Character Creation: Hellas: Worlds of Sun & Stone

So anyway:

The Game: Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone
The publisher: Khepera Publishing
Degree of familiarity: None. I picked it up at Origins (I think, maybe it was GenCon) last year, but didn't get a chance to play it.
Books required: Just the core and a great deal of time, which today I have.

I think this character is actually for the 1st edition, but my PDF is this one

 
OK, this game uses lifepaths, in a big way. You're not just creating a character, you've got a whole history going on, because these characters are meant to mythic in scope. Hell, you're actually meant to play the character's dynasty, which in a long chronicle, would be fully awesome.

Only one minor niggle, and it's something Stew pointed out when he did his character for this game: Some of the races that you can play don't have families in the same way that humans (Hellenes) do, which renders the whole "lifepath" thing a little unwieldy. Now, I'm not going to let that stop me, of course.

As an aside, I find that when I make characters for systems that include extended chargen sections - either in the "20 questions" form of Legend of the Five Rings or Edge of Midnight, or the lifepath form a la Shattered Dreams, I enjoy the extra thought it makes me put into characters. This is especially true if I don't know the game as well. I put lots of thought into World of Darkness characters, but the setting is quite familiar to me, too. Then when I get around to making a character for, say, Shadowrun, it doesn't have the same breadth, not because the information isn't out there, but because I'm not as familiar with it and the chargen section doesn't ask me to delve in the same ways (not that I wouldn't like to play T'kor, if anyone were running Shadowrun, you know, well).

OK, digression over, back to space opera. The Hellas book is really fucking pretty, and I enjoyed reading it quite a bit. Fiction bits were short and sweet, and I feel, after reading it, that I "get it" enough to play it. As for the system, I have no idea, but I admit my eyes tend to glaze over when I read systems. I need to see them in play first.

Well, my first step here is determine a race. OK. There are some cool ideas here, but the one that kept jumping out at me was the Myrmidons. These guys are living colonies of tiny insects, formed into a human shape (ever see the old Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends episode where the villain was a dude made of bees called "Swarm?").

What I like about this race is that they worship Hellenic gods and try to emulate the Hellenes. That is, they try and act human...but they aren't. They mimic human family structure, even pretending to reproduce the same way humans do (go ahead, picture two human-shaped clouds of insects doing it, I dare you), all in this kind of twisted hero-worship thing they've got going. That's creepy, and I love it. I could play that to the bone.

Myrmidons usually latch onto a Hellene to mimic or worship, which I would totally do with another Hellene character. Since Stew didn't make one, I'll just leave it at that. I will, however, note the stuff I get from being a bug-man.

My racial attributes:

Intelligence +0
Will +0
Perception +0
Charisma +0
Strength +0
Dexterity +3
Constitution +2
Speed +0
Combat Rating +0
Dynamism -3

Hit Points: 20

And then I get some Skills, which I note on the character sheet.

These might change as the process continues. I also get some special powers. I heal quickly, because "healing" means "making more bugs." I can shapeshift, I can add extra limbs (sweet!). And - holy crap, this is fun - I can ooze through cracks in an opponent's armor and fucking sting them to death. Enough Myrmidons can cluster together to make, say, a bridge or a spaceship. I can split off a little chunk of myself to go make me a smammich. And, of course, I can see in 360 degrees.

Holy crap, these guys are cool. OK, what's next!?

I roll on Life Path to determine my "childhood" (larva-hood?) adventures. Remember that Myrmidons don't really have childhoods, but it would be interesting if they put restrictions on how big they go during their early years, just to emulate childhood. Better go grab some entropy.

Let's see. I was born in Spring, specifically in Thargelion. I don't see anything about what that means in the section and the index is no help, dangit. Hm. Also, "birth" is a misnomer. I assume that Myrmidon breeding happens when a new queen is hatched, which technically doesn't require two Myrmidon colonies at all. But, if they want to emulate Hellenes, it should - the "mother" provides the queen egg and the "father" provides the male fertilization, so there we go.

Moving on, where was I "born"? The planet Aegina, the Myrmidon homeworld. Makes sense. Lemme look that up. Ooh, neat. The planet Aegina was devastated by a plague, one that pretty much killed every living thing there except the Myrmidons, which it elevated to sentience instead. Young Myrmidons pretty much leave as soon as they can. But some of my reasons for leaving might be covered in future rolls, so let's move on.

The next roll tells me I'm an orphan and I raised myself. Sounds good. My "parents" died in an accident on Aegina - crushed in a cave-in (bugs are hard to kill unless you get the queens). The other Myrmidons didn't know quite what to do, here; yes, I should be "raised" by someone else, but it's not like bugs aren't born with everything they need to be adults. My guy pretty much just grew faster than he normally would have been allowed to and went on with his life.

Next, parents' social station (pre-death, obviously). Nobles. Neato! So their death might have been assassination, or just a horrible accident. Hmm. I also get +5 Glory and the Royal Favor Talent.

Now, family status. Wow. We're destitute and powerless - I'm their only hope. Heavy burden for my shoulder-like-clusters-of-bugs.

How many siblings? One "twin." Ooh, that's interesting. When my folks created a new queen, they got two. That's gotta be uncommon. How does my twin feel about me? Competitive rival, but loves me. Maybe. I have an idea, here. My twin and I read up on some great Hellenic legend about feuding twins, and decided to emulate them. Problem is, the legends vary from place to place, and sometimes they end with one twin killing the other. Also, we argue about which twin is which.

Right, special gift: My folks left me a small fortress on a Theban asteroid. That's interesting. I figure there are actually two, one for me and one for my twin, orbiting near each other, almost exactly alike.

Divine Heritage: My great-grandmother on my mother's side had a divine parent (and was also a twin, how about). I get 3 more Glory. My Divine Mark is that I'm Very Wise. I get +1 Perception. A thousand eyes will do that.

Childhood Encounter: If I can tie this in to my parents' deaths, I will. Let's see. OK, I encountered "someone special." I met a Hero in the market when I was young, who gave me a small trinket and told me to keep it safe. Neato. I figure he's still got the small trinket in him, surrounded by the bugs. Or, fuck, how about this: The trinket is a lock, made of gold and brass. My guy has no idea where the key is, and he's never told anyone, not even his brother, about the lock. But his brother was in the market that day, too...

Now I choose a god. And I actually choose, I don't roll. I like the idea of this guy being about secrets, symbolized by a lock. I choose Aphrosia, the Lover (plays into the month of my birth, too). My twin, of course, is chosen of Athenia, whose domains are about prophecy and investigation (symbolized by a key, GET IT?).

Destiny: I choose Destiny (but not Fate, which is next). This is the heroic end to my Hero's story. Hmm. I think that his Destiny would involve reuniting lock and key, and therefore revealing some great secret or uncovering some kind of special wisdom. This will involve learning that my twin has the key, and convincing him to share it with me (yes, there's some very, er, Greek things going on with my twin, here, made slightly more palatable by the fact that we're two colonies of bugs). Joining Lock and Key, and discovering the Song of the Myrmidons - sounds good to me. What's the Song do? Dunno. That's for the GM to figure out, but I personally think these guys need their own racial identity, rather than aping the Hellenes. Maybe the song will help them find it.

Now, Fate: Roll a 5, roll a 5, roll a 5....4. Shit. "Killed by a foreign warrior." Well, actually, that could still be my brother, depending on the circumstances.

Profession. The Myrmidon-specific ones don't do anything for me. I think Ambassador speaks to me. It allows my guy to work at keeping secrets while appearing to be open and forthright, and puts me into a diplomatic spotlight which makes the "killed by a foreign warrior" thing more likely. Let's see. That gives me +1 Charisma and a bunch of Skills, which I note. As an amusing note, one of my skills is Seduction. Ew. Oh, I also make a Skill roll to see how much money I start with. OK. Since no Degree of Difficulty is listed, I assume it's unmodified. I roll a 3, to which I add my CHA bonus (+1) and my Profession Skill (+4) and get 8, which is a partial success, so I start with my full 2000 drachma.

Now, Callings. This is fun! I can take up to 5 Calling Life Paths, but each one ages me. That's OK; it's not like Myrmidons are going to be wrinkly (and besides my Goddess ensures I always look hot, which weirds me out some). Oh, side note: The book acknowledges that this creates characters that are not "balanced." Good on you, guys. Game balance is for video games and D&D.

So, where do we start? The Callings open to me are Legionnaire of Delphoi, Noble, Priest, Sailor and Scholar. So let's think. I figure that after the parent-crushing incident, my guy decided to get the hell off of Aegina for a while, so "Sailor" is a good start. I shall roll on the Sailor Life Path and see what happens. OK, first, how much did this age me? 4 years. OK. So what happened to me as a Sailor? A special event! Yay! Oh, well. I've "seen many things and experienced different cultures." I get a +1 in languages. I'll use that to bump my Hellene language up to Fluent. That's totally in-character, though it's no "fight a giant space-squid," is it? Maybe next time.

So after spending four years as a Sailor (during which I assume I wasn't doing grunt work - I was probably on an exploratory or diplomatic vessel), let's assume he moved up in the world and spent some time as a Noble. Roll for age: 3 years (7 total). Roll for event: Enemy! My enemy is an Atlantean. Ugh. What's an Atlantean? Jesus. That's fun. OK, he's trying to kill me because I'm fated to kill him, and he's working with my other enemies to kill me.

OK, let's put this in context. My guy knows nothing about the Atlantean. All he knows is that during his travels as a Noble (I figure the shift from Sailor to Noble happened once he learned about his fortress and figured out that "Mom" and "Dad" had some clout, even among Hellenes) he met a dark man during a diplomatic conference. That mean, an oracle, reported back to his Atlantean master that he had foreseen this young Myrmidon unlock the Song of the Myrmidon, the Music of the Endless Swarm...and that Swarm would be coming for him (the Atlantean) one day. This Atlantean, not wishing to have that happen, started digging in my guy's life, and found...his twin. Now he's working to nudge my twin into killing me, hopefully destroying the lock in the process. But the Atlantean doesn't know that my twin has the key, which would shut down my Destiny just as quickly.

Next Path: How about another stint as a Noble? The roll: 3 years. Special event! I cowed an angry mob in the markets using presence and noble stature. Sweet. My twin, in an ongoing effort to fuck with me, drove people into a frenzy, telling them that there was an Atlantean spy around, a Myrmidon noble (ironically, he was right, but it was him). My character spread himself out, making himself look huge but somehow still beautiful (arrrrgh) and told the people to go back to their business - I'm no spy, I'm the Lord and Master of the Fortress on That There Asteroid. I get +1 Command for my trouble.

Fourth Path: I don't know, Noble is still looking good. The roll: 5 years. Event: Relationship. This could get very weird. Oh, damn, it didn't. I befriend a contact on a random world, maybe a player character. I roll for a random world and get Tegea. Tegea is a water planet, where the algae blooms across the whole world, turning it red. Neat. I think my contact there is an algae baron, someone who's responsible for farming it and shipping it off-world. Someone I could call on for a favor (using my Royal Favor Talent) if need be. How close are we? We're friendly, but not blood brothers or anything. I think he's not Hellene, or I'd be friendlier to him. I think he's a Gorgeon, because the notion of talking with a great big fat snake-dude on an algae farm is awesome. His name is Nicias.

Last Path: Not Noble. Um. Fuck it, how about Legionnaire of Delphoi? In meeting and befriending Nicias, my guy learned about the people out there who depend on the Legion to do things as mundane as protect food ships from pirates or just general mishaps. He'd already spent his time working as a diplomat; now maybe it was time to do more. Years: 4 years, and that's because I rolled a 20 (you add 3 for this Path). The event: Enemy again. Ergh. It comes up as "a Parent," which is inconvenient because supposedly my folks are dead. Well, let's continue. Supposedly I foiled this enemy's insidious plot and were hailed a Hero. Sure, OK.

My "mother," known as Candis, didn't die in the cave-in. In fact, she planned it. The idea was to kill my "father" (Dunixi) and take over the family. But the cave-in was a little too successful, and Candis was trapped for a little longer than she wanted to be. In the interim, my character (and his twin), rather than sticking to the "pretend to be children" plan that was common for Myrmidons, grew up and left the planet. Mom wasn't there to rein us in, and with us "adults" but leaving the world, the family line fell to ruin. Mom also couldn't claim her true identity without setting off some alarm bells, so she retreated to the shadows, catching up with my character, what, 15 years later when he joined the Legion. She has, however, fallen in with both his twin and his secretive Atlantean enemy, and is working to kill him and collect his secret trinket, the Lock (Candis, like the Atlantean, doesn't know about the key).

That's Callings done, then. I should do Disadvantages at some point. Interestingly, they aren't listed in the character creation steps. I get five levels of Disadvantages, and I have to have three. Well, I think all of mine are going to be Relationships. First, my twin, obviously. His name is Alcides. I'll put that at level 3 - he's going to be the most important Disadvantage I have. I'll put the Atlantean and Candis as my other two, both at level 1. They're both using Alcides to get at me, but they'll work on their own sometimes, too.

Freebie points! I get 30. Well, since most of my Skills rely on Charisma, I'll spend 10 points and bump it up to +0. I suppose I should buy some combat skill, since I was a Legionnaire. I'll take Brawling. Costs one for one, so I'll buy up to +5. Hell, I'll buy a +1 in Combat Rating, too. I'll drop 5 points on the Well-Traveled Talent. That leaves me with 5 points left, unless I want to drop any of my attributes and get more points. Hate to say it, but Cultural Studies makes some sense. I put 4 points into Hellene and one point in Gorgeon, to reflect my time with Nicias. Guess that'll do it. Without knowing how the system works in play, I have no idea if I suck or not, which makes me nervous. Obviously this is a social, not a combat, character. But I'm a Hero, so you figure the combat would come later.

I start with Hero Points equal to 5 + (Charisma x 2), which is 11 for me. I start with no Fate Points, which is good. I've got +8 Glory right now, and that doesn't change until I go do more stuff.

Heroic Ambitions: I can take up to three of these, and they have to be Heroic, dammit. I don't want them to relate to my Destiny, at least not yet. Let's see.

Well, first, I figure that fortress should figure in somehow. My character wants to host a grand gathering of diplomats at his asteroid fortress (which I think we'll call "the Fire Hive", since it needs a name). Yes, this kind of violates the checklist of ambitions, but I'll also add that I want the gathering to be worthy of a song or story that gets repeated throughout Hellenic space, and I think that counts.

Second, I want to establish fair and safe trading between Nicias and some of the poorer, outlying worlds. Nicias is a buddy, but he's a shrewd trader, he's greedy and he doesn't give a shit about anyone outside his own world. My character wants to see people on other worlds get fed, and some worlds don't support life like they should (especially mining colonies and the like). This'll give him a chance to flex his muscles as a diplomat.

Finally, I want to lead an assault on my brother's fortress (which we'll call the Ice Hive). The two Hives have their names because of the colors of rock they're made of; his is blue and white, mine is red and yellow and black. I don't want to take the Ice Hive, or even destroy it. I just want to invade it, steal some stuff, and show my brother that I can fight, too (I think he's a better warrior than me). Kind of counting coup, in a way.

Now I need an epithet. The book suggests summarizing my character's life and letting the other players suggest an epithet, but clearly that's not an option. So: My character is chosen of Aphrosia, which means he's pretty and all. He's known for being wise, and a shrewd diplomat. But what is he really known for, something that's truly Heroic in scope? We'll say his epithet is "gentle-voiced;" he can soothe people no matter how angry or zealous they are. His name, by the way, is Iphicles, which was Heracles' twin brother. Iphicles, in Greek myth, grew up mortal, but around here, that ain't the case - Iphicles is a Hero in his own right.

Now, age. I start at age 6 (adult for a Myrmidon), and I add 19 years for my Life Paths, meaning I'm 25 now. Still in the "adult" range. Myrmidons don't live all that long, as it happens; age 50 is considered "venerable."

And remarkably, that's it! 

Character Creation: Terra Primate

Ook, ook. 

The Game: Terra Primate
The publisher: Eden Studios.
Degree of familiarity: None directly. I've read the bits of the book that aren't exactly the same as other Unisystem books.
Books required: Just the core book.

 

Well, as with All Flesh Must Be Eaten, the first thing I need to do is decide which "Apeworld" I want to use. 'Scuse me while I slide over to random.org for a moment.

OK, so I get the first one: Dominant Species. Hold on while I read it over. Got it; this is basically the classic Planet of the Apes, and the human characters are assumed to be visitors, whether spacemen, dimensional travelers or whatever. The option is there to play human-sympathizer apes or native humans, but I have an idea that I think will work.

The Apeworld says that the apes are afraid of water. I picture my character as being a sailor, maybe idle rich...but nah, people like that crack under pressure. This guy was a rebel billionaire type of guy, someone who made his own millions on the sweat of his brow. Owned a shipping company, I think. And then when his wife died, he decided he'd just sail around the world forever. So he's got his one-man boat, big enough to live on but not so big as he'd require a crew, and started sailing.

And then a couple of years later, he hit a squall in the Triangle. It blew him off course, and when it cleared, he'd run aground someplace he didn't recognize. He'd got no gas and the boat is pretty wrecked up anyway, so he went inland to find help. He found...apes.

These apes enslave humans, they're brutal and vicious, and they think nothing of burning a human village down if the humans don't capitulate. But they've got one real fear - water. They can't swim, they drown easy and they sure as hell don't know anything about boats. And that means my character can, with help, build devices to navigate the rivers and get the drop on the hairy bastards. Thing is, the apes know that now, and they want him dead.

My first step is to choose Character Type. In this game, I can be Pre-Heroic, Heroic or Powered (psychic, basically). I think that my idea works best as a Hero, so I'll go Heroic.

Next up: Attributes. I get 20 points. It's Unisystem, so we've got Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception, and Willpower. Well, this guy's pretty tough and determined. Average is about 2, so if I divvy up evenly I get 3 in each with 2 left over. OK. I'll make him exceptional (4 points) in Constitution and Willpower.

Skipping derived traits for now, sigh.

Qualities and Drawbacks. I get 15 points in Qualities and I can take up to 10 in Drawbacks. Well, right off I need the Minority Drawback at -3 because I'm in a world where humans are enslaved. I'll also take a 4-point Adversary - that'd be the ape military of the nearby city-state, who'd like me dead before I start teaching the concept of "Navy" to the humans. And I'll take Reckless; I figure this guy's been rich for so long he's not used to having to temper what he does or says.

Qualities, though. I'll take Charisma +5 - this guy's a born leader and always has been. He's gruff, but he's also sharp and likeable. I'll take Fast Reaction time; good for a sailor. Likewise, I'll take Nerves of Steel; he doesn't crack easy. I'll take 3 points of Good Luck. Finally, Situational Awareness. Good to notice the apes in the trees before they strike.

OK, that means I have 44 points to spend on Skills (35 normally + 9 more for Drawbacks). Here's what I come up with:

Brawling 2
Bureaucracy 2
Climbing 2
Craft (Carpentry) 3
Craft (Boat-Making) 3
Dodge 2
Engineer (Construction) 3
First Aid 1
Guns (Rifle) 2
Humanities (Law) 1
Humanities (Economics) 2
Intimidation 2
Mechanic 3
Notice 3
Pilot (Sailboat) 4
Pilot (Motorboat) 4
Running 2
Swimming 3

I don't have Powers, since I'm not...Powered, I just figure my derived traits. I have 38 Life Points, 38 Endurance Points, Speed 14 and 20 Essence (not that Essence means much to my non-Powered ass).

I picture my character in his early 40s. Crew-cut, brown hair, sharp blue eyes, Navy tats on his shoulders and in good shape for his age. Still wears his wedding ring after all these years (the cancer took his wife some years back). Missing his left front tooth from the boat crash that brought him here. His name is Earl Donald. His grandfather changed the family name from O'Donnell, back when the Irish didn't get a fair shake, and Earl kind of regrets not changing it back. As it happens, the apes don't care what his name is, they just want him dead. And all Earl wanted initially was to get home again, but these natives (and the other PCs, if there were any) are growing on him. Even if he could leave, he doesn't think he should.  

Character Creation: 50 Fathoms

Well, my initial idea for this evening's fun hit a snag - I'm out of space on my gaming bookshelves, so I need to buy another one before I can finish cleaning my office. Don't suppose anyone wants an assload of Jyhad cards? Happy to trade them for an RPG.

Anyway, I decided to make a character. Initially I was thinking Terra Primate, but I just read 50 Fathoms and figure I ought to do this one before the knowledge fades from my brain.

The Game: 50 Fathoms
The publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Degree of familiarity: None with this game specifically, though I've run Savage Worlds in the form of Necessary Evil.
Books required: The Savage Worlds book and the 50 Fathoms book.

 
I admit, I wasn't sold on this initially. I got this book in a trade, having flipped through it at a con or something and thought, "eh." I mean, it looks like a generic fantasy world, only with more water. What do I want fantasy for? I've got Desolation.

Really, though, the backstory is kind of interesting. Three witches, having been sentenced to death by the king, rise up all bloated and drowned and make it rain enough to drown the world in 50 fathoms of water (which may have been where the game title came from, I'm not sure). This also created a vortex to our world, so pirates and other shippy people have been lured in by some weird "Maiden" in the mist.

The world is detailed enough that it wouldn't be at all hard to run a game. I like that humans are interlopers, but that we've already set up towns and started trying to run things (including introduced our quaint notions of "God" to the heathen natives; it hasn't taken). There are also some cool races. You can play a hyper-intelligent crab-person, or a big fat walrus-person, or a dolphin-person, if you think the dolphin is your "spirit animal" or some such BS.

I do not have a spirit animal, and if I did, it'd be a bunny anyway, so I won't be playing a doreen (the dolphin-folks).

Step One: Race. Well, heck. This is not a light decision. If I want to play a magic-user ("elementalist", in this game) I have to be either human, scurillian (crab-people), kraken (FUCKING MIND FLAY- er, octopus-faced people) or masaquani (the human-like natives of Caribdus).

You know, I kind of like the notion of a super. In 50 Fathoms parlance, a "super" is someone who vouches for the legality of a ship's cargo, but the ship's code and number are tattooed on the super's arm. They're very well-paid. First time I read them, I thought maybe that'd be a fun character. I think I'll do that, but I still need a race.

I choose atani. They're these winged, bat-like elf-like people. The picture in the book is of this lithe, graceful-looking woman atani, but of course I'm going to play a dude. I think my atani left his home for some reason - probably his family died during the flood and subsequent war, and being around his own people is painful for him. He's OK with the open ocean - yeah, there's no trees, but he can hang in the crow's nest and look out over clear, blue water stretching forever. It's kind of peaceful. He also has the names and numbers of cargos past on his wings, not his arms, making for this kind of of weird patchwork of numbers and letters all over them, which I think would look awesome.

Step Two: Traits. I start with a d6 in Agility because I'm an atani. Strength, however, is expensive to raise (again, because I'm an atani and they have hollow bones). Since I think that this guy is going to spend a lot of time flying around, scouting, observing and occasionally firing a gun or sling or something at enemies, I'll keep my points in Agility and Smarts and Spirit. I boost Agility to a d10, Smarts to a d8 and Spirit to a d6. That leaves Vigor and Strength at a d4, but I can live with that.

OK, now Skills:

Flying d10 (it's free to d6, and I boost it to d10)
Knowledge (Masaquani Language) d6 (also free)
Boating d4
Climb d4
Knowledge (Shipping Laws) d6
Notice d6
Persuasion d6
Shooting d6
Streetwise d4
Taunt d6

Fun fact: You can incapacitate mooks with a Taunt.

I should do derived traits now, according to the book, but that's dumb.

Step Three: Special Abilities. Edges and Hindrances. I mark down my racial Edges (I can Glide and I'm Agile), and my racial Hindrance (I's a Weak puppy). As usual, I shall take the allowed two minor and one major Hindrances, which requires me to grab my copy of Savage Worlds.

OK, I'll take Cautious. My guy thinks of himself as the last of his line, and that makes him circumspect. Likewise, I'll take Pacifist. He'll fight if there's no choice, but he'd rather fly to high ground.

Hmm. For my Major Hindrance, let's give this guy some color. I'll take Enemy. He's got a ship of once-legitimate-sailors-now-pirates who can't go home again, largely because of my character. He was their super, and during the vessel he freaked. He saw the course that the captain had plotted, and saw that it was going to take them too close to the Kehana Flumes. Not wishing to be eaten by psychotic fish-monsters, he jumped ship, gliding away during the night and hitching a ride with another vessel. The ship can through the flumes fine, but arrived at their destination without a super...which meant the whole shipment was impounded and the crew arrested as pirates. This was some years back, when my guy was still pretty green, and he hasn't repeated this cowardice, but there's still a pissed-off crew of pirates who'd love to shoot his ass.

Well, now I've got 4 points to play with. I'd like an Edge, I think. I'll take Rich - supers are well-paid. For my last two points, I'll buy Stealth at d6.

I start with my clothes and 500 pieces of eight, only I get that times three for being Rich. With 1500 silver pieces, I buy two flintlock pistols (yes, I'm a pacifist, but guns improve my bargaining position) and a map of Caribdus. Figuring out my derived traits, I have +0 Charisma, 6'' Pace, 2 Parry (because I have no Fighting, which means I'd better stay the hell out of close combat) and 4 Vigor.

The book says atani have graceful-sounding names. One of my favorite lines from a Shakespeare play is from Twelfth Night: "This is Illyria, lady." Very lyrical. My character's name is Aes Lyrria (yes, it's pronounced much like "ace," but with a more obvious dipthong; "ay-is"). And I think that puts me all done. 

Character Creation: Colonial Gothic

 Been a while, huh?

The Game: Colonial Gothic, Revised Edition
The publisher: Rogue Games
Degree of familiarity: None. I've read the book, and well. Thoughts below.
Books Required: Just the core book, which I bought at GenCon.

 
Now, I'd heard about this game and heard good things. It's a niche for a historical horror game that I thought was both appropriate and under-used: The American Revolution. History gets more interesting to me the more recent it is, and the Revolution seemed like a pretty interesting time to be killing vampires. So I bought the book at GenCon and talked to Richard Iorio about it a little. System seems interesting, premise was good, OK.

And then I read the book. Now, I worked for White Wolf, as you all know, and much is made over White Wolf's frequent editing and grammatical errors. But I'll tell ya, when I read WW books, even the ones I don't work on, I don't see it. I mean, I catch one or two here and there, and sometimes we get annoyingly embarrassing mistakes like the whole "bloomer" thing in World of Darkness: Antagonists or the book title being misspelled on the spine of Fallen Tower. But man, it felt like I was seeing some pretty amateurish stuff in this book. Or maybe it was just that the mistakes I saw were pet peeves of mine (and in fairness, I have no idea if they come from the writers or the editor, since Scribendi has consistently fucked up WW books for a long time now).

For instance, I noticed "effect/affect" being misused a bunch of times. Lots of passive constructions, "there is/there are" statements, which aren't wrong, but I've been conditioned to read them as weak. I didn't see "loose" being used as "lose," which might have prompted action (probably of the "groan and shake head" variety), so that's good.

But beyond editing, the book just didn't grab me. Which is a shame, because I was all ready for it to. I wanted this to be a game that yells "Run me!" because it'd be a fun thing to try out with my players, but I've got so many other games that just look fun. And after reading, I can't remember much about it at all, which is not a good sign.

Oh, wait, here's something I do remember: There's a section on religion. It discusses the various flavors of Christianity that were prevalent; Quakers, Puritans and the like. And then at the end, we get this paragraph:

No discussion about religions in the colonies would be complete without mentioning the Indian tribes who call this land "home." Though many attempts in the past have been made to convert the tribes to the religious beliefs of the colonists forcibly, many still hold their tribal beliefs close.

And that's it.

Anyway, with all of that in mind, it's a game I'd love to play, because I'd like to see it in action. So, me am make character!

Character creation has five steps. Step One is deciding on Abilities. We get a pretty typical spread here: Might, Nimble, Vigor, Reason and Resolution.

Minor point: Is "nimble" ever used as a noun? If not, it's inconsistent with the other Abilities, and should be called "nimbleness."

Anyway, I get 55 points to divide up. Since I'm dividing points before doing concept (which I'm not saying is bad, it just makes for a different kind of chargen), I think I shall consciously avoid my usual "jumpy-flippy" character.

Oh, wait. This is fun. Under the "Hero Creation Process" header, it says I get 45 points for Abilities, and then further down the page it says I get 55. C'mon, guys. I'll take 55. If 7 is average, then I could put them all at average and have 20 points left over. Wait, that means I'd have four of my five stats at 12, which is the maximum. Damn, I guess they do mean 45 points.

OK, take fucking two. 45 points. 7 in all five stats, with ten left over. Much better. I'll boost Might to 10 (7 points left), Resolution to 12 (2 points left) and Vigor to 9. I'm strong, yeah, but really I'm unshakable.

Some bad book design ahoy. The steps at the beginning of the chapter say I go from Abilities to Background, but after Abilities, we get a discussion of Fate cards. So do I do those now? I guess I should do some Background first. I want my character to be kind of rough around the edges, and I like the idea that he doesn't owe anybody anything. I'll make him a former indentured servant. He left England because he was in trouble (I'll think about why later, since it'll be a Fate card) and to pay his way to the New World, he agreed to a term of service. He wound up skinning animals for a wealthy tanner, and so he's got nicks and cuts and scars all over his hands. He finished his term of service and left with his termination pay, as well as a couple of knives that the tanner felt were too worn to be useful.

The book recommends I consider a few questions, so I shall:

Where and when were you born? Let's say he's now 28, and was born in London.
How do you feel about Magic? I don't think he's seen it yet, but he does know that death and blood can be powerful things. That doesn't mean he wants any part of it or thinks it's right, that's just how it is.
What makes you a Hero? I like this question. His will makes him a Hero. He's committed to freedom as an ideal. That's not freedom from responsibility or work or hardship or care. He's a full supported of the idea of indentured servitude - you agree to the work, you do the work. He hates the notion of slavery and abuse of servants, though, but he's equally contemptuous of slaves who put up with that treatment.
What do you think about the War for Independence? He sees himself as independent already, so he doesn't much care. If he sees some tangible proof that England is really fucking the Colonies, though, he'll be ready for war.
What defines your Faith? The idea of personal independence. He can't stand Puritans or Quakers; they're either meek or intolerably nosy. He's probably Anglican, but the dogma is less important than his own take on it. He'd be very surprised to learn that the phrase "God helps those that help themselves" isn't actually in the Bible.

OK, keen. This guy's starting to take shape. Let's do the Fate cards. These are cards that the GM can whip out to mess with me during play, that define my beliefs and so on. I get five of them.

• "You killed a man on the streets of London by smashing his head against the street. He turned out to be a rich man's son." - This was why my character left London; he knew the dead guy's father would track him down.
  
• "You saw a dead deer get up and walk 18 steps - after you'd already skinned it." - Magic, and good flashback fodder.
  
• "You fell in love with a woman on your ship from London, also a servant. She was taken to Boston, but you aren't sure what happened to her. Her name was Rose. You never spoke to her." - I'm a sucker for unrequited love.
  
• "You never trust a man who offers to buy you a drink, because of what happened to your father." - I'll leave that open for the GM to screw with.
  
• "You cut your master with a blade while skinning once, because he was standing too close. He still thinks it was an accident." - Further definition of his issues with personal freedom and personal space.
  

Now, Skills. I get Trade (Leatherworking) at Base Rank, whatever that means, and Language - English (Fluent) for free. Then I get 55 points to buy Skills. Let's see how this works.

OK, this is kind of weird. You buy Skills using these points, sure, but to buy the first rank, you pay a number of points equal to the associated Ability. Get that? It costs more to buy Skills if the Ability is higher. Shouldn't it be easier to get good at a Skill if you've already got natural talent? But whatever. This system is a simple 2d12 roll under a target number affair, and the TN is the associated Skill + Ability. So shooting someone, presumably, is Nimble + Shoot; I have to roll under my total of those traits on 2d12.

Still, weird point expenditure. OK, I get Trade (Leatherworking) at Base Rank for free. That's Rank 1. The language here is confusing, and it doesn't help that the chart for buying skills in the book is wrong. Argh.

OK, I'm going to run out of points very quickly if I buy Might or Resolution Skills. Let's flip through the Skills and see what I really need. Holy shit, I don't have nearly enough points. Is this system meant to make sucky starting characters (boo!) or characters that only have a few skills, even if concept dictates others (boo!).

Like, here's the thing. I want these Skills:

Animal Handling
Athletics
Brawl
Intimidation
Melee
Thrown

There are others I'd like, but I figure these are appropriate to the concept. Now, to take these at Base Rank is 56 points. If I wanted to boost them higher, to give myself a chance to, you know, succeed on rolls, well, I have no way to do that. ASS. I guess what I'll do is ditch Intimidation. It doesn't make sense that I wouldn't have it, but it's the most expensive and I need those points. That gives me 12 points back, so I actually have 11 to throw around.

Now, taking Skill ranks past Base costs half the appropriate Attribute. Every time. Argh. OK, so if I want to raise Melee to Rank 2, it costs 5 points. I do, as it happens. I'm also going to specialize in Knives, so my effective Rank for not-knives drops to 1, but with knives I have Melee 3. I have 6 points left. You know, I think I'll drop Thrown, too. That gives me 7 points back, so I have 13. I'll buy another rank in Melee (5 gone) and another one in my Trade (5 gone), leaving me with 3 left. I'll buy up Animal Handling to Rank 2 with that, I guess.

Finishing touches. I'm meant to choose name, gender and age. I did age already and gender is obvious, so I'll do name. His real name is Timothy Edwards, but upon getting to the New World his master just called him "Skinner," so that's what he goes by.

Oh, gotta do derived traits. I get 45 Vitality, 45 Resolve and 60 Sanity. I have no idea how to mark those on these weird boxes, so I just marked off the bottom row. There, that's me done.

Character Creation: 3:16: Carnage Among the Stars

There's a really deep game in here, I just know it.

The Game: 3:16 Carnage Among the Stars
The publisher: Box Ninja
Degree of familiarity: None. I've read the book and heard good things about it, and I'd really like to run it at some point.
Books Required: Just the book, which is teeny. I picked it up at GenCon, because I have a policy about buying an IPR game at cons and this was one of the few that I'd heard of but didn't own.

 
OK, so 3:16 is not a Christian RPG (I thought it might because of the whole 3:16 thing, figuring it might be a reference to John 3:16, which says something like "vote Republican!", but I haven't read my Bible in a while). Anyway, in the future, everything is perfect. You don't die unless you want to, because we can fix pretty much anything. No war, no violence...well, actually plenty of both, but not between humans. No, in the future, you can join the Expeditionary Force, travel the universe, encounter strange alien beings and blow the living fuck out of them so they never have a chance to encounter, and therefore inconvenience, Terra.

Seriously. The whole point of the army is one big preemptive scorched earth deal. And you're holding the gun.

In this game, you don't roll to see if you hit in a fight. You roll to see how many fucking aliens you kill. The only stats are "Fighting" and "Non-Fighting." Well, that's not true. You also get flashbacks, which either let you kick ass (Strengths) or lose on your terms (Weaknesses), which I like, because I don't mind my characters getting fucked, but I'd rather have some say in it.

So, OK. Let's do this.

Name: The book recommends I just need one name, rather than a full name. I shall name my soldier...hmm. You know, here we run into one of my issues with both fantasy and far-future games. You've gotta figure that naming conventions are different than what we've got now, either way, so how do you pick a name that sounds a little off from our expectations but not totally whack-a-ding-hoy? Incidentally, the multiple Academy Award-nominated* film Jason X named characters in the future after Everquest characters, so that's a kind of full-circle naming weirdness.

Anyway, my character's name is "Coop." Yeah, it's short for "Cooper." Because in the future, two syllables is too much work.

Reputation: Here we provide a quick summary of our character. We're apparently Legion, today. PIGS. Anyway, I think Coop is lazy. He joined up because the recruitment posters showed soldiers on some bio-luminescent beach sipping cocktails, and damn it, he's been to that beach, and it's only glowing because we nuked it. But he's in the shits now, and he can't go home to the real paradise. I'll pick "Lazy Sulker" as my reputation.

Abilities: Like I said, I get two abilities, Fighting and Non-Fighting. That should be pretty self-explanatory. I get 10 points to split up, each has to get at least 2, so I'll put 4 into Fighting and 6 into Non-Fighting.

Kills: I roll a d10 for every point in Fighting I have. Hang on. OK, 14. That's how many aliens I've already fragged, probably with a grenade or something. Shooting guns is work.

Flashbacks: You do these in play, not in chargen, so never mind this bit.

Rank: The Rank of Sergeant goes to the character with the highest Fighting. That's assuredly not going to be Coop, so he's a Trooper.

Kit and Training: I note my stuff. I get: Mandelbrite Armor, knife, hydration tablets...hell, it's on the sheet. I also get a choice between an energy rifle and a slug rifle, and I'll take the laser, thanks much.

And that's it. Wow. Easiest character I've made since Taem. 

*OK, not really. 

Failure Is Not an Option

I made a discovery a few years back. I don’t remember what exactly triggered it, or indeed if there was a single event or moment in a game that led me to this realization. I think it’s more likely that I knew it subconsciously long before I ever spoke the words, but the discovery was this:

The players like to win.

I say it a lot now, both to myself and to other Storytellers who pride themselves on chuckling evilly and muttering about how they like to make their players’ lives difficult. Most of the time, when I repeat that mantra they look at me funny, and then say, “But you can’t win a role-playing game!”

Well, the truth is, you can win a role-playing game. You just have to keep in mind what the goal of such games is: To have fun. That said, what I mean when I say “the players like to win” is, “the players like it when their characters succeed at the tasks they choose to undertake.”

And yet, there are an awful lot of games and systems within games that seem to indicate that playing failure is fun, too. In this essay, we’re going to talk about characters with crippling deficiencies, how to interpret failed die rolls, how Storytellers can spin planned failure and avoid having dice bounced off their heads, and the many faces of Pyrrhic victories.

My Character is Lame: Flaws, Drawbacks, and Disadvantages

Most games include a system wherein you can take traits that act to the detriment of your character. They’re variously called Flaws (World of Darkness, et al.), Drawbacks (Chill, et al.), or Disadvantages (GURPS, et al.), but it all boils down to the same thing: Your character is less capable than the “base,” therefore you get a few more points to build her up in another area.

If you presume that player characters represent the base capability of any given person in the game world, the logic behind these traits is horribly flawed. I am not the equal of everyone else in the world, or even everyone else in my age and cultural group. The bum staggering down the street toward me might, if statted as a character, have such crippling flaws as Alcoholic, Mentally Ill, Homeless and Smelly, but that probably doesn’t mean he’s stronger, smarter or faster to make up for it. Indeed, most flaws, in real life, wind up being detrimental to development in all other areas of a person’s life.

The presumption is most games, however, isn’t that the characters are just normal folks. It’s that they’re the protagonists of this story (so right away, it should be obvious that we’re operating on a different level from real life), and thus they are more capable than most folks. Going back to the bum, he doesn’t need to built on the same point base as the characters, because he’s a supporting character at best, and more probably an “extra.” Even when the NPC in question is closer to the player characters’ capabilities (say, in a game of Vampire: The Requiem, the character in question is another vampire), the NPC doesn’t need to have the same “point base” as the characters.

On this premise, the “flaws balanced by extra points” model works a little better. Most games explain taking flaws by saying something about players being able to make their characters a bit more well-rounded, “realistic,” dramatic, and so on. Some games are even honest enough to say something like, “you probably won’t have enough points to build the character you want, but you can get more by taking flaws.” The truth of the matter is, though, that players who take flaws for their characters do so for one of two reasons: Because they like playing characters with flaws, or because they want the extra points.

Now, wanting the extra points doesn’t mean that the player isn’t going to play the flaw, or that the flaw isn’t an important and interesting part of the character, or indeed that the player is some sort of twink. It means that the player is using a game mechanic as presented, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that (I almost always take flaws for characters I play, and I play ‘em to the bone, but I also spend those extra points). Certainly I’ve run into players who sneak in flaws that they assume will never actually deter their characters, just to get some extra points. As a Storyteller, I recommend letting them take these flaws if at all feasible and then using them to best advantage the very first session (pure silliness, like taking a phobia of the ocean in a game set in Utah, should be disallowed, unless you’re playing a game that rewards silliness, like Toon).

But what about the players who like playing characters with flaws? Characters in role-playing games are most often defined by their power, be that by the supernatural or mundane skills and abilities that they possess or simply by the fact that they are powerful in comparison to the rest of the world. Even in games where the characters are the underdogs (like Hunter: The Reckoning and All Flesh Must Be Eaten), the characters are still superior to most of their peers — once again, because they are the characters. Playing a character defined by a flaw, be it physical, psychological, or supernatural is indicative of a player who wants something different out of the game than simply besting opponents and racking up experience points (it could also be indicative of a player who sees himself as flawed in some way, I guess, but that’s rather out of my depth).

So, what does all this have to do with success or failure? Consider this: Flaws and disadvantages in role-playing games should be impediments and character facets. They should be obstacles to be overcome during the course of the story, meaning that as Storyteller, you should present opportunities for characters to recognize, fall victim to, and ultimately overcome their flaws. Players, when you choose these traits, you should expect your character to suffer from them occasionally.

As an example: A friend of mine played a character in a game of Dark Ages: Werewolf with the Lame Flaw. In game terms, this means that the character suffered from a limp and couldn’t run as fast as her packmates, and that’s really about it. But the player took this a step further; the character didn’t tend to get into combat because her packmates usually reached the enemy and killed it before she had a chance. As such, the character was “apart” from her pack during dire circumstances, and even during the few times I ran the game, it was evident that this was having an effect on the group dynamic (I’d have been very interested to see how that dynamic evolved over a long period of time).

Note, too, that flaws don’t have to give you points to be important and necessitate attention during the game. A personality trait that you decide (or discover) in your character can be detrimental to the character or to the group, as long as it isn’t detrimental to the story. Some games, for instance, give point bonuses for traits like “Impatience” or “Curiosity,” and that’s fine; it tends to get the group moving when things bog down. “Honorable” is another trait often listed as a flaw, the logic there being that a character who can’t lie well is going to suffer penalties on attempts to deceive people. From a strictly game mechanics point of view, that makes sense, and if the result of that flaw is such a game penalty, well and good. If the only "effect," though, is "you should roleplay your character as being curious/honorable/etc.," I wonder about that trait's efficacy in the game. Does everything need a number attached to it? No, but my experience has been that folks who don't like rules ignore them anyway, and those who prefer that the rules work get annoyed when they get handwaved. Silver Age Sentinels from the now-defunct Guardians of Order stipulates that Defects are traits over which the character has no direct control — things like nemeses, physical defects, and so on. Personality traits can be fun to play, but they don’t give you extra points.

Another way to run flaws, incidentally (and the World of Darkness system does this), would be for the players to receive experience points or some other benefit when the flaw actually comes into play during the game. This would prevent people from taking ridiculous flaws, and would only reward players who play to their characters in their entirety. Games using the FATE System, including Spirit of the Century and Houses of the Blooded, use something like this; when one of a character's Aspects causes his trouble, the player can accept a Style point for it (or spend Style to avoid it). Ubiquity, which powers Desolation and Hollow Earth Expedition, does something similar.

Another category of flaws that bears special mention are those that have a bearing on a character’s ultimate destiny (you’ll sometimes see positive traits, like “Merits” or “Advantages” labeled Destiny, too, but taking such a thing as a flaw puts a different spin on the idea). If a character has a flaw like “Dark Fate,” this puts a couple of big obligations on the Storyteller. Not only do you have to screw that character over in some hugely dramatic way, but you have to make sure that nothing happens to the character before the boom falls (or if it does, you’d better be prepared to spin it in such a way that it fulfills the flaw’s parameters). I’m of two minds about flaws like this. On the one hand, it can be a cheap dodge of players who don’t want their characters to die and know that very few games ever actually end, meaning the moment of destiny will probably never arrive. On the other hand, it’s cool when players try to work out what their characters’ story arcs are going to be; I had a Storyteller ask me once what my character’s “tragedy threshold” was and then arrange a chronicle event accordingly. Some games ask during character creation what a character's path or story arc might look like, building in the notion that every character has a destiny (though it's typically kept loose; hard to account for everything that might happen during a game).

The Dice Hate Me: Incidental Failure

I talk about dice and when to use them in another essay, but I want to address a couple of points here on the subject of failed die rolls, more for players than Storytellers.

I’ve seen it happen a million times; the player throws the dice, the rolls fails, and the players says, “Can I try again?” with no hesitation. Yes, failure is a bummer, but next time, try considering what a failed roll really means. It might mean that your character doesn’t know anything about what’s being discussed, and, that in mind, might decide to stop thinking about it (especially if you took those extra points for flaws like “Impulsive” or “Impatient”). A failed physical roll might involve a muscle cramp or a sudden loss of steam. A failed social roll might involve a sudden burst of laughter or gas (if you have to ask why such a thing would constitute a failed roll, you need to get out more). Yes, the Storyteller can adjudicate some of this stuff, but she’s probably already overworked. Besides, if you take a little of that responsibility on yourself, you’re contributing to the chronicle and exerting greater control over your character, both of which are usually good things.

Failure can lead to character beliefs and hang-ups, too. I played in a game with a guy who, every time his character tried to use a specific power on were-creatures, failed his roll. After a while, he decided that his character figured that the power simply didn’t work on lycanthropes, and so stopped trying it. Yes, the player knew full well that the power had no such limitation, but the dice seemed to indicate otherwise.

The point here is that even the dice — which don’t hate you, remember, all they do is choose numbers — can provide interesting character bits, provided that you as the player are willing to let go of the mentality that says, “Aw, crap. I failed,” and instead adopt a mentality that says, “I am learning about my character as s/he experiences this story.”

God Hates Me: Setting the Players Up to Fail

I occasionally see pre-written scenarios that include scenes that the characters are supposed to fail. Mostly, these are combats that the characters lose so that they can be taken before the Grand High Muckety-Muck and charged with a quest/given a threat/sacrificed on an altar/what have you. As with most things in gaming, there’s a right way and wrong way to do this sort of thing. Also as with most things in gaming, the right way depends entirely on your players and what their preferences and thresholds are.

Some players, and I have to admit that I’m often one of them, don’t like to lose combats. But, for me at least, it has less to do with the notion of losing and more to do with the fact that if a combat (or indeed, any situation) has a predetermined outcome, I’d prefer not to have the illusion of choice. I played in a Mage: The Ascension game many years ago wherein our characters were ambushed by a bunch of Men in Black (now that Mage: The Ascension is over, that reference isn’t going to make as much sense, I guess) and the Storyteller told us we could each have one cool moment before being overpowered and render unconscious. That, to me, was fine — it made the combat quick because we didn’t each have to get beaten to a pulp (which in that system took forever anyway), and we weren’t under any illusions about whether or not the Storyteller was fudging dice rolls or otherwise “cheating.”

What if your players aren’t of this mindset, and refuse to roll over and let their characters fail without a fight? Well, ignoring the obvious trust issues plaguing such a group, you have a couple of options. One is, of course, to cheat. You let the players have whatever moments or successes they can manage out of the scenario…but your rolls are behind a screen, and you can very easily add in more enemies, a sudden rainstorm or any other wrinkles you need to bring about the result you want. The trick is doing it without being obvious, and the problem is that when you go from a defeat into an obviously well thought out scene, your players are probably going to pick up on what happened (hopefully, they’ll see why it was necessary and not be too put out).

The other option is to make the scenario difficult, but let the chips fall where they may. If you’ve got a sense of what the characters can do and how the players usually react and strategize, you can probably set up a situation that’s too tough for them, let them try and fail, and then continue on with the story. The caveat there, of course, is be prepared. In my essay "Living with Lady 10-Sider", I advise never to call for a die roll unless I’m prepared for failure. The reverse is also true: If you aren’t prepared for a successful roll, better just to stipulate that the action isn’t possible. This doesn’t work at all in combat, of course, but it’s fine in investigation scenes.

If you’re going to set the players up to fail, however, you need to be damned sure that they’ll have a chance to get their own back before the night is over, or at least to see where the action is heading. I love cliffhangers, but a Storyteller-imposed cliffhanger is very different than a player-imposed one. By that I mean, if the characters go marching into the dragon’s mouth and are immediately confronted with potentially deadly repercussions, they shouldn’t be surprised and can’t really blame you. In that case, ending the session with the henchman pointing weapons at the characters (or whatever other danger is fitting) is fine, and will probably have your players thinking about your game all week. But if you lured them in, or forced them in, they don’t have the same emotional attachment to the situation because they didn’t choose it. As such, you need to let them a little farther into the plotline before winding up, otherwise the conversation next session will consist of people saying, “What happened last time? Oh, right, we got our asses kicked and then some other stuff happened.”

A final word on setting the players up to fail: Don’t make it cheap. When I play Dungeons and Dragons, I tend to play magic-user characters. Mages and other spell-casters grow quite powerful with experience, and the sheer amount of power they can throw around is somewhat daunting to some GMs. So, I’ve noticed that as the final confrontation looms (or during any confrontation they don’t want the players to win “too easily”), suddenly magic just stops working. I hate that.

Ignoring the fact that mages in D&D (3^rd Edition, anyway) are completely useless if they can’t use magic, disallowing a character’s special powers because you feel it would make things “too easy” is cheap, lazy and shortsighted. If you feel that the abilities or powers that become available to characters in your chosen game system are too potent, change the system ahead of time and explain why to your players (and be prepared for a player to say, quite legitimately, that you should consider running a different game). Don’t allow the players to purchase traits for their characters that you don’t like and then toss in cheap methods for your NPCs to bypass them (now, when players become over-reliant on their characters’ special powers to the point that they stop thinking, which I’ve found happens often in Mage: The Ascension, then it might be time to arrange a story in which they can’t simply magic their way out of everything, but that’s a separate issue). This applies not just to magic, but any special power that characters might acquire. A fighter in D&D is optimized toward fighting, so you should allow that character to get into fights that are challenging, but not sure losses or stonewalls.

If a character must fail at something that should be his/her forte, try to find some way to work it into the story rather than just saying “Yeah, I know you rolled five successes, but nothing happens.” At least make it experiential: “You cast the spell correctly. You know you did, you felt the power leaving your body toward the target. But about midway there, everything in the room went cold, and your target still stands, unfazed.”

Pyrrhic Victories: We Won, But it Hurt

I like costly victories, myself. I like consequences to actions, and I like the notion that to gain something, you must sacrifice. I also recognize that this attitude might be a by-product of my employment with White Wolf, however.

A Pyrrhic victory, as you probably know, is a victory in the academic sense — you won, but another such “victory” would kill you. In a role-playing game, such victories are rare because normally you’ve got a group of people working toward whatever the goal of the current story is and therefore several minds all working out a strategy. Also, players tend to come with ideas so cool they should work. I tend to side with the players when they come up with great ideas. At the very least, I don’t go adding extra obstacles because I feel the players are having too easy a time of it.

But there’s a difference between upping the difficulty level of a story while it’s still in progress and allowing the NPCs to think on their feet. If I’m running a game of Vampire and I start adding dots of Disciplines to an enemy character while my players’ characters are chasing him down, that’s cheap. If I decide that he recognizes that he’s not going to win this fight and he starts fighting appropriately — that is, takes no prisoners, sets fire to the building, bargains for his unlife, or takes other actions that aren’t normally in character for him — that just means the supporting characters are responding to the situation that the players’ characters have created.

In short, every victory should cost something, but not just because you don’t want to make it easy on your players. Every victory should cost something because they need to know that they earn what they get.

But what about a true Pyrrhic victory, the kind that after the dust settles the characters are thinking, “If this is winning, must’ve been some way we could have lost.”? Here are some ways that victories in RPGs can become Pyrrhic:

• Character death: The characters accomplish their goals, but one or more of their number dies. This is a bigger problem in some settings than others (because in some settings, you can have your dead comrades resurrected), but killing off characters is often a touchy issue. It’s a great way to make the players realize that their situation is serious, but it’s also a good way to piss them off. Make sure everyone’s OK with the possibility of character death during the course of the story.

• Character injury: The characters might not be dead, but they’ve certainly got one foot in the grave. They’ve fought off their enemies or escape from their prison or whatever the case may be, but one even relatively minor fight and someone’s going to die. Now, obviously this has more of an impact in games like Chill or even most forms of Exalted, where healing takes some time and effort, but even in a game like Werewolf enough of the right kind of damage can make the characters (and the players) recognize how perilous their situation really is.

• Depleted resources: Most RPGs have some kind of “fuel stat.” In Vampire, it’s Vitae. In Werewolf: The Forsaken it’s Essence. In Chill, Stamina and Willpower can both rise and fall. In any case, the characters don’t necessarily have to be physically injured, but if they’ve burned all of their “magic points” during the course of the battle, they have most assuredly earned whatever victory they’ve achieved.

• Dead friends: I’ll admit: One of my greatest problems as a GM is that I hate playing NPCs. I’ll do it, but I’d rather they sit in the background and let the players do the important work. But once in a while, I’ve seen relations between an NPC and a player’s character become really strong. What happens, then, when said NPC dies — especially as a result of the PC’s action? While playing Nehemiah (a Vampire: The Masquerade characer, though the game was a weird homebrew quasi-World of Darkness setting), I found myself having to choose between going after my dire enemy or save a character to whom Nehemiah had become very attached. He chose to kill his enemy, for a number of very legitimate reasons. The lady to whom he was attached, however, wound up losing much of her sanity. (And kudos to the Storyteller in question, by the way, for making that decision hard and allowing me to kill Nicholas — that’s what made it a Pyrrhic victory). This only works, however, the players actually have some attachment to the NPCs, and that requires that you play them well.

Ending on a Downer

When players fail at a task, they tend to want to try it again. Some things, though, you only get one shot at. I already recommended never asking for a die roll unless you’re prepared for the results, failure or otherwise. Let’s take that one step further — if you give the players a piece of information, be prepared for them to follow it. Players don’t tend to do well with cryptic warnings of dire danger (because PCs are normally the only ones with enough gumption to go on in defiance of said warnings, so a lot of time when GMs say “Danger! Here be monsters!” players hear “Come on! Here be plot points!”).

If the players follow your cues into the plot points (or ignore your warnings and wind up in the soup) and fail miserably, what then? Ending on a down note isn’t a great idea, usually, but you don’t have to end on resounding victory. Ask yourself the following questions:

• What am I ending? A session can certainly end on a tragic or fearful note. The players will get the chance to right the wrongs next session, and sometimes a week away from the game can be a good way for them to gain some perspective and come back ready to solve their characters’ problems. If you’re ending a major story arc, the characters should be able to point to something in the story as an accomplishment, even if the overall story ended badly for them.

• Can they try again? If the mission was “stop the assassination” and the characters didn’t, then they probably don’t get another chance. If the mission was “retrieve the Golden Whatsis” and it slipped through their fingers, they can probably still track it down. They just might have very little time left, or it might be in their worst enemy’s hands, or something equally dire. If they can’t try the same mission again, perhaps now they must deal with the repercussions of their failure.

• Do they want to try again? My character in a Dark Ages: Fae game ran afoul of a demon in one story arc. During the five years of downtime between stories, he stayed the Hell away from anything that looked like it could be demonic, because he wanted nothing to do with them. “Know thy enemy” didn’t occur to him, because he was scared. If the players decide their characters are letting discretion be the better part of valor, fine. Don’t feel you have to chase them with their mistakes.

In closing, remember that we play these games for fun, but also to tell a story. Don’t worry about “realism,” worry about “drama.” Don’t sweat “balance.” Instead, think about “conflict.” Learn your players’ thresholds for failure, and scale the challenges accordingly. Even if the characters fail, the players will talk about the story afterwards, and consider it a success.

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!