Character Creation: HARP

The list is getting shorter. Only 18 games left.

Actually, an opinion, if anyone still reading these characters would like to pipe up. I own GURPS 3rd Ed, and I own exactly three GURPS books: Creatures of the Night, Cabal, and Bunnies and Burrows. I'd be happy to make characters for all three books. What do you guys think? No point just making a GURPS character; that'd be meaningless, without a setting.

And yet, that's more or less what I'm doing today.

The Game: High Adventure Role Playing
The publisher: Iron Crown Enterprises
Degree of familiarity: None. I'm not even sure where I got this book. I think Brad Williams might have given or traded it to me before I left Atlanta, but I don't remember.
Books required: Just the HARP book. 

 

You might recall from when I did a D&D character that I grouse when games don't include settings. Well, sometimes. I mean, GURPS doesn't, but that's kind of the point. Dread doesn't have a setting per se, but it's understood to be a horror game, at least, and the book gives you several examples to run with. HARP just gives you a game engine, but does at least pay some attention to helping the GM figure out the setting (it's not a very big section, but it's there). And the system's been licensed out, so apparently Iron Crown is doing something right.

Anyway, I'm going to do what I did for my D&D character (who, I should note, is now part of a party with a fighter, a rogue, and a mage). Make a generic-fantasy character, without worrying too much about the world, and just assume it's full of dungeons and perchance a dragon or two. Maybe some orcs.

OK, cracking the HARP book, I find Step One: Choose a Profession. I have nine choices...wait, what's a Harper? Oh, it's a bard. Well, let's think about this. If I were coming to this without having spent the last year (good god) making characters, my initial attraction would be to Harper, Mage or Warrior Mage, but really, I don't know. Let's look at the descriptions, such as they are, and see if anything inspires me.

Cleric? Eh. Did that. Fighter? Well, maybe. It just sounds so boring. Harper? Maybe. I played a bard in a god-awful game of D&D a couple years back, might be nice to see how the games compare. Mage? Maybe. I do love mages. Monk? OK, seriously, why aren't they called "martial artists" or something? Because when I think "monk," I think this or this. Ranger? Maybe. Never made one. Rogue? No, thanks. My Low Life character was kind rogue-y. Thief? Wait, what's the difference? Too confusing for me. Warrior Mage? Actually, I did that with my favorite D&D character.

OK, really, Ranger is the one that appeals, so let's do that. I get a +10 to any one Outdoor Skill, and I can learn Ranger spells. And there's some Favored Skill stuff, too, but that's for a later step. Oh, and my "Key Stats" are Insight, Strength and Agility.

Step Two: Generate Statistics. I've got three choices here. I can roll for random stats, or I can spend points, or I can spend a random number of points. Normally I'd spend for it, but I'd kinda like to finish this up and go eat something, so I'll generate some random numbers. I get:

43 57 99 100 50 71 97 40

Hoo, not bad. Ooh, this is a percentile system. Neat. Well, the books says I want high ratings in Insight, Strength and Agility. Interestingly, though, under the descriptions of the stats themselves, no stat is listed as being special for Rangers. Weird. Guess I should think a little about concept.

OK, my character was born to a happy family in a stone cottage in the woods, outside of town proper. They lived there because his mother was a midwife and his father was a trapper and furrier, so folks from the village came to see them all the time. My character, Alin, used to get into trouble with the twin children of the town magistrate. They went off exploring together, and one day they found (hang on, checking the monster section) a giant spider. It killed one of the twins (the boy) and bit my character, and the girl managed to help him hobble back home. Poisoned, he never quite managed to fully recover, and he walks slowly even now.

The magistrate blamed Alin for the death of his boy, and made things hard on the family. His parents both died fairly young, leaving Alin bitter and contemptuous of authority. Alin learned to be a trapper and a skilled archer, but he's comparatively frail and slow.

With all of that in mind, I assign numbers. OK, now we do Stat Bonuses and Development Points. I'll just note those below.

Strength 97 (Bonus 10, 10 DPs)
Constitution 43 (Bonus -2, 0 DPs)
Agility 99 (Bonus 10, 10 DPs)
Quickness 40 (Bonus -4, 0 DPs)
Self-Discipline 71 (Bonus 5, 5 DPs)
Reasoning 57 (Bonus 2, 2 DPs)
Insight 100 (Bonus 10, 10 DPs)
Presence 50 (Bonus 0, 0 DPs)

Now, what the heck do these do? I can use them to buy up stats, buy Talents and other stuff. I have 37 DPs (huh-huh), so I'll save them until I know what I can do with them.

Step Three: Choose Race & Culture. I'm human. That was easy. I get 8 points to divide between my bonuses, so I shall put four into Quickness (to offset my low rating) two into Reasoning and the other two into Self-Discipline. I note that my Endurance is +30, my "power points" is +30 (which might actually matter, since Rangers can cast spells), and my resistance are +10 across the board.

As a human, I get +5 ranks to skills of my choice in my Favored section. I also get one skill to get a +10; that's my specialty. The book tells me to figure out my height, weight, age and Base Movement Rate. Well, my character is a human male of, let's say, 21, and he's about average - 5'10'', about 180lbs. His BMR is 10' (based on his height and his Quickness). His culture is Rural; he didn't live deep in the woods enough to be Sylvan. That means I start with my Racial language (which probably doesn't exist) and Common. I get a bunch of skill ranks for growing up Rural, that I'll add in to the next step.

Step Four: Buy Skills and Talents. OK. I spent Development Points on these, and they cost different amounts based on whether they're Favored. Let's see what's in the list. I can only have 6 ranks in a skill, at 1st level. I get a bunch of free ranks, too. Holy god, this is annoyingly complex.

So, I'll take:

Ambush 3
Animal Handling 2
Armor 2
Brawling 2
Crafts (Bowyer) 3
Crafts (Fletcher) 1
Endurance 1
Foraging/Survival (Forest) 3
Healing 1
Herbcraft 1
Jumping 1
Locks/Traps 2
Lore (Local Region) 2
Navigation 1
Perception 1
Riding 1
Rope Mastery 3
SpellCasting (Tree Merge) 3
Stalking & Hiding 1
Swimming 2
Tracking 4
Weapon (Axes) 2
Weapon (Bows) 4

Now, Talents. I haven't spent any DPs yet, so these are theoretically all open. I'll spend 20 on Outdoorsman; that gives me +10 to all Outdoor skills and Herbcraft. I need to buy another rank in Tree Merge so I can actually cast it, which costs 2 more, leaving me with 13. I'll spend 3 to bump my Constitution up to 46 (which removes the penalty on it), and I'll put the other 10 into Speed Loader; I fire my bow quick-like.

I need to calculate my Skill bonuses and all. Jebus. There's math involved. Jesus, that was fun. Oh, and I get to add +10 to a single skill because I'm hoo-man. I choose Rope Mastery. I want to be good at making traps and snares.

Good grief. Step Five: Purchasing Equipment. Fuck that. I'm tired. I'll wind up with a bow, an ax, and 50' of rope like every other fantasy character.

Step Six: Final Touches. They recommend that here's where you finally start thinking about role-playing, but I have done that already. I shall, instead, give you the character sheet and go make a freaking bratwurst.

Character Creation: Ex Machina

IF I AM BECOME A MACHINE THEN HAIL THE GOD OF MACHINES

The Game: Ex Machina
The publisher: Guardians of Order, now sadly defunct.
Degree of familiarity: Like I said, ran it once or twice, and I'm fairly familiar with Tri-Stat.
Books required: Just the core. 

 

So, the setting I'm using is Daedalus. In this setting, everybody has a chip implanted, usually at childhood. These chips feed you media, help you grow, even "help" you find your soulmate and fall in love. There's a lot of attention in this setting to personal relationships, but it's quite clear that the relationship are on their terms. Everything is, really.

Who's "they?" The government. This world suffered some serious terrorist attacks a few years back (decades, probably, though years aren't specified) and that's what got everybody thinking that ID chips were a great idea (sound familiar to anyone?). Over time, the technology developed. Children could be flawlessly tracked. Oh, and now we can regulate your brain chemistry, so if you aren't producing enough dopamine, bam, we'll tell your brain to make more! No more Parkinson's! No more Alzheimer's! We can stream media directly to your mind. The settings of your lights, AC, heat, even your chair respond to your chip's broadcast. And we can teach you languages and other skills through bio-memes. Holy cats. Sounds awesome, right?

You can see where this is going. The government controls you. You are your brain, and the feds own that. This setting is a little bit Gattaca, a little bit Equilibrium, a lot of 1984, and I see some Minority Report in there, too. One of the interesting things is that since the chips regulate emotion, when you meet someone, they might start acting weird, and you've got to figure out if that's really them...or the chip?

OK, so I want to do something a little different for my character. This guy was a social scientist, working for what's now the Ministry of Citizen Welfare (MCW). His name is Gavin Croy. He remembers the world before chips, if vaguely (he was about 15 when chips started getting implanted), and has been through many different incarnations of the chips in his lifetime (we'll assume he's in his 60s now). At the time, he was all for it. He lost friends in some of the early terrorist attacks, and he had these absurd notions about they might be able to read your brain, but they'd never own your mind (as though there's a difference). So he championed the chip to his fellow students in college, and he went into government work to try and help people come to love the technology of the chip. And he was very, very successful. He married, had kids, chipped them, watched them grow up and marry and have their own kids, and was even thinking about retirement...

And then one day, he got a weird case. A file crossed his desk, a man named Herbert Thespen. Thespen was a resistant, someone for whom the chip just wasn't taking. Gavin has some medical training, and reading this guy's file, something rang a bell. It was a condition he'd heard of, some long-cured neurological thing that a friend of his in college had suffered from (in the days when chips were just for tracking, before they could stimulate neurochemicals). Gavin searched the archives for information on the condition, but it wasn't mentioned anywhere. He started looking into his old books and files from college, and he found more than he wanted.

Yeah, he found info on the condition. He also found copies of books like 1984. Fahrenheit 451. Snow Crash. Anthem. The Handmaid's Tale. These books aren't available anymore. Print books haven't really been easy to find in a while, anyway (everything's digital; that's not explicitly mentioned in the book, but it sure seems to be the way we're going), and he wasn't a pleasure reader. But now he started reading again...and he finally got it. The brain is the physical organ, and it controls the mind. It is the mind. And now they have the keys that labyrinth.

Gavin is an older man, and so he wasn't equipped to go scampering off into the night. But he also had a long lifetime of experience backing him up. He left his home to protect his family, and he went to the Outside, to the people who he knows aren't chipped. He got them to remove his chip, and he coped (barely) with the withdrawal of not having the world respond to him anymore. He's now selling drugs, medical equipment, and government information, making a living as a low-rent shadow doc (since most of his medical knowledge is theoretical; he's never actually practiced medicine). But what he wants more than anything is a way to free his family from the chips, and to cope with the crushing guilt he feels. He helped build this world.

OK, enough of that. Now, numbers! I'm building Gavin on a 75 point base. I've already done Steps One (kinda) and Two, so now:

Step Three: Assign Stats. Each stat point costs 2 points from my 75 total. Gavin's an old guy, so his Body is fairly low. Let's put it at 3, below human adult average. That's 6 points. His Mind and Soul are going to be higher, though. Let's put mind at 6 and Soul at 5, for a total of 28 on Stats.

Step Four: Template. There's a medic template, but it doesn't work for what I want to do with Gavin, so I'll just wing this.

Step Five: Attributes. Really, there aren't many of these that I'm going to want. Definitely Highly Skilled, though. I'll just devote 10 points to that right now, and maybe more later. That takes me to 38 spent.

Gavin isn't chipped anymore, so he doesn't get Item of Power for that. Organizational Ties, though? I'll blow 4 points to take level 2 for La Liberte. They want what Gavin knows, and he's happy to give it to them, it's just a matter of sifting out the useful information. I'll take Divine Relationship at 8; Gavin's a lucky dude (and the lack of other powers and abilities means he'll need those re-rolls). How about Heightened Awareness? Since Gavin's lost his chip, he's gotten paranoid and he's always been a fairly perceptive guy. I'll throw five in there, too.

That takes me to 55 spent, meaning I've got 23 left. Let's do something nutty, here. Gavin, to be most effective, needs a presence Inside. La Liberte, recognizing this, gave him a sleeper agent, someone with a half-chip that can get around in the city. This allows Gavin to make use of his old files and some of his status, as long as he's careful about it. I take one level of Agents, for 5 points. My Agent's name is Stephanie Peck, and while Gavin doesn't know it, she was a childhood friend of Gavin's daughter, Brianna.

That's 60 points spent. I'll proceed to...

Step Six: Skills. I presently have 130 points to spread out among Skills, and I might well take more. All Skills get a specialty, and they have variable point costs. This might take a few minutes.

Area Knowledge (Patrol Hotspots) 3 (12 points)
Biological Sciences (Genetics) 2 (8 points)
Computers (Databases) 3 (12 points)
Cultural Arts (History, Literature) 2 (6 points)
Domestic Arts (Cooking) 1 (2 points)
Driving (Car) 1 (4 points)
Electronics (Sensors) 2 (12 points)
Etiquette (Chipped People) 3 (9 points)
Foreign Culture (Allied Nations) 3 (9 points)
Languages (Various) 3 (6 points)
Law (Criminal) 2 (4 points)
Management/Administration (Government, MCW) 4 (9 points)
Medical (Pharmacology) 2 (6 points)
Physical Sciences (Biochemistry) 2 (8 points)
Social Sciences (Psychology, Politics, Social Work) 4 (10 points)
Stealth (Unobtrusive) 3 (9 points)
Street Sense (La Liberte) 1 (4 points)

Step Seven: Defects. There's gonna be a few of these. I'll take Recurring Nightmares (1 point); Gavin dreams about his family. I'll take Physical Impairment. He's old and his leg and back give him problems (also 1 point). I'll take a 2-point Skeleton in the Closet (the extent of Gavin's involvement in pushing the chips back in the day). And, definitely Wanted. Just 1 point, but the government would love to have Gavin back. That gives me 5 points back.

Well, heck. That means I have 55 points spent, for a whopping 20 points left. I could throw them all into Highly Skilled and get 200 more Skill points, I suppose. Hmm. I suppose I'll follow up on the "La Liberte wants me safe" theme and take a Servant. I'll put 12 points into it, giving me a level-2 Servant that I can swap out between adventures. Basically, La Liberte always has a staff member free they can assign me to help me out. Sometimes it might be a duke to protect me, others it might be a winger to drive me. That still leaves me 8 points, though.

Let's make me more important. I'll jack Organizational Ties up to level 3, which costs the rest of my points.

Step Eight: Derived Values. My Attack Combat Value is the average of my Stats, or 4. My Defense Combat Value is that minus 2, or 2. Ugh.

I have 40 Health points, and so my Shock is 8.

And that's it, really. I could earn Background Points if I had a GM, but I don't, so that's that.

Character Creation: Necessary Evil

Today's offering on the altar of creation (which really doesn't make sense, but sounds good) is Necessary Evil.

The Game: Necessary Evil
The publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Degree of familiarity: None, yet, though I'm running a one-shot in a couple of weeks.
Books required: The Savage Worlds book and the Necessary Evil book.

I'd heard of this game a while back. The basic idea is, aliens land and blew Earth all to Hell, took it over, and in the process wiped out all the superheroes. Now, it falls to supervillians to rise up and fight for Earth's freedom. The game gets into the moral and psychological themes this would create a little, but honestly, it's not like this is meant to be Aberrant in its social commentary. I can totally see 80s-Marvel doing this story. The good guys are dead, so the bad guys have to step up, because if there's no world left then there's no world to rule.

But really, I'm more interested in villains who don't so much want to rule the world as get rich and live comfortably. I'd like to play someone in the vein of Blacklash or the Beetle; a fairly absurd villain, at the guts of it, who just wants cash. But now cash, fame and notoriety are meaningless.

I don't think I actually want to go technological, but I'll hold off on deciding that for sure until later.

Step One: Concept. This proceeds in three very simple questions.

1) How did your character get his powers? Hmm. Villains are generally either disfigured by their powers or they did it themselves in a fit of pique. I don't want to be disfigured...or do I? I think perhaps I do. OK. My character was collateral damage during a fight between some superhero and some supervillain. The hero, I don't know, but the villain was Dr. Devolution (who's dead as of Necessary Evil, but his lab figures into one of the story seeds). My character was an innocent bystander, a normal guy doing a normal office job at the lab where the hero (a mild mannered scientist, but secretly the tech-hero Binary!) worked. Dr. Devolution sent his monstrosities in to grab the latest experiment, a new form of solar energy, and Binary fought them. Normal day in Star City.

Except my character, an entry-level tech named Burt Bannister (superheroes have alliterative names, dammit) was trapped in his cubicle when the fighting started. He finally made a break for it, but one of the monsters bit him, poisoning him. Binary, not a healer but not willing to let the guy die, used his powers to break down Burt's physical body into data, store it, and then reconstitute it later when he could get medical help. Trouble was, he'd never done it with a living person before, only machines, and Burt's body didn't take it well. It adapted the poison and rebuilt its physical form to accommodate it, and when he reformed, he was hideous.

2) What sort of powers does your villain have? I think Burt needs some kind of poison touch or bite, and should also have a modicum of super-strength and invulnerability. I think that physically, his face has become purple and monstrous, and his flesh feels tough, leathery, but smooth. He's more or less a brick, but with the venom added to give him some spice.

3) Why did your character become a villain? Well, the usual "disfigured and thinks the world owes him" thing, of course. Burt's transformation took some time, and by the time he'd gone fully purple and poisonous, Star City's media had moved on to other battles. Binary died in battle with another villain a month later, and Burt had no one to blame. He decided that he would use his powers to get rich and life high on the hog for the rest of his days, since this venom is, sooner or later, going to kill him (that's the prognosis he was given). As a villain, he called himself Toxicity.

But when the aliens invaded, he actually was one of the first villains to fight them. Not, you know, a lot, and he did some looting where he could, too. He just didn't want to knuckle under to the ugly bastards. And the one day, he was taking advantage of some alien-caused carnage to swipe some gear, and none other than Champion showed up and kicked his ass. He not only beat him up, he shamed him. Burt did his best emo-villain and said that this, a poison, was all he was. Champion, who despite being a little like Superman in function is not a dick, quoted Paracelsus: "Everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison." Burt fled, mortified, but when the real shit hit the fan and Champion died, he came out of hiding with a new name and costume. Now he's Dosage, and he's here to show the aliens what it means to mess with Earth.

Step Two: Race. Human. That's easy.

Step Three: Traits. I start with a d4 in my attributes, and I get 5 points to raise 'em. Same as usual. I'll boost Agility to d6, Strength to d8 and Vigor to d6, for now.

15 points for Skills. I'll buy a d6 in Climbing and Fighting, and a d4 in Intimidation, Knowledge (Computers, from his old life), Notice, Streetwise and Shooting. And then I'll bump Intimidation up to d6 and Fighting to d10, and then take Streetwise to d6. Good, good. For now.

I can take two minor Hindrances and one Major, so I shall. Definitely Ugly. I take Terminally Ill. The poison is still killing Dosage, and he knows that. When the symptoms act up, he's in horrible pain and his flesh burns and goes ugly red, rather than the purple it usually is. And, because it's easy, I'll take Distinctive Appearance. It's easy to recognize Dosage as Dosage, rather than just some ugly dude. He's freaking purple.

Ooh, and since I can take an extra Major Hindrance to gain 5 extra Power Points, I will. I'll take Bloodthirsty. This is partially him projecting his own issues onto the aliens, and partially the venom affecting his brain over time.

Now, I get 4 points to mess with. I take the Berserk Edge; just seems to fit. I'll use the other two points to bump Spirit up to a d6, which gives me an extra skill point, which I put into Shooting.

Now, powers! I get 15 points. I want Armor, first. I'll dump 4 points into it. I want his bite to be poisonous, so I'll take two powers to represent. Paralysis (2) means he can nip you and knock you out, but Infection (4) kills in 1d6 hours. I'll take Leaping at 1, but I'll add Bounce to it so I can do that cool back-and-forth thing and scale tall structures. That leaves 3 points. I'll put them into Super Attribute (Strength), making me able to lift about 1000 pounds.

Finally, derived traits (I get $1000 to spend on gear, but eh). My Charisma is -2, or -6 to people that know I can kill with a bite. My Parry is 7, my Toughness is 5, and my Pace is 6''.

And that's it. Dosage is ready to go bite some aliens!

Character Creation: Bushido

Anyway. Let's do a character. Just to get it off my plate, let's do Bushido.

I don't really have much to say about this game. Never played, never actually ran it. I bought it at Mind Games in Toledo when they were still north of their Reynolds & Central store (which I'm told has now closed, how sad). This was probably the second RPG I ever bought, in fact. I don't remember what the attraction was; probably a 13-year-old's interest in ninjas, before I realized that pirates were much superior (you have honor, we have booty. Just sayin'). I read it, we made some characters, but it never quite gelled.

Reading it again now, I see how spoiled we've become, man. This thing reads like freaking stereo instructions. Long columns, little art, no graphic design, small font, and the writing is just boring. You think Mage: The Awakening is dry? It's fucking poetry compared to this.

And for all that, the game isn't all that interesting, IMO. It's basically D&D set in mythological Japan. In doing this project, I've found a lot of games that I'd love to run. This one, if I want something like it, I'll run L5R.

But, let's see what shakes loose.

The Game: Bushido
The Publisher: Fantasy Games Unlimited, Inc
Degree of Familiarity: Almost none. I've read the Heroes of Nippon book recently.
Books Required: Just the Heroes of Nippon book. 

OK, so the first thing I do is consult the Birth Table, to see my character's caste. For the first time in a while, I slide over here for some randomness. I "roll" a 62, which gives me...Heimin (Farmer), with a Low birth rank. Balls. I start with 5 initial On and 1 measly money die.

As a farmer, I get Katakana at (2xWit) + (10) + Initial Age. That's my writing skill. I also get Popular Dance (yee-haw), and a choice of one Practical Art and Hunting or Fishing. I shall take Fishing, and for my Practical Art, I take Massage, just to shake things up.

Now I choose a Profession. I haven't actually done a magic-user character in a while, and since that's usually my first step with fantasy games, I'll make him a Shugenja. Checking the Professional Summary Table, that gives me:

choice of 1 Bugei (combat skill)
choice of 1 School of Magic
choice of 2 Fine Arts
choice of 1 Bonus Skill

I double all initial literacy scores, which is cool. If I were Buke, I'd halve my initial On for being a magic-user, but I'm not, so I don't. OK, let's choose some skills.

I'll do magic first. I think that between the Fishing and the focus on Massage, the School of Water is appropriate here. Since Water magic deals with deception and bindings, I'll take Kusari-jutsu (I get no bonus, but the bonus is my level anyway, which is 1, which is lame) for my free Bugei. For my Fine Arts, I take Calligraphy and Go. And then I get one Bonus Skill. I'll take Shurikenjutsu, just because I really like thrown weapons.

So now I do Attributes. Unlike D&D, Bushido realized early on that random chargen was for video games, so I have 60 points to distribute. I get a -5 to my Strength, because spellcasters are automatically wimps, but I also get +10 to Wit and +15 to Will.

I guess to make this guy viable, I should figure out the system a little. Hang on.

OK, this is needlessly complex. You've got a Base Chance of Success (BCS), from 1 to 20, less than that on a d20 roll is success. Sound familiar?

But wait. Your BCS is determined by dividing your Skill rating by 5. And then there are modifiers. So for instance, for my guy to throw a shuriken, I add my Deftness + Will + level (because it's s Bonus Skill for me), divide the result by 5, and that's what I need to roll under on a d20 to succeed (there are probably other modifiers in combat, too). Sigh.

Well, let's look at magic, since that's what I want to be good at. Using magic, the BCS is based on Wit and Will. OK. The range for Attributes is 1 - 40. There are six of them, meaning if I dump 10 points in each, I wind up with:

Strength 5
Deftness 10
Speed 10
Health 10
Wit 20
Will 25

As it stands, I'd wind up with a BCS of 10 to do magic. 50/50 chance. Why do starting characters suck in old games? You know, I think I'll leave it like this, since it'll mean I'll suck about evenly across the board.

OK, now I calculate the BCSs of my Skills, since I have no further opportunity to improve them. My best BCS turns out to be in Katakana (I'm literate like a motherfucker), though Fishing ain't bad either. At least my party will eat. I get Average Peasant Garb and a bunch of other clothes that I wrote on the sheet. I also get a weapon for my Bugei. I technically get a Bo staff, but since I didn't take that skill, I don't bother. I do take shuriken and a manrikigusari (which is Nipponese for a big honkin' chain). And, I just now noticed that this weapon has a minimum Strength of 10 required. So, screw it. I shift 5 points from Health into Strength, so I can use the chain.

I roll a die and find out that I'm 20 years old. I roll some "dice" for money, and wind up with 3 gold coins, 5 silver and 50 copper.

Capabilities: Derived traits, basically. I get no damage bonus, because I ain't that strong. I do a d3 of damage in unarmed combat. I get 1 action per turn, and I move on a Base Action Phase of 5, whatever that means. My Base Movement Allowance is 3. My Hit Points start at my Health (5) plus a d3 (because, again, magic=wimp). I roll a 1 (of course), so I have 6 hit points. My healing rate is 1. I have 20 Freely Improvable Skills, which I guess at Skills I'm currently training in, which is kind of a cool notion. My Power rating is equal to my Will (25) plus 1d10 + my level, which comes out to 31. My Learning Rate is 2. Man, there are a lot of numbers. My Zanshin, which is concentration in combat or something, is 1.

My Brawling, which is what I'd use to punch somebody, is 4. My Climbing is 5, my Leaping is 5, my Swimming is 2 (fish well, swim badly) and my Magic is 10, since I add my level.

And now the book advises me to do some role-playing. OK. My character was a Peasant, living with his family in some little village somewhere. One summer, a drought hit their area, and the fish ponds dried up. My character walked miles every day to an area that wasn't as badly affected, and caught fish there. While there, he befriended an old blind man, and learned some techniques of shiatsu massage...as well as honing his literacy and learning of the School of Water magic.

That was in 18th year, and two years later, his younger brothers (twins) were old enough to help gather food and fish. He set off on his own, a young shugenja, seeking...truth? Power? Wealth? Glory? Honor? It's not important. He's seeking. He'll figure out what he's seeking later. His name among the Heimin is simply "Young Fisher", though his family named him Hibiki.

Origins 2009 - A GM's Report Card, Pt. 4

And now, the exciting conclusion.

So, Friday night, we sang, other people danced, we went to bed. Saturday, we woke up, and headed downstairs for more gaming!

Saturday morning, my 10AM game was Edge of Midnight, the second of the games that I ran. I've been running a chronicle of this particular game since December 2008, and I'm really enjoying it. Partly, that's because I've run little else than World of Darkness games for a long time and it's nice to keep the dark but play with a new setting and genre (noir), and partly that's because Edge of Midnight is just an awesome game and it's a hell of a lot of fun. So getting some new people to play it was a good plan, I thought.

The scenario was a murder mystery. Basically, prominent citizen dies at a club, and the PCs have until sunset to figure it out or else the victim's fans are going to riot. Oh, and the victim (and said fans) are gaunts, and a riot would tear the city apart. The characters got a chance to play with magic, investigation, learn about the city of Terminus (much like New Orleans, which is where my ongoing chronicle is set, too) and generally a good time was had by all. If I have one regret, it's that I didn't find a way to work in a more involved fight, but I hadn't set up the scenario to include combat and I didn't want it to feel forced (no orcs, thanks). I think the players dug it, though.

Following the game, Michelle and I headed to the dealer's room again. I scooped up a copy of Ars Magica, Fourth Edition for all of four bucks, and I finally bit the bullet and bought Unhallowed Metropolis. I've played UnMet a couple of times, I've really enjoyed it, and it's the sort of game I should own. And I've got players that I think would really get into it.

[redacted]

And that game was...Hollow Earth Expedition. Last tabletop game of the con, and the one I had the highest hopes for.

See, Hollow Earth Expedition is a pulp game, but unlike Spirit of the Century, it gives you a very specific setting - the Earth is hollow (bet you figured that, yeah?) and there are natives, dinosaurs, Amazons, the whole bit. I bought and read the game last year following GenCon, and I've been very keen to play it ever since. This particular game had a blurb that involved dinosaurs and capturing a tar pit. Awesome.

Warning sign right off: The GM hadn't made characters for the scenario, but had just photocopied the pre-gens from the book, put them in plastic sheets (OK, this is maybe just me, but I think it's cheap when players can't at least keep character sheets from con games), and handed us a great big stack. I picked on at random (the Big Game Hunter), and we started out on our airship in Hollow Earth.

Yep, just like that. No attempt at backstory or group cohesion. No explanation for why these characters were together. Just, here we are, on our airship, and then the air pirates attacked.

Now, at this point it's pretty clear we've into beer-n-pretzels, and that's disappointing, but OK. I co-opt Jonathan's Hyde's character from Jumanji to inform my portrayal of Col. Stanley Admunson (I promptly get a style point for naming my character, which encourages everyone else to do the same) and we get down to the business of killing air pirates. We win, but our ship is damaged badly, so the Fortune Hunter (played by a 16-year-old boy, who seems to have the emotional maturity of, say, 13) puts the ship down. The rest of us don parachutes and bail the heck out.

Splitting the party is fine; I do it all the time. But five to one isn't a split I like, because it puts too much focus on one dude, and that's especially true if the one dude is being...well, a fishmalk. So while the five of us are fighting a T-Rex, he's met a tribe of crazy Amazons (led by a woman named Sinestra) and patching the hole in the blimp with a bag of monkeys.

Things, clearly, are getting out of hand.

Eventually, we meet up with the other tribe of Amazons (at which point the GM makes it a point to tell us that some Amazons remove one breast, but not these Amazons...sigh). The gamer OMG GIRLZ is getting a little thick, especially for Michelle. I remind the 16-year-old that there is, indeed, a woman present and maybe he should be quite so juvenile, but his dad (also playing) is encouraging it a bit. We keep things on track, more or less, fix our blimp and land in New York City with a crew of Amazons (this is a shift from the GM's original intent, but it was the ending we liked).

Now, a little GMing theory: If you've reached the end, stop. We landed in NYC, the blimp burst through the subway tunnels, we're given applause and fame, awesome. That's the end of the story. Except, just then, not only did the Amazons reveal themselves to be the bad Amazons, but the freaking T-Rex jumped out of the hole and attacked. It had been tracking us. From the ground.

GMs, not every game has to end in a fight, even at a con. Here, consider this episode of Dexter's Laboratory.

Note that when DD runs the game, she keeps things exciting, she pays attention to what the players want for their characters, and she doesn't waste words or events? That's good GMing. (Yeah, she needs to learn the rules, but that'll come in time.)

Thoughts on the game: Pre-gens, cookie-cutter story, villains that show up once and never again (what happened to those ors, er, pirates?), gratuitous breast references, and an overdone ending scene? Man, it could have been so much cooler. My grade: D+

After that, I had to rush downstairs to play Rising! Only I didn't really have to rush, because the 10PM game didn't have any players but me. So I arranged to play in the 11PM game, which was a VIP event (and turned out to be all kinds of fun), went back upstairs for a while to watch Michelle sing karaoke. I didn't get to sing; the rotation was insane at that point.

Then, back downstairs for Rising. The VIP event involved them handcuffing us, blindfolding us, and letting us fight our way out of the lab that was doing experiments on us. They even took our pictures and did up little dossiers (apparently, my previous occupation was "cartoonist", which is funny if you've ever seen me try to draw). I played an engineer, which means I got to solve puzzles, and I discovered, now having played all four classes, that I'm happiest with Marksman. Engineer's fun, but I don't really solve puzzles under pressure all that well. Hunter isn't bad, but I like guns. Doctor's OK, but then you can't fight as well and you rely on other folks for protection. Nah, gimme guns.

Thoughts on the game: Rising isn't strictly an RPG. It's a LASH (Live Action Survival Horror), and mostly you don't really play a role as much as play yourself with some weird skills and rules with zombies trying to eat you. That said, Zombie Buddy Productions went the extra mile on the game, so RPG or not, it was bloody awesome. My grade: A

So the scenario ended, I survived, got my swag bag (awesome), and headed the heck to bed.

Sunday: We got up, got packed, took our stuff downstairs, and hit the dealer's room one last time. We (Michelle and I) had originally been scheduled for a game of Eclipse Phase, but that got canceled, and our other choice just didn't happen. So we wandered a bit, played some demos, did some more shopping. I picked up a copy of Agone for $2 (even if it sucks, that's less than a cup of coffee some places) and a copy of Trail of Chthulu, which I'm informed doesn't suck. That brings the total of new RPGs to five; that sounds good. Also bought a cool board game called Gemlok, which Heather enjoyed and wanted to grab.

All in all, lots of fun this year at Origins. Definitely got me in the mood to start serious essay writing about GMing again, so I'll get right on that.

Meantime, next con is GenCon, even if only overnight. We'll see how the grades fall out there.

Origins 2009 - A GM's Report Card, Part 3

Right, moving on. Friday!

Friday, we got up and grabbed some breakfast. Michelle and I had a 10AM game of 7th Sea to play.

Now, I'd never played 7th Sea before, and I don't own a copy. I know about the game in a vague sort of way; it's about swashbuckling and sailing and pirates and Musketeers and that sort of thing. Since several of my other games this year leaned toward pulp, I figured this wasn't too far off the mark.

Promising start! The GM was there before we were, had character sheets and drama dice spread out, had his screen and his books and whatnot set up. Michelle and I grabbed characters. I always grab a character at random for con games, if I can. That forces me away from playing to my usual standbys (whatever those are - jumpy/flippy characters, going by my chargen project) and makes me flex my improv muscles a bit. This time, I got Felix. We were all Musketeer-types, fighting on the side of the Emperor of Montaigne (which is "France" in the same way that "Rokugan" in Legend of the Five Rings is "Japan," I suppose). Felix was a gun-fighter, in a setting where guns aren't terribly accurate and have one usuable shot before you have to spend an hour reloading them. And that's fine; some gun-fu is never inappropriate.

The rest of the players showed up and picked characters, and we got our set-up: There's an assassin on a boat coming from "England," we need to intercept it and stop him. That means getting to the coast and getting a ship. Most of the scenario was the "getting to the coast" part, and that wasn't bad, though I do think that the GM could benefit from considering Chekov's Gun a bit. That is, if you see a gun on the mantle in Act One, it needs to go off in Act Three. Our "Act One" was taking horses to the river and then sailing up the river to the coast, and we got jumped by some highwaymen.

While I was happy to have a chance to try out the combat system, I had two problems with this set-up. First, they highwaymen fought like orcs.

OK, a slight digression here. One thing that annoys me in RPGs is when the bad guys fight until they're all dead, even after it becomes clear that they're going to lose. That reminds me of old school Dungeons and Dragons, where the enemies were "monsters," even when they were supposedly intelligent. I once threw a DM for a loop in a D&D game by pointing my bow at the last surviving kobold or goblin or orc or spee-lunker or whatever we were fighting and yelling "Surrender!" See, my character didn't see the monster as just a vehicle for XP, and this being, y'know, a role-playing game, I figured I'd play the role.

And yes, I know there's a place for beer-n-pretzels gaming. That's why we have Kobolds Ate My Baby and HoL. Anyway.

So, the highwaymen didn't exactly fight to the death, but pretty close. And then it turns out that they were just...highwaymen. They weren't in on the plot, they weren't trying to stop us from finding the assassin, they had no connection to the story at large. Just a random encounter. Bad form, GM.

Well, we made it to the coast, chartered a boat (and that scene went on way too long, which wasn't entirely the GM's fault; we were making it harder than it needed to be), got out to sea, boarded the assassin's boat, and killed him pretty handily. In most systems, I find, five dudes vs. one dude means a quick fight. Which is fine, incidentally; I have no problem with the final fight of a game being not much of a fight, provided that solving the mystery or otherwise getting to the fight is satisfying. This...was kind of a foregone conclusion.

My thoughts on the game: Now, for all that, the game was actually pretty fun. I didn't find myself looking at my watch (well, I did, but because I had a game to run at 2PM and I didn't want to be late), and I enjoyed the game and the system and even the story set-up. Some of the other players spent a little too much time boozing and whoring (all together now: "If there are girls there, I wanna do them!") and ignoring the fact that, hello, there was an actual woman sitting at the table, but not everyone in our little hobby has figured out that a little decorum is not a bad thing. I just wish the story had been a little tighter, and our choices would have influenced said story a little more. My grade: B-

And then, zoooom! Across the hall to run Geist: The Sin-Eaters. Now, Geist is the next World of Darkness game from good old White Wolf. They weren't actually at the convention, however, and my game was the only Geist game being run. They sent me some copies of the quickstart (which you can download here) to hand out, and I had a copy of the pdf of the book (which I'm not linking, obviously) so I could run the game.

I made up characters ahead of time, and did my usual blurb + six questions routine. The characters were all people who wound up on a bus in NYC for various reasons, and then "died" when the driver got distracted and drove them into the river. They bonded with geists, became Sin-Eaters and formed a krewe (which is not a misspelling of the word "crew," by the way). This particular story saw them investigating a warehouse in which ghosts dressed in fashions of the last 50 years were partying away, but there was no evidence that they'd actually died at that warehouse (if you know how the World of Darkness treats ghosts, that makes a little more sense).

The players got into it well, even considering the massive info-dump that's involved in playing a new World of Darkness game. I run investigation-heavy games, and the characters did well with splitting up (which allows me to cross-cut, which allows players to get food or do potty breaks without wasting too much game time) and using their powers in interesting ways. They tracked down the blood bather who was killing lots of people every decade and took her down; again, it's not about the final fight, it's about getting to that fight.

I'm not grading myself, but I'm happy with the way the game went. There are some tweaks I'd make if I run it again, but mostly just so the story flows a little better.

Following Geist, Michelle and I headed to the Big Bar on Two and sang karaoke a bit. I didn't do anything challenging; "Zoot Suit Riot" and "Fortunate Son," both of which I'm familiar with and I sound pretty good doing, I think. I did, however, come to a conclusion:

If you are putting in your slip for karaoke, and you think "Turn the Page" is a good song? You are already drunk, and should not be allowed to make decisions.

Last post coming soon.

Character Creation: LOO-Nars

That's how Ken Cliffe used to say it at meetings, and we'd chuckle slightly.

Anyway, yup, back to makin' characters, yo. I'm doing Exalted: Lunars today because I won't have the book much longer. See, I sold off these Exalted books to someone in Australia a while back, but they got returned. The buyer just recently emailed me in response to the email I sent her (in which I asked, "um, hey, books returned, do you really exist?") and so I'll be sending them on again, but I figure I'll make a character first.

So, here we g-g-g-go!

The Game: Exalted: Lunars, 1st Edition
The publisher: White Wolf
Degree of familiarity: Some. I ran Lunars a couple of times, and I always thought that of the "fatsplats," this was the one I liked the best. That was until Abyssals came around.
Books required: The Lunars book, and I think the core. I've got 'em both.

 
I know that there's some controversy over Lunars in certain gamer circles. Something about barbarians and their civilization and...ah, screw it. This is why Exalted threads on RPGNet are insufferable. You're playing a badass shapeshifter, what the hell else do you need?

I've had a concept in mind for a lunar character for a long, long time, and I'm finally gonna stat him up. First, coffee. OK, that's better. Now, one of the things I always liked about lunars was that once they drink the blood of an animal, they can change into it. I envisioned building a character around that power (which is reflected in the Background called Heart's Blood). Here's the deal.

He was a refugee from the Southern jungles. For fun, we'll say he grew up not far from Xaal (the home of the Last Hunter of Xaal, probably the only contribution to Exalted I made that I really liked). Since living near Xaal sucks if you don't want your innards consumed by spider beastmen, he started wandering north, and eventually got picked up by slavers. He wound up doing shit work in a traveling circus/menagerie kind of thing. You can probably see where this is going.

One day his circus got hit by a rampaging monster of some kind. It killed most of the workers and smashed open the cages, and in that burst of glorious chaos and savagery as a hundred animals from Creation ran riot, my character Exalted. He killed and ate the hearts of as many creatures as he could, but the one that he wanted, the one that started the whole mess, fled into the wastes. He's been after it ever since, wanting to eat its heart and become it. What he doesn't know is that it was a Lunar Exalt itself, wearing the deadly beastman form, and it didn't hit that circus by accident. But what was its target? And did it even notice when my character (known as Lolk) Exalted to Luna?

Righto, that'll do for a start.

Step One: Concept. I did most of this, but I need a caste and a totem and stuff. OK, at first blush, this guy seems like a Changing Moon, since he's so focused on shapeshifting. But he survived his Exaltation by killing a bunch of things and eating them. That screams Full Moon to me. Now, for the totem animal, this I don't have a good sense for. I think some kind of hunter/tracker would be good. How about a wild dog? I like the African hunting dogs, the ones with the brindled fur on their backs, and I can see something like that, something that takes him back to his roots in the Southern jungles. His Tell, then, is that brindling pattern on his skin - it looks like tattoos unless you look closely. Finally, I think about Nature. I think Explorer is the closest thing to what I want; he's focused on finding that monster, but tracking it leads him into all of the aftermath of that "monster's" travels, and he's starting to enjoy that.

Step Two: Select Attributes. Physicals are my Caste Attributes, so I'll make that primary. I'll make Mental secondary and Social tertiary. He's a shapeshifter, not a trickster.

Physical: I put four into Dexterity and three into Strength and two into Stamina. This guy is fast and lithe, not really a powerhouse. Goddamn it, I did it again.

Mental: Three into Perception, two into Wits and Intelligence.

Social: Big fat nada into Manipulation, three into Charisma, two into Appearance. Cute, charming, not real wordy.

Step Three: Select Abilities. I need to choose four favored Abilities, plus Survival. I take Athletics, Brawl, Dodge and Investigation as my favored Abilities. Now I get 25 dots to throw around, 10 of which must go to my favored ones.

Well, duh, we'll go three in Brawl, Survival, Athletics, Dodge, and Stealth. Two into Investigation, Lore, Occult. One into Medicine, Awareness, Melee, Linguistics. Sounds good.

Step Four: Advantages. Seven dots of Backgrounds, but can't go over three here. Well, duh, first off we'll got three dots in Heart's Blood. Also, I think word has spread of Lolk Hundred-Forms, even though he's young. I'll put one dot into Renown and two into Cult. I'll put my last dot into Artifact, but I'll hold off on defining it for now because I'll want to bump it up a little.

Oh, crap. Now Charms. I get Finding the Spirit's Shape for free, and then I get eight more. At least four have to be selected from Physical Attributes. Let's do this. I want Deadly Beastman Transformation at least once. I start with Essence 2, and I don't know that I'll raise it, so I'll just take this Charm twice for now. I'll come back to this later, once I buy my other Charms, and build his beastman form.

I know I want Towering Beast Form and Humble Mouse Shape, since those allow me to take forms that are bigger or smaller than I'd otherwise be able to. I'm sure Lolk killed an elephant (or the Exalted equivalent) during his Exaltation, and probably snapped up some rodents as well.

And, shit. That's half my Charms, and they're all based on Social Attributes (wtf?) so the rest have to be based on Physicals. Hope I can manage that, because the pre-reqs are wonky. Ooh, unarmed combat. Yes, please. I'll take Body Weapon Technique, right off. Deadly Claw Blow seems like a good plan, too. I'll take Bowing Reed Technique to give me some defensive power, and y'know, is there a hunting Charm in here? Probably is, but I'll bet it's Perception-based. Yep. OK, let's do this. I'll take Stealthy Fox Method, since it's based on Dexterity, and that'll be my Charms for now.

OK, now my Deadly Beastman form. I picture this as a slim, vicious werewolf-like thing. Maybe a little more broad-chested than your typical werewolf, but fast and deadly. I get eight dots in Attributes and three Gifts to pile on. Let's do it.

Gaining Dexterity is expensive, but hey, it fits. I'll dump four of my eight points there, raising my Dex in Beastman form to seven. I'll buy up Stamina to five and Strength to six, as well. Now, the Gifts. Hmm. Just to make me even more ridiculous, I'll take Horrifying Might and bump Dexterity up to nine in Beastman form. I'll take Terrible Beast Claws, too, and finish off with Resilience of Nature. Basically a classic werewolf, with brindled fur!

Now I get 5 dots to split up among Virtues. Conviction and Valor are going to be the high ones, here. I'll put three into Valor, two into Conviction, leaving Compassion and Temperance at one dot, for now. That gives me the Curse of the Raging Bull, which is perfect.

Derived traits can wait, dammit. I get 15 bonus points. I want another two dots of Heart's Blood (4 points) and two more dots of Artifact (2 points). Moonsilver armor, baby. That leaves me with nine points left. I want Sense-Sharpening Change (7 points) so that I can track even in human form. With those last two points, I'll buy a fourth dot of Brawl and two Specialities - one in Tracking (Survival) and one in Claws (Brawl).

OK, now I'll do derived traits. Lolk has Willpower 7. Personal Essence is 16, Peripheral is 38. I have to commit 4 for my moonsilver breastplate, though. I have 25 points of Renown, and I break it up this way: Succor 2, Mettle 8, Cunning 5, Glory 10.

And that'll do me, I do believe. If I were playing Lolk, I'd probably go ahead and list all thirty-six of the animals that he can turn into, but right now I think I'd rather go watch a movie. Panic monkey, though, is definitely among them.