'll say that part of Ledirc's Saining involved an oathmaster forging that oath between Ledirc and a local master craftsman. The Oath's wording goes like this:

I will perform one task for you, working wood or stone or slaughter of beast if you provide fair payment for my services, and agree never to let me hear a harsh word. I will fail my oath if the two full moons see the task unfinished. You will fail the oath and suffer the wrath of the bond if you do not pay for my services. If the other breaks, my punishment in shame is service to you, no matter what the task, for six full moons. Your punishment in shame is to be the slave of anyone who speaks your name for one full day.

And, finally, cantrips. I get two each in Dusk, Dawn and Night.

Night: I want to be able to hurt people without killing them, so I'll take Black and Blue. I'll take Winter's Glamour, too, to make myself invisible.

Dawn: Well, Beast Tongue, obviously. And then Sleep, since putting people to sleep without killing them is handy.

Dusk: Speed of the Wind, definitely. He's a quick little fucker. And then Twilight Shadow's Reach, allowing Ledirc to grab objects that are out of reach. Seems a very gobliny thing to do.

And by gum, I think that's it!

Character Creation: Asylum

You know, the kind the lunatics are running. 

The Game: Asylum
The publisher: Clockworks, now apparently defunct
Degree of familiarity: None. I bought it on the cheap at GenCon, largely because it's a game about insanity that uses marbles for the mechanic. I've since read it.
Books Required: Just the core.

 
Asylum is a dystopian-future RPG, in which a weird breed of algae spread into the atmosphere and blotted out the sun. In addition to killing most of the plant and animal life on Earth, it drove people crazy. Cut off from the sun, people developed mental illness at unprecedented rates, until large cities became nothing more than Wards for them. Now, in the year...uh, hang on...2163, the lunatics pretty much run the joint. There are Wardens and Orderlies (an aside, because this is cool: when the Orderlies are coming, it's common to ask, "Left or right?" because they carry tranq guns in their left hands and guns with live ammo in their right), and there's perhaps an organization over it all, but that doesn't help you. You can wander the wastelands, scavenge for stuff to trade (bullets are currency, as are meds), you can hang in the Lounge and gamble, or you can try and avoid the snakes that have evolved deadly poison in order to hunt and eat people. Oh, and these snakes are four feet long.

Wait, what?

OK, some amusing herpetology aside, the game has some interesting promise. All characters are crazy, and you can have Disorders and Aberrations. I have some quibbles with the disorders as presented, not least of which because autism is presented as an Aberration when autism is a) not a mental illness and b) not really much like what's presented in the book, but the book was always released in 1996, so I'll forgive an interpretation of the disorder that's consistent with what was known (or believed) at the time. At least all autistic people aren't Rain Man in this game.

The book reads as a product of its time; this was around the same time that Vampire: The Masquerade and the other early WoD games were coming onto the scene, and, like Shattered Dreams, feels like a close cousin to a White Wolf game (the author, Aaron Rosenberg, went on to do some work for Vampire in fact, including Sins of the Blood, to which I also contributed).

Anyway, let's do this. Actually, I'm going to go get a drink, and a bag of dice that I can use for marbles. OK, got 'em. Incidentally, the way this works is that each color of marble (black, white, blue, red, green) corresponds to a number, 1 to 5. So you draw two marbles and they add to relevant stats, non unlike Edge of Midnight, which does the same thing only with dice. Anyway, draws are read as "white, white" (the best possible), "blue, red", that kind of thing.

OK, first step is Conception (huh-huh). I'm asked to determine an Occupation, if I want one. Occupation keep you sane (ish), so I think I'll pick one. I want my character to be an Almanac. Almanacs are news fonts, but since there's really no print anymore (and few people are literate anyway), they just memorize everything and try to stay up to date on what's going on around them.

Ooh, you know what this game doesn't address? Children. That's probably good, but seriously, where do new Inmates come from? Yeah, people probably breed, but is there a Children's Ward out there somewhat? I'm guessing yes, because otherwise children probably wouldn't survive very long in this wasted world. Anyway, just a random thought.

So, Almanac. So much of how I interpret this character is going to depend on his mental illness, so let's draw (using dice in my desk drawer) for my Disorder. I draw black, red which gives Dissociative Identity Disorder. Oh, look, it's the Internet's second most-popular self-diagnosis. The way the book describes this is for each personality to be played by a different player. Yeah, no thanks. I think I'll exercise my right of refusal on Disorder (which the book makes a point of saying I have), because I'm not in the slightest bit enthused about playing multiple personalities.

OK, take two. A draw of white, white gives me Compulsive. Much better. Compulsive means that my character takes a certain, repetitive action at least every ten minutes. In my case, since he's an Almanac, I think it's related to checking the space that he's in. Someone might want to know how big this room is, after all, so he paces it out. If he's outside, he draws a circle on the ground so he can find this spot later, or otherwise makes landmarks. If asked, he does this shit because "someone might want to know."

Now I draw an Aberration. The book makes a point of saying that Aberrations cannot be chosen (Disorders can be, but I didn't have one that I really liked). Since I'm starting with an Occupation, though, I don't actually start with an Aberration; I'm drawing for a latent one, as it were. I draw Dependent, and that fits. If it comes into play and gets bad, my character can't make decisions on his own. He becomes so paralyzed by the notion of having to remember and catalog everything around him that he can't do anything.

Next comes figuring out my Vitals. I can either take a set pool of 11 points or draw for it. Let's draw for it, why the fuck not? I draw white, white, red, blue, which translates to scores of 5, 5, 4, 2, respectively. 16 in total, lots better than 11.

I have four Vitals: Lucidity, Fluidity, Aura and Zeal. Well, Lucidity is how well my character remembers and perceives the world around him, so as an Almanac that needs to be 5. Fluidity is how quickly I act and react; also a strength for him, I think (until he goes Dependent), so we'll put the other 5 there. Aura is social acuity and sexfulness, and that 2 has to go somewhere. Personally, I like that he's not really likable; getting info out of him requires putting up with his habit of measuring you first, in case anyone asks. And, finally, Zeal. Physical prowess and endurance. That gives me 4, which is good; this guy isn't manic but he is energetic.

Zeal determines Movement (8) and Resistance (varies by body part), but you can't raise Vitals during chargen, so that's done, then. And on to Skills.

I get Physical Skills equal to my Zeal (4), Mental equal to Lucidity (5) and Occupational equal to Fluidity (5). So I'm pretty skilled, by compare. Oh, and I get 2 free Skills points to throw anywhere. Because I have an Occupation, I can have two Skills at three and one at four, but they have to be Required or Recommended for my Occupation. So let's see what those Skills are.

OK, fail. Almanac lists "Deduction" as a Required Skill, but as far as I can tell, that's the only place that Skill appears in this book. Sure ain't in the Skill section. Argh. OK, that leaves Awareness as my only Required Skill, and Bargain, Psychoanalysis and Stealth as Recommended. I get a free point of Firearms, because everyone does. Holy shit, Bargain doesn't appear in the Skill section, either. WTF, Aaron?

Well, I jot down those Skills (the ones that exist), and Academia (it's restricted, but it makes sense for an Almanac), Literacy, Melee Combat, Electrician, Carpentry and Medicine.

Occupational: I'll put two into Electrician and Carpentry, and one into Medicine. These are Skills that he's learned mostly be observation and then repetition, meaning his might freak out if he finds an electrical system he hasn't seen before.

Physical: I'll leave Firearms where it is and put two each into Melee Combat and Stealth.

Mental: I'll put four into Awareness, and then one each into Psychoanalysis, Literacy and Academia. I'm pretty darned observant, which is fitting.

Next, Quirks, Faults, Knacks and Status. I get four points, but Quirks cost 4, Knacks cost 2, and Status costs 4. But, of course, Faults give me 2 each, and negative Status gives me 4. Hmm. Let's check it out.

OK, bad game design ahoy. Quirks don't have any mechanical effect. Get that? They're more expensive than Knacks, which do, but they don't actually do anything. They're things like Sadism, Hypochondriac...more mental foibles. Seriously, who wants to pay for that?

Knacks, OTOH, do stuff...but there's a draw table associated with them and Defects, which I think I'll ignore. Let's look at Faults and see if I want any. No, they all suck. Negative Status? Oh, hey, you can take Parent, meaning you have a kid around. First time I've seen kids mentioned. I don't see anything there I like. I can take two Knacks, then.

Well, let's take Direction Sense - he always knows where he's been. I'll also buy Quick Draw, allowing him to draw a weapon and attack in one action. I like the notion that he can snap quickly and have the skill to back it up.

Next, Attitude. Interestingly, the book says that deciding a personality should be the last thing you do, since personality is going to be informed by all the other choices you've made in chargen. I can dig that, though I think it can work the other way, too. Of the ones listed (though I could, of course, make one up), I like Team Player.

Thinking about personality before, he's obsessed with the notion that someone might ask him something that he can't remember or answer. He does OK as an Almanac (he's not violent by inclination, for one thing - sucks when you go to ask an Almanac something and he fucking stabs you), but he's a little sycophantic for some people's tastes. His favorite phrase is "if anyone asks." Someone finally asked him, "So, who's this 'Anyone' guy?" And my character, not understanding, replied, "Well...we're all anyone. I'm Anyone." The name stuck.

I can have gear as appropriate to what I'd need, but you know how I feel about shopping. I'll draw and have...four bullets at the start (bullets are currency). He doesn't carry a gun, but does have a makeshift knife. He's got a pair of nice boots that he took off a dead guy, and one single glove that he reverses and wears on either hand as mood takes him. 

Character Creation: Weapons of the Gods

MORTAL KOMBAT! Not really, but kinda close.

The Game: Weapons of the Gods
The publisher: Eos Press
Degree of familiarity: Only played it once, read it before that.
Books required: Just the core, though Brad gave me a copy of the Companion, so I may crack open that pdf.

 
Step One: Concept. I start with Archetype. I can be a Warrior, a Scholar or a Courtier. Well, I don't want to be a Courtier, so screw that. Because I like to make magic users in new systems, and because I haven't done one in a while (Dr. Fuchs aside), I'll make a Scholar.

I need to figure out an Origin; who I was before becoming one of the Wulin (martial arts heroes). OK, figure that my character was born the child of merchant in a large city of Shen Zou. He had a good head for math, and so his father liked him to keep the books (that way the totals always added up). One summer, his father went on a trip as part of a business deal, and left the boy's uncle in charge of the business. This uncle asked my character to fiddle with the numbers a bit, making sure that some profits got "lost," which they could then split.

My character refused, not (just) out of outrage for what this man was suggesting, but also because he didn't feel he could make the numbers do anything other than what they were meant to do. This was a truth of the universe, he felt - counting on one's hands always eventually added up to 10. He felt the stirrings of enlightenment here, and when his father returned (and his uncle had been dealt with), he went on a trip of his own - to find a teacher who could help him find the truth he was seeking. He wound up with the Dali, learning Daoist magic and kung fu.

There, good start. I need a name, too. Rather than try for Chinese, I'll do the adjective/noun thing. I think that his master in the Dali started calling him "Numbered Rain," since he'd count raindrops if he could.

And here the book talks about Passion, Hook and Challenge as though I should know what those mean, but there's no place for them on the character sheet...wait, no, it's on the second page. OK, actually, Passion does get addressed in the book, but much later...so, wait, is it this part of chargen, or does it happen later? Fuck.

Ahem. Wait, here we are. It says to roll a die and have the Sage (if I had one) consult a chart. Stand by. My roll gives a choice between Obsessed and Contemplative, and I think I like the latter better. Reading the section on Passion, I still have fuck-all idea what this means, but whatever. I see Rain as being a little too focused on minutiae. Very "can't see forest for trees" sort of fellow.

OK, what next? Attributes! Yay, numbers! I get 15 points to spread out amongst five Attributes. As a Scholar, my Genius and Wu Wei should be high. I'll put 5 into Genius; Rain is brilliant and his memory is flawless. I'll put 3 into Wu Wei; this is Rain's aspiration, to balance his intellect with harmony and understanding. That leaves 7 points. I'll make Might and Presence 2 and put the last 3 into Speed. My Chi scores are equal to my Attributes.

Now, Skills. I get 30 points, and the book recommends spending half on Favored Skills from my Archetype and the other half on stuff I picked up pre-Wulin. I can also buy Specialties. Let's see. These go 1 to 5, but I can't go about 3 at chargen. After shuffling numbers a bit, here's what I got:

Athletics 1
Climb 1
Fight 3
Initiative 1
Dodge 3
Finesse 2
Melee 2
Grace 1
Persuade (Bargain) 2
Learning (Math) 3
Crafting 1
Awareness 3
Investigation 3
Sense 3

OK, now's when things get truly weird. I have 50 Destiny points to spend, and I've gotta use these on kung fu and everything else I might want. Yi. OK. I guess I'll blow 4 and take an Affiliation with the Order of Dali, since that lets me learn their kung fu. Wait, no, actually, since I'm a starting character and not a Warrior, I can't buy their kung fu because it's Uncommon. OK, fine. Let's see what I can buy. I want to grab styles that use Silver and White Chi, since that's where I'm stronger, but anything's good.

Let's see. I'd take Drunken Monkey, but I think that Numbered Rain's staid, proper demeanor wouldn't let him study it seriously. I like God of Wind Kick, though. The first two levels let me leap into combat and kick people, but the third level kicks everyone within range, meaning it's a good mook-destroyer. Sure, sounds good. I'll blow 11 points to take that up to level 3.

Lightfoot is wire-fu, basically. I get the first level free, but one of the things I like most about wuxia is watching Chinese people jump around, so I'll probably raise this. Yeah, I'll blow two points to take Run Like a Deer, just to make myself faster.

Lunar Darkness is cool as hell; it lets me fight with blunt weapons like a fan or a three-section staff. I'll dump 11 points here, too, and take up to level 3. And that's probably all I should take for kung fu, since I've already burned 24 points on it.

OK, moving on. I want some magic, so I take Daoist Magic for 5 points. That just lets me do it, though; I probably have to buy spells separately. No, wait. I have to be fifth rank before I can take Secret Arts as a Scholar. What the fuck.

Man, this book. You think White Wolf books are hard to navigate? This is nuts. The character creation example doesn't follow the goddamn steps given in character creation, so even working from a template is impossible. And it's not like it says very clearly that starting Scholars can't take magic, which is ass anyway. Blah.

OK, never mind that, then. Oh, more nuttiness: I can take two Disadvantages, which give me Destiny if they come into play (fine), but there's no slot for them on the character sheet. That's bad design, guys.

All right, I've got 22 points left to spend. I'll take three levels of Mentor (the Daoist magician who's been training me, and would like to get me to loosen up). I'll put three points into Wealth; Numbered Rain is a whiz at math, and that's worked out well for his family. I'll spend 5 points and up my Wu Wei to 4, since that's the source of my white Chi. That leaves 11.

I'll buy the Confidence Skill at 1, and buy two points each in Stealth and Ranged. Six left. Heck, Skills are cheap. I'll buy up Athletics, Melee and Initiative to 3 and pump Grace to 2. That's all my points.

I get Health equal to my Chi, which is now 16, total. I get 3 points of Joss, which I can use either as good Joss (adds dice for me) or Corrupt (subtracts dice from them). I think that Rain is comfortable either way, but he's better at redirecting or redistributing Joss on other people, so two Corrupt and one Xia. I have two open slots in my River, since I'm a starting character.

I didn't take the Possessions Advantage, so I start with a sack with some food and water, some bamboo scroll books, my clothes and a single weapon, obviously one that's useful with Lunar Darkness. The three-section staff fits my concept of Rain nicely.

Thinking about Rain's goals a little, I think the first thing he wants to do is become a true Scholar and learn Daoist magic. But really, that's a stepping stone on the way to true enlightenment - learning the true composition of all matter. He feels, though he can't articulate this, that everything in the world is composed of the same stuff at some level, and he wants to count and quantify that matter, so as to better understand the nature of the universe. 

Character Creation: Shattered Dreams

Never not gonna put this song in my head.

The Game: Shattered Dreams
The publisher: Apex Publications, now gone..
Degree of familiarity: Some. Jon ran it back in the day.
Books required: Just the Shattered Dreams book. The back page of the book advertises a bunch of sourcebooks, but I have no idea how many actually got made.

Shattered Dreams is a cool concept. You play Dreamwalkers, folks who can zip in and out of others' dreams. Nightmares - monsters from God Knows Where - are trying to infiltrate humanity's sleeping minds, but Dreamwalkers can seal dreams against them, at least for a time. There's a lot of interesting stuff in this game. It's very much a product of its time (mid-90s), and that's both a good thing and a bad thing.

See, the mechanics suck. They're hard to explain. Based on your score in a given trait, you get a certain number of "success numbers." When you roll, you roll a d12 and if what comes up matches one of your chosen success numbers, you succeed. You're rolling both a skill and attribute die, and the GM is rolling a Dream Die as well (if you're in a dream at the time).

It's not too far off Edge of Midnight, as far as you're making two checks and can potentially fail one and succeed on the other. But the probabilities are weird, as is the whole notion of picking what numbers on the die succeed (seems like a headache in play).

Plus, the game kinda gets up its own ass a bit. Lots of talk about "roll-playing" vs. "role-playing" (it's so embarrassing that the NWoD core does that - I had nothing to do with it, I promise). A little bit of gratuitous violence and extremity. Reads a little like a poor cousin to a Vampire: The Masquerade book.

All of that said, I think that if you took this game, Don't Rest Your Head and Exquisite Replicas and smooshed them together, you'd have a fucking excellent head trip game. I just haven't done it yet, but I will someday.

For now, let's get started. First step, I generate attributes. I already know I'm going to want some entropy for this, so I'll open a tab for random.org now.

We've got six mental attributes: Command, Imagination, Intellect, Perception, Sanity and Stability (hey, didn't I just do a character with those last two?). Four physical attributes: Agility, Attractiveness, Endurance and Strength.

Have I mentioned that I hate systems that make physical appearance a trait? It's also defined in the book as "the character's physical looks and appearance." Little redundant.

Anyway, I can either roll randomly for each attribute, or roll for a total and distribute the points. Hmm. I can either roll 2d6 for each one, or 12d6 for mental attributes and 8d6 for physical. Think I'll do that last one. I get 49 and 24, respectively.

Now, I could think a little about concept, but there are lifepath thingies that I roll later, so maybe I'll just keep it general right now. I think I want someone with a high Command, Sanity and Stability. Physically, I dunno yet. Anyway, 2 is deficient and 12 is near perfection, but like I said, the probabilities in this game are whack-a-ding-hoy.

Command 8
Imagination 6
Intellect 7
Perception 8
Sanity 10
Stability 10

Agility 6
Attractiveness 6
Endurance 6
Strength 6

I just go middle of the road, across the board with physical ones. And then we move on to Aspect.

Argh. They only give us snapshots here, but don't give us a page number for the in-depth stuff. Sigh. Anyway, the three aspects are subconscious, conscious and overconscious. I think I played a conscious once before. Anyway, I'm picturing my character as being kind of a rock - someone you can depend on to keep you afloat. Based on the description, sounds overconscious to me. Being overconscious adds 1 to my Command and Imagination, 3 to my Sanity and 2 to my Stability. Awesome.

And now, derived traits. Man, this whole "put the derived traits in the middle of chargen" really is epidemic, innit? Anyway, my Psyche (how well I can exert my mind, will or spirit) is 20. My Shock (resilience in the dream world) is 24. My Health (resilience in the real world) is 12.

Insight is knowledge and stuff I've seen. It's a random roll, so I slide back to that site and get a 9. Checking that on the Dreamwalker Experience table, I get..."Been Around." I get 3 Insights and 6 Experience. I have full command of my Aspect powers, which is awesome.

Moving on. My Luck is a d12 roll on another chart. Ooh, got a 12! I'm Really Lucky! Which means what? My Luck score is 1d8. OK, then.

I have another trait called Sanity, this time measuring how my Sanity fluxes during play. Argh. And it says I determine this using the chart "above," but they really mean "below." S'okay, guys. I "roll" a 6 this time, meaning my Sanity is average. It ranges from 40 to 74, and apparently it starts off at 5d6+40. I roll a measly 10, so I start with 50.

Jeez. OK, now Skills. I start off with "Intellect plus Imagination all times 6", which is an absurd way to write that (seriously, did this people not take pre-Algebra?). Anyway, that's 84 points for me. 20% of those points (so, 16 or so) have to be spent on occupational skills, meaning I need to pick an occupation.

This is really fucking jumbled. Wow. OK, I haven't determined anything about this guy yet that would lead me to an occupation. I just know a little about his personality, and I've been avoiding doing much else since I want to do the lifepath thing at the end of chargen (it's optional, but hell, it's there). Oh, wait, there's a chart for that, too. OK, sure, why not? I get an 11, which is Entrepreneur. Hrm. OK, I can cope with that.

I think my character is doing something much like Will Smith's character in The Pursuit of Happyness was; selling something he got stuck selling by getting taken in. He's selling a weird sleep-aid setup; basically you hook these things up in your room, and they induce restful sleep somehow (the science is fuzzy). They work about as well as any other placebo, but they're expensive, and my character has six more to sell off before he's out from under.

With that in mind, let's do some Skills. Oh, wait, one more bit of weirdness. If you take a Dream skill (like Dream Fighting), you get half that score in Real Skill (like Real Fighting). You then pick one or the other to be the default, so as to avoid the feedback loop of raising one and then the other. Mercifully, after chargen these are fixed in place, so raising one doesn't affect (or "effect," as the Shattered Dreams book says) the other.

Administration 3
Bargain 3
Charisma 6
Interview 3
Bureaucracy 3
Business 3
High School Education 3
College Education 3
Computer Use 3
Mechanics 3
Occult 3
Alertness 3
Empathy 6
Judge Character 6
Dream Acrobatics 3
Dream Climbing 3
Dream Dodge 3
Dream Fighting 6
Dream Hide 3
Dream Stealth 3
Dream Weapons (Large Blades) 3
Dream Weapons (Handguns) 3
Meditation 6

Meaning I also get:
Real Acrobatics 1
Real Climbing 1
Real Dodge 1
Real Fighting 3
Real Hide 1
Real Stealth 1
Real Weapons (Large Blades) 1
Real Weapons (Handguns) 1

Oy. OK, explain to me who benefits from having Hide and Stealth as distinct skills? Jumped up Jesus on a pogo stick.

Anyway, I'll leave that for the moment. For now, I do Aspect powers. I get 20 points to divide up, but otherwise they're like Skills. I get At A Glance for free (telepathic contact with other Dreamwalkers). I'll put two points into each of the following: Know Thine Enemy (gives a general impression of Nightmare activity in a dream), Pierce the Nightmare (opens a hole in the Shroud so I can get out of a dream), Psycheleech (suck Psyche from the universal unconscious, or from a Nightmare), Sanity Wall (protects a sleeping dreamer) and Unmask (reveals any Nightmares in the area for what they are).

OK, now I get to pick two of four possible "packages" to customize my character a little. I'll take a 2-point boost to my Aspect powers total, and I'll take it twice, so I get 4 extra points. I put two of those points into Sanity Wall, one into Psycheleech and one into Unmask.

Right. Now the lifepath stuff, though it's called "Adding Flesh" in the book. It's basically charts up the ass.

Step One: Build. My build is "wiry." OK, fine. My character is used to eating ramen and other junk, and walks a lot.

Step Two: Personality Traits. Oh, lord. OK, I roll twice. Shit. I get "confident" and "hateful."

Right. Confident, sure. My character is confident in his abilities as a Dreamwalker. He's mad at the world, though, for forcing him into this shitty job and not letting him get out from under. He was just about ready to trash these stupid machines when he figured out that he was a Dreamwalker, and now he doesn't feel like he can walk away from a job that points him to Nightmares so easily. Still. It just pisses him off. For all that, though, his hate is a slow burn. He has no desire to die or burn out. He wants things to improve, for him and everyone.

Step Three: Likes and Dislikes. I like Status and work actively to attain it, but I dislike Money and don't much bother with it. Explains a lot. My character wants position and respect, but doesn't see that as being tied to money.

Step Four: Prejudices. Hrm. I'm not crazy about this one. Well, I rolled a 3 and a 12, so I put the 12 into the Prejudices table and I get "Different Profession." I'll say my guy has a problem with Doctors. More specifically, he's against the doctors that really just shill for drug companies, and leap for the pharmacy rather than trying to help patients.

Step Five: Fears. Another two rolls. He's afraid of open areas, and it's noticeable. He grew up in the city (which city? Dunno), and is used to apartments and close, tight, snug areas. Open areas freak him right out.

Step Six: Realization. That is, how I became a Dreamwalker. The power wasn't inborn, but he learned to do it while still in high school. In that case, the power to be a Dreamwalker informed his decision to start selling these stupid machines, rather than vice versa. Someone bilked him good.

Step Seven: Family. This requires five rolls and a lot of juggling. OK. I'm close with my family. Good start. One of my parents died by assault or murder. I've got four siblings, one brother and three sisters. My brother is older, but the three girls are younger. My brother and I exchange emails, but we live far apart and don't see each other much, but my sisters and I are all close. But my second-youngest sister is my favorite, and she looks up to me.

Fuck me, let's do some names. My character's name is Elwin James Taft, "LJ" to his friends and associates. He's 25. His older brother's name is Michael Taft, Jr. (named after their deceased father, who died in the line of duty - he was a cop). His brother is 28, and followed in dad's footsteps. His sisters are Shelly Taft (23, now in grad school), Annie Holden (21 and recently divorced, working in a record store) and Roberta Taft (18, freshman in college). LJ gets on fine with his siblings and his mom (his mother's name is Mina Taft), but he and Annie have a bond. They both made really stupid decisions and are paying for it, and the rest of the family kind of sees them as screw-ups. Annie is also the only one of the family that LJ ever told about his power to dreamwalk.

Step Eight: Friends. Seriously? Shit. OK, I've got 2 close friends. Both guys, both my age. Well, heck. LJ worked for a building site just out of college (he's got a liberal arts degree of some kind), and two of the guys who worked with him stayed in touch when he left to sell "hypno-rays." Those guys, named Keith Osmond and Sean Pacewicz, know that something's eating LJ lately, but he's never said what. They've offered to steal the machines for him, and he almost let them, but then something happened. Let's see what.

Step Nine: Life Events. I roll once on this massive table for every 10 years of life, rounding up, so three times.

OMG, these suck. Not just the ones I rolled, but the whole table. Check it out: I rolled 38, 100 and 18. In order:

35-39: You witnessed a truly great or truly horrible event.

98-100: Strange event that effected you [sic], caused possibly by the Nightmares. For instance, you thought some vampyre monsters came after you.

15-18: You had a fairly bad experience or were defeated in pursuit of a goal. For instance, someone of respectability telling you that you suck.

Not all of them are that general, but jesus. Anyway. I think the "fairly bad experience" was pretty obviously the whole "buying into the crappy machines" scam. Didn't earn him any points with his family, and he's still living it down. The "truly great/horrible event," well, let's tie that in to his dad's death. His dad lingered on life support after being shot, and LJ, already a Dreamwalker by then, entered his dream to try and help him. He saw the dreams of the comatose, and he learned then about the universal unconscious on a level he can't explain.

Finally, the "strange event" that "effected" me. LJ was going to get rid of the machines. And then he discovered that if they're tuned to the right settings, they can attract Nightmares. He hasn't destroyed them yet (mostly because he's trying to find a way to reverse that process), but he can't bear to sell them, either. He's actually thinking about stealing them back from the other buyers, but it does make him wonder about the manufacturer...

Step Ten: Personal Information. Geez, ain't that enough? No? OK.

LJ is about 6' tall, thin and wiry. He has dad's blue eyes and mom's thick brown hair. He's got two tattoos, one a barbed wire dealie on his right arm, and the other a replica of his father's badge on his left. He carries pictures of his family in his wallet, but rarely any money. He's happy to take you up on that lunch you offered him.

LJ is also solid. He's dependable and brutally honest, and in dream-land, other 'Walkers call him "the Wall."

Occurs to me, though, that most of my scores are pretty low. Ah, well. Ain't going back and changing stuff now. 

 

Information Wants to Be Free

One of the greatest challenges to a GM is giving the players enough information that they can resolve the conflict of a story, but not so much that they have detailed instructions on how to go about it. This problem leads to some of the most frustrating tropes I’ve seen in roleplaying games, and can result in the players feeling helpless within the context of the story and in the GM looking rather like a jerk. In this essay, we’re going to examine some ways of disseminating information to the players (and thus their characters), both good and bad, and the consequences of those methods.

Let’s begin with the bad ideas.

Three Common Informative Mistakes

• Infodump: This method involves long, long explanations, usually delivered straight from a book and not in-character. Typically, this covers information the characters “would already know,” and that’s fine. The problem is that listening to people read from books is boring, and that the players aren’t likely to retain the information (especially if you ask them to engage different parts of their brains — i.e., playing their characters — after the infodump is over). Infodumps can happen in character, as well, and this presents problems of its own (see next point).

• The Jive-Talking Wizard: I saw this term on Beth Kinderman’s website, and I think it’s pretty appropriate. It refers to the all-powerful being who appears in order to get the characters together and set them on the right track, but won’t, for reasons only known to himself, impart enough information to do the job well. When asked for details or more helpful information, he typically simpers, changes the subject, vanishes, thunders “That’s not for you to know!” or otherwise says “Screw you” to the players. I’ve seen him as a god of humor, an actual wizard (Gandalf is almost a literary example of this tactic, but Gandalf also takes personal risks and gets down and dirty in battle, too, so he doesn’t really count), a computer, a Sidereal Exalt, and mentors and rulers of all kinds.

As is probably obvious, the Wizard is a bad way to dispense information for several reasons. First, it puts the characters in an obviously subservient role. That’s sometimes appropriate, depending on the game in question, but it chafes a lot of players, especially when it’s so apparent. Second, it flies in the face of logic: Why does this guy need the characters as pawns? Why can’t he just handle things himself? Why is he being so stingy with information if he wants the characters to succeed? (The answer to these questions, of course, is that having too much information would make things too easy on the characters (this is a fallacy, but I’ll cover that later), and the GM wants things to be challenging. The Wizard makes things less challenging and more annoying, though.) Finally, the Wizard does nothing to engender any kind of interest in the storyline. In fact, he does the opposite: The players feel like they’re being ordered around, not told what they need to know, not given control over their lives, and generally treated like machines. Most of us get that kind of treatment at our jobs, and we don’t want it during an escapist hobby.

• File and Forget: Most GMs, myself included, make up most of the happenings in their stories on the spot. That’s fine. Some of the best storylines I’ve come up with involved me taking a flippant comment from a player and running with it. The problem comes not when GMs make up information on the spot, but when that information doesn’t remain consistent. If you give the players a juicy clue that wasn’t part of your original plan, write it down. Information that turns out to be false because the players interpreted it incorrectly or didn’t cross-check their facts (I’m amazed at how often players assume that anything out of the mouth of a sympathetic NPC is unassailable truth, but that’s a separate issue), that’s fine. If the information turns out to be false or irrelevant because you forgot what you told the players, that’s a failing on your part.

Informing Players and Making them Happy

With all of the above in mind, how do you, as GM, give your players the information they require without teasing them, annoying them, misleading them or inundating them? Here are some suggestions:

• Use the Supporting Cast: Having NPCs tell the players what’s going on is fine. Just remember a few simple principles.

First, the NPCs are not omniscient. A character’s mentor might be truly wise and powerful, but said mentor has a limited scope of knowledge. Asking for information outside of that scope results in no information, or, worse yet, misleading information. I recommend always mixing in something useful with misleading or useless information. After all, a game session only lasts so long and every hour spent chasing false leads is another hour that players will remember as pointless.

One way to keep in mind what a given NPCs knows is to stat that character. I’m not as stringent about statting everybody in the world as I was 10 years ago, but important supporting characters still get write-ups in my notebook. If I know, for instance, that Dr. Jones has a high rating in Archeology but nothing at all in Occult, his information about the Dread Book of Niffugcam is going to be skewed appropriately. Having NPCs with limited bases of knowledge serves a number of purposes. In addition to avoiding the Jive-Talking Wizard problem (since the NPC doesn’t withhold information, he just doesn’t know everything the players need to find out), it also helps the players see the NPCs as individuals. Once they know that Dr. Jones can help them translate Sanskrit, but that he doesn’t know a thing about art, they won’t bother going to him to help them identify which artist drew the prints found in the Dread Book.

Second, the NPCs have their own agendas, but you need to know what those agendas are. Sometimes, a character’s agenda lets him work closely with the players’ characters, and sometimes it involves keeping information hidden. By way of example, consider Orpheus. In case you don’t know, Orpheus is a game in which the characters work for a company that solves ghost-related problems, and the company has a somewhat…checkered past. In the chronicle I ran some years back (that I unfortunately did not log, or I'd link to it), the characters’ boss was obviously uncomfortable with some of the goings-on at the Orpheus Group, but wasn’t ready to share everything with the characters for fear of endangering them. As such, he told them what he could when he could. They suspected him of being a villain a couple of times, but when the chips came down, he was unequivocally on their side. The bottom line here: Know what your NPCs want as well as what they know, and have their behavior reflect both.

Third, pay attention to what the players ask. If they ask the wrong questions, give them the wrong answers. I’m not talking about letting them discuss how to translate the Dread Book with Dr. Jones in the room and then later having them find out that Jones could have helped translate it, but didn’t speak up because the players didn’t ask. That kind of nonsense (always followed by a simper and a “tee-hee”) is comparable to the Jive-Talking Wizard in its irritation level. What I mean is, don’t allow the NPCs to be psychic. An example: The characters come across a body mauled by an animal and find wolf-prints nearby. They immediately start asking poor overworked Dr. Jones about werewolves. Now, in fact, the creature responsible was a were-coyote, which has very different implications for the story, but the players have jumped to a conclusion (admittedly, it’s a pretty easy one to jump to) and so Dr. Jones can’t really correct them.

• Let them learn gradually: A way to avoid the infodump problem is to let the players find out crucial information over a period of time. It’s been my experience that groups often split up during investigation or information-gathering phases (“OK, I’ll hit the library, you go talk to Dr. Jones, and you get on the Internet”), and this is a golden opportunity for you as GM. By letting each of the players find a nugget of information, you aren’t asking all of the players to remember pages worth of data. The players can put everything they’ve learned together and analyze it as a group. This also plays directly into my next point…

• Let them earn the info: …which is, nothing’s free. The characters should have to work to find out what they need to know, even if the only work involved is deciding whom to ask. Note, though, that it’s incumbent upon you as GM to present more than one avenue of approach for investigation, or, at the very least, to avoid shutting the players down if they come up with something that you didn’t think of. I’ve played in games where the GM had very specific ideas about how problems should be solved, how the players should go about getting from point A to point B, and what the players should know at various stages of the game. I accept that sort of thing in computer “role-playing” games, because the computer program has to proceed in a specific way. As a human being, however, you are above this sort of linear progression, and can allow players to learn from whatever sources they can think of. (And this really all goes back to a point I’ve made before: Players like it when their ideas pan out. They don’t like it when they try something clever and the response from the GM is “That’s clever, but I didn’t think of it first, so it won’t work.”)

• Give ‘em what they want: I played in a World of Darkness game once many years ago in which our characters found it necessary to infiltrate a Technocracy base. For those who didn’t play Mage: The Ascension, that’s a bit like infiltrating the Death Star, only the Stormtroopers can shoot straight, don’t all carry master keys, and generally aren’t complete idiots. It’s walking into the meat grinder, we knew, so we wanted to be prepared. So, calling in our contacts and a lot of favors, we got a complete readout of the base, a schedule for the guards, technical data on how everything worked, and lists of staff and their capabilities (from a scientific/magical standpoint). Far from making it too easy on us, we discovered exactly how screwed we were. Having the information gave us the possibility of victory; without, we’d have been dead. To take a cinematic example, consider The Usual Suspects. The characters know that the job they are being forced to do is a suicide mission, but they know everything they need to know to pull it off.

My point, here, is that if the characters go into a situation blind, they can justifiably blame you if things go wrong, especially if you’ve been coy or downright misleading up to that point. If they know everything they could have known (or if they skimped on their research), they’ve got no one to blame but themselves.

This isn’t to say, of course, that things can’t go wrong or that the enemy can’t have tricks up its collective sleeve that the characters couldn’t foresee. Such surprises are very much in-genre for most of the settings of role-playing games. The point is that there’s a difference between information the characters could not possibly have known and information they should have known, but you wouldn’t tell them.

An example: Against my better judgment, I played in a Dungeons and Dragons game run by a first-time GM. She had her story all planned out, she said (which should have been a big warning sign). I played a druid, one of the other players made a duelist character, which is some jumped-up form of fighter that uses two weapons or something (I don’t like the d20 system and I don’t keep abreast of the 1.4 billion prestige classes currently available). Anyway, his character and mine walked into a bar and got jumped by a lot of toughs. The duelist hit one of them with a blow that should have killed him, and the player, quickly doing the math, figured that the “bar brawler” had to be a high-level fighter to survive. Turns out all of those brawlers were high-level fighters.

Ignoring the cliché of a bar fight breaking out in a D&D game (I'm not opposed to the classics), the GM really should have given the duelist’s player some kind of check to notice that these guys were all armed, that they carried themselves like professional fighters, that they look battle-hardened, etc. Instead, she chose to lure the player into a sucker bet. That’s not a good way to get people excited about playing in your game.

• Don’t tell them everything: The more you reveal to your players, the less they’ll fill in the blanks. I love it when players come up with explanations for what’s going on. Sometimes I even replace my actual plots with player-inspired lunacy. It’s a question (like most of Storytelling) of balance — give them as much information as they need, but not so much that they don’t need to find out how the story ends.

Four Simple Tricks to Avoid Under-Informed Players

• Know what there is to know: When I write scenarios and settings for game companies, I tend to spend a lot of work count on an area’s history and what has come before the players arrive. That’s because if the GM knows what’s happened, he’ll know what the players can potentially discover. I can’t predict, as a writer (or as a GM, for that matter) what the players are going to do, so the best I can do is know what information the players can find and let them find it. In my opinion, writing down the history of your setting or events is more important than statting out your antagonists. You can make up stats on the fly or use characters out of a book. Making up history and keeping it consistent is much trickier.

• Some Information is Crucial: One of my guiding principles as a GM is that I don't ask for rolls if I'm not prepared for the result. This principle is especially true in the information-gathering phase of a story, and I tend to run highly investigation and mystery-focused games, so I have to be conscious of what the players know and how they can find out the truth. In any given investigation-focused scene, thinking about what information the characters must walk away with. I'd even advise giving players the same information in a couple of different ways; it allows for confirmation and nuance. For example, a group of characters are looking into the disappearance of a local high schooler. Her parents think that she was a model teenager, but investigating her online presence (avenue of investigation #1) reveals chat logs and a browsing history of a decidedly more prurient nature. Discussion with her friends at school (avenue of investigation #2) reveals that she had an "older boyfriend," but that she had been "caught behind the bleachers" early in the school year. Same information - the girl was secretly sexually active and engaging in risky behaviors - but two points of reference and several opportunities for follow-up investigation.

For further consideration, have a look at the GUMSHOE system. I haven't played it yet, sadly, but I've read Trail of Cthulu, which uses GUMSHOE. The basic idea is that rather than rolling dice to have your characters obtain clues, you spend points. As such, you'll never miss a clue or a plot point due to a failed roll. You can spend points based on different investigative skills, though, so you'll get different information depending on how your character goes about it.

• Consider the characters’ avenue of approach: If you’ve got a group full of combat-ready characters who can barely read, they aren’t likely to spend days in the library looking through hoary old tomes. They’re more likely to go beating people up for information. Look over the character sheets, pay attention to how the players like to do things, and structure the information and the vectors of the information accordingly (players, this also means you need to play your characters appropriately — your hulking barbarian with no idea which way to hold a book probably shouldn’t suggest going to the local scribe and asking to poke through scrolls, though he might well suggest poking the scribe with sticks until he finds the information for the party).

• Everything is fluid: I’ve said this before, but it bears repeating: Be ready to scrap a plan, a fact, a character or a plot point the second your players come up with something better, especially if they have all the information and come to a completely logical conclusion that just happens to be miles away from what you came up with. You’ll usually find that tweaking a few details makes all the difference, and that you don’t need to change everything, just enough.

In closing, remember that you aren’t telling the story to the players, you’re telling the story with the players. They should be informing you just as you inform them.

Character Creation: Exquisite Replicas

Are we replicas? Yes, but we are exquisite replicas!

The Game: Exquisite Replicas
The publisher: Abstract Nova
Degree of familiarity: None. Just read it yesterday-ish.
Books required: Just my pdf. 

Thinking about it, I believe what I'd do with this game is smush it together with Don't Rest Your Head and Shattered Dreams. But that's a post for another time.

Right, so the first thing I do is prioritize traits. I can put Physical, Mental, Advantages or Occupations first. The game flat-out tells you that combat and other criminal skills are a good idea. Guess I'd better think of a concept.

OK, my guy is a screw-up. Dropped out of high school at 16, started running with a bad crowd, got drunk one night and plowed his car into someone's house. No fatalities, but a little kid was injured (though not seriously - fuck, what's everyone grousing about?) and so my character (Horace Deakins, he goes by "Deak," and do not call him "Horace") went to jail, briefly. Got out, went to work at his Dad's sporting goods store. It wasn't work he enjoyed, but he'd decided that jail sucked and the best way to stay out would be not to break the law anymore.

So there he was, working at the store, when he saw this old homeless guy loitering outside and scaring away customers and being old and smelly and stuff. So Deak went out to shake him down, but the guy grabbed him and coughed in his face and told him The Truth. And though Deak felt like he should punch the dude out, he didn't, and went back inside.

And weirdly, one baseball bat on the rack was glowing red. Deak grabbed it. Wasn't sure why.

He found out why a few nights later, when he saw the shadowy, blind Boogeymen stalking one of the girls on his block. He beat the Boogeyman to nothing, but the girl ran away. And the cops...Deak ran. He ran back to the store and found the old man (Zeke) waiting for him. Deak grabbed a hockey mask from his dad's store and vanished into Anonymous, totally unsure he wants this, but knowing that losing his freedom is something he just can't accept again.

Plus...what he did was stupid. What these things are doing is wrong.

OK, that's better. Now, prioritization. I'll put Advantages first, Physical second, Occupation third and Mental last.

Guess I'll tackle these in the order in which they're presented in the book.

Physical: I start with a 1 in all of my Physical traits (which are Coordination, Agility, Strength and Endurance), I can go as high as 5, and I have 7 points to spread around. Deak could have decent scores all around, but I only have so many points. I'll put two into Strength, two into Coordination, one into Agility and the other two into Endurance.

Mental: Same drill; here it's Knowledge, Intelligence, Awareness and Will. I get 3 whole points to blow here. Two into Awareness, the other into Will. Prison sharpened him up some, but he's still not very bright.

Occupations. OK, like Aletheia, this is weird. There's no skill list, you just figure you have the skills that go with your occupation(s). Occupations that are more important or more useful cost more. I have 5 points to spend, and "gang member/street thug" is a four-star occupation. It's also the closest to Deak's skill set that I can get (I mean, I could make up "ex-con" or something, but same diff), so I'll blow four of my points on that, and the other one to bump it to rank 2.

Advantages: And, finally, these things. I get 9 points to throw around. I can spend these on Aptitudes, Extracurricular Skills (that is, skills outside my Occupation) or Weaponry (replicated objects that work as weapons; replicas work better against replicas).

Well, I know I want Weaponry to represent my bat. That's only one point, so that's easy. I'll buy an Extracurricular Skill in Bludgeoning, and buy it up to four. And, heck, I figure Deak's dad made him do all the boring paperwork and inventory, so I'll take Administration and Computers both at 2 (neither are really within my skill set as a thug).

Now, I do Psychological States. These are kind of reminiscent of the madness tracks in Unknown Armies. We've got three: Violence, Paranoia and Immorality. I set them where I think it's appropriate to my character. All have advantages (being Violent makes it easier to, y'know, hurt things), but if they get too high, I go nuts and am no longer a PC. These go 1 to 5, and they all have to be at least 1.

For Paranoia, I'll just set it at 1. Deak knows that reality is being replaced by aliens, and he's suspicious, but he hasn't quite grokked that these creatures could have replaced anyone, and that includes cute puppies or, y'know, his own family.

For Violence, I'll put it at 4. He'll kill doppelgangers, and he'll injure people, but he's not a psycho (yet) and he's not really interested in harming people severely. That'll change.

And, finally, Immorality. This is a slippery stat and I don't much like it, because it concerns whether you're willing to lie and steal. Seems like a lot of concepts crammed into one place. Deak, for instance, I see as being willing to steal, but not to betray his family. I'll set this at 3, I guess, enough that I could take what I need.

I average my Psychological States, rounding down, to determine Mental Instability, so 2. If it hits 5, I'm KAH-RAZY and out of the game. I also start with an Impairment, at rank 2 (equal to Mental Instability). I take Impulsiveness. Deak goes off half-cocked; that's always been an issue for him.

I start with 2 Tragedy Points (I'll get more for role-playing my Impulsiveness) and 20 damage points. Easy-peasy.

I get 5 points to spend on Trivial Skills. These are hobbies and things that probably won't save my life, but add flavor to the character. Hmm. I think Deak's probably some kind of sports fan, but I hate playing characters that have skill-sets that I don't. I couldn't even fake talking about sports without rolling my eyes ("Yeah, that roided-up gorilla is totally worth all that money he's getting."). Instead, let's stick with what I know.

Deak's good at Video Games (2 points), and he plays the drums (something else I couldn't fake, but I can simulate with dice easily enough), also at 2. He shared a cell with a dude who was good with cards, so he's got Card Tricks at 1, as well.

Equipment, which is basically whatever Deak has. He's got the standard-issue black suit (let's hear it for Goodwill), a hockey mask, his replicated baseball bat, a little bit of cash and a pair of work boots. Beyond that, he's just one of the crowd, ready to crack some Othersider skull.

Character Creation: Trinity

Fun fact: This game was originally called Æon, but then MTV sued (or maybe just threatened to sue) White Wolf, and they had to put stickers on the cover of the books. That's why the other two games start with "A" and Trinity is the odd one out.  

The Game: Trinity
The publisher: White Wolf
Degree of familiarity: None, really. I read it, I've run Aberrant and played Adventure! (and made characters for both, as you know), but my experience with Trinity pretty much ends there.
Books Required: Just the Trinity book.

What everybody knows about Trinity (other than the whole "should've been called Æon but MTV sucks" thing) is that it's a space opera game, the first in the Æonverse (though chronologically the last), and it's a fairly typical White Wolf game. Mountains of setting, serviceable mechanics, lots of dots.

Sci-Fi isn't really my bag, normally. In fact, I'm not sure where I got the book. Probably snagged it from the WW warehouse before I left Atlanta. Like I said, I've read it, but skimming over it now I don't have a lot of memory of all of the setting conceits. There's a lot going on, which I like as an ST, but it does make character creation a little overwhelming - how much of this do I need to know?

Well, let's do this. Since I know step one is going to be "get a concept," I'll flip to a random place in the setting half of the book and find a hook that interest me. Hang on. OK, I flip to the section on Nippon. What I find interesting here is that Nippon was isolated during the Aberrant Wars, and everything's gotten really tech'd all to fuck. Lots of simulated intelligences, and folks treat them like pets or kids. And I think I'd like to play a telepath or empath, born into a society where people talk to machines like they're really people, and they fucking aren't, because people with real minds feel real.

Finding out that he wasn't crazy or afflicted with some kind of mental disorder, but that he was creeped out by SIs because he's a psi, was the best thing that ever happened to Yori Tanaka. Always a twitchy, kind of emo kid, he flipped out when he was 10 and got put on lots of different kinds of meds. Nothing really helped. It wasn't until he turned 15 that someone figured he might be a latent psion, and shipped him to China for testing. Of course, he wound up at the Ministry.

As an aside: Is it me, or is having every telepath be a Ministry member really...stupid? Why can't I make a dude who's a telepath but works for one of the other orders? Blah. Stupid splats. So glad that WW got less rigid about that, even if it did take three NWoD games for them to do it.

Right, I think that's enough to start.

Step One: Concept. As above. Yori (or "Lucky" as his Western friends call him) is about the opposite of the cold, stone-faced Ministry op. He loves people and animals, hates robots an SIs (they just don't feel right). He's friendly, if a little jumpy, still, but is quite happy to enforce all of the nutty laws that the Ministry wants enforced, if it means he gets to stay the fuck away from "fake minds." I might give him some bioware, too, just because it means he can't go home again (Nippon kills people with bioware).

I already know my Aptitude and Allegiance (Telepathy and the Ministry, respectively), but I have to choose an Origin - life before psi. I pick Outsider. Lucky did not fit in with his friends, all cooing over their virtual dogs and people and so on. Ew. For Nature, I'll take Caregiver. Like I said, Lucky likes people. He just doesn't like fake people.

Step Two: Choosing Attributes. The usual OWoD split, 7/5/3. I think if Lucky had grown up elsewhere, he'd wind up more Social, but Nippon's society led him to live in his own head. That makes Mental primary, Social secondary, and leaves Physical as tertiary.

Mental: I'll put Intelligence and Perception both at 4, and leave Wits at 2. Lucky is jumpy, but not especially fast.

Social: Three into Manipulation, one each into Charisma and Appearance. Good at talking, not great at the first impression thing, by compare.

Physical: Average across the board.

Step Three: Choosing Abilities. I get 10 in my Ability Group, and then 13 more anywhere, and can't go over 3 in any one. Looking at the Abilities in the Ministry's group, I can see I'm going to specialize somewhat, since a lot of these skills aren't very much what I have in mind for Lucky. I'll put three into Rapport, obviously. Three into Interrogation; Lucky is amazing at the "good cop" part of good cop/bad cop. I'll put two into Bureaucracy (he likes knowing his place) and one each into Martial Arts and Etiquette.

Now I get 13 more points for any Abilities I like. Athletics is a must; 1 dot for now. I'll put one more in Martial Arts. Two into Stealth. Three into Awareness, two into Investigation (perceptive, and by the way, telepathic). Two into Linguistics (for the English and Chinese families; Nihonjin is his native). One dot in Engineering (did grow up in Nippon, after all) and one in Subterfuge round me out.

Step Four: Advantages. I get seven dots in Backgrounds. Let's check 'em out. I'll take a dot in Citizenship (Nippon and China). Two into Cipher; he's just one of those guys. One into Status with the Ministry. And, the other three into Device, which I'll leave off on deciding just yet (since I might buy more dots with bonus points).

I get three dots to buy Modes, and my choices are Empathy, Mindshare and Psychbending. Hang on while I read those. OK, I like the basic powers for these three, but I think the second-dot powers are too aggressive for Lucky, at least for now. I'll buy the first dot of each of them.

Step Five: Finishing Touches. I start with 5 Willpower. My Psi starts at 3 because the Attributes upon which it's based suck. My Initiative starts at four, but that I might raise. My movement starts based on my Dexterity, which I doubt I'll raise, so Lucky walks 5m, runs 14m, and sprints 26m.

OK, now bonus points. Well, since my Psi is my dice pool for all my magic telepathy, better raise that to five. Which eats 10 of my points. Balls. I spend two more to buy a dot of Academics (I hate not having that Ability), one to buy Device to four, one to buy a Good Cop Specialty in Interrogation, and one to buy an Aikido Specialty in Martial Arts. That leaves my Initiative at 4, incidentally. But I do need four dots worth of Device. Ah, hell. Looking at this, it's not that you get special gear from this Background. This is the magic item Background, which means I have to fucking make something up. OK. Checking out the gear section, I like the bioweave armor. But since this is a Device, it's extra special. I think this bioweave armor works naturally with the flow of Lucky's body, allowing him to boost his ability to deflect incoming force (same principles as Aikido, almost). He can add his Marital Arts rating to his soak, as well as his armor rating. That's still not uber enough, but I'd need to actually play the game to get a sense of what would be. Oh, and some examples might've been nice, guys.

Now, where'd he get it? By mistake, I think. He checked the wrong box on a form, the form somehow got sent to R&D, and he got the damn bioweave with an experimental upgrade, wouldn't ya know. Just Lucky, I guess. Also would give me a good reason to boost Martial Arts in play.