Down and Out: Gaming in St. Louis

Gaming in the Imperium of Man

2011-12-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

I don't know why, but recently I've been looking through the books I own for the three Warhammer 40,000 RPGs I own - Dark Heresy, Rogue Trader, and Deathwatch. They're very different games, all taking place in the same universe, and they interact - when they interact at all - on very different wavelengths.

In Dark Heresy - my least favorite of the three - you start out playing as the lowest rung on the totem pole, gofers, errand boys, and expendable help working, indirectly, for one of the powers of the Imperium of Man - an Inquisitor. An Inquisitor is a power unto himself - he ( or she) is empowered to do everything he deems necessary to hunt down heretics, aliens, or Chaos-tainted individuals. There are few people in the Imperium - which spans thousands of worlds - with the power to stand up to an Inquisitor. But they are all very busy, and so they trust their minions to deal with minor issues. This is where a Dark Heresy character comes in - you are the newest recruits, and you get the worst jobs, as you claw your way up the ranks towards the Inquisitor. You deal with the smallest, least dangerous threats - but when you are a minion of an Inquisitor, the smallest threats are still enough to endanger a city - or an entire world. You may end up being why an Inquisitor ends up declaring Exterminatus on a world - being the reason why the Imperium kills all life on an entire planet, billions of people, because some aliens - or ideas - are too dangerous to be allowed to spread to other planets. Working your way up from the lowest of the low to be an Inquisitor's right hand - or even an Inquisitor yourself - sounds like a long, hard slog, but could be fun to try.

Rogue Trader is vastly different in power level and scope. As a Rogue trader and retinue, you are empowered to go beyond the bounds of the Imperium, finding new life and new worlds - and make profit from them. You have your own ship, a vast crew - numbering int he tens of thousands - and you can go where you like and do what you please, as long as you pay lip service to the goals of the Imperium of Man. You are a peer even to an Inquisitor - though your power lays beyond the bounds of the Imperium, while an Inquisitor's is within, and you are both nearly untouchable in your realms of influence. You travel through space, going from planet to planet, finding new routes of trade, new worlds to colonize, and sometimes new threats to fight against. You are not entirely unlike a privateer, but your oceans are exponentially bigger, the riches you seek massively greater, and the things which lurk in the dark far more dangerous. Your freedom is unrivaled in the Imperium, and there are almost no bounds you cannot cross. So, given that - what do you do? The freedom that Rogue Traders have is great - it's a little like Star Trek, but with no humanitarian mandate, no Prime Directive, just picking a star, grabbing the horizon, and making what profit you can.

Deathwatch is probably the RPG with the most familiarity to anyone who has played the Warhammer 40,000 miniatures wargame. In Deathwatch, you play a Space Marine - the most elite fighting force of the Imperium of Man. While the vast legions of the Imperial Guard and the starfleets of the Imperial Navy may guard and serve as the bulk of the Imperium's military, it is the Space Marines that are called when a threat is too great, or too dangerous, for mere men. Space Marines are genetically enhanced, superhuman warrior-monks, trained and altered since puberty to be the greatest fighting force of men. Amongst the billions - perhaps trillions - of humans, there are 1 million Space Marines to serve as protectors. Where a regiment of normal troops, or perhaps even an entire army, might not succeed, 5 Space Marines might. Encased in power armor, armed with great and terrible weaponry, and with the knowledge that you are man's best hope against the aliens and evil gods of Chaos, you devote your life to killing the enemies of man. Space Marines are righteous in their fury, and certain of their cause, and that's something I find fascinating, even when they are tasked with exterminating an alien race that may very well be harmless.

All three games use the same system, but with different power levels - Dark Heresy being the lowest, Deathwatch the highest. And yet, with the same system, these games do vastly different things, all in the same universe - which, granted, is vast; if each game is run in the area the books lay out, the three games will never cross paths - and they seem to do it well. I say seems, becuase I've never played any of them, though I would love to. If you're reading this, and you're interested, let me know - I'll loan you the books.

4th Edition D&D Design Decisions

2011-10-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

This is a few years out of date, but I felt like talking about D&D, and since I'm not currently running game, I thought I'd talk about some of the stuff that changed between 3rd Edition D&D and 4th Edition. While all editions of D&D seem to draw inspiration from a standard set of sources, different editions use different basic ideas when designing the basic parts of the system. 4th Edition was designed to be a more transparent edition, one where players would be able to see the workings of the system as they created their characters, and do the designers looked for inspiration from more modern, popular sources; in some cases, this meant video games.

One of the key ideas for creating characters in 4th Edition is the choice of role. There are four roles, roles that will likely seem familiar to players, current or former, of games like World of Warcraft: Controller, Defender, Leader, and Striker. These roles, in a very loose sense, correspond to the roles of Crowd Control, Tank, Healer, and DPS. While they appear similar, and their general ideas are similar, they serve different roles.

The Controller role (which may be the role with the least, or at least most confusing, definition) is about battlefield control - characters with the Controller role can alter a battlefield, lighting things on fire or freezing them with ice, forcing enemies to face the player characters (PCs) on the Controller's terms. They can also inflict a wide variety of status effects on targets, making enemies more vulnerable to other attacks, stunning them temporarily, or preventing them from moving. the Wizard class falls into this role, using walls of fire and bolts of lighting to redefine the battlefield.

The Defender role is about defending the other characters in the party. While there are a number of Defender classes, they accomplish this by generally targeting one (or several) enemies, and making them choose between targeting the Defender (and thus avoiding the other characters) and targeting other characters at a penalty to attack - the Swordmage, for example, can mark an opponent, and if that opponent attacks a character who is not the Swordmage, the Swordmage, regardless of where he is, can either teleport himself to the enemy, or the enemy to him.

The Leader fills what is traditionally seen as the healer's role, but healing is only part of what a Leader can do. The Leader can give bonuses to allies, penalties to enemies, let allies take additional actions, heal, and generally do all he or she can to assist the party - while also contributing to defeating enemies. The Cleric has long been a Leader sort in a healing role, though the new Warlord class from 4th Edition tends more towards increasing the combat ability of fellow party members, thus ensuring the party's battles end sooner.

The Striker is, like the MMO role of DPS, a damage-dealer. Their job is to inflict as much damage to enemies as possible, whether up close or from a distance. While they can also inflict status effects on enemies, these tend to be things that make inflicting more damage easier, rather than things that stun or immobilize an enemy. The Barbarian is a good example of a Striker; the Barbarian charges into battle, relying on a high amount of hit points to protect her while she rages, causing her to hit enemies harder than normal.

All classes in 4th Edition fall into one of these four roles, though they also tend to have a secondary role, as well; something they are good at, but not as good as their primary role. This gives everyone something to fall back on if they are having difficulty performing their primary role, or just feel like switching things up during battle. Fighters, while primarily Defenders, can also perform adequately in the Striker role, while Warlocks, who are primarily Strikers, can also inflict a number of status effects on enemies, giving them some ability as Controllers.

Each class each has a power source - something that tells you where his or her ability comes from. The power source tends to give some indication of how a character's power will work, and what they might do. A class with the Martial power source, for example, is not a student of the arcane, or a devotee of the divine, but rather gains its ability from intense exercise, practice, and study; there is nothing truly supernatural about Martial characters, they are just near-superhumanly good at their jobs, whether Ranger, Rogue, Fighter, or Warlord.

The current power sources are Martial, Arcane (wizardly magic), Divine (power from the gods), Primal (power coming from spirits of the land), Psionic (power from mentally-derived abilities, like telekinesis), and Shadow (abilities derived from a connection to a shadow plane). The power sources help to differentiate between classes of the same role; the Martial Defender (the Fighter) performs the duties of his role in a different way than an Arcane Defender (Swordmage), Divine Defender (Paladin), Primal Defender (Warden), or Psionic Defender (Battlemind). Almost every power source tends to have at least one - and sometimes several - classes that fall into each of the four roles.

These two things together - the role and power source - help prospective players to determine which class will best fit the sort of character they want to play, and avoid a character choice that will make them unhappy with their character later. And, despite the standard class names, there is no reason why a character could not choose a class - say, the Fighter - and call himself a Ranger, Swashbuckler, Guardian, or something else instead. Essentially, these things help to show the player what the designers of the game intended when they created the class, so that it is easier to find a better fit.

Getting Back Into the Dm's Chair

2011-10-12T21:47:00.000-07:00

It's been some time since I've DMed a full game of D&D - that is, a game with a full party, rather than just a couple of people. I started DMing not too long after I started playing D&D, way back in the early 90s; I was 12 or 13 years old, and, if my players from back then remember much about our time playing, they probably remember a lot of power fantasies; vorpal swords and hammers of thunderbolts, fighting dragons and demons, in a group known as the Savage Seven. I still have an illustration of the characters of the group sitting with all my gaming books; it's one of the few stray pieces of paper I have kept since those days.

After playing with that group, I moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and slowly, I found a new group, composed of friends from school and Boy Scouts. We played D&D, for a while, as well as games like Marvel Super Heroes and, for a short time, Rifts. My longest-running game then, though, was as the Storyteller for a game of Werewolf: The Apocalypse that spanned several of my high school years. My character in that game still inspires my e-mail address. I wasn't the only DM for the group, but I was the most constant. At least one of my players in my Werewolf game still considers it one of their favorite games ever.

After that, I moved on to college. For a while, I was just a player with the college's gaming group, even attending a few RPGA events. But when the 3rd Edition of D&D came out, I started DMing again, this time with a group composed, mostly, of the few friends I had at college. Lagos the half-elf ranger, Gr'b Ngk the half-orc barbarian, Braghmin the halfling cleric, Rafe the human thief, Varandel the elven monk, and Kaeiri the elven paladin went on a number of adventures during those years; I still have my notes from some of them. I ran a short-lived Werewolf game, too, though D&D was my game of choice; I was still fascinated by the new 3rd Edition.

After that, I spent several years away from gaming, watching 3rd Edition turn into 3.5. I played little in those years, mostly from lack of players and motivation. Then, in 2008, 4th Edition Dungeons & Dragons came out, and I became far more interested in finding games to play in. Mostly, I've played in short-lived games with a few friends, and most recently as a player in a game that lasted about 6 months. And now I'm looking to get back into DMing.

I am hoping to recruit most, if not all, of my players from school, and so I imagine I'll get a mix of players with a variety of skill levels; some will have played D&D, some not, and they may or may not know 4th Edition. I've been trying to bone up on my introductory materials, just in case; thankfully, Wizards of the Coast helpfully provides a set of Quick-Start Rules on their website. 4th Edition is a big change from previous editions, but has made some big, and I think much-needed, steps in balancing things out between classes

My game is going to be pretty simple in concept; while I hope for some experienced players, I'm not assuming anyone has any great deal of knowledge (or experience) with 4th Edition. The game I plan to run is going to be based around a series of modules I've picked up, all of which I've enjoyed reading; I'll start with them, and see where players want to go. I like 4th Edition's combat system, but I'm also a fan of getting the players to develop their own stories, so while I have modules ready to use, I'm ready to run right off the rails if that's the direction they decide to go. No fancy house rules, no themes to complicate things; just a group of 1st-level adventurers, of various races and classes, getting together in a town called Fallcrest in the Nentir Vale to go out in search of fame, fortune and adventure.

Should be a good time.

Why Do I Read Fantasy?

2011-09-16T13:17:00.000-07:00

The question of why I read fantasy literature has been on my mind a lot lately. This may have something to do with my curent grad school situation; much of the time I feel like, for whatever reason, I should be reading more of the works in my field of academic interest than fantasy. Why read the new Brandon Sanderson novel when I should be reading Chaucer? Why read A Dance With Dragons when I should be trying to figure out how to get the Song of Roland on my reading list for my exams? Why do I spend so much time on a genre of literature that is only just barely acknowledged by the average English department?

I think a lot of it has to do with my personality and the way that I grew up. When I was a young boy, my family moved around a lot; by the time I was 13, I had lived in 3 U.S. states and 3 European countries. This sounds great, for those of you who envy my European travels, but when I first moved to England, I was all of 8 years old, and we lived no more than a year or so per country. By age 11, I had moved four times, and would move again in two years. Now, many readers know me (yes, it is foolish to hope that I have many readers, but I can hope), but if you don't know me, I am quiet, bookish, and painfully shy. I've lived in St. Louis for almost ten years now, and I don't think I have done anything with fellow grad students that was not part of a school activity. Now, imagine someone that shy at 8 years old, knowing nobody in a new country, then repeating the process for several years.

For a lot of that time, books were my only friends - sadly, there was no internet yet in 1987, at least not for the general public. I think my first fantasy novels were the original Dragonlance trilogy, and for a long time, those characters felt like close friends. I felt a kinship with lonely Tanis, sickly Raistlin, the honorable Sturm. Their successes and failures were real to me, moreso than most real people were. I felt proud whe they did well, sad when they failed, pain when they hurt.

A few years and moves later, there were the Dark Elf book by R.A. Salvatore, with Drizzt the loner elf, outcast from his people, alone in a world that hated him. I identified with him, because I felt the same; I was a smart kid just hitting that time when smart kids become the enemy in school, when more assertive boys pick on nerds to show how cool they are. Sooner or later, I read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and wondered how we could make a world where evil no longer existed.

Now, years later, I have a small, close circle of friends, but I live near none of them. I try to get close to my felow grad students, but I have never been very good at it, so I find myself turning to old friends in the form of books. Not the books I read for class, but the fantasy and science fiction books I read to relax and enjoy myself. I no longer read Salvatore, but now I read Brandon Sanderson, John Scalzi, Steven Erikson and Jim Butcher, but the idea is the same; each good book is a new old friend, one I can unshelf when I feel lonely, stressed, depressed, or just out of sorts.

I wish sometimes that I could make fantasy literature a greater part of my academic career, but that seems unlikely to happen, so it will remain a guilty pleasure amidst discussions of Old English verse, Greek epics, and other medieval literature.

Star Trek: The Dark Beyond

2011-07-30T21:11:00.000-07:00

I've been a Star Trek fan since high school, when I watched much of Star Trek: The Next Generation. I was never a big fan of the original Trek series, but TNG really appealed to me. So I watched TNG eagerly, and as much of DS9 as I could, though sadly a missed a lot of it. I was disappointed in Voyager, and thought Enterprise had a lot of promise that was squandered by poor management. The most recent Star Trek movie was one I found myself very interested in. So when I watched all of Enterprise recently on Netflix, I looked to the Star Trek RPG books on my shelf and wondered what a Star Trek game would be like. I'm still not quite sure I'm ready to run a Star Trek game, but I do have a pitch, at least. I'll put it below.

Star Trek: The Dark Beyond

The year is 2155. The newly founded coalition of planets, including Earth, Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, Rigel, and a few others is in its infancy, but they have all proved willing to contribute members to Starfleet - and the first ship to accept members from all the members of the coalition, should they wish to join, is the NX-03, the Challenger. Its mission is to seek out new life and new civilizations, new allies to expand the coalition, and above all, to explore, to gain new knowledge of the universe.

But unbeknownst to the crew of the Challenger and the members of the coalition, an enemy lurks beyond their borders, and sees the newborn alliance as a threat to its growing power, and seeks to destroy it. This power lurks in the dark, striking from the shadows, concealing its identity as it tries to weaken its foe. The crew of the Challenger will face many obstacles on its mission of exploration - and may find itself unknowingly on the front lines of a shadow war.

You have been assigned as part of the command crew of the Challenger. Starship officer, soldier, diplomat, scientist, human, Andorian, Vulcan, Tellarite - you are a member of the first true coalition crew, boldly going into the unknown, challenging the known universe. What will you make of your mission?

System: The CODA Star Trek RPG, made by Decipher; it is out of print, but it is the most recent iteration of a Star Trek RPG.

Character Creation: Standard for the CODA system; the Starship Officer, Soldier, Diplomat, and Scientist professions are preferred, but others will be allowed with justification. Allowed species for this game will be Human, Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite, Denobulan, and Rigellian, though as with professions, other species might be allowed within reason. Regardless of profession, each player will start at the rank of Lieutenant, though higher rank can be gained in creation. Characters are intended to be bridge crew.

House Rules: The Fit trait is unavailable. Also, players will be asked, when Away Team missions are occurring, to temporarily play the 'Red Shirts' if their main characters are not on the mission; this is similar to Grog rules from the Ars Magica RPG. This is to give those players whose main characters are not on the mission some way to contribute (and so I don't have to come up with justification to send the senior crew on every away mission), and also to help flesh out the remaining crew members.

Themes: The themes to this series will be exploration and intrigue, though these may change during play. The crew will explore unknown space, while dealing with intrigue between coalition members and those outside who wish to destroy the coalition.

Media For Play: To be determined. Either chat-based or VOIP.

Captain America

2011-04-02T21:17:00.001-07:00

Captain America is a personal favorite as far as comic book heroes go, so I thought that he would make a good test character for this. First, a little history. Captain America, as a character, was created in 1941 for Timely Comics, by Joe Simon and comic legend Jack Kirby. It's somewhat ironic that Captain America, a tall, muscular, blond-haired, blue-eyed ubermensch, was created as a character that fought Nazis - and one of his creators, Jack Kirby, was Jewish. Captain America's kid sidekick, Bucky, was named after a childhood friend of Joe Simon. For a gallery of many people's favorite images of Captain America, you can go here. And now, the character.

Steve Rogers, in the Marvel Universe, was born on July 4th, 1917. He was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan, and his parents were Irish immigrants; after his father died when Steve was a child, he was raised by his mother. Steve's mother would later die of pneumonia when he was a teen, leaving him basically alone in the world. By the time World War 2 was starting, Steve was in his early 20s, working as an illustrator. He was a tall, skinny, not terribly healthy young man, but he was a patriot, and believed in the United States - so much so that he tried to enlist. He was rejected, though, on grounds of his poor physical fitness - but seeing the degree of commitment in this young man, General Chester Philips offered Steve a chance at a secret project called Operation: Rebirth. Rebirth was tasked with the creation of super-soldiers, and Steve was an ideal test subject - both because of his patriotism, and also because his condition as unfit for regular duty meant there would be no real loss to the military if the project went wrong.

After a rigorous selection process, Steve was chosen as the first test subject for the Super-Soldier serum by Dr. Abraham Erskine. The process involved injections, drinking of some part of the serum, and exposure to something called Vita-Rays, but at the end of the treatment, Steve Rogers had gone from being a scrawny, sickly young man to a man in the absolute peak of physical fitness. Despite the success, though, it was followed immediately by tragedy - a Nazi sleeper agent, seeing the serum's success, shot and killed Dr. Erskine, who had committed key parts of the serum's creation to his memory, meaning it could not be reproduced. Rogers chased the Nazi spy, but the Nazi died in the chase. With only Steve Rogers to show as a success of the project, the military decided to use Steve as a propaganda and counterintelligence agent - and so Steve is given a new uniform (designed from his own sketches), a shield, his new identity as Captain America, and a cover story as a clumsy private at Camp Lehigh in Virginia - which is where he first meets his sidekick, James Buchanan 'Bucky' Barnes, the camp's teenage mascot.

Bucky discovers Steve's secret identity, and offers to keep it secret if he can work as his sidekick, which Steve agrees to (though, depending on version of the story, Bucky may have been paired with Steve on purpose, to do the dirty work that Steve couldn't). Soon after, Steve meets President Roosevelt, who gives him a different shield, made of a light, nearly indestructible new alloy of steel and vibranium - his iconic circular shield, that he often uses as a thrown weapon. Captain America and Bucky then go overseas to fight the Nazis, teaming up with other superheroes (forming the original Invaders) and fighting a number of Nazi villains such as the Black Talon, Hangman, White Death, Baron Zemo - and his greatest foe, the Red Skull. It is on one such mission to destroy an experimental drone, armed with large amounts of explosives by Baron Zemo, that Captain America and Bucky are lost - as they hung on as the drone lifted off, they tried to defuse the explosives, and they managed to cause it to explode prematurely - blowing both off, and causing the world to assume they were dead.

Captain America, though, was blown into the freezing water, and due to his enhanced systems, survives to be frozen in a block of ice - and remains that way for decades, until he is eventually discovered floating in the North Atlantic by the group that would become the original Avengers. Once he is thawed out, his experience in combat and his leadership skills help him to become the leader of the Avengers, but he feels like a man out of his time - everyone he knew is either dead or decades older than he is, and he is wracked with guilt over the perceived death of his young sidekick. Still, though, he takes it upon himself to act as the leader and the conscience of the Avengers, and is a mentor and friend to many of the heroes of the Marvel Universe. Most recently, he discovered that Bucky didn't die, but had been recovered by Russians - and programmed to become a sleeper assassin, who had only recently begun to break from his programming.

After reuniting with his former sidekick, Captain America faced off against some of his oldest compatriots in the big Marvel event, Civil War - Captain America championed the heroes who felt that they should not be forced by the government to register and give up their secret identities, and had to oppose the leader of the pro-registration forces, his old friend Tony Stark - Iron Man. He fought the good fight, but eventually Captain America surrendered, and was being brought to trial for his actions when he was apparently assassinated. In reality, he was shunted out of step with time, so that his old foe, Red Skull, who had survived in one form or another, could transfer his consciousness into Steve Rogers' body. Steve Rogers was eventually brought back into regular time, his consciousness overpowering the Red Skull's, and he returned - to find out that, inspired by how his former partner had gone to such lengths to save him, Bucky had taken up the mantle of Captain America. After going on to help a coalition of heroes save Asgard - and possibly the world - from destruction at the hands of Norman Osborn, Steve Rogers is appointed to the position once occupied by old companion Nick Fury, and leaves Bucky with the mantle of Captain America.

Much of this is easily found out by looking up a history of Captain America online. So why is Captain America so important? In the Marvel Universe, he was one of the first heroes written, though others are placed earlier in the timeline of the universe. He is a charismatic leader, one who makes friends of virtually every hero he meets - he does, after all, become leader of the Avengers after being frozen for decades. He walks among heroes who can shake the earth, and at least one constant friend - Thor - is a god. Even though Captain America has no truly superhuman powers, though, he is seen as an equal, if not more. Why? Because, I think, he is a symbol. He wears the flag of the US, and champions the ideals of America, but seems called to something higher - as he says at one point, "I'm loyal to nothing, General...except the [American] Dream." He is loyal to his friends, and merciful to his enemies, and always tries to help those around him be better. He rises from essentially nothing - a poor son of immigrants - to become one fo the greatest names in the Marvel universe, fighting for truth, justice, and the American way.

One of my personal favorite Captain America stories takes place out of continuity, in a trade called Captain America: The Chosen. In it, it is revealed that, for whatever reason, the Super-Solder serum is failing, and rapidly, and so Captain America is dying. Even without his physical abilities, he wants to help, so he joins a remote-viewing project, using his background as an illustrator to help him visualize and draw targets and locations of terrorists and other villains. While doing so, he finds that he can actually project an image of himself - which at first he uses to try and confuse enemies, but then decides, as his condition progresses more rapidly, to appear to normal Americans - doctors, firefighters, and in particular, a soldier stationed in Afghanistan. It seems that Captain America's simple presence, even as a projection, makes people push themselves harder, and Captain America follows this soldier - and, when the soldier and his unit are trapped inside a cave with no easy way out and several injuries, Cap helps this soldier find a way out, using reserves of strength and will he didn't know he had. Meanwhile, in the lab where Captain America is dying, the President, hearing that one of the nation's greatest heroes is dying, comes to visit him on his deathbed - and is attacked by a terrorist agent lurking in the lab as part of the cleaning staff. With his last strength, Captain America throws his body between the terrorist and the President, and dies - but not before one last push through the project, causing people across the world to see him, inspiring them in a time of need.

Captain America is a man who gives everything for what he believes in. He inspires those around him through his actions, and even though he wears the flag, his sense of right and wrong knows no borders; even those of other nationalities, creeds, and faiths seem to feel the power of his beliefs. As Hercules says in Captain America #444, "On Olympus, we measure wisdom against Athena...speed against Hermes...power against Zeus. But we measure courage...against Captain America." He fights against impossible odds, at times; even as a man with no superpowers, he has fought against universe-threatening foes like Thanos, Kang the Conqueror, and Ultron. In a time where America is often seen as a bully, or worse, Captain America is a symbol of everything that America should be, and should work towards being. In short, Captain America is the ultimate symbol of hope - and the American Dream.

“Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole COUNTRY decides that something WRONG is something RIGHT. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: The requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or consequences. When the mob and the press and the WORLD tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole WORLD -- 'No, YOU move."”- Captain America

Closed

2011-01-22T06:55:00.000-08:00

Until further notice, I won't be adding to this blog due to lack of interest.

The Big Chair

2011-01-18T13:38:00.001-08:00

It's been a long time since I actually ran a game for a group. So long, in fact, that I have trouble remembering exactly when the last time was. I remember doing so for years in middle school, then in high school, and on into my undergrad years, but after that, things get a little fuzzy. And I know my head has often been in a bad place in the years since I got out of undergrad, and I even have a reasonable excuse for that. But I've got all these games that I have that I haven't played, and probably won't get a chance to play, unless I decide to try and make them happen. So I'm thinking that I should get back into the game.

The problem is, I want to try something new, and that has traditionally been a problem. The old favorite games - D&D and the various Storyteller games White Wolf makes - are old favorites for a reason; they're reasonably easy to grasp, and a lot of people know how to play them already. with something new, different, and possibly unusual, I have to not only come at the game with new ideas, but I also have to explain to whatever group I have what the system is, why it is cool and fun, and how to play with it.

Also, most of the people I know who I have gamed with in the past are people who live nowhere near me. While face-to-face gaming is vastly preferable in general (in large part because it becomes much easier to flake out on a meeting you don't have to physically attend), I'm not averse to online gaming; I've put various chat programs to good use in the past, and I'm fairly certain it can continue to work in the future, especially with all the advancements that keep happening. AIM chat is no longer the big thing in online gaming chat; now we have Skype, and virtual tabletops, and wikis, and Facebook. So I think that, since online gaming is possibly the easiest way to assemble a group of players who I know, have met, and have spoken to, even if it requires some scheduling to make happen.

The challenge, then, is finding people to subject themselves to such a game. I'm out of practice running games; like I said, I can't remember when the last one I actually got up and running happened, and while I used to be considered good, I don't know where my lack of practice and other problems have left me. Also, I want to try something new - new to me, that is; some people might have more experience in whatever I end up going with than others. I don't want to play D&D, in any iteration, or any of White Wolf's Storyteller games, however interesting. I'm looking for something I haven't done before, something that does something new.

Some of my more current ideas would be something along the lines of a FATE game, like the Dresden Files or Legends of Anglerre; the FATE system is one I like the look of, and seems to have a lot of potential. Eclipse Phase is high on the list, currently, as a game of futuristic transhuman conspiracy and horror; a bonus is that it was written under the Creative Commons license, so it is legal to download for free. Other games that have been going around in my head are things like Hellas; Rogue Trader; Shadowrun; something using the Cinematic Unisystem, like Buffy or Angel; some kind of superhero game; something in the Mass Effect universe, though likely not my own version, since it strays a bit too close to D&D; games using the One Roll Engine, like Reign or a version of Fallout I'm reading through; and I'm open to other suggestions.

If you have any interest in something like this, let me know, by whatever means you feel like; comment here, send me an e-mail, leave a note on my Facebook page, send me an IM, give me a call, hell, even tweet at me (my Twitter handle is, unsurprisingly, knightveritas). I have no interest in forcing people into playing a strange new game, but I am open to suggestion, discussion, and ideas, so please, let me know what you're thinking.

Simplifying the Buy-In

2011-01-04T22:59:00.000-08:00

So, as it may be obvious to anyone who has read a fair part of this blog, I have a lot of RPGs. Most of them, I have never played, and will probably never have a chance to play. Sometimes, this is just because of lack of players, or lack of interest on the part of players I do have, but sometimes it is something I think I can possibly do something about - the complications of the game itself. Some RPGs have these great ideas, that sound like a lot of fun to play with - but when you get into the system, especially the key part for new players - character creation - it becomes kind of a mess. That's where you lose people.

I take a lot of systems for granted, and most times, it's because I have a fair degree of familiarity with them. I've been playing D&D for almost 20 years now, in various incarnations, so I've got a pretty good idea on how it works (though 2nd Edition's THAC0 system still mystifies me at times). I've been using White Wolf's Storyteller System for quite a long time now, too, and so even the tougher games that use it have a fair degree of ease to me. But since I've used these systems, and many others, for so long, it's all become old hat to me. This makes me tend to often assume facts that are not in evidence when it comes to gaming - namely, that other people will see the systems the way I do.

The problem is, though, at least with trying to bring in new players - especially new players who are basically entirely new to the idea of tabletop RPGs - is that they aren't familiar with the system, and sometimes the most complex parts of the system are right up front in the character generation process. It's easy enough to say, for example, that D&D is essentially a d20-based system; it uses a 20-sided die for most conflict resolution, whether skill- or combat-based. But with character generation, you have to distribute points (or roll randomly) for attributes; pick skills; choose a class; choose feats that work, either mechanically or story-wise, with your character; choose powers for you character; choose equipment. Similarly, with the Storyteller System, most things are accomplished in-system by adding a stat + ability, rolling a number of 10-sided dice, and seeing how many reach or exceed the target number. But for character creation, first you need to pick a concept; then a Nature; then determine which type of supernatural/superpowered being you are; then often faction within that character type; then you have a pool of points for attributes, then another for abilities, then backgrounds, then powers, and finally, an entirely separate pool of points that can be used to add to just about anything.

Now, with a lot of practice, a good GM can guide a player through this, but it's still intimidating and sometimes difficult to work through. Even if you guide a new player through the process, there's a fair chance they won't really know what exactly happened. You can always create a pre-generated character for a new player, to use until they get used to the system, but then they aren't getting their character. So the ideal system to bring in new players, players who are unfamiliar with tabletop RPGs, is one that doesn't use a confusing character generation system - or thinking up some way to describe the system, and how to build a character, that breaks everything down into more digestible parts.

Personally, I could go for both solutions, but I often find that using simpler systems makes me a bit crazy, because I'm used to more complex systems - for gaming purposes, anyway. So I think I prefer method 2 - breaking down a more complex system into more manageable pieces, easier to explain. So, in at least a couple of instances, I have written out basic primers for games. Most recently was for a D&D game I was thinking about running (that never got off the ground because I am bad with scheduling); I tried to simplify the core ideas of 4th Edition D&D character generation to about 8 pages , typed out as a Word document. It needs a bit of updating, since some things have been added since then, but shrinking the basics of a 200+ page book down to about 10 pages seems like a pretty good job to me. I did something similar with the previous edition of D&D, too, though probably not as succinctly, and I'm thinking about doing this for the Storyteller System - though something like that would probably have to be modified for each specific Storyteller game.

I'm not exactly sure why this idea came to me when it did; maybe I was just looking for something to say about gaming and my personal experience. I don't claim any great expertise, but it's my blog, so I'll share what I know (or think I know) and what I'm thinking. After writing a long paper about complexity in academic writing, I felt this was something interesting, and something that bothered me; I've never liked the idea of losing a prospective new player, especially one who I know is very interested, enthusiastic, and creative, just because the character creation and general system introduction was too complex. So, if you're looking for something like this for a game you want to run, but think might be too big a buy-in for new players, feel free to ask me - I have a fair amount of free time, I'm familiar with virtually every system of every game I've gone through over the last year, and I can always use the practice. I'm not looking to break copyrights or infringe on trademarks, just try to make it easier to bring some new blood into the hobby.

(I take requests for blog topics, too, especially if it's something I think is cool, so suggestions, and comments, are always welcome.)

Rogue Trader, Part 2

2010-12-31T13:04:00.000-08:00

Back when I was in high school, in the dark ages f the mid-90s, I got into playing the miniatures wargame, Warhammer 40,000. A science-fiction wargame set int he grim darkness of the far future, there were any number of factions to play. Nominally on the good guys side were the Imperial Guard, the standard human armies of the tens of thousands of Imperial human worlds, and the Space Marines, essentially super-powered monk-knights with power armor, the elite of the elite, the warriors sent into the toughest fights to face the most terrifying foes. I was always fond of the Eldar, the 'space elves', looking to outrun the reach of the gods of Chaos and survive as a race.

Rogue Trader is one of three tabletop games set in the Warhammer 40,000 universe; the first was Dark Heresy, about acolytes of an Imperial Inquisitor doing their master's grunt work, trying to save the Imperium of humanity from heresy, aliens, and other assorted mischief. The third is Deathwatch, where you play part of a squad of the aforementioned Space Marines, committing commando raids and secretive operations into dangerous territory for the good of the Emperor. Rogue Trader, however, is a different animal altogether.

While the human Imperium in the 40k universe is generally portrayed as superstitious, xenophobic, and sometimes fanatical, Rogue Trader is the one of these that is not like the others. Rogue Traders are privileged traders, merchants, privateers and such that are given special Warrants - signed by the Emperor himself, supposedly - to go beyond the bounds of the Imperium, looking for ways to expand the grasp of humanity - and make themselves rich in the process. Think of Rogue Trader as Star Trek - but the ships are kilometers long, with crews in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, and while Rogue Traders do boldly go where no others have gone before, they don't do so just for the joy of exploration - they do so to make money. And because of their Warrant, they have carte blanche to do what they want - they can associate with proscribed alien races, attack planets, and defy the authority of other Imperium officials in pursuit of their job. This makes Rogue Traders, for the most part, a more free-wheeling, liberal group than other human of the Imperium - though that's not saying much.

Even the standard character types conform to the types of officers and characters you'd expect to see on a Star Trek bridge crew. FIrst, you have the Rogue Trader - head of the crew, the captain of the ship, bearer of the Warrant - the big cheese. Then you have the Arch-Militant - head of the ship's security forces, master of arms, general security officer and soldier. The Navigator - the man whose special talents allow him to navigate the hellish Warp, which allows mankind to travel between stars - is the navigation officer. The Astropath - who blinds himself to augment his psychic ability, which allows him to communicate at intergalactic distances - is the communications officer. The Explorator, a tech-priest who worships the Omnissiah, a technologically divine version of the Emperor, harbors all the secret and divine knowledge of forbidden technology - making him the equivalent of the science officer. The Seneschal, who handles logistics, commercial operations, and is generally the Rogue Trader's right hand, is the first officer. The Void Master, who has mastered one or more of the ship's systems, such as gunnery, the helm, the ship's sensors, or smaller craft, fills a number of roles.

In one of their newer supplements, they added options for players of Rogue Trader to play one of two alien species - a big deal in the 40k universe, since most humans fear anyone non-human, and even those humans who have been mutated by radiation or other problems. The Kroot are a race of alien mercenaries, who consume to corpses of their fallen foes - and who can use the DNA of their foes to alter future generations of Kroot. Though primitive, the Kroot are effective mercenaries, but the real surprise is the inclusion of Orks. In the 40k universe, Orks are the closest thing to a universal plague - they are born from fungi, grow larger through combat and confrontation, and fear nothing. They live to fight - and are something like a cross between an English soccer hooligan and a Terminator. Some can be pacified for short times with promises of combat, or transport to combat, or things to help them in combat, but they have no other joy in life but to fight.

Personally, I'm hoping that, in the future, Rogue Trader supplements add Eldar to the races that can ride along with a Rogue Trader - mostly because I always liked the Eldar, they were an interesting take on the whole idea of elves. I like Rogue Trader, even if I never get a chance to play it, because of the atmosphere of the 40k universe, the idea of being the command crew for a ship big enough to house a small city, and the way to game looks like it would run. Personally, I've always been fond of playing characters who hit, shoot, or otherwise destroy their enemies, but I could see myself getting into playing an Explorator Tech-Priest, or maybe a Void Master gunner or pilot. Any game that tempts me into playing outside my standard character type is one that I want to play, and Rogue Trader is pretty high up on that list.

Scion, Part 2

2010-12-30T09:22:00.000-08:00

Back in early November, I did my whole character creation thing for Scion, a game where you play the modern children of ancient gods. I'm looking at actually playing Scion for the first time in a long time now, so I thought I might come back to it. It doesn't hurt that the first Scion book is one of the few I was able to bring with me on 'vacation' to Florida over Christmas break.

I've been interested in mythology for a long time, probably since before middle school. Mostly, I focussed on the myths surrounding the Greek and Norse gods, because they are two of the most well-known Western mythological groups. I've also been into White Wolf as a game company for a long time - since high school, at the very least, where I ran a long-running game of Werewolf: the Apocalypse, as well as some other, shorter games, like Project Twilight. That means I've probably had about 15 years of experience with the Storyteller system - which is a little depressing personally, but not terribly relevant.

Bringing mythology together with the Storyteller system was a big deal for me when I first heard about it; I hadn't really thought about it before, but a game about modern mythic heros and demigods really hit a chord. Initially, however, after reading the books I wasn't too thrilled about the system. Looking at the way powers were divided - the personally focussed epic attributes, and the more wide-ranging divine powers - I thought the game wasn't really all that balanced.

Of course, after I thought about it for a while, I realized that was the point. There's no reason a Scion focussed on fertility god powers should be as effective in combat as a Scion of a war god. And even a Scion of a war god can choose to either focus on personal combat powers - in which case he'll take epic physical attributes - or on causing others to be better in combat, in which case he'll take powers in the War purview. Balance is not one of the key ideas of Scion, because mythologically, the gods were never balanced - they were each focussed on their own area.

The mechanics in some ares of Scion are a little crazy, yeah, but a lot of that only happens when you start getting to the higher power levels. Epic attributes, for example, grant automatic successes on certain types of rolls, and they increase geometrically - Epic Stat 1 gives 1 auto success, Epic Stat 2 gives 2, Epic Stat 3 gives 4, and so on. This is fine early on, while Scion is still played in the Hero stage, but near the end of Demigod or God, the geometric successes mean that someone with, say, Epic Dexterity 7 is essentially guaranteed to defeat someone who only has Epic Dexterity 6. That's because the person with Epic Dexterity 7 has twice the automatic successes of the person with Epic Dexterity 6. But this is easy enough to change by just making the automatic successes and such progress in a linear fashion - Epic Stat 3 gives 3 successes instead of 4, and Epic Stat 4 gives 4 successes instead of 8.

After that, there's only a couple of other problems with Scion, and some of them are only going to come up if a player knows the Storyteller system well and how to game it. Scion uses a stat called Legend, for example; it represents how well-known and powerful your character is, and you can't progress to the next power level - from Hero to Demigod, or Demigod to God, without Legend. Now, in theory, though the base level of Legend is 2, you can push it as high as 4 during character creation - and this means you only need a minimum of experience points to push it to 5, and thus Demigod level. But a character who does that is bypassing everything else, and the GM has an easy way to delay the switch to Demigod - the jump in levels requires a visitation by the Scion's divine parent, and a confirmation by them that the character is ready to move up in the world.

It seems that a lot of the mechanical problems of Scion can be solved - but in most cases, they can only be solved with a good GM who pays attention and players who try to follow a particular theme rather than trying to game the system. I know I've been guilty of that before, so I don't count myself out of that group, but I generally try to keep to the spirit of the game. So I am looking forward to being able to play Scion again in the near future, even if I am playing the combat monkey in a group full of characters who can likely lead my character along by the nose. Because half of the fun of gaming, at least for me, is the interaction with the group, and it'll be a crazy time in a group playing the children of gods.

Eclipse Phase

2010-12-25T18:35:00.000-08:00

It's been a while since my last entry, but in my defense, it's been busy - the end of the semester with papers due, the new expansion for World of Warcraft, and being down with my family in Florida for the holidays, away from most of my books - and the ones I brought, I've already done characters for. But now, after Christmas, I have at least a couple new games to enter, and tonight, I'll be doing one, called Eclipse Phase.

Eclipse Phase is a science fiction RPG, set a century or two into the future. As time went on, people developed greater and greater technology, and some even moved out into space to colonize and mine and develop there. Soon enough, seed AIs - AIs that could improve and learn on their own - were developed, and not long after, they got angry. They slowly started conflicts that spread into wars, and those wars began to consume the world - and even after humans realized it was these AIs, called TITANs - Total Information Tactical Awareness Networks - they still fought each others. When things looked worst and the TITANs were winning, people fled the earth in droves, both in human form and in digital uploads of their consciousness, and the TITANs followed - and then, for whatever reason, they disappeared through the Pandora Gates, moving into unknown areas of the universe.

Now, humans survive in forms that are often hard to see as human - they have moved into a phase of transhumanism. Minds can be transferred into new, genetically engineered - or entirely robotic - bodies. They can be stored digitally. They can be backed up, in case a body - called a morph - is killed. The mind may not even be human - it may be a carefully controlled AI or an uplifted animal. Humanity, lessened to half a billion from a population of over 8 billion, now lives among the stars, unable to return to an Earth war-torn, ecologically wrecked, and still infested with some TITAN constructs. Split into many nation-states, hypercorporations, and factions, with economies of both money and reputation, doing things as varied as exploration of planets, searching for alien artifacts, negotiating with the alien Factors, trying to reclaim the Earth, fighting for your favored faction, or trying to find out what the TITANs wanted and where they went, the characters of Eclipse Phase have their work cut out for them.

Eclipse Phase uses a percentile system, using 2d10 - one as the tens die, one as the single digit die; the aim is to roll under. For this character, I think I'll want to make an explorer-type character, because exploring this kind of setting sounds fun, and risky. Explorer will be my character concept, then. Next, I choose my Background, from a list provided; I'll make my character one of the first generation of Original Space Colonists; this means that when I get to skill selection, I will add +10 to either Pilot: Spacecraft or the Freefall skill, +10 to a Technical, Academic, or Profession skill of my choice, and then +20 to a Networking skill of my choice. Some backgrounds have a disadvantage, but not this one.

Next comes my choice of Faction; there are quite a few, but I have to choose one. I think the one that fits me best will be the Titanian faction, the faction of the Titanian Commonwealth's socialist cyberdemocracy. This gets me +10 to two Technical of Academic skills of my choice, and +20 to the Networking: Autonomists skill. As with backgrounds, factions can have disadvantages, but not this one. Now, I get to spend some points. There are 7 aptitudes: Cognition, Coordination, Intuition, Reflexes, Savvy, Somatics, and Willpower. I have 105 points to spread between them. For simplicity, I will put 15 in Cognition, Coordination, Reflexes, Savvy, and Somatics. I will put 10 points in Willpower, and then 20 in Intuition. I then gain my natural Language skill at 70 + my Intuition score; I'll take English, and so it will be rated at 90. I then start with a Moxie stat - a representation of my ability to face down challenges and overcome obstacles - of 1. I have 5,000 credits to purchase gear, and 50 Reputation Points to spread between the reputation networks of my choice - I'll put 20 points with Firewall, the default PC organization, and 30 points with the Research Network, a group of scientists, explorers, and researchers.

Now, I get to spend a lot more points - 1000, to be exact. I spend them to buy skills, Moxie, aptitude points, money, or reputation - as well as an initial body, or morph, to start in. It costs 1 points per skill point up to 60, so I'll start there. I'll take 30 points each in Academics: Astrosociology and Academics: Astrozoology, as well as Academics: Xenolinguistics - I'll designate these three as the targets for my background and faction skills, too. Then I need to take 400 points worth of active skills - those skills which require physical activity. I'll take 30 in Fray (fighting), and 20 points in Freefall. Then 40 in Freerunning (to help me get around on my own). Since I'm an explorer, I'll want a few points in Investigate; I'll spend 20 there. I'll spend 15 points in Kinesics, too. I want to be able to patch myself up, so I'll spend 25 in Medicine: Paramedic. I'll want to be able to find my way around, so I'll spend 40 points in Navigation, and 10 in Pilot: Spacecraft. I'll put 40 points in Perception, as well - nice to se what's going on most of the time, right? I'll put another 25 in Kinetic Weapons, so I can shoot at things a bit. Then I'll put 30 in Infiltration, so I can sneak around - why fight when you don't have to? I'll put 25 more in Pilot: Groundcraft, so I can make my way around on the ground, 40 in Scrounging, and spend my last 40 of the 400 with 30 in Hardware: Groundcraft and 10 in Climbing.

I'll spend 60 points to increase my Moxie by 4, up to 5. Then 50 more, to add 5 points to Somatics, to raise it to 20. I'll reserve 50 points for my morph. This leaves me with 365 points. Now, while I had to spend 400 points on physical skills, I need to spend 300 on Knowledge skills. I've already spent 90, so I have 210 left. I'll start with Interests: Gatecrashing (I want to know all I can about the mysterious Pandora Gates) at 40. I'll also take Interests: Sci-Fi Aliens at 40. Then I'll put 20 in Networking: Firewall, and 20 in Networking: Autonomists. Then I'll put 30 each in Profession: First Contact, Profession: Surveying, and Profession: Smuggling Tricks (sometimes, you just have to make ends meet). That's all my Knowledge skills, but I'll spend a few more. I'll put 20 in Language: Mandarin, and 20 more in Networking: Scientists, and 30 in Academics: Memetics. I have 70 points left; I'll spend 50 to get both of my current reputations up to 50, and the last 20 on the Fast Learner trait (I improve skills and learn new ones in half the time it normally takes) and Situational Awareness (I maintain continuous partial awareness of my surroundings, making me hard to distract).

Now, with my 50 remaining points, I choose my morph; personally, I like the Olympian morph - it's kind of like having your body be like Captain America. It has a decent Durability and Wound Threshold, and gives me +5 Coordination, +5 Reflexes, +10 to Somatics, and +5 to Willpower. It comes with the Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, and Cortical Stack implants This actually only costs me 40 points, but I'll keep the last 10 points for a rainy day.

Then I choose my gear, using my 5,000 starting credits. For armor, I'll buy a basic VacSuit, and for a weapon I'll buy a Kinetic Assault Rifle. I'll buy a few more implants for my morph - the Adrenal Boost, Direction Sense, Enhanced Vision, Medichines, Oxygen Reserve, and Temperature Tolerance. these will help me as an explorer to survive harsh environments, and sometimes harsh people. Then I'll buy an assortment of other gear - Backup Insurance for 1 month (so I can get a new body if I die suddenly), Breadcrumb Positioning System (like GPS, but in SPACE!), a Diamond Axe, Electrogravity Net, Electronic Rope (like rope, but with power!), a knife, portable lidar/radar system, radio booster, shelter dome (fancy tent), spindle with spindle climber, tactical network software, traction pads, and an ultitool (Leatherman x Swiss Army Knife + space tools).

Finally, I choose motivations. These are three ideologies, goals, or other reasons I have to do what I do; whether I follow the ideology of a cyberdemocracy, subscribe to hypercapitalism, or pursue knowledge of nano-ecology. The book has a list, but also encourages you to find your own; for this, I'll go with the book's list, and choose Alien Contact, Exploration, and Nano-Ecology. And so, at the end, my character will look like this:

Pandion

Titanian Explorer

Background: Original Space Colonist

Faction: Titanian

Morph: Olympian

Motivations: Alien Contact + Exploration + Nano-Ecology

Aptitudes

COG 15

COO 20

INT 20

REF 20

SAV 15

SOM 30

WIL 15

Stats

Moxie 5

LUC

WT 8

DUR 40

DR 60

INIT 70 (80)

SPD 1

Skills

Academics: Astrosociology 55

Academics: Astrozoology 55

Academics: Xenolinguistics 55

Academics: Memetics 45

Climbing 40

Fray 45

Free Fall 35

Freerunning 70

Hardware: Groundcraft 45

Infiltration 50

Interests: Gatecrashing 55

Interests: Sci-Fi Aliens 55

Investigation 40

Kinesics 30

Kinetic Weapons 45

Language: English 90

Language: Mandarin 40

Medicine: Paramedic 40

Navigation 60

Networking: Autonomists 55

Networking: Firewall 45

Networking: Scientists 35

Perception 60

Pilot: Groundcraft 40

Pilot: Spacecraft 35

Profession: First Contact 45

Profession: Surveying 45

Profession: Smuggling Tricks 45

Protocol 25

Scrounging 60

Traits

Fast Learner

Situational Awareness

Rep

Firewall: 50

Research Network Associates 50

Equipment

Armor: VacSuit

Weapon: Kinetic Assault Rifle

Implants: Adrenal Boost, Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Direction Sense, Enhanced Vision, Medichines, Oxygen Reserve, Temperature Tolerance

Gear: Backup Insurance (1 month), Breadcrumb Positioning System, Diamond Ax, Electrogravitic Net, Electronic Rope, Knife, Portable Lidar/Radar Sensor System, Radio Booster, Shelter Dome, Specimen Container, Spindle with Spinlde Climber, Tactical Network Software, Traction Pads, Ultitool

Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay, 2nd Edition

2010-12-02T10:30:00.000-08:00

Sorry for the delay; between Thanksgiving, the imminent expansion of world of Warcraft, and finishing up schoolwork for the semester, life has been pretty crazy lately. On the upside, for anyone who reads this, I seem to have an additional copy of the Hellas RPG basic book; let me know if you want it, because it'll go to the first person who asks.

On to the game for today. Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay is, like Rogue Trader, based on a big wargaming property owned by games Workshop, though WFRP is based on their fantasy game, Warhammer Fantasy Battles. It takes place in a world that is in continuous upheaval; dark elves assault the ancient kingdom of the high elves, dwarves are under continuous siege from orcs and goblins, and the great human empire, modeled largely on the provinces of medieval Germany, must deal with many threats - undead at their borders, orcs and goblins besieging their dwarven allies, skaven (evil rat-men) under their feet, and the insidious forces of the Chaos gods all around and within. The characters in WFRP don't start out as great heroes, just people in many normal walks of life; heralds, valets, outlaws, mercenaries, rat-catchers, and many others. They fight against the forces of evil, or join them, as they see fit. It's nto high fantasy, but more grim, gritty fantasy roleplaying; there are few magic swords here, btu there is the very real possibility that you will end up dead in a ditch, or converted and mutated by Chaos. But it's all a part of survival in the Warhammer world.

For character generation, I start with race. I have four choices; I can be a human, a proud citizen of the Empire; a dwarf, an ally to the humans, in their lands for trading, fighting, or both; a wood elf, comign into human areas looking for aid against the creatures that invade the forests; or a halfling, a race much like the hobbits if they had been taken over by humans and didn't care. I think I'll go with human, as it is the standard. This gives me the skills Common Knowledge (The Empire), Gossip, and Speak Language (Reikspiel), as well as two random Talents; I get night Vision and Hardy. After that, I generate my characteristics, which are Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Willpower, and Fellowship; as a human, all of these are determined by a roll of 2d10+20. I end up with, in order, 28, 33, 25, 34, 30, 22, 37, and 24. I have 1 Attack, and have 11 Wounds. My Strength Bonus is 2, my Toughness Bonus is 3, my Movement is 4, and I start with 3 Fate points.

Next, I get to determine my profession. There are 60 choices, though some are only for certain races, and I can either determine this randomly, or choose one by myself. I think I'll just choose for myself, and I'll pick a Profession that is a classic in Warhammer Fantasy Roleplaying - the Rat Catcher. As a Rat Catcher, I gain the skills Animal Care, Animal Trainer, Concealment, Perception, Search, Set Trap, and Silent Move. As Talents, I gain Resistance to Disease, Resistance to Poison, Specialist Weapon Group (Sling), and Tunnel Rat. I also gain the profession's starting equipment: a Sling with ammunition, 4 Animal Traps, a Pole with 1d10 dead rats, and a Small but Vicious Dog. As my first career, I get one free advance; I'll use it to add 5 to my Agility. Also, when I finish this career track, my choices of new careers to enter are: Bone Picker, Cat Burgalr, Grave Robber, Jailer, Shieldbreaker, and Thief. It seems I am quite the low-life, but then, I do spend my days wandering in the sewers killing rats. My final character looks like:

Johan
Race: Human
Current Career: Rat Catcher
Previous Careers: None

Age: 25
Eye Color: Brown
Hair Color: Copper
Weight: 150 lbs.
Height: 5' 10"
Star sign: The Gloaming
Birthplace: Middenland

WS 28, BS 34, S 25, T 34, Ag 35, Int 22, WP 37, Fel 24

A1, W 11, SB 2, TB 3, M 4, Mag 0, IP 0, FP 3

Skills: Animal Care, Animal Training, Common Knowledge (The Empire), Concealment, Gossip, Perception, Search, Set Trap, Silent Move, Speak Language (Reikspiel)

Talents: Hardy, Night Vision, Resistance to Disease, Resistance to Poison, Specialist Weapon Group (Sling), and Tunnel Rat

Trappings: Sling with ammunition, 4 Animal Traps, Pole with 1d10 dead rats, Small but Vicious Dog

And now I am ready to go out in the world, likely to be killed horribly. Unless I fight rats, that is.

The Dresden Files RPG

2010-11-23T13:37:00.000-08:00

I'm a big fan of the Dresden Files series by Jim Butcher; how could I not like a series of books written in a hard-boiled detective noir style, except having them be about a wizard instead? So I was very happy when the Dresden Files RPG, having been in the works for a couple years, finally came out earlier this year. It runs on the FATE system (which can be found, for free, in a slightly earlier iteration at the Evil Hat website) , which is a very narrativist system; instead of focusing on hit points and powers and minutiae, it focuses instead on the characters and the special things about them.

One of the big things abotu the system are the Aspects; every character has some. The Aspects are chosen and created for each character in a way that works with the character, and each Aspect helps to do something - though whether that somethign is positive or negative for the character is debatable. A character who's a cabbie, for instance, might have the Aspect 'You'd Better Buckle Up'; this might help the character while driving in a high-speed chase scenario, but might also be bad when driving regularly. A character with the Aspect 'High Stakes Gambler' might be good at gambling, but when he or she loses, it will be a big loss. They can both help and complicate your character's life, and so they're an important part of the FATE system.

Being a Dresden Files game, characters can be regular humans, or they can be magically gifted, divinely inspired, or not human at all. The power level of the game determines how powerful you can be; depending on the starting level, your character will have a varying pool of what are called 'refresh' points, and those are usedto purchase either supernatural powers, templates, or simply useful talents and tricks. This is important, both because any refresh points you don't spend at character creation will be turned into Fate points (which let you change a situation in your favor), and because you always have to keep at least one refresh unspent - it reflects your free will and ability to act on your own. Without any refresh, you become a pawn of your superiors, or simply a slave to your own desires, and lose the ability to act freely - and thus be a PC.

I'll build a character assuming a setting something liek that of the Dresden Files - an urban setting, with some kind of entrenched supernatural power around. What I want to build is, essentially, an Einherjar - one of the honored dead of Valhalla, sent back to the mortal plane by Odin to watch and see what is going on, and whether or not he should be taking more of an interest in things. First, I have to choose a High Concept; this could be somethign relating to my job, something relating to my service to Odin, or a combination of several things; I'll make my Hich Concept 'Honored Dead Man Walking'. Sort of on the nose, but it works. After that, I need to choose a Trouble, somethign that complicates my (un)life with my High Concept. I'll go with 'Out of His Time'; my character, as a long-dead Einherjar, isn't as used to the modern world as he could be, and it causes troubles for him.

Next, I go through a series of phases to develop my character. First, there is 'Where did you come from?', also known as the background. My character will have been a warrior chosen to go to Valhalla, and then, long after, chosen to return to the mortal world to look out for Odin's interests; I have to choose an aspect for this phase, something relating to my background - I'll go with Mortal Wound Scar, the scar from the wound that killed him; hard to explain, but a mark of his current supernatural nature. Next, there is the rising conflict phase, or 'What Shaped You?' Being that my character is a man who died in battle, I'll go with 'Death is only the beginning' sure, it's from The Mummy, but in this guy's case it's true. Then, I move on to the story phase, or 'What was your first adventure?' As a guy who goes on to be sent out as an agent, I'll set it up so that his first adventure was a while ago, when he was sent out as an agent to take care of a problem for Odin. It wasn an ugly situation, but he was the right man, so I'll make his aspect here 'The right man in the wrong place'. The final two phases are times when my character would have 'guest starred' in another PC's stories, so I'll skip those for now, unless somebody has an idea for those; an example from the Dresden Files RPG book has Harry Dresden starring in Karrin Murphy's case, Restoration, where Harry gets in a fight with a troll and trades quips with it, leading the example player to give Harry the aspect 'Epic Wiseass'.

For the mechanical parts of my character, I need to spend refresh points and skill points; I'll start at the Chest-Deep power level, which gives me 8 refresh and 30 skill points. As an Einherjar, I'll take the Emissary of Power template, which lets me choose supernatural powers that would fit with my status. I don't see an Einherjar throwing spells around, but his somewhat hazy status between life and death grants him some benefits - I'll go with Inhuman Speed, Inhuman Strength, and Supernatural Recovery (which True Magic can negate); this makes my character somewhat stronger and faster than an average human, and lets me recover from wounds quickly and exert myself for truly inhuman amounts of time. This will cost me 7 refresh, so that's it for that category. With 30 points, I can get 2 skills each at Superb, Great, Good, Fair, and Average levels. I'll take Weapons and Endurance at Superb; I can dish hits out and take them well. I'll put Fists and Might at Great; I'm pretty good even without a weapon, and Im pretty strong. I'll take Alertness and Intimidation at Good, so it's hard to catch me off-guard and I'm scary when I want to be. At Fair, I'll take Lore and Athletics; I've picked up some odd knowledge being a dead guy for so long, and I'm still pretty spry. Finally, at Average I'll take Conviction and Survival; I'm mentally sound, and I know something about surviving in the wild, though I haven't done so in a long time. So, in the end, my character will look like:

Erik Grimson

Aspects
Honored Dead Man Walking
Out Of His Time
Mortal Wound Scar
Death Is Only The Beginning
Right Man In The Wrong Place

Skills
Superb: Weapons, Endurance
Great: Fists, Might
Good: Alertness, Intimidate
Fair: Lore, Athletics
Average: Conviction, Survival

Stress
Physical (based on Endurance): 4
Mental (Based on Conviction): 3
Social (Based on Presence): 2

Stunts & Powers
Inhuman Speed (Alertness +4 for initiative purposes, Athletics checks at +1, remove -1 penalty for moving an acting)
Inhuman Strength (+3 Might when lifting or breaking things, +1 Might when grappling, +2 damage when using attacks that rely on muscular force)
Supernatural Recovery (recover from all injuries with time, recover from physical injuries as if they were of lesser severity, other skills never restricted from lack of rest, clear away minor injuries twice a scene)

Base Refresh level: 8
Adjusted refresh level: 1

this is the first character I've made for this game, so while I hope it is correct, I welcome any spotting of errors.

Heroquest

2010-11-20T20:29:00.001-08:00

After a couple days off to deal with non-internet life, I have returned to continue my quest. Today's game is, as the title says, Heroquest, designed by Robin Laws and Greg Stafford. I don't have the most recent edition of Heroquest handy, so I'll use the second edition, which uses the world of Glorantha as the default setting. I could try to explain, but the Wikipedia article on Glorantha says it better, so I'll quote:

"In Glorantha, magic operates from the everyday level of prayers and charms to the creation and maintenance of the world. Heroes make their way in the world, and may also venture into metaphysical realms to gain knowledge and power, at the risk of body and soul. In the more recent material competing magical outlooks, such as theism, shamanism and mysticism, exist to explain the world. Within each metaphysical system, adherents may also compete - such as when theistic worshipers of rival gods battle each other. The world is flat, with a dome-like sky, and it has been shaped in large and small ways by the mythic actions of the gods. The 'historical' world of Glorantha is in a more or less fallen state, having recovered only partially from a universal battle against Chaos in the mythic Godtime.

Humans are the dominant race, but other sentient beings abound. Some, such as the mystic dragonewts, are unique to Glorantha. Familiar nonhuman races, such as elves and dwarves, are distinct from their common, Tolkienesque portrayals."

Heroquest itself is a very narrativist game; unlike some RPGs that rely of knowledge of the system or rules, memorization, or a talent for math, Heroquest rewards things like creative improvisation, shared storytelling, and a proactive group of players. It comes with three typical methods of character creation: with the Prose method, I write about 100 words on my character, and using those 100 words, I pick out certain keywords to use for my skills and abilities. With the List method, I choose a set of keywords for my character, then choose up to ten additional abilities and up to 3 character flaws. Finally, there's the As-You-Go method, where you start with essentially a blank sheet, and make up your character as the session progresses. Since the first method would be difficult here, and the third method would be impossible for this blog, I'll go with the List method.

First, as a Heroquest character in Glorantha, I have to choose several keywords: an occupation keyword, a homeland keyword, whether or not I take my homeland's religion keyword, and a magic keyword - either for specific magic talent, or simply for common magic. I think I'll go with the Warrior occupation, which is the occupation of a warrior from a somewhat barbaric or 'uncivilized' culture, because I want to take the Heortling homeland keyword, as the Heortlings are the proto-Scandinavians of Glorantha. They have a specialized religion keyword, the Storm Pantheon, which I think I'll take as well; as for my magic keyword, I'll just go with common magic. That covers my keywords; with each keyword will come a number of abilities that I know because of that keyword. Now I have ten choices that I can use for abilities, followers, or special possessions. I think I'll take a polar bear-skin cloak that always keeps me warm, I'll join the cult of the warrior (and adventure) god Destor as an initiate, the Hardy ability, the Hold Drink ability, the History and Singing abilities, Brawling, the Know Customs of Strangers ability, Axe and Shield Fighting, and Speak Grazer. I'm thinking of my Heortling Warrior as someone like Herger the Joyous in the movie 13th Warrior, a warrior but also something of a skald and historian, with knowledge of other people. So, that said, my character, when filled out, will look like this:

Asborn the Able

Keywords
Homeland: Heortlings 17
Occupation: Warrior 17
Magic: Humakt 17
Common Magic 17

Skills
Heortling: Dragon Pass Geography 17, Farming 17, Heortling Customs 17, Speak Sartarite 17, Walk with Snowshoes 17, Wilderness Survival 17, Spear and Shield Combat 17
Warrior: Endurance 17, Guard Camp 17, Know Lunar Tactics 17, Know Local Area 17, Listen 17, Sword Fighting 17, Sling Fighting 17, Recognize Fighting Style 17, Recognize Foe 17, Ride 17, Scout 17
Storm Pantheon: Know Storm Pantheon Myths 17
Other: Hardy 13, Hold Drink 13, History 13, Singing 13, Brawling 13, Know Customs of Strangers 13, Axe and Shield Fighting 13, Speak Grazer 13

Relationships
Love Family 17
Revere Ancestors 17
Loyal to Clan 17
Worship Storm Pantheon 17
Member of Destor Cult 17

Magical Abilities
Common Magic 17
Destor: Overbear Foe 17, Burst of Speed 17, Sunset Leap 17, Call Clouds 17
Polar Bear Warmth Cloak 13

Personality
Active 17
Curious 17
Wanderlust 17
Boastful 17
Brave 17
Determined 17
Fear Dragons 17
Hate Chaos 17
Hate Lunars 17

Possessions & Wealth
Standard of Living: Common
Wealth 13
Weapons (sword, spear, axe)
Medium armor and shield
Strong horse 12M

Grimm

2010-11-16T19:45:00.001-08:00

Grimm is a game about fairy tales, which you might have gathered from the title; many of the fairy tales that a character might encounter are straight out of Grimm's tales. What's interesting about Grimm, though, is who you play; rather than playing an average adventurer looking to make a fortune or fame off of the stuff of fairy tales, you play a child, probably around 12-13 years old, that has somehow managed to step into the world of fairy tales, and must team up with other children to survive and get home. It's a fun idea, though probably one not a lot of players would like - I know a number of people who wouldn't want to relive those years of their lives again. But it is a cool idea, which is why I ended up buying the game; it's made by Fantasy Flight Games, who has made a number of very cool products.

OK, as a Grimm character, I have a few choices to make. First, I have to pick an Archetype for my character to belong to; my choices are The Bully, The Dreamer, The Jock, The Nerd, The Normal Kid, The Outcast, and The Popular Kid. The Archetyoe I pick determines what abilities I start with and at what level, as well as giving me a special archetype bonus and weakness, as well as a list of things I can gain as I progress. I think I'll choose the Archetype that would have fit me most closely at that age, and go with Dreamer. Dreamers are the kids with their heads int he clouds, always thinking up some col new story or playing with a new idea, often ignoring what happens around them for the things in their head. In Grimm, all of that suddenly becomes real, and so they have a bit of an advantage there. The Specialty of Dreamers is that they roll an extra die on all initial tests of Imagination; their Flaw is that they take a -1 to all tests made against charms, illusion, or other mind-altering effects; and their initial Archetype Ability is called I Think I Can - I can choose two iconic Core abilities, one of which must be Imagination, or I can choose Imagination twice, meaning that any time I generate something real with the power of my imagination, it is more powerful. I think I'll go with that.

There are three categories of abilities - Core, Playground, and Study - and each ability has a grade. As a Dreamer, my Core abilities start as: Cool 1st Grade, Pluck 1st Grade, Imagination 4th Grade, Luck 2nd Grade, and Muscle 1st Grade. My Playground abilities start as: Hide 2nd Grade, Seek 4th Grade, Scamper 2nd Grade, Scrap 1st Grade, and Throw 2nd Grade. Finally, my Study abilities are: 4-H 1st Grade, Book Learning 2nd Grade, Boy Scouts 1st Grade, Gaming 3rd Grade, Home Ec 1st Grade. I have no Grade in the Study abilities of Country Club, Industrial Arts, or Juvie. I get 8 points to increase these abilities; Core abilities cost 3, Playground cost 2, and Study cost 1. I think I'll put another grade in Pluck, another grade in Scrap, 2 grades in Boy Scouts, and 1 in Book Learning.

Finally, I get a choice of Talents; I get one at character creation, and may choose an Origin Talent as well. Talents allow for a bit of customization and a unique feel to your character. After looking through the Origin Talents, I think I'll pass on them, leaving me with just my initial Talent. After looking through my options, I think I'll go with Hawk-Eyed; this gives me a +2 advantage on all Seek tests to notice or find small or hidden things. It sounds like it could come in handy. So, aside from some fleshing out, at the end my character looks like this:

Tommy Taylor
Shape: Person-shaped
Stature: Kid-sized
Speed: Average

Dreamer
Dreamer Skills: +1 on initial Imagination tests, -1 to all charm/illusion/mind-affecting tests, I Think I Can

Core Abilities: Cool 1st, Pluck 2nd, Imagination 4th, Luck 2nd, Muscle 1st
Playground Abilities: Hide 2nd, Seek 4th, Scamper 2nd, Scrap 2nd, Throw 2nd
Study Abilities: 4-h 1st, Book Learning 3rd, Boy Scouts 3rd, Gaming 3rd, Home Ec 1st

Talent: Hawk-Eyed

Big Eyes, Small Mouth

2010-11-15T19:43:00.000-08:00

Big Eyes, Small Mouth is a roleplaying game with a somewhat generic system that tends towards the anime genre. From the magical girl series to the Robotech/Gundam ripoff, Big Eyes, Small Mouth (or BESM for short) can handle just about anything. In a pinch, it's a decent universal system, too, though it's always been a little too loose for my tastes. In any case, my preferences are irrelevant, as I have been challenged to make a character, and as a gentleman , I must accept.

However offensive, I have been challenged to create that most elusive of characters, the Lesbian Stripper Ninja. I have 350 character points to accomplish this. First, I distribute points to Stats; there are three Stats, Body, Mind, and Soul. The game recommends that I spend 180 of my points on Stats, so I will spend 70 to give myself a Body of 7, 60 to give myself a Soul of 6, and 50 to give myself a Mind of 5. This leaves me 170 points to spend on Attributes. I'll spend 20 points to gain 2 ranks of Attack Combat Mastery (I'm good at attacking), 10 points for 1 rank of Defence Combat Mastery (I can play for the defence, too), 4 points for Heightened Awareness (my senses are tingling), 15 points for Items (my ninja gear, weapons and such; stripper pole optional), 4 points for 2 ranks in Jumping (because ninjas jump like kangaroos), 10 points for Massive Damage (I do l33t damage), 12 points for 4 ranks in the Acrobatics skill, 4 points for 2 ranks in the Burglary skill, 6 points for 3 ranks in Climbing, 3 points for 3 ranks for Controlled Breathing skills, 6 points for 2 ranks in Intimidation, 4 points for 2 ranks in the Occult skill, 3 points for 3 ranks in the Poisons skill, 6 points for 3 ranks in the Sleight of Hand skill, 12 points for 4 ranks of the Stealth skill, 4 points for 4 ranks in the Stripping skill (I am, after all, a stripper), 3 points for 3 ranks of the Urban Tracking skill, 12 points for 6 forms of Special Movement (Balance, Cat-Like, Fast, Light-Footed, Untrackable, and Wall-Bouncing), 20 points for the Dynamic Power attribute (to represent my array of mystical ninja tricks), and 22 points for 11 Combat Techniques (Blind-Fighting, Blind Shooting, Brutal 2, Concealment, Critical Strike, Lethal Blow, Lightning Reflexes 2, Precise Aim, and Portable Armory).

Well, after that laundry list of Attributes, I have now spent 360 points - so now I need to take 10 points of Defects to even things out. Being a lesbian, I will take 3 points of Guy Magnet - it will be extremely uncomfortable to be mobbed by hordes of single men. I will then take 6 points of the Ism Defect; as a lesbian stripper, I must endure extreme sexism from the macho boy's club that is the ninja world. Finally, I'll take 1 point in Easily Distracted. After that, all that is left is to calculate derived values. First, my Combat Value is equal to Body + Mind + Soul divided by 3; this leaves me with 6. My Attack Combat Value is 6 +2 for my ranks in Attack Combat Mastery; similarly, my Defence Combat Value is 7. My Damage Multiplier is 5, +1 for my level of Massive Damage. My Health Points are equal to Body + Soul x 5, so for me, 65. My Energy Points (for using things like my Dynamic ninja powers) is equal to Mind + Soul x5, or 55 for me. Shock Value, the point at which my loss of Health Points will stun me, is equal to max HP divided by 5, or 13 for me. So, the final character, bizarre though she is, looks like this:

Yono Oko
Lesbian Stripper Ninja
Size: Medium
Points: 350

Body 7
Soul 6
Mind 5

Attack Combat Value 7
Defence Combat Value 6
Damage Multiplier 6
Health Points 65
Shock Value 13
Energy Points 55

Attack Combat Mastery 2
Defence Combat Mastery 1
Heightened Awareness 2
Jumping 2
Item (Various Equipment, 15 points)
Massive Damage 1
Skill: Acrobatics 4
Skill: Burglary 2
Skill: Climbing 3
Skill: Controlled Breathing 3
Skill: Intimidation 3
Skill: Occult 2
Skill: Poisons 3
Skill: Sleight of Hand 3
Skill: Stealth 4
Skill: Stripping 4
Skill: Urban Tracking 3
Special Movement (Balance, Cat-Like, Fast, Light-Footed, Untrackable, Wall-Bouncing)
Dynamic Powers (Ninja Tricks)
Combat Techniques (Blind-Fighting, Blind Shooting, Brutal 2, Concealment, Critical Strike, Lethal Blow, Lightning Reflexes 2, Precise Aim, Portable Armory)

(Yes, I feel horribly embarrassed, but I was challenged. Don't judge me.)

Trinity

2010-11-14T20:47:00.000-08:00

Well, I got bored, so I came back with today's character creation entry. It is Trinity, the third in a trilogy of EGPs White Wolf made about superheroes in various stages. Trinity is about science-ficiton superheroes in space; technically, Psions, or people who have the ability to manipulate various forces with their minds alone. In the timeline of Trinity, after the Aberrant game, in 2049, Aberrants grow to be such a power that the UN declares war on them and it is a messy war. They destroy Jerusalem in 2051, and in 2061, a growing Chinese space fleet threatened to destroy the entire planet if the Aberrants didn't surrender. They didn't surrender, but they did leave the Earth - though they vowed to return. The Earth forces worked for 40 years to develop a means to combat the Aberrants, and they finally came up with the Psions - first eight individuals, who would later be the basis for the 8 psion orders. They would be humanity's defense against the Aberrant threat, and against any alien life humans might encounter in their journey into space. So now, it is 2120, and the Psion orders have been fully created; rumors of Aberrants returning, in small groups as superpowered terrorist cells, abound. You are a member of one of the Psion orders - can you save humanity's future?

As a White Wolf game, Trinity uses the Storyteller system. Yes, I know, it's tiring to see the same system over and over, but I am almost positive this is my last Storyteller game, so bear with me. As a first step, I'll make my character's concept be Philosopher; he's something of an idealist at heart, believing man can transcend its nature to become something better. His nature will be Explorer, but of a more internal nature than external. Then I choose an Aptitude, a psionic capability for one of the six know Aptitudes: Biokinesis, Clairsentience, Electrokinesis, Psychokinesis, Telepathy, and Vitakinesis. As a philosopher of humanity and its limits, I'll go with Biokinesis - manipulation of his own body and cellular structure. I'll leave his Allegiance as the standard Biokinetic one, the Norca order, who train most biokinetics.

After that, I move on to mechanics. Like other Storyteller games, I have three attribute categories - Physical, Mental, and Social - and a point spread of 7/5/3. I'll put Mental first this time, and put two points each in Perception and Wits, with 3 in Intelligence. Physical will come next, with 1 point in Strength and 2 points each in Dexterity and Stamina. Finally I have Social, where I'll put one point each in Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance. Then I move on to Abilities; I have ten points to put in the standard Norca grouping (Athletics, Brawl or Martial Arts, Intrusion, Melee, Stealth, and Savvy), and 13 points to spend everywhere else. I'll put two points each in Athletics, Martial Arts, Intrusion, Stealth, and Savvy; I'll then put three points each in Awareness, Investigation, Academics, and Science, with 1 point left over for Meditation. I then have 7 points in Backgrounds to spend; I'll put two in Cipher to make me hard to pin down, two in Citizenship to give me three separate nations to call home, and 3 in Device - this will let me pick up a very nice set of armor, a set of Bioweave Armor.

Next, I move into the actual powers of my Aptitude. Biokinesis has three branches: Adaptation (which lets me adapt my body to surroundings, even hostile and/or extraterrestrial ones), Psychomorphing (lets me explore the inner functions and modifications of my own body), and Transmogrify (which lets me alter myself on a cellular level to change my appearance). I have three points to spend here, though I automatically start with the Biokinesis standard ability, Biosense (which lets me perceive the presence of nearby living beings, even if I can't see them). I think Psychomorphing fits my stated concept est, so I'll put two points there; this gives me access to the Sense Biokinesis power (lets me tell whether or not a given subject has any biokinetic augmentation or manipulation) and Bioshift (this lets me shift my Physical Attribute points around temporarily; if I needed some quick Strength, for example, I could shift my points in Dexterity and Stamina over, giving me a Strength of 6). My final point will go into Adaptation, to give me the Metabolic Efficiency power (which lets me ignore the effects of poisons or toxins).

Finally, I get to the finishing touches. My Willpower begins at a rating of 5, which is nice. My Psi, the rating of my character's psionic capacity, is Stamina + Wits + Charisma, divided by two; in my case, this gives me a starting Psi of 4. My Initiative is equal to my Dexterity + Wits, so 6. And then I get 15 bonus points to spend. This will go quickly; I want to buy another point of Psi, to put me at 5; this costs 5 points. Then I want to buy another point of Strength for 5 points, and a point of Wits for 5 points. Since I added a point of Wits, my beginning Psi, without the bonus point, is 5, which means I now start with 6. So the final character looks like this:

Jonas
Concept: Philosopher Nature: Explorer
Aptitude: Biokinesis Allegiance: Norca
Attributes
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 3, Stamina 3
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 4, Wits 4
Social: Charisma 2, Manipulation 2, Appearance 2

Abilities
Athletics 2, Martial Arts 2, Intrusion 2, Stealth 2, Savvy 2, Awareness 3, Investigation 3, Academics 3, Science 3, Meditation 1

Backgrounds
Cipher 2
Citizenship 2
Devices 3 (Bioweave Armor)

Biokinesis
Biosense
Psychomorph 2 (Sense Biokinesis, Bioshift)
Adaptation 1 (Metabolic Efficiency)

Willpower 5
Initiative 6
Psi 6

Doom & Gloom

2010-11-14T16:20:00.000-08:00

Since I can't seem to bring myself to make an entry for today, at least not one in my series of character creation, I just thought I'd vent for a moment. I have all these RPGs; my count comes to 48, and those are just the ones within easy reach of my computer. Of those 48, I have played a grand total of 6 : D&D, Scion, Exalted, Big Eyes Small Mouth, Hunter: The Vigil and a short-lived game of Buffy. This may be a function of my lack of ability to connect with other gamers in real life, or my general ability to be rejected for every online game I've ever tried to join, or just the fact that I get frustrated easily and don't take setbacks well and this means any online games I try to run myself are virtually doomed to failure. I have a newfound respect for raid leaders in MMORPGs who have to manage to get 10, 25, or even more people together on a weekly basis for several hours at a time and can manage to hold the raid together, because I can't manage 4-5 people once every couple of weeks. Feel free to comment, but any comments about how I just don't try hard enough will be ignored, and deleted if possible; I feel like hell already, I don't need help in that area.

Aberrant

2010-11-13T19:12:00.001-08:00

Aberrant is the middle child of a series of three superhero-themed games made by White Wolf; Adventure!, a pulp-hero themed game, was the first, and Trinity, aimed more at science-fiction superheroics in the future, is the third. Aberrant is the more typical, as supers games go; it is based in what is more or less the present. In Aberrant, super-powered beings, or novas, began to appear in 1998 after a special satellite blew up in orbit and somehow distributed a certain type of radiation into the jetstream as it crashed. The world reacted, in many ways; religions sprung up around the novas, there were new TV shows and blockbuster movies about and starring them, and they became key players in the world; a major UN-associated entity, Project Utopia, recruited novas in order to help do many things around the world, while a group of nova quasi-terrorists called the Teragen declare that they are above humanity and thus not subject to the laws of man. Now, ten years later, one of the world's most popular novas has been killed, and a number of novas formerly associated with Project Utopia (and their official superteam, Team Tomorrow) have left, citing beliefs that a cabal inside Project Utopia, called Project Proteus, has sinister plans and may have killed their friend; these breakaways call themselves the Aberrants. This is the world that Aberrant assumes; let's make a character for it.

I'm a big comic reader, and so I can think of a lot of character's I'd love to imitate or copy here. But since this is an example character, I'll go with a pretty standard idea. As a White Wolf game, this game uses the Storyteller system, so Attributes and Abilities are used here, obviously. For Phase One of character creation, I build my character pre-nova; I'll choose a concept of Thrillseeker, and since I'll be going for a physical-based character, I'll make Physical my primary attributes; this give me 7 points. I'll put 2 each in Stamina and Dexterity, and 3 in Strength. Next I'll go with Social; this gives me 5 points, so I'll put 1 in Manipulation, and 2 each in Charisma and Appearance. Finally, I come to Mental; I have 3 points, so I'll put one each in Perception, Intelligence, and Wits.

After that, I move on to Abilities; I have 23 points to spend here. I'll put three in Brawl, because I anticipate using my hand s a lot, and 3 more in Might; I'll put 3 in Athletics, and 3 each in Endurance and Resistance. For my last 8 points, I'll put 3 in Awareness, 3 in Intimidation, and 2 in Rapport. Then I get 7 points to spend in Backgrounds; I'll put 2 in Influence (so people know who I am), 2 in Cipher (so it's hard to find out who I REALLY am), 2 in Node (which lets me recover and use my nova powers more efficiently), and 1 in Eufiber (to give me a super-suit that's hard to destroy). Then I rcord my initial Willpower, which is 3, my initial Quantum (measurement of how powerful a nova I am), which is 1, and my Initiative, equal to Dex +Wits, which is 5. I then have 15 bonus points to spend; I'll spend 7 to give myself another point of Quantum, 5 for another point in Dexterity, 2 for another point in Willpower and 1 to raise my Initiative to 6. That's it for my pre-nova stuff.

Phase Tow is the Nova phase; it's how I change my character from a normal human to a superhuman. First, I have to decide on how I became a nova; since my character is a Thrillseeker, I'll say it happened when he got too close to a fight between novas that got a little explosive, and he survived - and became a nova in the process. Then I get 30 nova points to spend to give myself powers. I'll spend two nova points to add 6 Attribute dots; one each in everything Physical and Mental. Then I'll spend 5 more to raise my Quantum to 3. Actually; wait; I want some stuff that would otherwise cost more than I have, so I will take a hit of one permanent point of Taint (which slowly could drive me crazy, as I use forces the human body was not meant to handle) to cut the cost of the point of Quantum in half; rounded up, that is 3. Then, I will spend a whopping 18 points to get Mega-Attribute ratings of 2 in each of Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina. Each rank of Mega-Attribute gives me an attribute-specific enhancement, so for Strength I will choose Shockwave (I can stomp and cause a small earthquake) and Thunderclap (what it sounds like); for Dexterity I will choose Fast Tasks (I can do normal tasks is vastly reduced time, like pain a house in a second or two) and Rapid Strike (again, obvious); for Stamina I will choose Resiliency (I'm resistant to damage) and Regeneration (what damage I take, I heal fast). This leaves me with 7 points; I will use 6 of those to purchase one rank each of Flight and Invulnerability, and my final point to purchase a rank in the minor power Luck. So, in the end, my character looks like this:

Adrenaline (really John Freeman)
Concept: Thrillseeker
Attributes
Physical: Strength 5, Dexterity 5, Stamina 4
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 2, Appearance 3
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 3, Wits 3

Abilities
Brawl 3, Might 3, Athletics 3, Endurance 3, Resistance 3, Awareness 3, Intimidation 3, Rapport 2

Nova Abilities
Mega-Strength 2 (Shockwave, Thunderclap)
Mega-Dexterity 2 (Fast Tasks, Rapid Blows)
Mega-Stamina 2 (Resiliency, Regeneration)
Flight 1
Invulnerability 1 (Fire attacks)
Luck 1

Quantum 3 (Quantum Pool: 26)
Willpower 4
Initiative 9

Exalted

2010-11-12T19:39:00.000-08:00

Exalted is a game of epic fantasy storytelling, made by White Wolf. In Exalted, you play (what else?) one of the Exalted, a group of humans chosen and elevated by the gods in order to protect and take care of the mortal realm. In the ancient past, the Primordials, the creatures who made Creation and the gods, ran everything, but as the gods watched their master grow decadent, carelessly destroying things or warping the minds and bodies of living beings simply because they could, the gods decided their masters needed to go. Cleverly, the Primordials had created the gods such that the gods could not revolt directly - but, with the aid of one or two Primordials who agreed with the gods, they created a group of mortal warriors to fight the war for them. It was a brutal, bloody, terrible war, but in the end the gods won, and left the caretaking of the physical world to their warriors, the Exalts.

The greatest Exalted were the Solars, created by the greatest of gods, the Unconquered Sun; it was they who were placed in charge. The Lunars, creations of the moon goddess Luna, were placed as advisors, mates, bodyguards, and friends to the Solars, while the Sidereals, chosen of the Five Maidens, were put in place to plot and plan and keep reality running. The Dragon-Blooded, children of the Elemental Dragons, were the footsoldiers of the Exalted. As time went on, the Solars, too, grew decadent and cruel, and the Sidereals, with the help of the Dragon-Blooded, hatched a plot to overthrow the Solars, kill them, and keep their mystic Exaltations from reincarnating in new hosts. When the Solars died, and died hard, the Lunars who survived fled to the boundaries of Creation, where the Wyld, the stuff of chaos, bled into the borders of ordered reality, and hid.

The Dragon-Blooded took over, with the Sidereals directing them from behind the scenes, until the spirits of the defeated Primordials grew restless - and decided to try to kill or corrupt all of Creation. The spirits of dead Primordials, the Neverborn, crafted an army, using the spirits of 13 former Solars as their generals and stealing some of the hidden Solar Exaltations as their greatest warriors to destroy reality. The Yozis - the Primoridals who surrendered and were imprisoned - use their control over demons, and a handful of stolen Solar Exaltations, to try and corrupt the world and free themselves. The Fair Folk, formless creatures who simply want to return creation to the chaos of the Wyld, await the chance to enter reality, and the hold of the Dragon-Blooded on the Realm they have crafted is slipping. Into this come the Solar Exalted, their Exaltations freed after millenia of imprisonment; to what cause will they lend their great power? And if you were one of these Chosen of the Sun, what would you do?

(Alternately, for an amusing take on the setting's history and culture, go here: http://1d4chan.org/wiki/Exalted#Backstory)

As a Storyteller game by White Wolf, the Exalted system bears a number of similarities with other White Wolf games; attributes and abilities remain mostly unchanged. To create a Solar Exalt, first I need a background; I'm thinking a character who aspires to be a thief so great, literally no one will ever know he was there. This moves into choosing a caste; there are 5 castes of Solars, Dawn, Zenith, Twilight, Night, and Eclipse. Night is the caste that best fits my concept, with favored skills like Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny, and Stealth. It also has a special ability that allows me to not only mute my expression of power when I get (and use) my supernatural powers, but also to extend that muteness outwards from me, making me harder to notice. Seems handy to me. Then, I move on to attributes; as a Solar, I get 8 dots for my primary set, 6 for my secondary, and 4 for tertiary. Since I want to be a Night caste thief, I need to be pretty physical, so that will be my primary; I'll put 4 points in Dexterity, and 2 each in Strength and Stamina. I'll take Social as my secondary, and put 2 points each in Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance; finally, for Mental, I'll put one point each in Intelligence and Wits, and 2 points in Perception.

After that, I move on to abilities. My caste abilities, listed above, are easier for me to advance once play has started, and I can pick another five Favored abilities; I'll choose Investigation, Lore, Socialize, Thrown, and Martial Arts. I have to put one point each (at least ) in each Favored ability; I'll put one each in all but Investigation, where I'll put two. I then have 22 points left to distribute in abilities; I want to be good at my caste abilities, and can't raise anything above three yet, so I'll put three in each of my caste abilities: Athletics, Awareness, Dodge, Larceny, and Stealth. That leaves me with 7 points; I'll put another point in each of my Favored abilities (actually, 2 more in Thrown), and then my last point in Survival, just in case.

After abilities, I move on to Backgrounds. I have seven points here, and they're pretty useful; I'll put two in Resources, so I have some cash to fall back on, 2 in Contacts, so I'm in touch with the people who matter, and 3 in Artifact; with those, I'll nab myself an artifact Mask, which lets me alter my appearance at will and control any emotions I may show, as well as misdirect any observers as to my true motives, for 2 points, and then an Artifact chain shirt made of orichalcum for the third point - can't be too careful. then I move into the interesting part of character generation, charm selection.

Charms are the supernatural powers of the Exalted, and as a Solar, I start with 10; charms are each tied to an ability. First, I want to be able to Dodge any attacks; first, I'll take Shadow Over Water, which lets me ignore any penalties to a Dodge roll, and then I'll take Seven Shadows Evasion, a Perfect Dodge charm - this lets me dodge any attack I see coming, no matter what it is. Satisfied with that, I'll move on to Larceny. First, I'll pick up Flawless Pickpocketing Technique, which guarantees success on a pickpocketing attempt; then I'll take Stealing From Plain Sight Spirit, which lets my character literally steal anything in plain sight, and others won't, and in fact are incapable, of noticing it for some time. I'll take Lock-Opening Touch, as well, making it trivial to open even the hardest locks. Then on to Stealth; I'll pick up Easily-Overlooked Presence Method, which makes me hard to notice, then Mental Invisibility Technique, letting me compel others to ignore my presence. Finally here I'll take Vanishing From Mind's Eye Method, which lets me literally erase myself from the memories of others. Then I'll take Graceful Crane Stance, which lets me automatically keep my balance in almost any situation, and Spider-Foot Style, which lets me run on any surface, even vertical or upside-down, from Athletics. Finally, I'll go with a combat charm or two from Thrown; I'll take a First Thrown Excellency, which lets me add dice to a Thrown roll, and then Joint-Wounding Attack, which lets me stun and wound foes by hitting tendons, muscles, joints and the like.

After Charms, I move on to Virtues, which are not as fun but are important; they determine my Willpower, for one, and also the nature of my Flaw. The Virtues are Compassion, Conviction, Temperance, and Valor; I start with one in each, and then have 5 more points to add. I'll put three points in Temperance, which reflects my self-control and clear-headedness, and then 2 in Conviction, which reflects my resistance to mental and physical hardship. Guess I won't be very Valorous or Compassionate. This means, hat because my Temperance and Conviction combined equal 7, that that is my Willpower. I start with 2 permanent Essence, and a pool of Essence from those two permanent points equal to (as a personal pool) Essence x 3 + Willpower, and (as a peripheral pool) Essence x 7 +Willpower +total of all Virtues. Finally, I have bonus points to spend - 15, in fact. I'll spend 7 to get a 3rd point of Essence, 2 each to raise Stealth and Larceny to 5, 1 point to add a point in Dodge, and the last three to add Specialties of 3 dice each to Larceny and Stealth. So the final character looks like:

Dieb the Incorrigible
Night Caste
Attributes
Physical: Strength 3, Dexterity 5, Stamina 3
Social: Charisma 3, Manipulation 3, Appearance 3
Mental: Perception 3, Intelligence 2, Wits 2

Abilities
Caste: Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Dodge 4, Larceny 5 (Specialty 3: Con games), Stealth 5 (Specialty 3: Moving Silently)
Favored: Investigation 3, Lore 2, Martial Arts 2, Socialize 2, Thrown 3

Backgrounds
Resources: 2
Contacts: 2
Artifact: 3 (Artifact Mask, Orichalcum chain shirt)

Charms
Athletics: Graceful Crane Stance, Spider-Foot Style
Dodge: Shadow Over Water, Seven Shadow Evasion
Larceny: Lock-Opening Touch, Flawless Pickpocketing Technique, Steal From Plain Sight Spirit
Stealth: Easily-Overlooked Presence Method, Mental Invisibility Technique, Vanishing From Mind's Eye Method
Thrown: First Thrown Excellency, Joint-Wounding Technique

Virtues
Compassion 1, Conviction 3, Temperance 4, Valor 1

Willpower: 7
Essence: 3
Personal Essence Pool: 16
Peripheral Essence Pool: 37

Earthdawn

2010-11-11T20:14:00.000-08:00

Earthdawn is an interesting idea for a roleplaying game - it's like someone asked, what happens if we take a post-apocalyptic RPG and a fantasy RPG and ram them together? Earthdawn is the result. In the past of Earthdawn's world, magic was a growing force, and civilizations flourished under it - but some magicians realized that the magic growing slowly opened holes in reality, holes that would eventually let terrible, Cthonic entities called Horrors into the world. Eventually magic reached a point where, even if magic use ceased, there was enough to let the Horrors in, so people began to prepare for the inevitable, and created sanctuaries called kaers. They filled with the various peoples quickly, and then they were sealed away as the Horrors began to enter the world - and they remained that way for generations. Some kaers were destroyed due to weak protections, some due to accidentally allowing a Horror in with them, and at least one due to hubris, but for the most part, they survived - and now that the Horrors have mostly gone, and people are emerging, the rebuilding begins. It is your task, as one of the newly released, to explore what remains of the world, facing what the Horrors left behind, finding what has been lost, and helping to forge Barsaive's future.

So, to create a character in Earthdawn, first I choose a Discipline, like a class, and a race. I'll go with the Warrior Discipline, because I like to hit things, and the Obsidiman race; they're a 7-foot-tall, 800-pound race of beings seemingly born out of living rock, who are very strong and tough to hurt. My starting attributes as an Obsidiman are Dexterity 8, Strength 18, Toughness 13, Perception 9, Will 10, and Charisma 9. My movement speed is 5, and my karma modifier is 3. I have two abilities: an Increased Wound Threshold of +3, and Natural Armor which gives me a Physical Armor Rating of 3 and means I can't wear standard armor.

After that, I have 25 points to assign to attributes. My key attributes as a Warrior are Dexterity and Strength, so I'll put some points in them. Attributes cost 1 point each up to 3 points, then 2 points after that. I want to get my Dexterity to 14, which costs me 9 points, and then my Strength to 20, for 2 more points. I'll then add 5 points each to both Toughness and Will, which uses up the last of my attribute points. I then record these, and then have a number of characteristics to determine. First, I check for Armor; as an Obsidiman, I have Physical Armor 3, and can't wear other armor, so that's easy. My Mystic Armor Rating, based on my Will score, is 2. I then check my Physical Defense Rating, which is based on my Dexterity, and find the rating is 8. My Spell Defense is based on Perception, which in why case isn't great, so I have a 6. My Social Defense is based on Charisma, also not very high, and is also a 6. My Death Rating, the number of points of damage required to kill my character, is 42, and my Unconscious Rating, the number of points of damage it take to knock me out, is 34. My Wound Threshold, the number of points of damage an attack has to inflict in order to inflict a serious Wound, is 12, 15 because I'm an Obsidiman.

After that, I determine Initiative, which for me is 6, and then Karma, which as an Obsidiman is 3. My Carrying Capacity, due to my prodigious Strength, is 260 pounds. Then, I assign Talent Ranks for my Discipline. I start with eight points, and my options are Avoid Blow, Karma Ritual, Melee Weapons, Unarmed Combat, and Wood Skin. Since I'm an Obsidiman, I think I'll pass on the last one for now and assign two points to each of the first 4. Then I get to skills, which are divided into 4 categories: Knowledge, Artisan, Language, and General. I automatically have 2 points in Knowledge Skills; I'll put a point each in Ancient Weapons and in Horror Lore. Then I have one free Artisan rank; I'll put it in Rune Carving. Then I get two points in Speak Language, and one in Read/Write Language; I'll take the most common language, Dwarf, and Obsidiman for speaking, and go with Dwarven for Read/Write. Finally, I get to General Skills, and I have 8 points to use here. I'll put two points in the Battle Bellow skill, 2 in Craft Weapon, 2 points in Shield Charge and 2 points in Sprint.

Finally, I equip my character; I start with an Adventurer's Kit, Rune-Carving Artisan Tools, a dagger, traveler's garb, 1 week of trail rations, and 100 silver pieces; I'll spend 25 to buy a broadsword and then 50 more for a Crystal Buckler. I'm now ready to start adventuring. So, my final character looks like:

Granite
Obsidiman Warrior
DEX 14 STR 20 TOU 18
PER 9 WILL 15 CHA 9
Physical Armor: 4 Mystic Armor: 3
Physical Defense: 8 Spell Defense: 6 Social Defense: 6
Death Rating: 42 Unconscious Rating: 34 Wound Threshold: 15
Initiative: 6 Karma: 3 Movement: 5 Carrying Capacity 260

Talents
Avoid Blow 2, Karma Ritual 2, Melee Weapons 2, Unarmed Combat 2

Skills
Ancient Weapons Knowledge 1, Horror Lore Knowledge 1, Artisan Rune-Carving 1, Speak Dwarven, Speak Obsidiman, Read/Write Dwarven, Battle Bellow 2, Craft Weapon 2, Shield Charge 2, Sprint 2

Equipment
Adventurer's Kit, Rune-Carving Artisan Tools, Dagger, Traveler's Garb, 1 week trail rations, 25 silver pieces, Broadsword, Crystal Buckler

Godlike

2010-11-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

Godlike's tagline is 'superhero roleplaying in a world on fire 1936-1946', and that's basically what it's about. It's a game created by the (often creepy and disturbed, but generally awesome) minds of Dennis Detwiller, of Delta Green fame, and Greg Stolze, who did Unknown Armies. They've collaborated on a number of projects - notably this, Wild Talents, and also the Xbox game Prototype. Essentially, superpowered people started appearing around the world starting in 1936, and their appearance changed, at least in some ways, how World War II was fought. These heroes aren't Superman or Green Lantern, though - they generally have only one power, and are almost always vulnerable to some form of non-superhuman attack. Der Flieger, for example, the first superhuman, could fly, very fast - up to 800 mph - but once the Allies figured out how to track him with artillery, they shot him down. So, the question is - what do you do with your superpower? How do you contribute to the war effort? Who do you throw in with? And how do you keep from getting killed?

To build a Godlike character, first the game tells you to work out your Background, Nationality, Age, Family, Education, Dependants (if any), and a Motivation for the character. Since my favorite superhero is Captain America, I'll go with a similar background. A young man from New York, terrified and angered by what he sees and hears about the Nazis (and to a lesser extent, the Japanese) doing, enlists as soon as he is able. He's idealistic, and wants to help save lives, and defeat the Nazis. He's got a mother, but no siblings, and his father died when he was 10 from complications arising from old war injuries (from World War I). He's just out of high school, and might have been thinking about college if the war hadn't been going on. He's friendly and sociable, gets along well with most people, and is motivated by a desire to set things right, and bring down the evil he sees as the Nazis.

Then I get to the mechanics. There are six statistics - Body, Brains, Coordination, Cool, Command, and Sense. I start with 1 in all of them, and then have 6 points to spread around as I like. I'll put one in everything but Sense, and then put the last point in Command. I add together my Cool and Command scores to get my Base Will, which is 5. Then I get 20 points to spend on skills, but I can't raise a skill higher than its governing stat - so any Sense skills I take won't be very good. I'll take Leadership and Inspire at 3, and then Athletics, Endurance, Health, Dodge, Rifle, First Aid, and Mental Stability at 2. Then I get into my Talent - my superpower. The game says 25 points is about average for a starting game, so I'll stick with that. I want to be fairly simple, but have a character who could be fun to play, so I'll go with one major and one minor ability. First, I'll spend 21 points to purchase 3 levels of Heavy Armor; this means that against small arms fire, my character is practically bulletproof. And then I'll spend the last 4 points to add two points of Command as a hyperstat - this makes my character a good, if inexperienced, leader who likes to lead from the front - and can afford to, since most bullets bounce right off him. So, in the end, my character looks like:

Roger Stevenson
Male American
6', 200 lbs., Age 18
Brains 2
Body 2
Command 3
Coordination 2
Cool 2
Sense 1
Base Will 5

Skills
Inspire 3
Leadership 3
Athletics 2
Endurance 2
Health 2
Dodge 2
Rifle 2
First Aid 2
Mental Stability 2
Language (English) 1

Talents
Heavy Armor 3
Hyperstat: Command 2

Deadlands Reloaded

2010-11-09T20:34:00.000-08:00

Deadlands is an odd game. It is set in the Wild West, only in a different version of our world - one where, instead of the North winning the Civil War, something supernatural happened, allowing the South to regroup after Gettysburg, and effectively letting them put the North into stalemate. Now the cause of the supernatural hysteria, a substance called ghost rock, can be mined out west (especially in the Great Maze of canyons and tunnels that is much of California after a devastating earthquake), but other things are happening; the dead rise up in odd places, bizarre new creatures are emerging, and the world is moving in very strange directions - and nobody seems to know why, only that it's probably bad. So you play a wanderer out in the West, trying to make a living, or find out what's going on, or to make a quick buck, and sometimes you can do it with supernatural help.

Deadlands uses the Savage Worlds system, which is also on my list, and which I'll get to at another time. It's actually a fairly easy method of character generation, so I'll get to it. Since I absolutely loathe the idea of playing a Confederate (see my previous opinions on such in my quasi-review of Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood), I'll play an ex-Union soldier now working as a freelance gun, making his way in the Weird West. I have 5 main attributes: Agility, Smarts, Spirit, Strength, and Vigor. They each start at a value of d4, and I have 5 points to spend; each point raises an ability one die type. Since I'm going to be a gunslinger, I'll put 2 points each in Agility and Vigor, with the last point in Spirit; I won't be the smartest gun in the West. I then have 15 points for skills; these also start at d4, and I can purchase them up to the die size of the attribute they are tied to for 1 point per step; anything beyond that is 2 points. Being a gunslinger, I'll want Guts (Spirit), Fighting (Agility), Riding (Agility), Shooting (Agility), and maybe a little Stealth (Agility). I'll put 3 points in Guts, 2 points each in Riding and Stealth, and 4 each in Fighting and Shooting.

I have a couple secondary statistics now; Charisma is set at +0, Pace is at 6, Parry is set at 2+half my Fighting die, which is a d10, so 7, and Toughness is equal to 2+half my Vigor die, which gives me 6. I also have one point of Grit. Then we get to Special Abilities. I can take a number of Hindrances no,w, either to give me extra points to spend or to let me purchase Edges; being human, I get one Edge for free. I'd like to put at least one point each into Strength and Spirit, so I'll need at least 4 points of Hindrances - coincidentally, the maximum I am allowed. I think I'll go with the Code of Honor Major hindrance (I have to keep my word, treat prisoners well, and try to act like a gentleman), the Loyal Minor Hindrance (I never leave a man behind), and Doubting Thomas (I have trouble believing in the supernatural). This gets me the points I need to add 1 each to Strength and Spirit. Then I get my free human Edge; I'll take True Grit, raising my Grit by 1.

I then have $250 for equipment; a set of clothes (with obligatory duster and Stetson hat) will cost about $30, then I'll want a backpack ($2), a bed roll ($4), canteen ($1), and a mess kit ($2). Then on to the fun stuff. As a gunslinger, I'll need a gun belt ($2), and a quick-draw holster ($11). I'll also pick up a rifle boot ($3), for when my shootin' iron ain't enough. That leaves me $195 for firepower. I'll buy a Colt Frontier for $8, and a Colt Revolving rifle for $24, and 100 rounds for the pistol, along with 50 for the rifle, for $11. This leaves me with $152, enough for a horse with $2 to spare - and I'll have to ride bareback. Ouch.

After this, I would normally fill out my background and then my character's worst nightmare, but that's not necessary for the purposes of this, so I'll leave it at this:

Jim Stirling
Ex-Union Gunslinger
Agility d8
Smarts d4
Spirit d8
Strength d6
Vigor d8

Skills
Guts d8
Fighting d10
Riding d8
Shooting d10
Stealth d8

Secondary Statistics
Charisma +0
Pace 6
Parry 7
Toughness 6
Grit 2

Hindrances
Code of Honor (Major), Loyalty (Minor), Doubting Thomas (Minor)
Edge
True Grit

Equipment
Clothing (pants, shirt, boot, duster, Stetson), backpack, bedroll, canteen, mess kit, Colt Frontier, Colt Revolving Rifle, 100 rounds pistol ammo, 50 rounds rifle ammo, horse

Scion

2010-11-08T19:54:00.000-08:00

Scion is a game I had big hopes for - I mean, come on, you get to play the sons and daughters of old pagan deities in the modern world, fighting against the evil Titans/Jotun/ what have you and their minions to decide the fate of the world! how could that not be cool? Sadly, it didn't work out as well as it could have; mechanical elements of the game - using White Wolf's Storyteller system - just didn't work very well in implementing the feel of playing a modern-day Hercules. It's still a cool game to think about, though, and maybe somewhere on the internet, somebody has managed to figure out how to rework the game so that it works on a higher level. In any case, that's my game for tonight.

When making a Scion character, the first thing I really have to consider is which divine pantheon to make a scion of. My options are Norse, Greek, Egyptian, Japanese, Voodoo, and Aztec; there are other options outside the basic book, but those are the ones I'll start from. I'm feeling Northern tonight, so I'll go with Norse. Then I choose a god (or goddess) to have my character be the child of; my options are Baldur, Freyr, Frigg, Heimdall, Hel, Loki, Odin, Sif, Thor, Tyr, and Vidar. I think I'll go with Baldur. This means that when I get to Powers later, I'll know my parental associated powers are Epic Appearance, Epic Charisma, the Guardian, Jotunblut, and Sun Purviews. Baldur's associated abilities are Art, Athletics, Brawl, Melee, Marksmanship, and Presence. I'm also likely to have trouble with any scions or servants of Hel or Loki, and also Apollo, Horus, Izanami, Kalfu, and Miclantecuhtli.

As a Storyteller game, it uses the standard Attributes, and so there are three division, Physical, Social, and Mental. As a Scion of Baldur, I'll make Social my Primary, Physical my Secondary, and Mental my Tertiary. So I have eight points to spread in Social; I will put 4 in Charisma, 3 in Appearance, and 1 in Manipulation; I don't think my character will be much of a plotter. For Physical, I'll make it an even spread, 2 each in Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina. Finally, for Mental, I have 4 points, so I'll put one each in Perception and Intelligence, and 2 in Wits.

For Abilities, I have 30 points to spread around, and can't raise any ability above 3 yet. Since I'd like to be pretty competent in any skill I take, I'll go with ten skills at 3 points each. I want to be faithful to my deific dad, so I'll choose Athletics, Brawl, Melee, and Presence for his associated list. Then I'll choose Awareness, Control (so I can drive some kind of cool divine vehicle), Empathy, Fortitude, Integrity, and Investigation. At this point, it kinda looks like I'm shaping up to some kind of super-cool two-fisted private detective with divine heritage, which sounds cool to me; I'll roll with it. Then I get 5 points to spend in the four Birthright categories: Creature, Followers, Guide, and Relic. I'll put 3 points in Followers to represent some friends my character has who happen to be in a Norse-themed biker gang, and 2 points in Relic, allowing me access to two of Baldur's divine Purviews.

I then get 10 points to distribute between Epic Attributes and Boons from Baldur. I'll split the points - 5 for Epic Attributes, 5 for Boons. I'll put a point each in Epic Dexterity, Stamina, Charisma, Appearance, and Wits; I then get a special Knack for each epic attribute; in order, I'll take Cat's Grace (it is hard to knock me off my feet, and I take difficult terrain well), Solipsistic Well-Being (once per scene, I can't be hurt by an attack I don't see coming), Charmer (I'm good at convincing even skeptical or suspicious or even hostile people to help me), Center of Attention (I can literally draw everyone's attention in any room I walk into) and Instant Investigator (I take an intuitive 'read' of any crime scene, knowing clues in seconds). For Boons, I'll take a 2-point Guardian Boon called Aegis, which grants a measure of divine protection to a person or object I designate, and then the 1-point Sun Boon, Penetrating Glare - which lets me see through smoke, fog, and similar translucent impediments with no penalty - and then the 2-point Sun Boon, Divine Radiance, allowing me to literally emit sunlight.

Then I proceed to Virtues; each pantheon has a set of four, and the Aesir have Courage, Endurance, Expression, and Loyalty. I start with one point in each, and then have 5 additional points to distribute; I'll put two each in Courage and Loyalty, and 1 in Endurance. My character isn't much of a poet or artist, so no points in Expression.Then I move intot he final stages of character creation. My Legend , which is the measure of my power as a scion, is 2; I'll raise that to 3 with bonus points. My Willpower, which represents my strength of purpose and determination, is the same as the total of my two highest Virtues; that makes it 6. Then I have 15 bonus points. 7 of these go to raising my Legend, and I'll spend another 2 to make my Willpower 7. I'll spend 4 more to add another point of Epic Charisma, and take the Knack Never Say Die (I can inspire allies even after taking a beating). The last 2 I'll spend on 2 points of Marksmanship - even a two-fisted detective with a winning smile might need to use a gun sometimes.So, the final character looks like:

Don (Short for Donar) Knight
Two-Fisted Private Eye
Attributes
Strength 3, Dexterity 3 (Epic 1), Stamina 3 (Epic 1)
Charisma 5 (Epic 2), Manipulation 2, Appearance 4 (Epic 1)
Perception 2, Intelligence 2, Wits 3 (Epic 1)

Abilities
Athletics 3, Awareness 3, Brawl 3, Control (Automobiles) 3, Empathy 3, Fortitude 3, Integrity 3, Investigation 3, Marksmanship 2, Melee 3, Presence 3

Birthrights
Followers 3 (10 biker gang berzerkers)
Relic 2 (Grants access to Sun and Guardian Purviews)

Knacks
Cat's Grace
Solipsistic Well-Being
Charmer
Never Say Die
Center of Attention
Instant Investigator

Boons
Aegis
Penetrating Glare
Divine Radiance

Virtues
Courage 3
Endurance 2
Expression 1
Loyalty 3

Legend 3
Willpower 7

Fallout and American Culture: Through a Mirror (of Science!)

2010-11-07T12:55:00.000-08:00

I mentioned the other day on Facebook that I was having an idea about a paper based on the Fallout series of video games, seen as a reflection of 1950s-era American culture. It's been bouncing around in my head for a while now, and so I thought I'd try and put a few of my ideas for the series down on (virtual) paper to see how they look. All comments are welcome; as a Medievalist primarily, my knowledge of the actual facts of 1950s American life and culture is pretty limited.

In the world of Fallout, the nuclear war that Americans feared throughout all of the 1950s happened. The war killed most life on the planet, leaving the few survivors to try and pick up the pieces and make new lives for themselves in a world which was no longer a very friendly one. Many of the common themes you see in Fallout games, though, are themes that were very present in the American mind between the 50s and 60s. Culturally, even though the Great War in Fallout doesn't occur until 2077 or thereabouts, American life and culture stays at about the 1950s level. The Fallout America, instead of focusing on miniaturization of electronics, chose instead to focus on the creation of massive supercomputers, the harnessing of the atom to a degree unseen by our culture, and robotics. This causes some big changes right away.

The choice to go away from miniaturization in the Fallout universe means that the television never becomes as prevalent a communication and entertainment tool as it did in our world. People have television, certainly, but they remain black and white, with few shows; radio remains the most common form of mass media. This essentially locks the Fallout world into 1950s-era culture, because they never get the kinds of developments that come with advancing media technology.

Hatred of communism, a staple of 1950s culture (House Un-American Affairs Committee, anyone?), continues in the Fallout universe, but instead of being focused on the USSR, the Fallout America sets its hatred against China. This is most obvious in Fallout 3, where you can find a number of dead (or ghoul) Chinese spies, sent to infiltrate American culture; there's even a piece of DLC that lets you virtually replay the reclamation of Alaska from Chinese invaders.

Just because the culture of Fallout America is stuck in the 1950s, though, their technology advances - though it seems to advance in line with the sorts of things 1950s Americans thought they would see in the future. Household cleaning robots become common, and one model of security robot, the Protectron series, bears an odd resemblance to the Robby the Robot character from the 1956 movie Forbidden Planet. Cars don't fly, but they become powered by fusion engines, which makes them much more efficient - though, as any player of Fallout 3 who has had a firefight near a car knows, also very explosive and radioactive. Powered armor is developed, making soldiers look like robots, often wielding weapons that seem to be lifted directly from 50s science fiction - the Fat Man, the plasma rifle, even the standard assault rifle. The various laser and plasma weapons to be found do exactly what they would in a standard 1950s pulp science fiction movie - reduce an opponent to ash or goo.

Computers, without the focus on miniaturization, change as well. No longer is it possible for every person to have their own personal computer, even in 2077 - computers are still clunky, and the transistor was created in Fallout America not longer before the bombs dropped, and there is no evidence that the semiconducting microprocessor chip is ever invented. While in Fallout 3 and New Vegas there are references to e-mails and such, implying that some form of internet had been created, it seemed to be mostly business-related, especially since only businesses could really afford computers anyway. And computers in Fallout America are ugly: the tiny display and the the keyboard for the vacuum tube/transistor 'personal' computers are merged into a single piece, while digital computers require entire rooms for storage. The primitive GUI (graphical user interface) shows they had not progressed into user-friendly territory, either. They did, however, have one advantage - massive processing power. This made it possible for primitive artificial intelligences to be created or develop on their own, like the Calculator in Fallout: Tactics.

Even some of the personalities of main characters in the Fallout games have been lifted straight from 50s and 60s culture. The 'President', Dick Richardson, in Fallout 2, is said to have been based in large part on Richard Nixon. President Eden in Fallout 3, despite who and what he turns out to be, spends much of his time trying to communicate through radio in a manner similar to FDR's Fireside Chats. Robert House, founder of RobCo Industries, and a main character of Fallout: New Vegas, was inspired by eccentric (or crazy) media mogul Howard Hughes. Even the Master, the villain of the original Fallout, was inspired by the tales of H.G. Wells, especially the Island of Dr. Moreau (The Master's original name was Richard Moreau).

Finally, one of the big changes in Fallout America that make it a reflection of our own 1950s and 60s is what happened as a result of the Great War. While we know that radiation in large doses is likely to cause cancer, radiation sickness, and other unpleasant side effects, the effects of radiation in Fallout reflect what would be seen in 50s and 60s horror and science fiction movies. Giant irradiated ants (a la Them!), ghouls, super mutants, centaurs, mirelurks, and many more are all made possible by radiation, which for ghouls becomes the reason for their extreme longevity. While the main character of Fallout games can generally be harmed and killed by extreme radiation, this seems to be because he is, almost always, a regular human. Plus, it eliminates the horror aspects of being eaten by giant radioactive insects if you, too, can become giant by hanging out at a toxic waste dump.

That's basically what I have so far; there's probably more, but it's not coming to mind right now, and this entry is already fairly long. As I said before, feel free to comment, criticize, provide points of research, whatever floats your boat. I don't know if this will develop into something more serious, but it's good to get it out of my head for a bit.

Pendragon

2010-11-06T18:42:00.001-07:00

King Arthur is a persistent part of Western culture, even if there's no real evidence for a historical king of the same name. So of course there's an RPG based on the world of King Arthur, and Pendragon is that RPG. It takes place in the 6th century AD, bringing together the actual historical facts of 6th century Britain with the whimsical and fictional ideals of Malory's Le Morte D'Arthur. You play a knight in the court of Arthur, questing about the realm during the height of its glory, not knowing about the dark future that will come. Well, technically your character starts as a squire, but that's pretty close, right?

According to the character creation guide in the Pendragon book (I'm using the 4th edition), first I need a name. I'll go with Galardoun, and according to the book, I am from Salisbury, was raised in a Cymric culture, and am a Christian. then I determine my father's name; that will be Caulas, and he is (or was) a vassal knight. I am the eldest son, and my lord is Sir Robert, Earl of Salisbury. As I noted earlier, my character is a squire, and he lives in the Salisbury manor of Idmiston.

After my personal data is determined, I move on to personality traits and passions. Traits are opposing values; the Valorous trait, for example, is opposed by Cowardly. This is true for each pair of traits, and the combined value for each pair must equal 20. Because I'm a squire, I put Valorous at 15 and Cowardly at 5; then I list each of the Christian Virtues (Chaste, Forgiving, Merciful, Modest, and Temperate) at 13, with their opposing attributes at 7. All others are left at 10 on both sides. I have an option to have one Trait at 16, as my 'famous' trait, the thing for which I am well-known, but I'll pass on that for now. Then I list my Passions, things my character feels most strongly about; I start with five, Loyalty to my lord, Love of family, Hospitality, Honor, and Hatred of Saxons. These all start at 15, except for Hatred of Saxon, which is determined by a 3d6 roll - mine is 12.

Third, I move on to statistics. There are five key statistics here; Size, Dexterity, Strength, Constitution, and Appearance. These are pretty self-explanatory, and I have 60 points to distribute among them; in order, I'll go 13, 12, 13, 10, 12. As a cultural modifier for being Cymric, I get +3 Constitution. There are then a few derived statistics; Damage is equal to STR+SIZ/6, which is essentially 4, meaning I do 4d6 damage. Healing Rate is STR+CON/10, which rounds up to 3. Movement Rate is STR+DEX/10, which is also 3, then Total Hit Points, equal to CON+Size, in my case 26, and I become Unconscious at Total Hit Points/4, which is 4. I can then choose a single distinctive feature; I'll choose broad-shouldered.

Next I move on to Skills. Pendragon has a number of skills, and the basic values for most are already determined. I get to choose 2 non-combat skills to set at 10 - I'll choose Heraldry and Hunting. Then I choose one skill at which I excel; I'll go with Sword, and set it at 15. Then I have 10 points to distribute among the rest of my skills; I'll put 2 points in Lance, 3 points in Horsemanship, and 5 in Tourney. I can bypass the Previous Experience portion, as I'll be starting at minimum age (which is 21), and so the last thing I determine is Glory, how I am seen in the eyes of my peers and my betters; initially, I have only the Glory I gain from being my father's son (which comes to 175), but once I become a full knight I will get much more.So, the final product comes to:

Galardoun, eldest son of Caulas
Squire to Sir Robert, Earl of Salisbury
Cymric, Christian
Age: 21

Personality Traits
Chaste 13/Lustful 7
Energetic 10/Lazy 10
Forgiving 13/Vengeful 7
Generous 10/Selfish 10
Honest 10/Deceitful 10
Just 10/Arbitrary 10
Merciful 13/Cruel 7
Modest 13/Proud 7
Pious 10/Worldly 10
Prudent 10/Reckless 10
Temperate 10/Indulgent 10
Trusting 10/Suspicious 10
Valorous 15/Cowardly 5

Passions
Loyalty (lord) 15
Love (family) 15
Hospitality 15
Honor 15
Hate Saxons 12

Statistics
SIZ 13
DEX 12
STR 13
CON 13
APP 12
Damage 4d6
Healing Rate 3
Movement Rate 3
Total Hit Points 26
Unconscious 4

Distinctive Feature: Broad-shouldered

Skills
Awareness 5, Boating 1, Chirurgery 0, Compose 0, Courtesy 3, Dancing 2, Faerie Lore 1, Falconry 3, First Aid 10, Flirting 3, Folk Lore 2, Gaming 3, Heraldry 10, Hunting 10, Industry 0, Intrigue 3, Orate 3, Play 3, Read 0, Recognize 3, Religion 2, Romance 2, Singing 2, Stewardship 2, Swimming 2, Tourney 10
Combat Skills
Battle 10, Horsemanship 13, Sword 15, Lance 12, Spear 6, Dagger 5

Glory: 175

Equipment Carried
Reinforced chain mail, 2 spears, shield, sword, dagger, 5 jousting lances, fine clothing, charger, rouncy, sumpter, personal gear, travel gear, war gear

that's essentially it; Galardoun is now ready to go adventuring in ancient Britain to make his way in the world and become a knight of King Arthur's court.

Gamma World

2010-11-06T12:10:00.000-07:00

Ah, Gamma World. I'm not old enough to have played the original editions of this game, but I've heard stories, and I did pick up the (sadly) much less wacky version created for 3rd Edition - Omega World, I think it was. I am not sure I can really give a description that does Gamma World justice, so I'll quote from the Wizards of the Coast website:

Bruce: Most people believe the world was once perfect, but then the Big Mistake wiped it out, leaving behind the blasted landscape and visibly cracked moon of Gamma Terra. Residents of that utopian former world (you and me) are called Ancients, and their ruins and still-functioning super-science artifacts can still be found.

Insofar as it can be determined by people of Gamma Terra, the Big Mistake was a combination of events kicked off by an accident at an Ancient installation called the Large Hadron Collider that was attempting to locate the “God Particle.” Depending on the story, it was one of those tiny things that didn’t seem important at the time: a bird dropped a piece of bread, which precipitated a series of cascading malfunctions culminating in the event that partially collapsed billions of parallel timelines into a single worldtrack! Uncomprehending nations in a large percentage of these parallel Earths mistook the collapse for an attack by enemies and immediately launched their arsenals of nuclear, chemical, biological, and superscience weapons at each other.

That was some years ago. Since then, remnant poisons, fluxing timelines, and transposed creatures and technology of myriad alternate dimensions combined to create a unique tableau that any Ancient would deride as the gibberings of a down-on-her-luck pulp novelist. From where you’re sitting, it’s obviously no fantasy, but sometimes it sure seems crazy.

So, Gamma World is a wacky game. And characters for it are correspondingly wacky. For initial character creation, you have two origins for your character; it is left up to the player to decide how the two fit together. Right now, the origins table is just something you roll 1d20 on twice, but I have hopes it will be expanded. So, starting out, I roll Cockroach for my primary origin, giving me an 18 Constitution, and Hawkoid for secondary, giving me a 16 Wisdom. With Cockroach, I get +4 to Mechanics skill checks, +2 to Reflex saves, I can climb my speed, even upside-down, and I can spit at opponents, while as a Hawkoid I get +4 to Perception checks, the ability to fly, and a terrifying shriek attack. I then roll 3d6 for each of my remaining stats, and get Strength 10, Dexterity 10, Intelligence 12, and Charisma 16. I start with 30 hit points, saves of Fortitude 15, Reflex 14, and Will 14, and for random gear, I get duct tape, night-vision goggles, and a tent.What this all looks like:

'Hawkroach' (Cockroach/Hawkoid)

Strength 10
Constitution 18
Dexterity 10
Intelligence 12
Wisdom 16
Charisma 16

Fortitude: 15 Reflex: 14 Will: 14
Hit points: 30

Skills
Acrobatics: 1
Athletics: 1
Conspiracy: 2
Insight: 4
Interaction: 5
Mechanics: 6
Nature: 4
Perception: 8
Science: 2
Stealth: 1

Gear
Heavy armor
Weapon: speed limit post, with sign
Weapon: potato gun

Explorer's kit
Night-vision goggles
Duct tape
Tent

With that, my crazed hawkroach is ready to wander out into the madness that is Gamma Terra. If you're interested, there's a random character generator for the new edition of Gamma World; you can find the character generator here.

Rogue Trader

2010-11-04T19:55:00.000-07:00

Rogue Trader is one of three RPGs set in the grim darkness of the future - the world of Games Workshop's popular miniatures wargame Warhammer 40,000, in fact. Humanity sprawls across the cosmos, but over time has lost much of what makes it great; instead of innovating new technology, a stagnant Imperial priesthood carefully controls all advanced technology, and so very little is new under their sun. Humans fight many enemies - the terrifying, robotic Necrons, the ever-hungry Alien-like Tyrannids, the murderous (yet happy-go-luck) Orks, the advanced, allof, yet ailing Eldar, and the corrupting forces of Chaos, man's greatest foe.

In Rogue Trader, your job isn't to fight the good fight against these foes, though - you are given a Warrant of Trade to travel the cosmos, find new places, meet interesting people, and make money off of them. You keep communication lines open, you travel the rough edges of space, and you fight (or trade) with most of the aliens listed above, and many others. It's a bit like Star Trek, if the Enterprise had opened a chain of department stores or dropped mining colonists off on every new world they found. Your ship is a millenia-old masterpiece, with a crew in the thousands, if not tens of thousands, and your Warrant gives you the ability to go places that are normally restricted - so, where do you want to go?

For this, I'll make a character who is the iconic Rogue Trader. I won't be including a ship, as that is like creating another character entirely. Stage 1 of Rogue Trader character building is generating statistics. There are nine statistics: Weapon Skill, Ballistic Skill, Strength, Toughness, Agility, Intelligence, Perception, Willpower, and Fellowship. To get these, I roll 2d10 for each statistic, and add 25; this gives me, after I roll, scores, in order, of 36, 33, 41, 35, 34, 37, 40, 33, and 39.

Next, I work my way down the origin path. First, I choose a home world; I'll make a Rogue Trader who's been in space all his life, so I choose Void Born. This gives me -5 Strength and +5 Willpower, the Speak Language (Ship Dialect) skill, the Charmed ability, a -5 on all Fellowship tests made with non-void-born humans, the ability to count Navigation (Stellar) and Pilot (Spacecraft) as Basic skills, immunity to space-travel sickness, 10 Wounds, and 4 Fate points. Then I determine my Birthright; I'll choose Scapegrace, so my Rogue Trader will have a bit of a shaky beginning. This gives me Sleight of Hand as a Basic skill, +3 to Intelligence or Perception, and 3 Corruption or Insanity points - I'll take Intelligence and Insanity, thanks.

Then we move on to Lure of the Void, what drew my character towards this life. I'll say my Rogue Trader was always fascinated by Alien life and take Chosen by Destiny: Xenophile, which gives me +10 on Fellowship tests with aliens, and a -5 on Willpower tests involving alien artifacts or psychic powers. Then we have Trials and Travails; I'll take Dark Voyage, to represent a terrible voyage that prepared me for things to come; this gives me the Forbidden Lore (Xenos) skill, as well as 3 more Insanity points. Who needs sanity, anyway? Finally, for my Motivation, I'll choose Renown; I want to be remembered, for good or ill. This gives me the Peer talent; I'll choose Adeptus Mechanicus as the Peer group, to help keep my ship in repair. Then I look at the Rogue Trader career.

As a Rogue Trader, I begin with the following skills: Command, Commerce, Charm, Common Lore (Imperium), Evaluate, Literacy, Scholastic Lore (Astromancy), and Speak Language (High and Low Gothic). I also gain the talents Air of Authority, Piston Weapon Training (Universal), and Melee Weapon Training (Universal). As for Starting gear, I get: A best-Craftsmanship laspistol OR a good-Craftsmanship hand cannon OR a common-Craftsmanship plasma pistol; a Best-Craftsmanship mono-sword OR common-Craftsmanship power sword, a micro-bead, void suit, set of fine clothing, xeno-pelt cloak, and best-Craftsmanship light carapace OR storm trooper carapace armor. I want to be showy, so I'll pick the plasma pistol, power sword, and the storm trooper carapace. Finally, I have 5,000 experience points to spend. Yes, I get experience to spend even before I start playing, how cool is that?

I'll spend enough experience to get +5 bonuses to all my statistics, which comes to 2300 XP. I'll spend another 1000 XP to get +5 more to Intelligence, Fellowship, and Agility. I'll then drop 1400 XP to pick up training in every skill my career shows me I can get - Awareness, Command, Commerce, Charm, Ciphers (Rogue Trader), Common Lore (Imperium), Common Lore (Rogue Traders), Dodge, Evaluate, Literacy, Pilot (Spacecraft), Scholastic Lore (Astromancy), Secret Tongue (Rogue Trader), and Speak Languages (Trader's Cant). You may notice some of these are skills I already have training in; getting them a second time gives me Skill Mastery, which gives me a +10 to all checks with those skills. Finally, I'll drop 200 XP to get the Renowned Warrant talent, putting me at 4900 XP spent. So, at the end of this, I come out with a character that looks like this:

Roland Xanatov, Rogue Trader

Weapon Skill 36
Ballistic Skill 38
Strength 41
Toughness 40
Agility 44
Intelligence 50
Perception 45
Willpower 43
Fellowship 49

Skills
Basic: Sleight of Hand, Navigation (Stellar)
Trained: Awareness, Ciphers (Rogue Trader), Common Lore (Rogue Traders), Dodge, Forbidden Lore (Xenos), Pilot (Spacecraft), Secret Tongue (Rogue Trader), Speak Language (High and Low Gothic, Trader's Cant, Ship Dialect).
Trained (Skill Mastery): Command, Commerce, Charm, Common Lore (Imperium), Evaluate, Literacy, Scholastic Lore (Astromancy)

Talents
Air of Authority, Piston Weapon Training (Universal), and Melee Weapon Training (Universal), Peer (Adeptus Mechanicus), Renowned Warrant

Special Abilities
Charmed; -10 to Fellowship with non-void-born humans; immunity to space-travel sickness; +10 Fellowship with aliens; -5 Willpower against alien artifacts or psychic powers

Equipment
Common-Craftsmanship plasma pistol; Common-Craftsmanship power sword; Best-Craftsmanship storm trooper carapace; micro-bead, void suit, set of fine clothing, xeno-pelt cloak

Wounds: 10
Fate Points: 4
Insanity Points: 6
Movement: 8

And now I am ready to roam the stars, shooting, dealing, and running away as I see fit.

Character Creation, Continued

2010-11-04T19:48:00.001-07:00

So back in March I embarked on a journey to create a character for every RPG I own. About two months or so in, I ran into troubles - namely summer, then the loss of my dog, and then a bunch of school-related things. I think, though, that I am back in a place where I can reasonably continue the project. After going back to the original list (which you can find in one of my two entries for March), this is the list I still have undone:

Star Wars: Saga Edition
Exalted
Weapons of the Gods
Trinity
Aberrant
Houses of the Blooded
Big Eyes, Small Mouth
Deadlands Reloaded
Scion
Godlike
Savage Worlds
Earthdawn 3rd Edition
Ars Magica
Alternity
Grimm
Pendragon
Heroquest
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 2nd Edition
Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay 3rd Edition
Fireborn
Dresden Files
Rogue Trader
Dark Heresy
Gamma World

d20 Settings:
Midnight
Dawnforge
Fading Suns
Dragonstar
World of Warcraft
Iron Kingdoms
Scarred Lands
Arcana Evolved

If anyone has any preferences, then please, let me know. Otherwise, I'm going to start with Rogue Trader, as it's what I'm currently reading through.

Is Essentials Essential?

2010-09-28T01:14:00.000-07:00

Wizards of the Coast just recently started coming out with a new group of products for D&D called the Essentials line. It was created as a means to get new players into the game by simplifying the way certain things worked in the game and also smoothing out some of the language and the more complex rules. It started with the release of a new beginner's set in a red box - reminiscent of the red box the original version of D&D came in. While I don't have the boxed set myself, I have heard from people who do have it, and it is full of goodies - a map, plenty of counters for monsters and PCs, basic rules for PCs up to 3rd level, and an introductory adventure reminiscent of a Choose Your Own Adventure book - every decision you make in the adventure guides you along the character creation process, and if what I've been told is true, it turns out to be quite an ingenious way to make a character, to develop the character in a simple and easy fashion.

After that, though, the Essentials products start doing some things I'm still not sure if I like. The main player book, Heroes of the Fallen Lands, introduces new builds for the most basic of D&D character classes - Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Wizard. There are two Fighter builds, the Knight and the Slayer. The Knight is a standard defender; he creates an aura around him that causes monsters to get penalties to attack anyone but him. The Slayer, though, is a new animal - a Fighter build for the Striker role. The Slayer wears heavy armor and does heavy damage, and that's it. Neither Fighter build has Daily power anymore; they were removed from the martial classes, as some people thought it odd that a class that relies solely on physical ability would have abilities they could only use once per day. This applies to the Rogue, too; now the Rogue build, the Thief, gets not new Daily powers, but various movement powers that let the Thief move around the battlefield more easily and in new ways. The Cleric build, the Warpriest, is essentially two builds in one, as you choose either to utilize the Sun or Storm domain. Each has different powers; Storm is more offensive, while Sun is more healing oriented. In the interest of simplification, the Warpriest has little choice of powers available; you can only choose Daily powers and Utility powers. The Wizard build, the Mage, is similar; you can specialize in one of several schools of magic, and they will effect what choices you get for Daily and Utility powers. The choosing of feats, too, has changed; now feats, at least in Essentials material, are not restricted to the various tiers of character advancement, but they are all available to anyone, as long as you meet the requirements.

I'm all for simplification of things for new players; sometimes the crunchy aspects of D&D can seem very intimidating when you are trying to get someone new to try it out. And I like the Cleric and Wizard builds, because the power choice, limited though it is, seems solid and flavorful, and very iconic. The changes to the martial classes, though, I am more worried about. Does WotC really think that players will be so turned off by their having Daily powers that they'll abandon the game? The cinematic aspect of a warrior or rogue busting out that one truly cool power at the best possible minute is one I find easy to visualize. But the removal of the daily power isn't what really worries me; what worries me is that they took a Fighter build and changed it from its normal Defender role to the Striker role. Now, I like the idea that Fighters can be flexible, but what if it spreads to other classes? Will we have Wizard Defenders, or Rogue Leaders? That will mean either a truly ridiculous number of class builds, or a confusing mix of options that dilutes everything until no class is unique anymore, where every class can do everything. And this won't be an isolated thing; the Heroes of the Fallen Lands book confirms they will have several more such role-jumping class builds in the advanced player book, Heroes of the Forgotten Kingdoms.

So I'm very worried about the Essentials products. I don't want 4th Edition D&D to become a horrific, incomprehensible mess because they decided suddenly that all classes can be all things; niche protection of certain roles is part of what makes D&D the game it is. I'm still hopeful, though, because this comes so soon after the great products that are the 4th Edition Dark Sun books; surely, if they can do something like that, they can keep something like Essentials in check, not letting it go too far. Or, at least, that's my hope.

Comics for the Casual

2010-09-08T11:46:00.000-07:00

I'm a big reader of comics, which is probably not a surprise to anyone who reads this. I know, though, that getting into comics nowadays can be very tough, especially for people who don't want to have to deal with 50 years of continuity: How many characters are related to Scott Summers? How many times has Jean Grey died? When did Spiderman stop having a relationship with Mary Jane? Which version of the Avengers are we on? How many Robins has Batman been through? How did Superman died, but not really, but then come back, but not really, and then turn into some electric guy? And what the hell is Final Crisis, and why is it so complicated?

All this kind of stuff is a pain to have to make your way through, and a lot of people are put off by the very idea of having to read through it - even if they want to get to some of the most classic stories in comics. So I thought I'd put together a small list of cool comics that, thus far, have a fairly limited run, and don't go on forever. Sometimes they're personal favorites, some of them are recommended by friends, and some of them are just because I have always had good luck with a particular writer or character. In any case, the list is this:

Planetary, by Warren Ellis. This takes place in the Wildstorm comic universe, but as a comic it is remarkably self-contained. It is collected in four volumes, and tells the story of the field team of the Planetary foundation, a trio, sometimes quartet, of superpowered people looking to uncover the secret history of the world. It has interesting riffs on many other popular comics; League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, justice League, Fantastic Four, Tarzan, the Incredible Hulk, and probably a few others, and deals with some truly bizarre encounters - a character from a fictional universe entering their own, an island of Godzilla-like monsters, a voyage to the moon by Victorian explorers, and hidden cities in Africa. It's well-written, fun to read, and always keeps my interest.

Invincible, by Robert Kirkman. Invincible is a comic set in the Image universe about a boy who discovers, one day, that he has superpowers, just like his father. And then finds out that his father is far, far different than he ever imagined. Invincible is a little like Superman, if Superman discovered that not only was he Kryptonian, but that Krypton was alive - and it wanted to conquer Earth, the planet Superman is sworn to protect. It mixes a story about a teenager becoming a man and the trouble that brings with a story about being the most powerful guardian of your world - and knowing that might not be powerful enough. Kirkman seems to have a lot of fun writing this, and it shows; Invincible is one of the best comics still running at the moment.

Fables, by Bill Willingham. Fables is a comic in the Vertigo universe, and has a spinoff, Jack of Fables. Fables is a comic about characters straight out of fairy tales and children's stories - Cinderella, Snow White, the Big Bad Wolf - and how they are refugees on our world, driven out of their own homeworlds by a great Adversary. They live, in secret, in a small community in New York City, with a farm upstate for those who cannot pass as human, and they live their extremely long lives. Some plot to get their old homes back, some look for ways to come to power in the modern world, and some just want to be left alone. Familiar characters from the fables and stories we knew as kids come to life and become much more interesting in this series, which eventually manages to defeat its great Adversary, at great cost. It's a great twist on old characters, and immensely enjoyable to read.

Global Frequency, by Warren Ellis. Global Frequency is a comic set in no set universe; it is a comic about an organization called Global Frequency, an independently funded and run group of experts on any number of things that gets called in to handle strange occurences. From the implications of creating actual cybernetic soldiers to doctors driven mad by bio-toxins who then turn their patients into freakish works of art, Global Frequency handles it. It only ran for 12 issues, but it's a good comic of speculative fiction and the kinds of things we humans can get into if we start messing around.

Powers, by Brian Michael Bendis. Powers is a comic initially published by Image Comics, and later on by Icon, a Marvel Comics imprint. It is the story of two detectives in a world where superpowers are real, though uncommon - and one of the detectives used to be a superhero. The storyline of Powers is part police procedural, part superhero tale, part 'VH1: Behind the Music'. It is sometimes funny, sometimes brutal, and sometimes just bizarre, but it is always entertaining to read, and the way it treats the superpowered community is something that isn't seen very often in comics.

The Return of Dark Sun

2010-09-02T22:53:00.000-07:00

Dark Sun, as I have probably mentioned before, used to be my favorite campaign setting in 2nd Edition D&D. It was radically different from the other main settings, like Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance. It was one of several new and unusual settings that came to 2nd Edition, though sadly the others have not survived as well - they were either folded into the current realm of 4th Edition, such as Ravenloft, along with bits and pieces of Spelljammer and Planescape, or were totally forgotten, like the Birthright setting.

Now Dark Sun has returned; just a few weeks ago, it was brought out as the third official setting of 4th Edition, after Forgotten Realms and Eberron. It may have been the only decent thing to come out of last month; sadly, just a week after Dark Sun came out in stores, my dog, Merlin, reached a point in his health that we had to put him to sleep. I'm still coming to terms with that, but that's a whole different thing; I'd like to talk about Dark Sun, the new and improved version.

Dark Sun in 4th Edition is both similar to the original 2nd Edition setting and radically different. The timeline of the setting, unlike that of Forgotten Realms, which was moved forward, was actually rolled back to the timeline that the first version of the setting started - while the world is still mostly ruled by vicious sorcerer-kings, and threatened by the terrible Dragon, the city of Tyr has been freed from the tyrannical rule of its king Kalak. The world is still mostly a wasteland, much of it covered in desert; the ruins of the past dot the landscape, and the places of ancient kingdoms and cities where great populations must have once lived haunt those few who remain. Cannibalistic halflings live in the few forests that remain in the Ringing Mountains, and tribes of the insectoid thri-kreen roam the plains far from the human cities. Life is harsh and unpleasant, but there is some hope, and it is up to the players to find it.

Much like the old setting, there are a few new races for Dark Sun - the aforementioned thri-kreen, an insectoid race that are unfamiliar to most humanoids, but whose fate is also affected by the destructive powers of the Dragon and the sorcerer-kings, and the muls, a race that is a hybrid of dwarves and humans, bred for hard labor, slavery, and battle in the gladiatorial arena. The old half-giants are now simply reskinned goliaths, and the dray, a reptilian, almost draconic race from the original version of the setting, are now dragonborn. There are no new classes in Dark Sun - indeed, several classes are missing by default, as the gods of Dark Sun are all dead or gone, leaving no Divine power source. Several classes gain new builds, though, such and the Wild Battlemind, the Arena Fighter, and the new Sorcerer-King pact for the Warlock.

Defiling, the destructive use of arcane power, has a new and interesting implementation in Dark Sun now - it is an at-will power available to all Arcane classes. It can only be used to augment the daily powers of Arcane users, though - it allows for a reroll should the power miss its target, or should the user roll insufficiently high damage, though the second roll must be taken. In return, it deals damage to all nearby allies of the user equal to half of a healing surge value, damage which cannot be resisted or reduced. There are a number of feats that augment this power, making it more useful and powerful - and all you have to do is hurt your friends to use it. Preservers, the 'good' arcane magic users of the setting, refuse to use this power; in fact, for a few paragon paths, it is lost altogether. The two paths of magic lead ultimately to the big epic destinies of the setting - the Avangion, the ultimate symbol of preserving magic, and the Dragon, the ultimate expression of the defiler's power.

The setting also includes notes on what to do for weapons and armor in a setting with little available metal, including optional weapon breakage rules, and also a number of weapons which would be familiar to those who know the old setting. Potions and other liquid consumables are rare in Dark Sun, so instead of small liquid containers, they take the form of various fruits. Because of the lack of most traditional magic, they also include ideas from the second Dungeon Master's Guide, the granting of boons and special powers from various sources, such as the sorcerer-kings, elemental powers, the glory of arena combat, and the like. Finally, there is a section on how to handle the harsh environment of Athas - the most unpleasant of which, at least for PCs, is sun sickness. If PCs go without supplies for long enough, sun sickness hits them, and like the rest of Athas, it is harsh - 3 missed saves, and the affected person dies. Life on Athas is dangerous, even without monsters trying to kill you.

Finally, there is the atlas of Athas. It is a fairly short portion of the book, relatively speaking, but it covers the major areas of the land. It covers each of the seven major city-states of the Tyr region, from rulerless Tyr to the warlike city of Urik and the forested area of Raam. It covers many of the areas in between, as well, from the Ringing Mountains to the Ivory Triangle and the dry but still deadly Silt Sea. There are numerous areas of interest given in each, with enough information given to be a starting point, but not enough to box a DM in. It isn't a huge amount of information, but I'm OK with that - especially since I still have all my old 2nd Edition setting information to help give me some expanded setting areas.

Overall, I'm a big fan of the new Dark Sun. It satisfies my nostalgia concerning the old version, and does a great job of bringing the setting into the present. I only wish that I was going to be in a position to use the setting sometime in the near future. Sadly, while I am in a regular D&D game now, the game is ongoing and set in Eberron, and unlikely to change anytime soon. Don't get me wrong, I like my current group, but I'd like a chance to play in my old favorite setting. If you're interested, or have any ideas you'd life to talk about, or really anything gaming-related to talk about, feel free to comment here, or reach my by e-mail at jacobgreyfang@gmail.com or on AIM as knightveritas.

Video Games and the Illusion of Choice

2010-06-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

As you may have noted from my two previous entries, aside from tabletop gaming, I also enjoy video games - most often of the RPG or action/adventure genres, though sometimes something different. Which brings me to the topic of my entry today. In video games of the RPG genre, we, as players, are often offered choices. Or are we? Sometimes we are given things that seem like meaningful choices, but do they mean anything? Do they meaningfully impact the story in any way? I've got a few examples in mind; they may or may not be entirely correct.

Final Fantasy XIII came out a few months ago; as you can tell, it is the 13th FInal Fantasy game numerically, though there are a number of spinoffs. While I did not play it personally, I was present when a goof friend purchased it, and watched while he played for about 30 hours over 5-6 days. Now, as they have been in the past, Final Fantasy is on the cutting edge of graphics; the visuals are beautiful, the FMV (full-motion video) is great, and the characters look stunningly real for people in often ridiculous costumes. The story, while often terribly complex and bizarre, is long and intricate. But my biggest problem with Final Fantasy games, even though I love a number of them, is that they really offer the player no choice. There is one singular path you have to take, one story to follow, and there is no real, meaningful deviation; only after playing the game for more than 30 hours are you even given a chance to choose which area you want to go see - until then, you are shuttled from one beautifully-rendered locale to another, put on a linear path, and run through the paces. This is especially ironic, given that the main story is all about whether or not the characters have any choice in their lives. You have some minor choice in how you characters progress, but you never choose their dialogue options, you never make any goal choices, and often it doesn't feel like an RPG, but more of a virtual novel in which you take a very minor part.

Then we have a game like, say, Mass Effect 2. It's an RPG game by Bioware, and while the visuals aren't quite up to par with the latest that Squaresoft puts forth in Final Fantasy games, they are quite nice. If you played through the first Mass Effect, you can carry over your saved game and thus the choices you made in the first game, so some things will change. If you were mean or nice to a reporter in the first one, it will note that and she will respond appropriately when she meets you in the second; if you took the time to save a particular member of your team, Wrex, in the first one, he'll show up as an NPC in ME 2. There are a lot of little moments like this in Mass Effect 2, but the thing is, they really don't mean anything that pertains to the plot. Whether or not you threatened a reporter or saved Wrex won't impact the greater story; it just gives you the illusion that all of these choices, interesting though they may be, actually have some sort of greater meaning. Now, there is supposed to be a 3rd Mass Effect game eventually, and perhaps Bioware is building towards that, and maybe all these choices will culminate in something meaningful and concrete, but right now, Mass Effect 2 goes to some effort to make it look as if you have a choice, and while you do have more say in what you do - dialogue choices, where you do your missions, which weapons you upgrade - the story remains essentially the same.

Most recently of all, we have a game like Alpha Protocol. I don't know if this really qualifies as an RPG, but it does have a number of RPG elements, and so I'll toss it in there for the purposes of this entry. In Alpha Protocol, at a number of points during the game, you can make choices that actually, meaningfully effect what you do. If you rough up a Russian info broker, he'll inform on you to your enemies. If you let a leader of a terrorist group who has information you want live, he'll provide help later on, in the form of information and assistance - you won't be attacked by members of his group in a later mission, for instance. In one of the most notable instances I found (this will have spoilers, so you may want to close your eyes if you haven't played), there is a boss in the Moscow mission hub who is a truly ridiculous character - he worships the 80s. When you face him in his fortress-like home, you face off in his giant room with a stage suitable for an 80s hair band, with 80s hair band metal playing in the background, a full light show going, while he dual-wields gold-plated submachine guns and wears an 80s jacket so loud it hurts. After you injure him enough, he then snorts cocaine, which makes him a ravening, nigh-invincible death machine whose physical attacks will brutally maul you. Unless, of course, you went to the Taipei mission hub first, and made contact with a 'secret agent' named Steven Heck, and made a favorable impression on him. If you did this, and then go to face the Russian arms dealer/cokehead, you have the option of giving him a shipment of poisoned cocaine, which will slowly kill him every time he partakes of his wonder drug, making the battle far simpler. This is a choice that actually has some effect on the game. It is one of many; often, the amount of info you can gather on important personalities will give you different avenues of action or conversation with them, and this is sometimes the only way to get certain things done.

Now, all three of these were good games, though my friend who played Final Fantasy XIII was getting bored of the lack of impact he had on the story when I last saw him play. This same guy tore through Mass Effect 2 twice over the course of a couple weeks. He hasn't played Alpha Protocol yet, but I think if he does, he'll have a number of things he'll want to replay. So, is choice, or the illusion of choice, in a video game really so important? Does it have anything to say about the player, or about the game developer? How will it effect the future of video gaming, if at all? All questions I find myself wondering about at night sometimes.

USS Workstation - The Continued Voyages

2010-06-25T09:46:00.000-07:00

Once again, I find myself posting from a computer at work. I probably wouldn't be doing this during the school year, but summers are a slow time working in a university, so here I am; plus I can't really get access to my computer for long enough at home, so here I am. As with my last entry, this will also be my own personal reviews of two video games, though not as ridiculously positive. Zero Punctuation may not be quite my level of vitriol, but it can get up there.

Prototype - this is a game that I picked up well after it was released, mostly because I don't often like to play the 'bad guy'; I don't play Grand Theft Auto games, and don't generally pick the 'evil' alignments in games where I get a choice. In Prototype, you play Alex Mercer, a guy who wakes up on a morgue slab, and immediately, for no reason he can remember, has people trying to kill him, including the military.

He quickly discovers that he is now different, massively so; he is stronger, faster, and tougher than normal humans, can literally run up walls and leap great distances, and under the right circumstances, can literally turn his body into a variety of living weapons. And as he discovers what is happening to him, he also discovers the military - or, more accurately, the military-industrial complex - views him as a threat greater than almost anything in history, and is willing to sacrifice the entire island of Manhattan to take him out.

In Prototype, you can kill just about everyone you meet; random civilians, military squads, tanks, helicopters, and beasts created by the 'disease' that infects Alex, and has begun to spread to the general populace. The game plays in a third-person perspective, and for the most part, you can roam all over the island of Manhattan - which is a big area, even when you can leap from building to building, because the creators of Prototype went to some trouble to make the area authentic. Aside from just following the storyline, there are various optional challenge missions, testing your new abilities and how you use them, and also missions that pit you against both the military and the Infected.

You can be sneaky about it - eventually you get an ability that lets you sneak up on and 'consume' a person, taking their shape and memories - but as the game goes one, things get harder; the military becomes better at detecting you, the Infected grow in number, and neither group likes you. So yes, while you can run rampant murdering the population of New York City, you aren't just a total psychopath - you are a man who wants to know what was done to him, how to stop it, and who is responsible. What you find out is ugly, but makes you something of an anti-hero - you may do bad things at times, but in general, you are working to do some kind of good. If you can handle crazy 3rd-person action where you run up buildings, fight hand-to-hand with helicopters, and can eat people to sneak around, this is a game you'll enjoy - as, I was surprised, I did.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood - this is a game that, unlike basically all the others so far, is something of a first-person shooter. You play one of a pair of brothers, who start out as soldiers in the US Civil War, and you are fighting on the losing side. The Civil War missions get you used to the two characters you'll be able to control throughout the game, the brothers McCall, Ray and Thomas. There's a third brother, William, who narrates, but he isn't playable. One brother, Ray, is tougher and more suited to close combat and heavier weapons, and can take more punishment; the other, Thomas, is more of a sharpshooter, and uses more accurate weapons.

The object of the game, once your characters desert their unit after going home to find their mother dead because of Yankee mischief, is to go down to Mexico, escape the law, and find the mythical treasure of Juarez, which will make them rich and let them rebuild their family home. To this extent, you take a number of jobs, many of them unpleasant - at one point, you have to gun down a sheriff of a small town because one of the brothers slept with the sheriff's daughter, then blow your way out of town as violently as possible, and eventually, you run into a woman, Marisa, who divides the brothers, as both want her and both will kill to get her. You work for, and against, a host of unpalatable people - the Mexican warlord Juarez, your former Confederate commander Barnsby, the Apaches of Texas and Mexico - all in search of the woman and the gold.

I disliked this game for both reasons of gameplay and story. Gameplay is first; for one, many of the most important 'fights' of the game are handled using a slow-motion, bullet-time fast-draw duel, where you circle around, try to keep your opponent in front of you, then draw and fire. The problem is that to be successul, you have to fire at exactly the right time, hitting a very small area, and do it very accurately, and you get one try - otherwise, you die and have to keep trying over and over. In a game where some of your other, tougher opponents can take dozens of bullets, as can you, this is just a way to screw the player. Also, the use of contemporary weapons meakes the FPS shooting difficult, as apparently nobody ever taught the McCalls to steady their guns, so they move all over, even when zooming in. This makes the game difficult to the point of frustration, even on Easy difficulty, for people who are not experienced in FPS games.

The story is unpalatable, too. The two brothers start out as Confederate soldiers, mowing down Union soldiers with glee, then desert their side the moment they hear their home might be in danger; it is, but they had known that could happen, especially since they, even thought they seem like vaguely criminal men, are apparently part of the slave- and plantation-owning Southern elite. They then pillage, and presumably rape, their way to, and then through, Texas, down to Mexico, and take up all manner of unpleasant jobs, to the sorrow of their brother William, who is a priest. Once Marisa comes into the picture, they even begin to fight each other over her, to the point where at the end they hate each other more than their other enemies. Ray and Thomas are unpleasant characters, who perform 'good' acts by accident on occasion, but generally are selfish, self-centered, and just plain mean. At several points, they actually laugh maniacally when killing unarmed people, whether white, Mexican, or Native American. They are exactly the kind of characters I hate to play, and since Bound in Blood is apparently the prequel to the 2006 game simply named Call of Juarez, I can't imagine how ugly things are there. Unless you love playing total bastards and are already very skilled at FPS games, I recommend you avoid this game.

Tales from the USS Workstation

2010-06-23T13:00:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm able to access my blog at work, and today is not a particularly active day, so I thought I'd throw up an entry while I'm here to give me something to do. Today, I think I'll try something I haven't really done before - I'll try to give short reviews of several video games I have been playing recently. I have no background in this, so don't expect brilliant wit, but it could be interesting.

Mass Effect 2 - this game actually came out in late January of this year. It is the sequel to Bioware's popular Mass Effect, and uses an interesting system in determining how the story goes - if you have a previous saved game from Mass Effect 1, you can transfer the pertinent story details to Mass Effect 2, so any choices you made in the first will carry over. If not, you can just go with the standard set of choices, but those choices are ones I found to be sub-optimal.

Mass Effect 2 is a sci-fi action game, mostly an RPG but with a fair amount of 3rd-person shooter elements. You captain a ship, seek out a crew of violent misfits to help you in your quest, and lead a three-person team down to planet or space-station surfaces to accomplish missions. Like most Bioware games, there is an alignment system; you can choose to go Paragon, the goody two shoes guy, or Renegade, the Jack Bauer of the cosmos. You can actually progress in both; earning points in one won't make the other go down, though getting one alignment up high opens up different conversation options as you progress.

It changes the combat system from the first game, simplifying the weapons choices, changing the overheating firearm mechanic to a reloading mechanic, ad makes taking cover very important - even with a number of personal shield and health upgrades, staying out in the open for more than a few seconds of fire will get you good and dead. The story is a continuation of the first game, and is just as compelling; the biggest flaws I've found in the game can be the long load times between some areas, much like the long 'elevator' sequences in the first game, and the replacement of the often frustrating tank-driving quasi-minigame from the original with a planet-scanning minigame to net yourself the minerals and ores you need to purchase upgrades.

I purchased this game the day it came out, and played it almost 8 hours a night for a week until I finished it; if you like previous Bioware games and can handle RPGs that have real-time combat, this is a good choice.

Alpha Protocol - this game actually came out at the beginning of this month, and while it isn't the type of game I normally pick up, some things I had heard abotu it intrigued me. After watchign a friend play through Batman: Arkham Asylum, I thought a stealth game might be fun, and Alph Protocol offers a robust stealth system. In Alpha Protocol, you play a secret agent, working for the titular group of Alpha Protocl, a secret agency kept secret even from others like the CIA, NSA, and FBI. It plays, when you are in mission mode, from a 3rd person perspective, giving you a decent idea of your surroundings.

You have a choice of a number of character options, which determine the skill-set your character will be best at; Soldiers are good with guns, with some training in Toughness and Tenchnical Aptitude; Field Agents are stealthy, good at martial arts, and have some pistol skills; Tech Specialists are good at Sabotage, with skill in Technical Aptitude, shotguns, and a hint of Stealth; and Freelancers can choose their skill allocations. You can also choose to play as a Recruit, where you start with no skill ranks, but finishing the game as a Recruit unlocks Veteran mode, which gives you 3 ranks in every skill to start, and gives you some extra options later in the game. You spend a lot of the game making contacts, whether friends or enemies, and how you interact with them determines how they treat you; the three standard conversation approaches have been called the 3 JBs: the James Bond (suave) approach, the Jason Bourne (professional) approach, and the Jack Bauer (rampant aggression) approach.

As you progress, you gain levels to improve your skills, money to upgrade and alter your weaponry, armor, and gadget arsenal, tips to help you on missions, perks depending on how well you do some things (in one mission, if you attack nobody and attract no attention, you get a perk that decreses cooldown on your Stealth skills), and can even choose your mission handler at times. There are four main mission hubs, and after you complete the first, you can then go throught the next three in any order - if you find one too hard, you can skip over to another for a while to try and improve your skills. I, personally, went with a sneaky martial artist; it was fun sneaking up behind unsuspecting guards and knocking them out with sleeper holds, though I could just as easily have killed them.

The way you interact with people you meet, and how you complete missions, changes the progression of the game so much that the game would seem to have almost infinite replayability. The only problems I've had with the game is that at times the graphics can seem somewhat dated for a game this new, and the sheer number of options and decisions available can be mind-boggling. As I noted before, this is not the kind of game I normally pick up; I generally prefer sci-fi or fantasy RPG-type games, but the sheer amount of fun I had with this game means I highly recommend it.

Away Team: Second Mission

2010-06-18T00:43:00.001-07:00

Yes, I have another short reprieve, and so here I am, sharing it with you, whoever you are. I thought that, since this is a temporary reprieve, I'd try and share some more of my personal memories and thoughts on various games, rather than more characters; I can always pick that up again later.

I have a lot of gaming memories, though the most vivid ones are most often of particular settings. My earliest favorite setting was Dark Sun; after a couple years of reading Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun was a breath of fresh air. It was a bleak world, where even finding things that would be the most basic items on other worlds was a great find. People made do with wood, obsidian, and bone, where on other worlds they would use metal. Water was rare, and life was cheap; evil had, for the most part, won. Characters started out as hardened people; in a game where virtually everyone started at 1st level in other settings, Dark Sun characters started at 3rd level, and everyone had some sort of minor psionic talent, some greater than others. Some races that were common player races in other settings were gone - wiped out in terrible wars of genocide, the commanders of which now ruled the great city-states of the setting, as beings of terrible power. Even in the terrible wasteland that was the world, though, there was still some hope, and it was hard-won and worth every minute. I played for a long time in Dark Sun, playing as a mul (half-dwarf, half-human) former gladiator, with a number of companions played by good friends.

Then there was Planescape. Planescape was D&D's big mindtrip. In other settings, the planes were strange places, rarely seen or spoken of and visits there were rarer still. They were places made up of concepts, of pure elements, of good and evil, law and chaos, and the material world had little in common with them. And Planescape was right in the middle of it all. Sigil, the City of Doors, was a strange multiversal city that had residents and visitors from everywhere, every place, every material world, and was ruled by nobody except a single being, the Lady, whose sole concerns seemed to be the keeping of the city from the hands of interfering gods and keeping Sigil residents from worshiping her and getting too rowdy. Sigil was called the City of Doors because somewhere in the city, there was a door or portal to everywhere - if you had the right key. You could go anywhere, do just about anything, meet almost anybody - from the worst demon to the highest god, from the embodiment of fire to the living center of Law. It was unique and special, and the writing for the setting, along with the art, gave birth to a setting like no other since. The Planescape: Torment computer game, based in the setting, has been widely regarded as one of the best computer RPGs of all time. Sadly, it died an ignoble death with the end of 2nd Edition AD&D, though a loyal fanbase has kept it alive in one form or another ever since.

Then came Eberron. When 3rd Edition came out for D&D, they announced a setting search, open to all who cared to submit - and thousands of submissions came in. Wizards of the Coast winnowed the submissions down to a final few, and of those, it chose Eberron, which breathed new life into the stagnant setting morass that was official D&D at the time. Eberron was pulp fantasy at its finest; magically created, mass-produced golems soldiered with dinosaur-riding halfling tribes, lightning-driven trains flew over magical rails. The undead fought alongside living soldiers against former countrymen; elves worshiped their mystical dead; strange beings from a dreamworld pushed to take control of the dream-state of the whole world. It was to 3rd Edition what Dark Sun and Planescape were to 2nd Edition, and I bought up every book, read every novel. Unlike Dark Sun, I got little chance to play in Eberron, but it has given me any number of new ideas; for characters, for games, for places to go and things to do. It was chosen as a setting for 4th Edition as well, right after Forgotten Realms, and luckily for me, Dark Sun will be revived next, in a matter of months.

Now, for those of you who know me, you know I have a taste for the mythological. Some of my favorite books are things like Beowulf, the Iliad, and the Odyssey. So of course, when a small, independent gaming company called Khepera Publishing publishing a game called Hellas came out, a game that promised to let you tell the epic stories of Greek myth, but in space, I jumped for it. Sure enough, it does; Spartans are now from a world named Sparta, and Athenians from the Athens system; they fight and love and laugh and travel with such alien races as the Amazorans, (an entirely female subspecies of the larger Zoran race), the Kyklopes (aliens who blind themselves to see through a mystical third eye), the Goregons (primitive serpent-people, angry at the Atlanteans), the Myrmidons (hive-mind collectives that choose to shape themselves as Hellenes because they look up to them), and more. They still follow the gods, though by slightly different names, and travel the cosmos, spear and shield ready - with a blast rifle slung over one shoulder, of course, and traveling in a much snazzier chariot. In this sort of game, the Argonauts would not simply travel the Mediterranean, but entire galaxies. The siege of Troy would be a conflict so great it would make the final battles of Star Wars - any of them - look small by comparison. Perhaps in another galaxy lie Aegyptians, brought there by their own gods. It is epic Greek fantasy writ on a scale so large I have trouble seeing it, and so I have fallen in love with it - to the point of pledging over $100 to the Kickstarter for the first supplement, Princes of the Universe, and right now I am praying that it will make its goal by the deadline so I can have another beautiful full-color book to flesh out the setting more. I may not have the ideas to bring to life something like this, but I can certainly contribute to the success of something that may inspire me to do more with my thoughts. I hope to play Hellas one day - hopefully one day soon - but right now, the setting alone can keep me fascinated for hours or days, and that is good enough for me.

These are a few of the games and settings that set my mind on fire, that keep me up at night thinking of new games, new characters, new adventures. There are many more, because my collection is large; not all of them have the same visceral effect, but I remember them fondly, and try to keep them in my head. If you have any similar memories or thoughts on gaming, please feel free to share. Maybe we can help each other out.

Away Team

2010-06-12T22:13:00.000-07:00

As you may have noticed, I haven't updated in a couple weeks; this is due to being out of town, in part, but also due to a need to spend most, if not all of my time at home in an area of the house where there is no computer, which makes it difficult to update. I've got a momentary reprieve from that now, but that stops tomorrow, and continues until the 24th or so of this month. Never fear, though, I have had a few interesting gaming ideas since then.

After playing through Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II while out of town, currently playing through Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, and reading Star Wars and Philosophy, I've had an interest in playing in a Star Wars game renewed. This is also in part because I am looking forward to the new Bioware Star Wars MMO next year, entitled The Old Republic. I think I'd like to play either a bounty hunter sort or a Jedi; the whole self-dependent bounty hunter thing appeals to me, but so do the challenges of having to play a Jedi who is trying to actively stay true to the tenets of the Jedi - no attacking others, fighting only in self-defense; as Yoda said, the Force is to be used for knowledge and self-defense only, never for attack. Also, the whole philosophy break between the Jedi and Sith is fascinating, and KotoR II came at it in an interesting way. I think it would be interesting to play in a Star Wars RPG that actually tried to play that way; it's a good idea, especially since it seems to be the reason for the high power level of Jedi in most Star Wars games, but I don't know how it would work in actual play. Plus, again, the obvious difficulty of finding anyone, online or off, to play with.

They other game I've been meddling with is a high-powered 4th Edition D&D game, where essentially the characters start in the epic tier, and are personal representatives from a god, or group of gods, who go around collecting on divine loans, bets, and other transactions that are slow to work themselves out. Since the gods dislike fighting each other personally - they know that even the evil gods are still needed to hold back another possibly Primordial War - they use people like these to settle things between them. This is explored in more detail in the RPG.net thread here, entitled Legbreakers of the Gods.

Anyway, that's what is bouncing around in my head at the moment; more to come when I get a reprieve again.

Geist: The Sin-Eaters

2010-05-26T22:46:00.000-07:00

Imagine you died. Doesn't matter much what from; could be violence, could be disease, could be just plain bad luck. Imagine after you died, your soul was approached by a...sort of spirit. It offered you the ability to return from the grave, but in return, you have to help the spirit. The spirit was a ghost, once, but has lingered for so long that it has lost its identity; all that remains is a driving purpose, a need to see something done. It may be a single task, or it may be the work of a lifetime, but it will give you life to help it. So you take the deal, and find yourself different; you have access to strange powers. You can speak to the dead, see ghosts, and, if the time and place are right, you can cross into the Underworld. You have a new lease of life, and the ability to police the line between life and death, and a task. What do you do?

That is essentially the premise of Geist, and it is the last of the new World of Darkness games. As such, it shares a system and a setting with the others. For this, the last WoD game, I'll make up a former card shark, who leaves how he treats the line between life and death to Lady Luck. I'll put Social first, then Mental, and finally Physical. So, Presence 3, Manipulation 3, and Composure 2, then Intelligence 2, Wits 3, and Resolve 2, and finally Strength 2, Dexterity 2, and Stamina 2. For Skills, I'll want Empathy 3, Persuasion 3, Socialize 3, and Subterfuge 2, then Computers 2, Investigation 2, Medicine 1, and Science 2, and finally Brawl 1, Drive 1, and Larceny 2. For Specialties, I'll want Larceny (Pickpocketing), Empathy (Lies), and Persuasion (Fast-Talking). Then I add Geist characteristics; archetype (how I see my new occupation), threshold (how I died), Psyche (how powerful I am), manifestations (my Geist powers), and keys (the flavor of my powers). For archetype, I'll choose Bonepicker, someone who uses his powers to make the world more comfortable, and for threshold, I'll pick Forgotten; I died by chance, like I lived. My keys will be Industrial, which affects the trappings of modern society, and Passion, which lets me influence the emotions of others. I'll put two of my 3 manifestation points in the Passion Boneyard; I can judge the emotional nature of others, and compel others to feel certain emotions, and the last point in Industrial Curse so I can reduce the benefit of any technology my enemies may use. I'll spend 6 of my Merit points to get to Psyche 3, and put the last point in Resources to reflect people I've fleeced. Derived characteristics are Defense 2, Size 5, Initiative 4, Speed 9, Health 7, Willpower 4, Synergy (Geist Morality) is 7, Virtue is Justice, and Vice is Envy. He tries to fleece those who deserve to be taken down a peg or two, but also just wants to live a comfortable life. So, the final character looks like this:

Joey Evans
Concept: Slick card-shark
Archetype: Bonepicker
Threshold: The Forgotten
Virtue: Justice
Vice: Envy
Attributes
Intelligence: 2
Wits: 3
Resolve: 2
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 2
Stamina: 2
Presence: 3
Manipulation: 3
Composure: 2

Skills
Computers 2
Investigation 2
Medicine 1
Science 2
Brawl 1
Drive 1
Larceny 2 (Specialty: Pickpocketing)
Empathy 3 (Specialty: Lies)
Persuasion 3 (Specialty: Fast-Taling)
Socialize 3
Subterfuge 2

Merits
Resources 1

Keys
Industrial
Passion

Manifestations
Passion Boneyard 2
Industrial Curse 1

Defense 2
Size 5
Initiative 4
Speed 9
Health 7
Synergy 7
Willpower 4
Psyche 3

Hunter: The Vigil

2010-05-24T18:34:00.000-07:00

There are terrible things out there in the dark. You know; you've seen them. One of them, or many of them, have done something to you, or to your family, or your friends; something bad enough that you have taken up a cause that may get you killed. When your day job is done, and everyone else has gone home to have dinner and be with their family, you hunt the creatures that dwell in the darkness. You are the light of humanity, fighting back against the darkness; you know, though, that all too often, those who take up your chosen task are extinguished - or, worse, become that which you despise. Can you hold the line against the night? Can you fight back without becoming too close to that which you hunt?

this is the premise of hunter; essentially, you play a normal person int he World of Darkness hunting the creatures of the night, whether they are vampires, werewolves, the walking dead, or witches. As such, it uses the same system, and is almost identical to the base World of Darkness character, with a few differences. For this character, I think I'll make a kind of modern crusader, a soldier who fights the darkness with his faith - and a gun or two. I'll put Physical first, then Mental, and finally Social. So let's have Strength 2, Dexterity 3, and Stamina 3, followed by Intelligence 2, Wits 3, and Resolve 2, and finally Presence 2, Manipulation 1, and Composure 3. For Skills, I'll go with Brawl 2, Firearms 3, Survival 2, Athletics 3, and Drive 1; then Computer 1, Investigation 2, Medicine 2, and Science 2, with Intimidation 2 and Streetwise 2 for last. For Specialties, I'll take Medicine (Field Medicine), Firearms (Assault Rifles), and Intimidation (Stare-Downs). As a hunter, I choose first a Profession (which will be Soldier), and a Tier (I'll go with 3), so I am also a member of a Conspiracy (mine will be the Malleus Maleficarum, the Hammer of Witches - a Catholic organization that hunts monsters). My Profession gives me another specialty, in either Firearms or Survival - I'll take one in Survival (Foraging). I now have 7 points of Merits; I'll spend three in Professional Training (Soldier). which gives me easier access to further specialties in play. I'll spend 3 points in Benedictions, which gives me access to the Malleus Maleficarum's special ability - the use of ancient Catholic rites to fight evil, such as the Armor of St. Martin, which gives the user temporary divine armor. My last point will be spent on Status in the Malleus - this gives me the access to the Benedictions, otherwise I'm not a trusted enough member to be able to use them. Finally, we have derived statistics; Defense is 3, Size is 5, Initiative is 6, Health is 7, Speed is 10, Morality is 7, Willpower is 5, his virtue is Faith, and his Vice is Pride. So, the final version looks like this:

Andrew Benedict
Concept: Crusading Soldier
Profession: Soldier
Conspiracy: Malleus Maleficarum
Virtue: Faith
Vice: Pride
Attributes
Intellgence: 2
Wits: 3
Resolve: 2
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Stamina: 3
Presence: 2
Manipulation: 1
Composure: 3

Skills
Computers 1
Investigation 2
Medicine 2 (Specialty: Field Medicine)
Science 2
Athletics 3
Brawl 2
Drive 1
Firearms 3 (Specialty: Assault Rifles)
Survival 2 (Specialty: Foraging)
Intimidation 2 (Specialty: Stare-Downs)
Streetwise 2

Merits
Professional Training 3
Benedictions 3
Status 1

Defense 3
Size 5
Initiative 6
Speed 10
Health 7
Morality 7
Willpower 5

Vampire: The Requiem

2010-05-23T21:07:00.000-07:00

There is a culture of the supernatural that hides underneath the veneer of human society. They come out only at night, and they feed on the blood that flows through the veins of mankind. They live for hundreds of years, and they control wealth and power that would make many of the richest men blush; and yet, they can never reveal who and what they truly are, for fear that society will destroy them. Soulless creatures, trapped in the darkness, preying on the living and trying to find a purpose. These are the vampires.

This is the premise of Vampire, and as with the several games before it, it is set in the World of Darkness and uses the same setting. I haven't done a female character for a while, so I think I'll make one of those; I'm thinking a vampiric dilettante. I think that means I'll put Social first, then Physical, then Mental. Presence 3, Manipulation 3, Composure 2, then Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2, and finally Intelligence 2, Wits 2, and Resolve 2. Then for Skills, I am thinking Intimidation 2, Persuasion 3, Socialize 3, Subterfuge 3, then Athletics 1, Brawl 2, Stealth 3, Weaponry 1, and finally Investigation 1, Occult 2, Politics 1. For specialties, I'll take Socialize (Parties), Subterfuge (Misdirection), and Stealth (Moving in Darkness). Then I choose Vampire characteristics: Clan (which vampiric bloodline she is from), Covenant (which vampiric group she claims membership with), Disciplines (vampiric powers), and Blood Potency (how powerful her vampiric powers are). As the Daeva bloodline is the emotional, sensual, and desirable one, I'll choose that, and with it an extra point in either Dexterity or Manipulation - I'll choose Manipulation. As for covenants, none of the one presented really fit the character I am imagining, so I'll remain unbound for now. Now I get disciplines; I'll take two points in Majesty (which lets me stun others in awe, and make them reveal their innermost feelings) and one point in Celerity (which makes me faster in combat, letting me subtract dice from my opponent's rolls). Blood Potency starts at 1, and I'll increase it to 2 with Merit points; I'll use the remaining 4 to get 2 points in Haven, for a decent place to stay during the day, and 2 points in Herd, making it easier for my character to feed. Finally, I'll do derived statistics; Defense is 2, Size is 5, Health is 7, Initiative is 5, Humanity (Vampire Morality) is 7, Speed is 10, Willpower is 4, Virtue is Charity, and Vice will be Lust. So the final character will look like this:

Alanna Chance
Concept: Societal dilettante
Clan: Daeva
Covenant: Unbound
Virtue: Charity
Vice: Lust

Attributes
Intelligence: 2
Wits: 2
Resolve: 2
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 3
Stamina: 2
Presence: 3
Manipulation: 4
Composure: 2

Skills
Investigation: 1
Occult: 2
Politics: 1
Athletics: 1
Brawl: 2
Stealth: 3 (Specialty: Moving in Darkness)
Weaponry: 1
Intimidation: 2
Persuasion: 3
Socialize: 3 (Specialty: Parties)
Subterfuge: 3 (Specialty: Misdirection)

Merits
Haven 2
Herd 2

Disciplines
Majesty 2
Celerity 1

Defense 2
Size 5
Initiative 5
Speed 10
Health 7
Humanity 7
Willpower 4
Blood Potency 2

Mage: The Awakening

2010-05-21T23:18:00.000-07:00

Long ago, man discovered the secrets of magic. As men are prone to do, they used this new ability to gain power. They created the city of Atlantis, and as they grew more powerful and decadent, they created a Celestial Ladder to take them to the heavens while still alive and rule over the world. A few mages climbed the ladder, but most simply fought over it, and the ladder, along with Atlantis, was destroyed - separating the Supernal Realms, the realms of the heavens, from the earthly realm. Now the Exarchs, those few early mages to climb the Celestial Ladder, have incredible power, and they want to keep it - and so they have erased the memory of Atlantis. But they are opposed by a small group of Atlantean mages who also climbed the ladder, and established Watchtowers in the Supernal Realms, pathways to magic - and they use these Watchtowers to call to humanity across the abyss that lies between the Realms. Those called become mages, and must oppose the earthly forces of the Exarchs - and possibly rise in power to oppose the Exarchs themselves.

This is the premise of Mage, and as with the last few games, it is set in the World of Darkness, and uses the same system. I think I'll make a character who is a historian obsessed with the secret history of mankind. So I'll go Mental, Social, Physical. Intelligence 3, Wits 3, and Resolve 2, then Presence 2, Manipulation 1, and Composure 4, and finally Strength 2, Dexterity 2, and Stamina 2. Then on to Skills; I'll take Academics 3, Computers 1, Investigation 3, Occult 3, and Medicine 1. Then I'll take Empathy 2, Socialize 2, Streetwise 2, and Subterfuge 1. Finally, I'll take Brawl 1, Drive 1, and Stealth 2. For specialties, I want Academics (History), Investigation (Artifacts), and Occult (Atlantis). The I add the Mage template; I choose a Path (my path to magic), Order (my social group of mages), magical abilities, and Gnosis (degree of magical proficiency). My path will be Obrimos; they draw their power from what they perceive as the realm of the divine. This also gives me +1 to my Resolve attribute, and tells me my major Arcana will be Forces and Prime, and I will be weak with Death magic. My group will be the Mysterium, seekers of lore and knowledge. When casting a spell that uses one of the Mysterium's specialties - Investigation, Occult, and Survival - I get +1 die to my pool. For my magical powers, I get 2 dots each in Forces and Prime, and I will take one in Spirit; I then get 6 points to spend on specific rotes, or spells. I will take Influence Light and Control Heat in Forces, Activate Enchanted Item in Prime, and Second Sight in Spirit. I start with Gnosis 1, and increase it to 2 with 3 Merit points, using the rest for the Merit Encyclopedic Knowledge; as a mage, I get the High Speech merit for free. Derived values are Defense 2, Size 5, Health 7, Initiative 6, Wisdom (a Mage's Morality) 7, Speed 9, Willpower 7, Virtue will be Faith, and Vice will be Greed. So the final character will be:

Thomas Coyne
Concept: Secret Historian
Path: Obrimos
Organization: Mysterium
Virtue: Faith
Vice: Greed

Attributes
Intelligence: 3
Wits: 3
Resolve: 3
Strength: 2
Dexterity: 2
Stamina: 2
Presence: 2
Manipulation: 1
Composure: 4

Skills
Academics 3 (Specialty: History)
Computers 1
Investigation 3 (Specialty: Artifacts)
Occult 3 (Specialty: Atlantis)
Medicine 1
Brawl 1
Drive 1
Survival 2
Empathy 2
Socialize 2
Streetwise 2
Subterfuge 1

Merits
High Speech
Encyclopedic Knowledge

Arcanum
Forces 2
Prime 2
Spirit 1

Rotes
Influence Light (Forces 1)
Control Heat (Forces 2)
Activate Enchanted Item (Prime 2)
Second Sight (Spirit 1)

Defense 2
Size 5
Speed 9
Initiative 6
Health 7
Wisdom 7
Willpower 7

Promethean: The Created

2010-05-20T21:00:00.000-07:00

You used to be human, once. At least, you think so. Now you are something else, something created from the parts and bodies of the dead. Like the monster Frankenstein created, you now wander the earth, searching for a purpose to your existence, trying to find a way to become that which all of your kind want - to be truly human, to have a soul. Until then, you wander without aim, never staying too long - as your very presence can incite normal people against you.

This is the premise of Promethean, and so, like all the other World of Darkness games, it uses the same setting and system. As a being that was created from the parts of the dead, the Promethean has little in the way of a true background - generally, they don't remember the lives of their bodies or their parts. I will make a combative character this time; as a concept, he will be a defender of the weak. So for Attributes, Physical will be first, then Mental, then Social. I'll go with Strength 3, Dexterity 2, Stamina 3, then Intelligence 2, Wits 2, and Resolve 3, and finally Presence 2, Manipulation 1, and Composure 3. Then I move on the skills. I'll take Athletics 3, Brawl 3, Survival 3, and Weaponry 2. Then I will take Crafts 2, Investigation 2, Occult 2, and Medicine 1. Finally, I'll take Empathy 1, Intimidation 2, and Streetwise 1. Then I get 3 specialties, and I'll take Body Language for Investigate, Boxing for Brawl, and Foraging for Survival. Then I add the Promethean template, which means lineage (the type of Promethean), Refinement (the path the Promethean is taking towards a human soul), transmutations (the powers of the Promethean), and Azoth (the degree of Divine Fire within the Promethean). I'll make this character a Tammuz, also known as a Golem; he will be introspective, and governed byt he element of Earth; he also gets the Bestowment of Unholy Stamina, which increases his Stamina and its effects in a number of situations. He will follow the Refimement of Iron, the way of the warrior, which gives him access to the transmutations of Corporeum and Vitality. I then get 3 dots in transmutations; I'll spend all 3 in the Vitality transmutation, to get one dot of the Might Transmutation (giving me +1 Strength every time I spend 1 Pyros - the Promethean's energy) and the Bludgeon ability (letting me pummel living beings with supernatural power). I will spend 3 points of my 7 Merit points to get my Azoth to 2, and the remaining four to get the Giant Merit, giving me +1 Size and thus +1 Health. For derived statistics, Defense is 2, Health is 9, Size is 6, Initiative is 5, Humanity (Promethean Morality) is 7, Speed is 11, Willpower is 6, the Virtue will be Justice, and the Vice will be Wrath. I imagine this character as kind of like a mix between Bruce Banner and the Hulk from the old Lou Ferrigno series. so the final character looks like this:

John Buck
Concept: Defender of the weak
Lineage: Tammuz
Refinement: Iron
Virtue: Justice
Vice: Wrath
Attributes
Intelligence 2
Wits 2
Resolve 3
Strength 3
Dexterity 2
Stamina 3
Presence 2
Manipulation 1
Composure 3

Skills
Crafts 2
Investigate 2 (Specialty: Body Language)
Medicine 1
Occult 2
Athletics 3
Brawl 3 (Specialty: Boxing)
Survival 3
Weaponry 3
Empathy 1
Intimidate 2
Streetwise 1

Merits
Giant

Transmutations
Might 1
Bludgeon
Unholy Stamina

Defense 2
Size 6
Speed 11
Initiative 5
Health 9
Willpower 6
Humanity 7
Azoth 2

Changeling: The Lost

2010-05-19T19:01:00.000-07:00

Imagine you ran into a creature, the most beautiful, wondrous creature you had ever seen. Imagine it invited you to its home, to see the sights that it has created and to experience its world. Imagine going there, only to become the lowest of the low, servant to your new master, forced to do anything and everything it thinks of, and never being allowed to do, or go completely mad. Now imagine you were given the chance to escape, to return to your world again, changed by your experiences; are you still who you were when you left? Now imagine that the world had continued on without you; your former master had left a simulacrum in your place, and it continued your life - and better than you ever did. Imagine you are this changed being, without a home or family, constantly living in fear that your former master will come back to this world and find you and bring you back. your only solace is in the companionship of others who have felt the same servitude, from different fae masters. What do you do with your life?

This, in a nutshell, is the premise of Changeling: The Lost. You play a person returned from the world of the true fae, changed by your experiences and perhaps not entirely sane. It, too, uses the Wolrd of Darkness as a setting, and so the same system. I think I'll make an architect, so I'll put Mental first, Physical second, and Social third. I'll take Intelligence 3, Wits 3, and Resolve 2, then Strength 2, Dexterity 3, and Stamina 2, and then Composure 2, Manipulation 2, and Presence 2. Then I get Skills at 11/7/4, so I'll go with Academics 2, Computer 2, Crafts 3, Politics 2, and Science 2. Then for Physical, I'll take Athletics 2, Drive 2, Firearms 1, Stealth 1, and Survival 1. Finally, for Social, Persuasion 1, Socialize 1, Streetwise 1, and Subterfuge 1. Then I take Skill Specialties; I'll take Academics (Architecture), Craft (Buildings), and Computer (Drafting). Then I add the changeling template; I choose a seeming (the type of changeling I become) and a Court (the group of changelings I join). I will be an Artist of the Wizened seeming; I get to use a special rule now when I use Crafts, and can spend Glamour for rerolls. I am also nimble and dexterous, but sadly ugly; my Presence rolls will suffer, as will untrained social skills. I will also join the Winter Court. Now I have 5 points of contracts, the changeling powers, to distribute; I'll take 3 dots in the Contracts of Artifice, which lets me repair most things, disable many devices, and make already-created items more efficient and easier to use. I will take the final two dots in the Eternal Winter contract, letting me cool a room considerably and also freeze liquids with a touch of my fingers. then I determine my Wyrd, the connection I have to the fae world; I start with 1, but can add 1 point per three Merit point spent. I'll take 2 more dots, leaving me with 1 point left; I'll use that to give myself a New Identity. then I determine derived stats. Defense is 3, Health is 7, Size is 5, Initiative is 5, Clarity (Changeling Morality) is 7, Speed is 10, Willpower is 4, my Virtue will be Temperance and my Vice will be Envy. So the final character is this:

Joseph MacAllen
Concept: Bored Architect
Seeming: Wizened (Artist)
Court: Winter
Virtue: Temperance
Vice: Envy
Attributes
Intelligence 3
Wits 3
Resolve 2
Strength 2
Dexterity 3
Stamina 2
Presence 2
Manipulation 2
Composure 2

Skills
Academics 2 (Specialty: Architecture)
Computers 2 (Specialty: Drafting)
Craft 3 (Specialty: Buildings)
Politics 2
Science 2
Athletics 2
Drive 2
Firearms 1
Stealth 1
Survival 1
Persuasion 1
Socialize 1
Streetwise 1
Subterfuge 1

Merits
New Identity (1 point)

Contracts
Artifice 3
Eternal Winter 2

Wyrd 3
Defense 3
Size 5
Speed 10
Initiative 5
Health 7
Willpower 4
Clarity 7

Werewolf: The Forsaken

2010-05-18T17:49:00.000-07:00

Long ago, when the Earth was Pangaea and the spirit real was much closer to the physical world, Father Wolf patrolled the border between the two, keeping vigilant for any spirit that caused too much trouble in the land of flesh. He mated with the moon spirit Luna, and had 9 children, who would become the first werewolves, and taught them the ways of his task. As time went on, Father Wolf grew old and slow, and spirits began to get away with much more, and so one fateful day, five of his children decided that, for the good of the world, they must kill their father and take up his task. They did, and hearing his death howl, Luna cursed them to be forever of two worlds, fitting in with neither. Three of Father Wolf's children, too cowardly to do what must be done, went and hid, and nursed a grudge against their siblings - a grudge added to by their new spirit advisors. The ninth child did nothing, and disappeared from history. And so now we are the children of those five, the Uratha, the Forsaken; cursed to be of two worlds, to walk between and police the boundaries, our songs unsung by the humans around us and our guard always up, for spirits, and our so-called 'Pure' brethren, are always seeking to destroy us and bring the spirit world into dominance over this world. So now you, too, must join the fight, take up a weapon, and guard your territory, for we are the only defense this world has.

Werewolf: The Forsaken is a game set in White Wolf's World of Darkness, and uses the same system; in fact, all that is added are a tribe (which of the 5 Forsaken children you feel the most in common with) and an auspice (the phase of the moon you are born under). You also get the Primal Urge merit, telling you how in touch with your animal side you are, and Gifts from your spirit heritage to help you in your task. So, let's start out; I think I'll make a musician. As before, we have 5/4/3 divided between Physical, Social, and Mental; I'll keep Social as primary, then have Physical as secondary and Mental as tertiary. So I'll have Presence 3, Manipulation 3, and Composure 2, then Strength 2, Dexterity 3, and Stamina 2, followed by Intelligence 2, Wits 2, and Resolve 2. Then I go on to skills, where I again have 11/7/4. For Social skills, I'll take Expression 3, Streetwise 2, Socialize 2, Intimidation 2, and Persuasion 2. For Physical, I'll take Athletics 2, Brawl 2, Survival 2, and Drive 1, leaving me with Computers 1, Crafts 1, Medicine 1, and Occult 1 in Mental skills. Then I get three Skill Specialties, so I'll take Expression (Musical Instrument), Brawl (Dirty Tricks), and Medicine (Pharmaceuticals). Now I choose auspice and tribe. For auspice, I will go with the gibbous moon, or Cahalith; it is the moon of storytellers and lorekeepers, priests and historians. I get a free specialty in a Cahalith skill (I'll choose Persuasion), and the Prophetic Dreams ability; once per story I can ask the Storyteller for a prophetic dream, though he is free to make it as full of symbolism as he likes. For tribe, I will go with the Iron Masters, the tribe most in tune with modern society, even if only in a kinda-sorta way. These two things determine the kinds of Gifts I can take, and the type of Renown (status in werewolf society) that is important to me. Then I move on to derived attributes; Defense is 2, Health is 7, Initiative is 5, Harmony (werewolf Morality) is 7 (this is also the size of my character's Essence pool), Size is 5, Speed is 10, Willpower is 4, and my Virtue will be Fortitude, while my Vice will be Lust. For Merits, I start with 1 dot in Primal Urge, and I'll spend 3 more Merit points to get a second dot, and the remaining four to get the Inspiring Merit. Now I choose Gifts; I get one each from my auspice and tribe, and one other. I'll take the 1-point Gibbous Moon gift, Pack Awareness, letting me know in general where my packmates are and what they are doing, as well as if they are badly hurt. then I'll take the 1-point Inspiration Gift The Right Words, letting me make a nice speech and gain a bonus to Social rolls made to encourage or mollify others. Finally, I'll take the 1-point Technology gift Left-Handed Spanner, which lets me cause a minor and temporary malfunction in any piece of technology with more than two moving parts. Then I have three points of Renown to distribute; I must put one in Glory for being a Cahalith, and one in Cunning for being an Iron Master, and will put the third point in Wisdom. So the final product looks like this:

Nate Simons
Concept: Alternative rocker
Auspice: Cahalith
Tribe: Iron Masters
Virtue: Fortitude
Vice: Lust

Attributes
Intelligence 2
Wits 2
Resolve 2
Strength 2
Dexterity 3
Stamina 2
Presence 3
Manipulation 3
Composure 2

Skills
Computers 1
Crafts 1
Medicine 1 (Specialty: Pharmaceuticals)
Occult 1
Athletics 2
Brawl 2 (Specialty: Dirty Tricks)
Drive 1
Survival 2
Empathy 2
Expression 3 (Specialty: Guitar)
Intimidation 2
Persuasion 2 (Specialty: Motivational Speeches)
Streetwise 2

Gifts
Pack Awareness
The Right Words
Left-Handed Spanner

Merits
Primal Urge 2
Inspirational

Renown
Glory 1
Cunning 1
Wisdom 1

Health 7
Size 5
Speed 10
Defense 2
Initiative 5
Willpower 4
Essence 7
Harmony 7

World of Darkness

2010-05-17T21:54:00.000-07:00

The World of Darkness is perhaps one of the best-known games around. Made by White Wolf Game Studio, the current version of the World of Darkness is the second, often referred to as the 'new' World of Darkness. Essentially, what the game is about is this: you play, at least in the basic version of World of Darkness, a normal person. Somehow, you have seen something you shouldn't have, and the world has been blown wide open to you; you realize the supernatural is real, and in some cases is all around you. There are creatures that live in the shadows and hide themselves away from humanity, things like ghosts and spirits, werewolves and vampires. Some of them prey on humanity; some of them use humanity; some of them simply try to avoid humanity. But you know that there is something out there now, and you don't know that you an hide anymore.

World of Darkness uses White Wolf's Storyteller system, which is generally pretty easy to grasp; most rolls within the system involve combining the numbers of an attribute and a skill, then rolling that number of dice in an attempt to hit a target number. For a basic character, the amount of points you get to make your character are small: there are three categories of Attributes, each with three Attributes. Mental attributes are Intelligence, Wits, and Resolve; Physical attributes are Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina; Social attributes are Presence, Manipulation, and Composure. Each Attribute starts with one points, then you get additional points; 5 for one category, 4 for a second, and 3 for the third. I think I'll try to make a journalist who's finding out there's more to his stories than he knows, and so I'll go for Social first, Mental second, and Physical third. So I'll make his Presence 3, Composure 3, Manipulation 2, Intelligence 2, Wits 3, Resolve 2, Strength 2, Dexterity 2, and Stamina 2. Then I move on to Skills; there are again three categories of Skills, and they get points divided by 11/7/4. For Social skills, I'll take Empathy 2, Intimidation 2, Persuasion 2, Socialize 3, and Streetwise 2. For Mental skills, I want Computers 2, Investigation3, and Occult 2. Finally, for Physical skills, I'll take Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Drive 1, and Larceny 1. I then get three Skill Specialties; I'll take a specialty in Crime Scenes for Investigation, Lies for Empathy, and Bar Hopping for Socialize. Then I determine some derived stats; Defense (which is the lower of Dexterity or Wits, so 2), Health (Staminas plus Size, so 7), Initiative (Dexterity plus Composure, or 5), Morality (7 for starting characters), Size (5 for normal humans), Speed (Strength + Dexterity + 5, or 9), Willpower (Resolve + Composure, or 5), and a Virtue and a Vice; I'll choose Hope for a Virtue and Pride for a Vice. Then, finally, I have 7 points to spend on Merits; I'll take Eidetic Memory, Barfly, Striking Looks, and Iron Stomach. So, the final character will look something like this:

Rob Stirling
Concept: Nightstalker journalist
Virtue: Hope
Vice: Pride

Attributes
Intelligence 2
Wits 3
Resolve 2
Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Stamina 2
Presence 3
Manipulation 2
Composure 3

Skills
Computers 2
Investigation 3 (Specialty: Crime Scenes)
Occult 2
Athletics 1
Brawl 1
Drive 1
Larceny 1
Empathy 2 (Specialty: Lies)
Intimidation 2
Persuasion 2
Socialize 3 (Specialty: Bar-Hopping)
Streetwise 2

Size 5
Speed 9
Initiative 5
Defense 2
Health 7
Willpower 5
Morality 7

Merits
Eidetic Memory
Barfly
Striking Looks (2 points)
Iron Stomach

Armageddon: The End Times

2010-05-16T17:30:00.000-07:00

Armageddon is a game, unsurprisingly, about the end of the world. It is set in the not-too-far future, where the supernatural has once again come into the world. Beings of great power walk the world, powers both old and new; gods of old walk alongside angels and demons, magic-users and gunfighters. The Army of the Reckoning, composed of the followers of the great and evil power Leviathan, is sweeping the world, trying to bring about the end of everything; the other powers are, understandably, upset about this, and are doing what they can to prevent it.This catastrophe brings strange bedfellows; the Heavenly Host and the Infernal Legion battle alongside the Lodge of the Undying, the Pantheons of old gods, and the former angelic beings known ans the Watchers. Armageddon, made by Eden Studios, uses the Unisystem rules set, and unlike previous games, has four tiers of character power, each with several options: Pre-Heroic Characters, including Potential Heroes and the Beginning Gifted; Heroic Characters, including the Gifted, the Lesser Gifted, the Mundane, and the Lesser Supernatural; Legendary Characters, like the Supernatural and the Greater Gifted; and Mythical Characters, including Demi-gods, Greater Supernaturals, and Gifted Masters. I think I'll go with the Mythical tier, and make a Greater Supernatural character - that gives me 30 points of Attributes, 20 points in Qualities, up to 15 points in Drawbacks, 60 points in Skills, and 90 points in Metaphysics.

Well, I want to have dealings with the Norse pantheon - I want to be an Inheritor of Tyr, the god of justice and battle. So let's give my character 5 in Strength, Dexterity, and Constitution, 3 in Intelligence, and 6 in both Perception and Willpower. That gives me, according the the Life Point and Endurance Point Formula Charts. 90 LPs and 78 EPs. It also gives me Speed 20 and 50 Essence Points. As for Qualities, I need to take Inheritor, which is a 20-point Quality; it gives me the aspect of Justice, +3 Strength, and +3 Constitution, and +1 to Intelligence. He regains 1 LP or EP per Willpower point per turn, cannot be killed by narcotics, irritant poisons, or mundane diseases,a nd he does not grow old. As an inheritor of a god of Justice and War, my character must take the Drawback Honorable, and I'll go for the full three points; I'll also take Adversary at 3 points, and Recklessness for 2 more. I'll use those 8 points to buy Fast Reaction Time, Hard to Kill 3, and Nerves of Steel. That brings me to skills, where I have 60 points to spend. Let's take Brawling 5, Dodge 5, Drive: Car 4, Gun (Handgun) 4, Hand Weapon (Hammer) 5, Intimidation 5, Language (English) 5, Language (Norse)4, Martial Arts 5, Myth and Legend (Norse) 5, Notice 5, Rituals 5, Stealth 2, Storytelling 5, and Surveillance 2. Finally, we come to Metaphsyics. As an Inheritor, my character uses what is known as Primal Power. I have 90 points, so I'll take Primal Skill 5 for 10 points, then Aura of Power for 3 points, Dominion for 8 points, Combat Wisdom for 5 points, Sagacity for 5 points, Sense Truth for 3 points, Wise Choice for 2 points, Decision for 5 points, Discover the Guilty for 3 points, Unbending Will for 2 points, Cold Fury for 10 points, Berserk Leader for 5 points, Enhanced Strength for 4 points, Iron Muscles for 6 points, Combat Speed for 10 points, and finally Ways of War for 8 points. That's an exhaustive list, but it means that I can see the truth, punish the guilty, increase my Will, Strength, and speed, make wise decisions, gain berserker abilities without losing conscious thought, give berserker strength to others, and use any weapon from a rock to a rocket launcher with a fair degree of skill. So, that means my final character will look like this:

Erik Gardena
Character Type: Greater Supernatural
Association: Pantheons

Attributes
Strength 8
Dexterity 5
Constitution 8
Intelligence 5
Perception 6
Willpower 6

Secondary Attributes
Life Points: 129
Endurance Points: 96
Speed: 26
Essence Pool: 57

Qualities
Inheritor
Fast Reaction Time
Hard to Kill 3
Nerves of Steel

Drawbacks
Honorable 3
Adversary 3 (Church of Revelations)
Recklessness

Skills
Brawling 5
Dodge 5
Drive: Car 4
Gun (Handgun) 4
Hand Weapon (Hammer) 5
Intimidation 5
Language (English) 5
Language (Norse)4
Martial Arts 5
Myth and Legend (Norse) 5
Notice 5
Rituals 5
Stealth 2
Storytelling 5
Surveillance 2

Metaphysics
Aspects: Justice and War
Primal Skill 5
Aura of Power
Dominion
Combat Wisdom
Sagacity
Sense Truth
Wise Choices
Discover the Guilty
Unbending Will 1
Cold Fury
Berserker Leader
Enhanced Strength 2
Iron Muscles 3
Combat Speed (10 point version)
Ways of War

Witchcraft

2010-05-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

Withcraft is another game by Eden studios, and it, too uses the Unisystem rules set. Unsurprisingly, the game is about witchcraft, those gifted with magic and those without. There are a number of orders who are devoted to the use of magic, and several who are devoted to rooting it out; both think they are doing the best, but a Time of Reckoning is approaching where one side will likely prevail over the other, and determine the future of the world. It has actual witches in the Wicce, conspiracy-themed magic users in the Rosicrucians, the magic-hunting, Inquisition-descended Sentinels, the mental Cabal of the Psyche, and others, and characters belong to one of these groups - or go it alone - in their attempts to discover what is going on in the world of the supernatural, and whether they want to stop it or hurry it along. As the game uses the Unisystem, it's pretty familiar; there are four tiers of character with Witchcraft, though: the Gifted, who have the greatest magical powers; the Lesser Gifted, who have some power, but not as much; the Mundanes, who are without supernatural abilities, but can make up for it with normal human skills; and the Bast, a group fo feline shapeshifters. I'm going to go with one of the Lesser Gifted. This gives me 20 Attribute points, 15 points for Qualities (of which 5 will be used to purchase the Gifted Quality, up to 10 points in Drawbacks, 30 points in Skills, and 15 points for Metaphysics.

I want to make a Rosicrucian, a member of the Brotherhood of the Rose Cross; I'm a member of a secret society looking to use magic for the good of humanity, whether it wants it or not. Taking an idea from the core book, I'll play a stage magician; what better place to hide than in plain sight? I'll take Strength 2, Dexterity 4, Constitution 2, Intelligence 4, Perception 4, and Willpower 4 for my Primary Attributes, and secondary attributes like Life Points, Endurance Points, Speed and Essence are determined the same as in All Flesh Must Be Eaten, giving me 26 LPs, 29 EPs, Speed 12 and 20 Essence. Then for Qualities, I take Gifted (5 points), Attractiveness (3 points), Fast Reaction Time (2 points), Resources (2 points), and Increased Essence (6 points), adding 5 Essence per point spent. That puts me over my limit, so I need to take some Drawbacks; I'll take a 3-point Adversary (perhaps a demented, and undead, stalker fan), Delusion (Invincible) for 2 points, Emotional Problems (Fear of Rejection) for 1 point, PAranoid for 2 points, and Showoff for 2 points. Then, I move to Skills; I have 30 points here, so I'll take Acrobatics 1, Acting 3, Brawling 2, Climbing 2, Dodge 2, Escapism 4, Lock-Picking 3, Occult Knowledge 2, Rituals (Rosicrucian) 2, Seduction 3, Sleight of Hand 4, and Stealth 2. Finally, we come to Metaphysics, where the real magic is. I want Affect Psyche, Elemental Air, Lesser Illusion, Shielding, and Essence Channeling, and thanks to Drawbacks, I have 22 points to use. I'll take 3 levels of Essence Channeling, which determines the possible Strength of my other magic; that costs 6 points. I can then buy 2 levels of each of the other 4, at 2 points per level, to finish off my points. So, the final character looks like this:

Anthony Blackstone Farland
Association: Rosicrucian
Concept: Reluctant Hero
Channeling Level: 3
Primary Attributes
Strength 2
Dexterity 4
Constitution 2
Intelligence 4
Perception 4
Willpower 4
Secondary Attributes
Life Points: 26
Endurance Points: 29
Speed: 12
Essence Pool: 50

Qualities
Gifted
Attractiveness
Fast Reaction Time
Increased Essence 6
Resources 2
Drawbacks
Adversary 3
Delusion (Invincible)
Emotional Problem (Fear of Rejection)
Paranoid
Showoff

Skills
Acrobatics 2
Acting 3
Brawling 2
Climbing 1
Dodge 2
Escapism 4
Lock-Picking 3
Occult Knowledge 2
Rituals (Rosicrucian) 2
Seduction 3
Sleight of Hand 4
Stealth 2

Metaphysics
Affect Psyche 2
Elemental Air 2
Lesser Illusion 2
Shielding 2
Essence Channeling 3

What we have here is a very intelligent, savvy stage magician (though a bit off is rocker at times). He's very good at normal stage magic, and his magical abilities help him out: Affect Psyche lets him influence the moods of others, or project an Aura of confidence; Elemental Air lets him affect the air around him, from things as small as stirring the air to the possibility of lightning from thin air; Lesser Illusion allows him to create visual, auditory, or even full illusions, that will fool most people; and Shielding will let him shield himself from both magical and physical harm - for those times when getting sawed in half isn't just a trick. With Resources 2, he's fairly well-off, so can purchase most of what he wants, so it leaves him some leisure time to traipse about the world finding out the secret of the supernatural - while putting in the occasional show, of course.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten

2010-05-13T20:14:00.000-07:00

Who doesn't like zombies? They're great enemies - no mind, so easy to kill without qualms, but then, you can always throw zombies of friends or family at characters to mess with their heads. Fast zombies, slow zombies, disease zombies, magic curse zombies, they're all good. All Flesh Must Be Eaten is a game about surviving in a world with a zombie problem. It's by Eden Studios, who did Buffy, Angel, and Army of Darkness, but it uses the full Unisystem rules set, as opposed to the Cinematic Unisystem rules. As with those games, there are three tiers of characters, though they aren't as blatant in power level difference; there are the Norms, who are your basic everyday person stuck in a world full of zombies; Survivors, people who have that extra something that lets them survive more easily in a world of the dead; and the Inspired, people who have developed supernatural powers, large or small, that they can use in the face of a zombie apocalypse. Let's build a Survivor.

As a Survivor, I get 20 points for Attributes, 15 points for Qualities, up to 10 points of Drawbacks, and 35 points in Skills. Attributes are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception, and Willpower. Let's make this Survivor a former police officer, and give him Str 3, Dex 2, Con 4, Int 3, Per 4, and Wil 4.This lets us determine the secondary attributes, which are Life Points, Endurance Points, Speed, and Essence Pool. Life Points are determined by adding Con and Str together, multiplying by 4, and adding 10, this gives our cop 38 LPs. Endurance Points are found by adding Con, Str, and Wil together, multiplying by 3, then adding 5; this gives me 38 EPs as well. Speed is Con + Dex x2, or 12, and Essence is determined by adding all attributes together, for a total of 20. Next, I move on to Qualities and drawbacks; I'll take Contacts (Police) 3, Contacts (Underworld) 2, Hard to Kill 4 (which gives me 3 LPs for every level, bringing my total to 50), Nerves of Steel, Resistance (Disease) 1, and Situational Awareness. No Drawbacks for now; they could prove to be deadly. Next we go to Skills. I want a character who can do what a cop should, so I'll take Brawling 3, Computers 2, Dodge 3, Drive: Car 3, First Aid 2, Guns (Handgun) 4, Guns (Shotgun) 3, Hand Weapon (Club) 3, Intimidation 3, Questioning 2, Streetwise 3, Surveillance 3, and Bureaucracy 1. Finally, I get gear, and since I'm a cop, I'll take what looks like fairly standard police equipment: a Class IIIa Bulletproof Vest, First Aid Kit, Flare Gun, Flashlight, Handcuffs, Handgun, Squad Car (Sedan), and Vehicle Radio. Put that all together, and we have:

Officer John Clemens
Survivor
Str 3, Dex 2, Con 4, Int 3, Per 4, Wil 4
LPs: 50
EPs: 38
Speed: 12
Essence: 20

Qualities/Drawbacks
Contacts (Police) 3 (3)
Contacts (Underworld) 2 (2)
Hard to Kill 4 (4)
Nerves of Steel (3)
Situational Awareness (2)
Resistance (Disease) 1 (1)

Skills
Brawling 3
Computers 2
Dodge 3
Drive: Car 3
First Aid 2
Guns (Handgun) 4
Guns (Shotgun) 3
Hand Weapon (Club) 3
Intimidation 3
Questioning 2
Streetwise 3
Surveillance 3
Bureaucracy 1

Gear
Class IIIa Vest, First Aid Kit, Flare Gun, Flashlight, Handcuffs, Squad Car (Sedan), Vehicle Radio

He's not quite STARS material, but he'll do for now.

Lord of the Rings RPG

2010-05-12T19:18:00.001-07:00

Lord of the Rings, like Star Trek, is one of those things you learn about in general if you tend to read blogs about RPGs. Especially after the big movie trilogy, Lord of the Rings was very much at the front of people's minds for RPG purposes, and Decipher, the same company that did the Star Trek RPG, picked up the Lord of the Rings license. They didn't keep it for very long, but it's a decent enough version of the game, and it's what I have. The system is very similar to the Star Trek system - near identical, in fact, excpet for some name-changing. And since anyone reading this probably has a basic knowledge of the Lord of the Rings world, I'll get to character creation.

First, you choose your character's race; you can be a Dwarf, Elf, Hobbit, or Human. Elves and Humans have several versions, and since I'm partial to the Riders of Rohan, I'll go with a Human of the Middle Peoples; as such, I get +1 Strength and +1 Vitality, and speak Westron and Rohirric. As a human, I get Adaptable , which is +2 to one of the derived statistics of Stamina, Swiftness, or Willpower; Dominion of Man, which gives me +1 Courage; and Skilled, which gives me +2 to one skill or +1 to two skills. Then I get to make six skill picks; I'll take +1 to each of Armed Combat, Ranged Combat, Ride, Inspire, Observe, and Survival. I also get an Edge, so I'll take Honour's Insight. Then I choose my Order, which is like a class; my options are Barbarian, Craftsman, Loremaster, Magician, Mariner, Minstrel, Noble, Rogue, and Warrior. Since I'd like to be a Rider of Rohan, I'll take Warrior. I'll take the Horseman package, which gives me Armed Combat +3, Healing +1, Inspire +2, Intimidate +2, Observe +2, Ranged Combat +1, Ride +3, and Siegecraft +1, plus 5 points to distribute to any Warrior Order skills; I'll take Armed Combat, Ranged Combat, Intimidate, Healing, and Survival. This also gives me an Edge, so I'll take Fell-handed. Then I choose a Warrior Ability; I'll take Warrior-born, so I can spend a point of Courage to gain +2 to all Armed Combat and Ranged Combat checks in a single battle. Then I choose my attributes; as with Star Trek, I can take an array of 10, 9, 7, 7, 5, 4, so I will arrange those Nimbleness, Strength, Perception, Vitality, Bearing, and Wits. I then get a third Edge pick, and I'll take Bold. Then I determine secondary statistics; Stamina is derived from Strength or Vitality, Swiftness from Nimbleness or Perception, Willpower from Bearing or Wits, and Wisdom from Bearing or Perception. Then Defense is derived as 10+ my Nimbleness modifier, which makes it 12. Health Is my Vitalyt (8) plus my Strength modifier (+1), so I have 9 Health. As a Human, I start with 4 Courage, and 0 Renown as a starting character - though I'd change that shortly in play. And, as as a Human, my Size is Medium. Equipment is determined by game, but errata indicates a good starting amount of starting money is 1d6 silver pieces, modified by order and background. So, it all comes together like this:

Dirohl, Rider of Rohan
Race: Man (Middle Peoples)
Racial Abilities: Adaptable (+2 Willpower), Dominion of Man, Skilled
Attributes: Bearing 5 (+0), Nimbleness 10 (+2), Perception 7 (+0), Strength 10 (+2), Vitality 8 (+1), Wits 4 (+0)
Reactions: Stamina (+2), Swiftness (+2), Willpower (+2), Wisdom (+0)
Order: Warrior
Order Ability: Warrior-born
Advancements: 0
Skills: Armed Combat (Polearms) +6, Healing (Treat Wounds) +2, Inspire +3, Intimidate (Majesty) +3, Language: Westron (Common) +3, Language: Rohirrin +3, Lore: History (Rohan) +3, Lore: Realm (Rohan) +3, Observe (Spot) +3, Ranged Combat (Bows) +3, Ride (Horse) +5, Siege-craft (Defence) +1, Survival +2 (Plains)
Edges: Honour's Insight, Fell-handed, Bold
Flaws: None
Health: 9
Courage: 4
Renown: 0
Gear: Longsword, spear, longbow, 20 arrows, chainmail, large shield, horse

Star Trek: The Roleplaying Game

2010-05-12T18:29:00.000-07:00

Star Trek is a franchise that probably everyone is aware of - almost certainly if you find yourself reading blogs about RPGs, anyway. What is there not to like about playing a character serving on a starship, traveling throughout the stars looking for new planets to explore, and new aces to contact? Well, or conquer if you are into the Cardassians, Klingons, Dominion, and that crowd. There have been several RPGs based in the Star Trek universe; this is the most recent, by Decipher, which also made a Star Trek CCG. The system is a fairly simple one, so let's get to it, shall we?

First, I have to choose a species. You can choose from basically all the Star Trek standards - Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans, Bajorans, Cardassians, Talaxians, Trill, Betazoids, Ferengi - there's even a whole book devoted to various aliens, but I think I'll go with a bog-standard Human. As a species, they have no adjustments to the basic statistics, but they do get the ability Adaptable, which gives them a bonus to either Stamina, Quickness, or Willpower; Human Spirit, which gives them +1 Courage; and Skilled, which lets them add +2 to one skill or +1 to two skills. Then I choose my profession, My choices are Diplomat, Merchant, Mystic, Rogue, Scientist, Soldier, and Starship Officer - and within the Starship Officer profession, you choose from Command, Operations, and Science. Being as it is Star Trek, I'll go with Starship Officer, and choose Operations, as I'd like to make a tactical officer. Then I choose my attributes: the attributes are Agility, Intellect, Presence, Perception, Strength, and Vitality. I can roll for this, or choose from an array; I'll go with the array, which is 10, 9, 7, 7, 5, and 4. As I want a tactical officer, the book recommends I get Agility, Perception, Vitality, and Strength, then Presence and Intelligence, so that is how I will distribute my points. Then, we move on to skills. First I choose species skills; this is a number of points equal to my Int (4) x2, so 8 points to distribute among skills like Culture, History, Politics, Religion, Homeworld, and various languages. Then I choose a personal development package; this is, essentially, what I get for my character as he grew up. I'll choose the Military "Brat" package. I'll get Energy Weapons +2, Computer Use +1, Survival +1, and System Operation +1, plus an Edge - I'll go with Alert. Then I get a Professional Development package; since I want a tactical officer, I'll take the Tactical Officer package, which gives me Computer Use (Hacking) +2, Culture +2, Energy Weapons +2, Repair +2, System Operation (Tactical) +4, Tactics (Space) +2, and an Unarmed Combat skill at +2. Then I get 5 skill points for Security Professional skills, so I'll take +1 to Athletics, Energy Weapons, First Aid, Observe, and Tactics (Space). I also get another Edge, so I'll choose Resolute. I then get a third Edge choice, so I'll go with Promotion, to make my character a Lieutenant (junior grade) instead of the standard Ensign. Then I determine a number of characteristics, the Reaction scores; Quickness gets the modifier from either Perception or Agility, Savvy from Presence or Perception, Stamina from Strength or Vitality, and Willpower from Intellect or Vitality. Defense is 7 plus my Agility modifier, which is +2. Health equals my Vitality attribute plus my strength modifier, so I have 7 starting Health. I have 4 starting Courage, the 3 standard +1 for being Human. As a beginning character, I have no Renown. So, after all that is done, my character looks like this:

Tactical Officer Lieutenant j.g. David Holdstock
Agility 10 (+2 modifier)
Perception 9 (+1 modifier)
Strength 7
Vitality 7
Presence 5
Intelligence 4

Quickness +2
Savvy +1
Stamina +2
Willpower +0

Defense 9
Health 7
Courage 4
Renown 0

Skills
Energy Weapons +5
Computer Use (Hacking) +3
Survival +2
System Operation (Tactical) +5
Human Culture +4
Repair +2
Tactics (Space) +3
Unarmed Combat (Self-defense) +2
Athletics +1
First Aid +1
Observe +2
Human History +2
Earth Knowledge +2
Federation Standard Language +2

Edges
Alert, Promotion, Resolute

Professional Abilities
Starship Duty, Security Protocols

Equipment
As a Starfleet officer, David gets equipment as assigned to him for a mission, though he can request specific items.

PhD Acceptance

2010-05-12T00:10:00.000-07:00

Well, today was a big day - I finally found out whether or not I would have any future in a PhD program. I have been given provisional acceptance into my program, and the conditions seem entirely possible, but it's also been a long day, so I don't have a character done for today. Tomorrow, though. hopefully I'll have the time - and the energy - to knock out a couple to make up for it. At least one of them will be from Decipher's Star Trek RPG.

Stormbringer

2010-05-10T20:37:00.000-07:00

Stormbringer is an RPG based on the stories of Elric of Melnibone, the dark fantasy character created by Michael Moorcock. It was made by Chaosium, and the edition I have was printed in 2001, so it could conceivably still be in print. In Stormbringer, you play a character set in the world of Elric, amidst the Young Kingdoms; you aspire to become a champion of the primal forces of Law, Chaos, or Balance. Perhaps you could even aspire to becoming the current incarnation of the Eternal Champion. You discover the secrets and prophecies that criss-cross the Young Kingdoms, the Unknown Lands, and the gods of Law and Chaos - if, that is, you manage to keep yourself alive.

It uses the same system as other Chaosium games, like Call of Cthulhu, so the skills are percentile-based. There are seven principle attributes: Strength (STR), Constitution (CON), Size (SIZ), Intelligence (INT), Power (POW), Dexterity (DEX), and Appearance (APP). You determine those by rolling 2d6+6 for each. Then you determine the derived statistics Idea (INTx5), Luck (POWx5), Dexterity (DEXx5), and Charisma (APPx5). Since I won't be making a magic-user, I don't need to raise my Power, the attribute that governs magic. I determine my Damage Bonus in combat by adding STR + SIZ, and determine hit points by adding CON + SIZ and dividing by 2. My magic points, useless though they will be to me, are equal to my POW score. I can then choose 13 skills, and add 20 skill points to each. Then I choose an occupation for my character; since I generally tend to play fighters, I can go with Mercenary or Soldier, and I think I'll go with Mercenary. This means I can divide 250 points among the skills Brawl, Dodge, Ride, Throw, 3 weapon skills, and a personal specialty skill, as well as 200 bronzes. I then roll for a distinctive feature, and roll 1d6, add that to 17, and find my age. Since I'm not taking magic, I'll go for Law, and add 20 skill points to between 1 and 3 skills, adding 1 point to my Law allegiance for each skill. I then get my equipment, including 600 bronzes, a horse and tack, and something that shows my character's relationship with his family. So, putting that all together:

Sayem Osrode
Age: 20
STR: 15
CON: 14
SIZ: 15
INT: 11 Idea: 55
POW: 9 Luck: 45
DEX: 13 Dexterity: 65
APP: 12 Charisma: 60
Distinguishing Feature: facial tattoo

Law: 3
Damage Bonus: +1d4
Hit Points: 15
Skills
Brawl: 75%
Broadsword: 50%
Climb: 60%
Dodge: 71%
Hide: 40%
Jump: 45%
Listen: 45%
Maul: 50%
Move Quietly: 60%
Ride: 60%
Sailing: 35%
Scent/Taste: 35%
Search: 60%
Throw: 70%
Throwing Axe: 50%
Track: 55%
Trap: 25%
Young Kingdoms: 55%

Equipment
Horse w/tack, broadsword, maul, throwing axe, half-plate, backpack, rope, sandals, shirt, laborer's clothes, family ring

Hellas: Worlds of Sun and Stone

2010-05-09T17:43:00.000-07:00

Hellas is an odd, but very cool, game. It's odd in that it is a mix of very different types of games; it mixes the classical Greek heroic game with the sci-fi space opera game. It is cool in that it does it very well. Essentially, in the game universe, the Hellenes (or Greeks, as we'd think of them) were pushed into high-tech society when their gods manifested and helped them out, and so within 500 years they were flying around their own solar system like champs. After a nasty run-in with Kronos the Titan, who made them abandon their home system, they spread out to many systems and worlds - often corresponding to the city-states of the Greeks as we think of them, with the Athenians, Spartans, Corinthians, and other all having their own systems. The trouble came when some of their own, the Atlanteans, decided they knew best and wanted to take over - and very nearly did it, before being dumped into the setting's equivalent of hyperspace. Like Greek mythology, their are a number of monsters, but many of them present themselves as alien species - the Amazorans, for instance, or the man-serpent race of the Goregons, the insect colony hive-mind Myrmidons, and others. Play is set up in such a way that you follow a god and gain glory in his or her name, and if you get enough, they take you into the afterlife - or kill you out of jealousy, because Greek gods are like that. But it's cool, because you can pick up playing as your previous cahracter's son, nephew, best friend, or whatnot, as the game is meant to stretch generations. It uses a variant of the OMNI system, used by Talislanta - though I don't know, since I've never played Talislanta.

In any case, let's create a character. Much as I'd love to fiddle with the insect colony of the Myrmidons, I think I'll stick with a Hellene for now. There are ten Attributes: Intelligence (INT), Perception (PER), Will (WIL), Charisma (CHA), Strength (STR), Dexterity (DEX), Constitution (CON), Speed (SPD), Combat Rating (CR), and Dynamism Rating (DYN); the last is the statistic that governs the 'magic' of the setting, but I won't really be dealing with it. I have 5 Attribute points, and since I'll be making a warrior, I'll put 2 in Strength, 1 in Constitution, 2 in Combat Rating, and I'll take a -1 to Dynamism for a point in Dexterity. As a Hellene, I get to choose between 4 skill packages, Athenoian, Delphoian, Boetian, and Spartan; I'll take Spartan, which gives me Command +2, Evade +2, Pankration +2, Parry +2, Lore (tactics) +2, Etiquette (Hellene) +3, Speak Language (Hellene, native), and Weapon (of choice) +2. As a Hellene, I also get +2 on all Command and Diplomacy rolls, and as a Hellene I can also force a reroll of any dice action pertaining to my character a number of times per game equal to my Will score (minimum once).

Now we come to the fun part, the Lifepath, where I roll to determine many of the important things. First, I roll for month of birth; it comes up Hekatombaion, in the summer, the month of Athenia. As a Spartan, this is Sparta. My father is dead, but he was a Retired Hero; this gives me +3 Glory, and +1 in a skill of my choice. My family is well-loved, and we have many allies. I am an only son, and have received my father's hoplite sword as an inheritance from my father. A grandparent on my mother's side, it seems, had a divine parent, and so I gain 5 Glory; the divine mark I gain from this is Strength of Mind, which gives me +1 Will. When my character was a child, he met a ghost that told him of his tragic fate; he is fated to die at the hands of a noble, though a noble from where is unknown. And now, I choose a god. Being born in the month of Athenia, I will choose her over the war god Areson. Now, I choose a profession, and as a Spartan, I will go with Hellene Spartan; this gives me +1 to STR or CR, and the skills Brawling +3, Command +2, Evade +1, Intimidate +2, Parry +4, Survival +2, Weapon (spear) +4, Weapon (rifle) +4, Weapon (blade, large) +4, and Profession (warrior, STR) +4. I gain the Talent Advanced Militia Training, and starting gear in the form of a Spartan tactical cuirass vest, Hoplon shield, Spartan infantry spear, Spartan slug rifle, and military clothing, as well as 250 dm in money. I have several choices for Callings that proceed from this profession: Legionnaire of Delphoi, Noble, Rogue, or Warrior; this tells me what I have done in my chosen profession, and how long I have spent in it. As I want to be a great hero, I will choose Legionnaire of Delphoi, and my roll tells me I have spent 4 years in their ranks; as a major event in my time, I have fought a great battle; I fought pirates on the planet Elis, and stories tell of how I threw a spear through ten men; I gain +1 STR or CON.

Now, I come to disadvantages; every character has some, 5 points divided between the categories of Relationship, Internal, or External Problems. I will put 2 points in Relationship: I abandoned a lover to join the Delphoi League, and she plots against me; 1 point in Internal: my character is hot-blooded and quick to take offense; and 2 points in External Problems; I owe a debt to a high-ranking Strategos, who helped to spread the tale of my deeds on Elis in exchange for occasional favors. After that, I have 30 Freebie point to spend; I will spend 5 points to add 1 to STR, and 5 more to add 1 to DEX, and 5 more after that to add 1 to CHA; this leaves me with 15 points. I will then take the Danger Sense and Hardiness Talents, for 5 points each, and spend the last five points on skills. I start with 7 Hero Points, which I can use to help out on my rolls. As a hero (PC), I can start out with three Heroic Ambitions, like 'Find and take my revenge on the Zoran General Bydeles, the murderer of my cousin'; if I ever complete the Ambition, I get 10 XP on the spot. I won't think any up right now, but maybe later. I start out at age 22, and I will choose the name Aristeides; all I have left is to choose my heroic epithet, which I will relate to my great battle and become Aristeides Spear-Hurler. So, at the last:

Aristeides
Hellene of Sparta
Epithet: Spear-Hurler
Glory: 8
Age: 22
Favored of Athenia
Profession: Hellene Spartan
INT +0, WIL +1, STR +3, CON +2, CR +3, PER +0, CHA +1, DEX +2, SPD +0, DYN -1
Hit Points: 31
Hero Points: 7
Skills
Command +4, Evade +3, Pankration +2, Parry +6, Lore (tactics) +3, Etiquette (Hellene) +3, Speak Language (Hellene, native), Brawling +3, Intimidate +2, Survival +2, Weapon (spear) +4, Weapon (rifle) +4, Weapon (blade, large) +6, and Profession (warrior, STR) +4

Talents
Advanced Militia Training, Danger Sense, Hardiness

Equipment
Spartan tactical cuirass vest, Hoplon shield, Spartan infantry spear, father's hoplite sword, Spartan slug rifle, military clothing, Plate helmet, 40 dm

Edit: I haven't been doing this for other games, though I probably should, but here is the website for Hellas. Also, if you find yourself interested in the game, the first supplement, Princes of the Universe, is being ransomed, and you can find that here.

Delta Green

2010-05-06T19:07:00.000-07:00

Delta Green is a game related to Call of Cthulhu - which is a game about finding out all about the horrible things that lurk just beyond our imagining, waiting to destroy our minds and blast our sanity, and that's if we're lucky. Delta Green takes that, and adds new elements - it assumes that some government agencies know about the Cthulhu mythos and all that goes with it, and some of them are trying to keep it from coming to light and coming to pass - while some of them are actively trying to make it all come true. you play a member of one of those agencies - the titular Delta Green - which recruits agents from every government agency in order to combat the groups that oppose it - whether the mythos-corrupted Majestic-12 or the formerly Nazi Karotechia, or the SaucerWatch group that tries to find out what it shouldn't know - and also the mythos itself, whether the alien Mi-Go of the icthyoid hybrids of Ipswich, or the horrific presence of Nyarlathotep. Delta Green uses the original Call of Cthulhu game, rather than the d20 version, so I will post a character from the original.

Agent Scott Jaeger
Ethnicity: Caucasian
Age: 37
STR 13 CON 17 SIZ 14 INT 17 POW 14
DEX 14 APP 11 EDU 19 SAN 70 HP 16
Damage Bonus: +1d4
Education: Doctor of Jurisprudence (Law Degree)
Occupation: FBI Special Agent
Skills: Computer Use 28%, Drive Auto 52%, Fast Talk 51%, Law 63%, Listen 54%, Martial Arts 56%, Psychology 77%, Spot Hidden 72%
Languages: English 95%, Spanish 23%
Attacks:
Colt Delta Elite Auto 70%, 1d10+1
Colt M16A2 Assault Rifle 60%, 2d6
Fist/Punch 55%, 1d3+db
Grapple 55%, Special
Head Butt 35%, 1d4+db
Kick 55%, 1d6+db

Scott is, obviously, an FBI agent, one who got a law degree before joining up. As a special agent, he gets training in the skills Drive Auto, Fast Talk, Handgun, Law, Listen, Psychology, Spot Hidden, and any two of the following: Accounting, Computer Use, Electronics, Martial Arts, Other Language, Rifle, and Submachine Gun. Scott, obviously, took Computer Use and Martial Arts. So he joins Delta Green, becoming a part of their organization and preparing to face things which defy explanation - and sanity.

Spycraft

2010-05-06T10:25:00.000-07:00

Spycraft is a game that started out in the d20 craze, and is still pretty cool. Unlike a lot of d20 games, Spycraft abandoned the whole fantasy background, and decided to go with another area entirely - the spy game. It's for everyone who ever watched a James Bond movie, or a movie like the Bourne films, Sneakers, Spy Games, or any number of other movies based on the espionage industry. Like d20, the game uses the six primary attributes - Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Wisdom, Intelligence, and Charisma, but after that it swerves away from the D&D character. you get to pick your character's Origin - which consists of two parts, picking a Talent and then pickign a Specialty - which replace the normal race selection of a D&D game, and then you get to pick a class. These classes aren't the typical D&D classes; they are created specially for Spycraft. They consist of the Advocate, the Explorer, the Faceman, the Hacker, the Intruder, the Pointman, the Scientist, the Scout, the Sleuth, the Snoop, the Soldier, and the Wheelman. Most of those are somewhat self-explanatory; they cover most of the general archetypes you see used in spy movies and similar media. So, let's create a character based on this stuff.

First, we'll use point-buy to buy our stats; this is the old 3rd Edition point-buy system, so we have 36 points. I'll spend 6 points to get Strength 12, 11 points to get Dexterity 15, 3 points for Constitution 11, 8 points for Intelligence 14, and 8 points for Charisma 14. since my highest attributes are Dexterity and Charisma, I'll aim for the Wheelman class. For Origin, I'll take the Daring Talent, which gives me +2 Dex, -2 Int, +1 to initiative checks, and +1 to action die results. For Specialty, I'll take Hot Rodder; it grants the Lane Dancer bonus feat, the Drive (Standard Ground Vehicles) skill focus, 1 forte relating to that focus, and a +1 bonus to Drive and Streetwise checks. So, the character will start to look like this:

Johnny Rocket
Origin: Daring Hot-Rodder
Class: Wheelman
Stats
Str: 12, Dex: 17, Con: 11, Int: 12, Wis: 8, Cha: 14

Skills: Drive 8, Electronics 5, Impress 6, Mechanics 5, Notice 4, Security 5, Streetwise 6

Saves
Fort: +0, Reflex: +5, Will: +0, Def: +1

Initiative: +5

Base Attack bonus: +1

Vitality: 8 (1d10 + Con bonus)

Wealth: 1

Gear: 1V

Core Ability
Driven: Each time you spend 1 action point to boost a Maneuver or Mechanics/Repair check, roll and add the results of 2 dice; also, when you suffer an error with a Maneuver or Mechanics/Repair check, the GC must spend 1 additional action point to make it a critical failure.

Class Abilities
Daredevil: At level 1, gain the Daredevil feat as a bonus feat
Custom Ride: Choose Vehicle gear picks as if the current mission Caliber were 1 higher

Feats: Daredevil, Lane Dancer, Defensive Driving

Johnny started out as a street racer, but because of his natural Charisma and skill, he got recruited by the Agency. Now he is the go-to guy for getaways, because he is a wizard with cars, bikes, and anything else that goes on land.

There are other options for characters, and other bits I haven't covered, like equipment, but that's all a little much for an entry like this. I'll likely be doing another entry tonight, as well, to make up for missing yesterday.

Unknown Armies

2010-05-04T19:23:00.001-07:00

Unknown Armies is an odd game, in that it essentially revolves around your character being on the way to madness. The default character, at the 'Street' level, must be obsessed with something, though it is up to the player as to what that something is; if he or she wants to become an Adept (a worker of modern-day magic) or an Avatar (an example of a popular archetype that gives you power), you must be more obsessed, often to the point of madness or even total insanity. But let's start slowly. To create a character, first you must have an obsession; this can be something general, like 'Toughness' or 'Religion' or even 'Knowing it All'. Then, you must have three separate passions - a Fear passion, a Rage passion, and a Noble passion. Fear can be something like arachnophobia, or fear of foreigners, but each must be tied to a mental stress track, of which there are five: Violence, Helplessness, The Unnatural, Isolation, and Self. Rage passions can be things like Bad Drivers, Laziness, or Cell Phones. Noble passions are things like Protecting Children, or Historical Preservation, or World Peace. After you have those, you get to determine your stats, of which there are four: Body, Speed, Mind, and Soul. Finally, you determine your skills, and those can be virtually anything, since there is really no set skill list; each stat has a couple skills, but others are made up by the player. So, let's start out.

Jerry Kopp

Obsession: Vampires (yeah, sue me)
Fear Stimulus: (Violence) Bees
Rage Stimulus: Racism
Noble Stimulus: Book Preservation

Stats (220 points)
Body: 50
Speed: 60
Mind: 70
Soul: 40

Skills (15 bonus points, and 15% in all basic skills)
Body Skills (50 points)
General Athletics: 40%
Struggle: 40%
Speed Skills (60 points)
Dodge: 35%
Driving: 25%
Initiative: 30%
Multi-task: 20%
Mind Skills (70 points)
Conceal: 20%
General Education: 50%
Notice: 30%
Photographic Memory: 25%
Soul Skills (40 points)
Charm: 20%
Lying: 20%
Hunches: 15%
Vocal Imitation: 15%

Jerry is a very intelligent, quite nimble guy who isn't all that empathetic; he's good with doing multiple things at once and keeping track of all kinds of things in his head, but a lot of human interaction puzzles him. He has a bizarre fascination with vampires, in art, in literature, in movies, and so he is driven to see or read anything containing them, from Anne Rice books to Bram Stoker to Vlad the Impaler's history to the Twilight books. He's had some bad experiences with bees, because his presence seems to drive them wild, and so he's afraid of them. He's a white guy, but racism just sets him off; he's never seen a reason why people hate each other because of skin color, when there are so many better reasons. And he loves books, and works in book preservation to keep books old and new from falling apart. He's just beginning to learn about what lies underneath the world everyone else knows, but he hasn't become obsessed enough with anything yet to uncover the secret pathways to magic that are the paths to being an Adept.

Reign: A Game of Lords and Leaders

2010-05-03T17:13:00.000-07:00

I'm a big fan of Greg Stolze's work. I liked it when he wrote for Godlike (a game I will likely try to do tomorrow), and I an currently enamored of his fantasy game Reign. It uses a system known as ORE, or One Roll Engine - essentially, the idea is that you can use a single roll to resolve just about anything. You use a pool of ten-sided dice, and instead of aiming for a target number, as with White Wolf games, you go for matching sets. The number that is matched tells you how well you do, while the amount of matches tells you how fast you do whatever it is you are doing; so 2 10s would be represented as 2x10, and 4 5s would be 2x5. Being the One Roll Engine, you can also create your character this way, and while I'd love to use some of the supplementary material, I shall restrain myself and keep to the core book. For this kind of character generation, you start with a score of 2 in the six primary stats: Body, Coordination, Sense, Knowledge, Command, and Charm. Then you roll 11d10 - to ensure that you get at least one matching pair; the matching pair(s) determine the professions your character has held. So, lets roll: 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 3, 3, 10, 8, 4, 2. 3x7 gives me a career of Canny Sage, meaning I get +5 ranks of the Student skill in whatever field I choose, as well as +1 Knowledge, +2 Language skill, +1 Lore skill, and +2 Heal Skill. 2x6 gets me Foot Soldier, so I get +1 Body, +2 Fight skill, +1 Dodge skill, and +2 Parry skill. 2x3 is Street Entertainer, which gives me +1 Charm, +2 Perform skill, +2 Fascinate skill, and +1 Jest skill. That's it for professions; now comes the fun part. for each non-matched number, I can choose an outcome on one of three charts for my character's unusual experiences. So, for 10, I will choose Diplomatic Incident: I somehow caused a diplomatic incident, and got someone's attention; I get the Patron Advantage (5 points), but also gain Problem: Enemy. For 8, I'll go with Kidnapped by Barbarians, which gives me +1 Ride skill, +1 Endurance skill, +1 Plead skill, +2 in the Language of my kidnappers. For 4, I'll go with Caravan Debacle - a caravan I was with never reached its destination, and went terribly, terribly wrong; this gives me +3 Student: Navigation, and +2 Direction skill. Finally, for 2, I'll take Escaped a Death Sentence, giving me the Fool Lucky Advantage.Put together, this gives us:

Attributes
3 Body, 2 Coordination, 2 Sense, 3 Knowledge, 2 Command, and 3 Charm

Skills
Language 2 (Truil), Language 2 (Dindovaran), Lore 1, Heal 2, Fight 2, dodge 1, Parry 2, Perform 2, Fascinate 2, Jest 1, Ride 1, Endurance 1, Plead 1, Student: Navigation 3, Student: Astronomy 5, Direction 2

Advantages
Patron (5 points), Fool Lucky

Problems
Enemy

As I can arrange these in any manner that suits me, let's spin it like this: Myruk Orser was, in his teens, a street performer, doing tricks for all that would stand and watch. It was a decent living, at first, but then, his nation, Uldholm, went to war with the Truil tribes, and the money began to dry up. It all came to a head when Myruk had the misforutne of telling a slightly-too-off-color joke in front of one of the leading guildmasters of the land; while he gained secret praise from the guildmaster's chief enemy, he also felt it wise to take up a new profession, and so he joined the army.

He marched and drilled with the best of the mediocre, but Myruk was never cut out for soldiering; his mind was always somewhere else. This was never clearer than when he went scouting in the wrong direction and was captured by the Truils. he found they were decent people, really, but his humor was not his best quality as a prisoner, and eventually the Truils decided to get rid of him - by tossing him off a nearby cliff. Luckily for Myruk, the cliff was not as steep or as deadly as the Truils thought, and so he thought himself lucky as he rolled down the hillside - especially when he ran into the Dindavaran caravan.

Sadly, the Dindavaran caravan was terribly lost, and despite his best efforts, Myruk was not a navigator, though he picked up quite a bit fromt he caravan's navigator before he died. Lost, alone, and near starving, Myruk stumbled back to civilization, and decided to put all his new skills to work - he became a sage's assistant, learning quickly of astronomy, herbs, and even picking up some of the language of his unlucky caravan. Now, though, his feet are itching for something else, and he is inclined to listen to them.

Myruk is not the best character ever, but he's certainly interesting enough. And if you like new and interesting games, I highly suggest Reign' the game world is different from almost every other fantasy world I have seen, and most of the material, besides the core book can be found for free on Greg Stolze's website. It's an easy system to learn, and a fun game to read, so check it out if you can.

Out of Town

2010-04-30T10:07:00.000-07:00

I'll be out of town and away from my computer until Sunday evening, but hopefully I will have a character ready for you by then. In any case, if you have requests for other games, leave 'em here, so I can see what people want!

Army of Darkness RPG

2010-04-29T20:26:00.000-07:00

Tonight, we'll round out the Cinematic Unisystem trio of games with Army of Darkness (if you're a regular Unisystem fan, don't worry, I'll get to those later). If you've seen Army of Darkness (and really, who hasn't?), you're familiar with the premise - evil forces wake up, and magically teleport someone (Ash, in the movie) back to the Middle Ages, where he/she/they have to fight off hordes of undead creatures and evil beasties in order to say the words and get the heck home. Since the point of the game is to kick evil arse, and not sit around yapping, it uses Cinematic Unisystem, since it's a bit more streamlined. As with Buffy and Angel, it divides the characters into three skill levels: Primitive Screwheads, Heroes, and Experienced Heroes. Since I did mid-level for Angel, and low-level from Buffy, I'll do an Experienced Hero. They get 25 Attribute Points, 25 Quality Points, up to 10 Drawback Points, 40 Skill Points, and 20 Drama Points.

Gunslinger

Attributes
Strength 5 (2 levels from Promised One Quality)
Dexterity 7 (2 levels from Promised One Quality)
Constitution 6 (2 levels from Promised One Quality)
Intelligence 4
Perception 5
Willpower 6 (2 levels from Promised One Quality)

Qualities
Attractiveness +2
Fast Reaction Time (Part of Promised One Quality)
Hard to Kill 3 (2 levels from Promised One Quality)
Nerves of Steel (Part of Promised One Quality)
Promised One
Regeneration (3 life points per hour) (Part of Promised One Quality)
Resistance (Pain) 4
Situational Awareness

Drawbacks
Adversary (Deadites and Skeletons) Part of Promised One Quality)
Honorable (Minimal)
Humorless
Outcast

Skills (40 +4 from Drawbacks)
Acrobatics 4
Crime 4
Doctor 4
Driving/Riding 4
Getting Medieval 4
Gun Fu 8
Influence 2
Kung Fu 4 (1 level from Promised One Quality)
Mr. Fix-It 2
Notice 4
Occultism 2
Sports 2

The Gunsligner is pissed. He was minding his business, rustling cattle or robbing banks or whatever it is he does when he's feeling bored, and suddenly, some crazy monster attacked him. BEfore he knew it, he was in the middle of nowhere, stuck with people using giant knives and wearing all kinds of metal. Lucky for him, guns fix most problems. It's a little tough getting new bullets - the funny-hat-wearing advisors keep making noise about mystic powders and stuff - but all he needs are some bullets, a horse, and room to run. He has the Promised One Quality, meaning he has to fulfill some sort of prophecy to get home, but he also gets a bunch of benefits. He's a pretty, fast on the draw, tough sumbitch, and doesn't have much of a sense of humor, so if you cross him, say your prayers and make a will. Especially if you're a Deadite.

Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG

2010-04-28T22:40:00.001-07:00

Continuing from last night, the Buffy RPG is basically the same as the Angel RPG - it uses the same system, and basically the same character types - though instead of Investigator, Champion, Veteran Champion, Buffy uses White Hat, Hero, Experienced Hero. Like Angel, each type gets different amounts of points for character creation; the biggest difference with the Buffy RPG is that Buffy uses some different Qualities and Drawbacks, and it also got more support - there were three books, besides the core book, made for Buffy. Those books are the Slayer's Handbook, Monster Smackdown, and the Magic Box. So, there are a few more options with a Buffy game, though the books work just fine for Angel, too. In any case, while Angel tends to look towards slightly more adult characters, Buffy kind of assumes most characters will be young, in their teens. With that in mind, since I did a Champion yesterday, let's do a White Hat for Buffy; they get 15 Attribute Points, 10 Quality Points, up to 10 Drawback Points, 15 Skill Points, and 20 Drama Points.

'Scooby Gang' Member

Attributes (15 Points)
Strength 2
Dexterity 2
Constitution 2
Intelligence 4
Perception 2
Willpower 3

Qualities (10 Points)
Acute Senses (Vision)
Good Luck 3
Hard to Kill 3

Drawbacks (7 Points)
Adversary (Vampires & Demons)
Misfit
Teenager

Skills (15 Points + 7 from Drawbacks)
Acrobatics 2
Art 1
Computers 1
Doctor 2
Driving 2
Getting Medieval 2
Influence 2
Knowledge 2
Kung Fu 3
Notice 2
Occultism 2
Science 1

So, what we have here is your average outsider teen. Everyone thinks she's a misfit, she can't get out because she's still in school, and suddenly, she's got friends who do things like hunt down vampires, zombies, and devilish robots at night. She tags along, and does her best to contribute in fights, but most of her help comes outside the ring - she knows stuff. Misfits read the craziest books, you know - and sometimes, they get something useful out of them. Also, she's got wheels. If you read the entry from yesterdayyou'll note that the White Hat/Investigator character gets more Drama Points than the Hero/Champion - that's because they tend to be more fragile, and so they need a little more help in that department, plus it's always one of the brainy, squishy types who solve the problem in the nick of time while their scary combat monster buddy holds off the evil hordes, right?

Angel Roleplaying Game

2010-04-27T21:29:00.000-07:00

Angel is a game based on the TV series of the same name, companion to Buffy. They were both made by Eden Studios, and both use the same system, the Cinematic Unisystem - a streamlined version of Eden's more detailed Unisystem. Sadly, Eden Studios lost the license to the games earlier than they had planned due to some business problems, and didn't get a chance to make some of the best-sounding books: Tea & Crossbows: The Watcher's Handbook, Military Monster Squad: The Initiative Sourcebook, Lawyer, Guns & Money: The Wolfram & Hart sourcebook, and probably several others. In any case, about Angel - there are three main categories of character, the Investigator, the Champion, and the Veteran Champion. Each has a different power level, and different access to things to buy with the point-buy pool each has. Much like the TV show, it can be used to run a game with one Champion and several Investigator, or several Champions, or even Veteran Champions - think Angel season 5, with Spike, Angel, and Illyria stomping around. So, how about for this Angel character, we make a Champion - right at the mid-range of power for beginners. Champions get 20 Attribute Points, 20 Quality Points, can take up to 10 Drawback Points, 30 Skill Points, and 10 Drama Points. So, let's start.

Attributes (20)
Strength 6 (2 levels from Revenant Quality)
Dexterity 5 (2 levels from Revenant Quality)
Constitution 6 (2 levels from Revenant Quality)
Intelligence 4
Perception 3
Willpower 5 (3 levels from Revenant Quality)

Qualities (20 +2 from Drawbacks)
Body Switching (Part of Revenant Quality)
Hard to Kill 3
Regeneration (Per Hour)(Part of Revenant Quality)
Revenant
Situational Awareness
Unique Kill (Fire)(Part of Revenant Quality)

Drawbacks
Adversary (Vampires and Demons)
Dependent (Family)
Emotional Problem (Fear of Commitment)
Obligation (Total - The Powers That Be)
Psychic Visions (Part of Revenant Quality)

Skills (30 +8 from Drawbacks)
Acrobatics 5
Crime 4
Drive 2
Getting Medieval 6
Influence 3
Kung Fu 6
Notice 5
Occultism 3

Our Champion is a Revenant - it;s a hefty Quality meaning that he is faster, stronger, and tougher than normal people, but also doesn't sweat, breathe, or have a pulse - because, technically, he's dead. Not like a vampire, though, since vampires are demons trapped in humans forms - a Revenant is a spirit sent back from the dead to right wrongs by the Powers That Be. While his body is tough, it can be killed, but he comes back in a new one, unless he is killed with fire. He comes back from the dead over and over, killing demons and helping those who need it - and if he doesn't do it voluntarily, the crippling psychic visions he gets will nudge him in the right direction. Being dead doesn't fix all your problems, though - he's still got family to take care of, though it's a bit awkward to explain why a different person seems to know all the same things a former brother, sister, child or parent should know. And being dead is hell on new relationships. Like all good monster-killers in the Buffyverse, our Champion is skilled in melee and hand-to-hand skills, because bullets don't stop demons as well as a good axe.

The Drama Points aren't spent in character creation - they are used in play, and can be used for any of 5 different reasons: Heroic Feat (doing something cool at a dramatically appropriate time, like disarming a bomb with seconds to go), I Think I'm Okay (you don't take as much damage as you thought - a bullet missed a vital organ), Plot Twist (getting a break in a story - conveniently finding a valuable clue, say), Righteous Fury (you get hyped with righteous rage, and hit harder/faster/more), and Back From The Dead (the chracter comes back from the dead - at a dramatically appropriate time, that is). Perfect for mirroring the kind of wacky things that go on in an average Angel episode.

Shadowrun

2010-04-27T01:32:00.000-07:00

Shadowrun is a fun kind of game. Take your average kind of fantasy pastiche elements - elves, dwarves, orcs, trolls, dragons, magic - and throw them into a futuristic setting with cybernetics, high-grade firearms, wireless supercomputer networks with AIs...it's a cool idea, nd a cool game. I can't say that I've ever really played it, but I do own a number of the books, and as usual, I do tend towards a combat-centered character. So, if you are hoping for a top-of-the-line combat mage or a smooth-talking, computer-hacking decker, sorry. Like Mutants & Masterminds, Shadowrun works on a point buy system; you pay more points to play, say, a troll character than a human. You can allocate a certain amount of your points to statistics, a certain amount to skills (which are divided up into two groups, Practical and Knowledge), a certain amount to gear (including all sorts of cool cybergadgetry), and then add it all up before you go on your first run - with the inevitable betrayal by Mr. Johnson, of course. So, without further ado, here's my elven street samurai, a former member of the elven special forces group the Tir Tairngire Ghosts:

Jonas Arkiel, 'Phantom'

Body 3, Agility 5 (7), Reaction 4 (5), Strength 2 (4), Charisma 4, Intuition 4, Logic 4, Willpower 3

Edge 1, Initiative 9, Essence 2.725

Practical Skills: Climbing 3, Gymnastics 3, Running 3, Swimming 3, Automatics 4, Longarms 4, Pistols 4, Disguise 3, Infiltration 3, Palming 3, Shadowing 3, Blades 2, Clubs 2, Unarmed Combat 2, Perception 5, Etiquette 1, Demolitions 3, Dodge 4

Knowledge Skills: English (Native), Sperethiel 3, Military (Special Forces) 3, Security Procedures (Military) 2, Elven Society 3, Poison Antidotes 1, Firearm Design 3, Bars 2, Black Markets 2, Mercenary Hangouts 2

Qualities: Martial Arts 1, Guts, Addiction (Mild), SINner, Spirit bane, Wanted

Cybernetics: Cybereyes Basic System (Rating 2) with Flare Compensation, Lowlight Vision, Thermographic Vision, and Smartlink, Wired Reflexes (Rating 1)

Bioware: Muscle Augmentation 2, Muscle Toner 2, Orthoskin 1, Echolocation

Equipment: Ceramic Knife, Victorinox Memory Blade, 2 Extendable Batons, 2 Ares Predator IVs, Defiance EX Shocker, Morrissey Elan, HK Urban Combat, Colt M22A3, 2 Concealable Holsters, Hidden Gun Arm Slide, 2 Silencers, Sound Suppressor, 5 Flash-Bangs, 5 Smoke Grenades, 12 clips APDS rounds, 12 clips Explosive rounds, 12 clips Regular ammo, 6 clips Gel rounds, SWAT Armor, Lined Coat, Commlink: Sony Emperor, Skinlink, Subvocal Microphone, Tag Eraser, Fake License (Rating 4), RFID Sensor, 10 Plastic Restraints, Lockpick set, Gecko Tape gloves, Survival Kit, Grapple Gun, 200m Stealth Rope, Medkit (Rating 4), DocWagon Contract (Basic, 1 Year), 5 Stim Patches, 5 Tranq Patches, Fake SIN (Rating 4), Tool Kit, Flashlight, Catalyst Stick, 5 Trauma Patches, 2 months of low-rent housing.

Contacts: Morgue Tech, Fixer

Yeah, about half of that equipment list is weaponry of various types. What can I say? I like options. The cyberware and bioware increases his physical abilities - the statistics in parentheses above are the ratings after the cyberware; Orthoskin makes him slightly bulletproof, and his eyes are adjusted to see in low-light, to see heat signatures, to compensation for flares and flashes of light, and to link automatically with his guns. The references to a SIN (or System Identification Number) are essentially about having, or not having a national ID; the quality SINner means he has a real one, unlike many criminals, which could make him easier to track, but he has a high-quality fake SIN for use on illegal jobs. His mild addiction is to alcohol, and some spirits dislike him on sight, and he is wanted by his former boss for having information he shouldn't. He's laying low, waiting for his buddy in the morgue or his recent acquaintance the fixer to find him something to do - and waiting for other runners to group up with.

Mutants & Masterminds

2010-04-26T00:55:00.000-07:00

Mutants & Masterminds is a super-hero RPG, and one that is based on the d20 system popularized with the 3rd Edition of D&D. I have long been a fan of the super-hero genre, though I can't say that I have ever played in a super-hero RPG, something I would like to change at some point. As a fan of the genre, one of my favorite heroes has always been Captain America; I think that his example is a good one, and his abilities, while at the high end of the human norm, aren't completely off the scale. So, I think that in the spirit of the super-soldier, I will attempt to replicate that archetype in my character today. Mutants & Masterminds works on a sort of point-buy system, where each characteristic and statistic is bought from a pool of points determined by the power level of the game (in this case, the standard power level is 10). So, for a super-soldier at power level 10, with 150 points, it looks something like this:

Silver Soldier

Str 22 (+6), Dex 22 (+6), Con 22 (+6), Int 18 (+4), Wis 18 (+4), Cha (+4)

Toughness +6, Fortitude +10, Reflex +10, Will +8

Skills: Acrobatics 4 (+10), Climb 4 (+10), Intimidate 4 (+8), Knowledge (tactics) 12 (+6), Notice 8 (+12), Search 4 (+8), Sense Motive 4 (+8), Stealth 4 (+10), Swim 4 (+10)

Feats: Assessment, Benefit (security clearance), Diehard, Elusive Target, Evasion 2, Improved Block, Improved Initiative, Improved Trip, Inspire, Leadership, Master Plan, Power Attack, Uncanny Dodge (visual)

Powers: Blast 4 (thrown shield; Power Feats: Mighty 6, Ricochet; Alternate Powers: Strike 4 [Power Feats: Mighty]), Shield 4

Combat: Attack +10, Grapple +16, Damage +6 (unarmed), +10 (shield), Defense +14 (+5 flat-footed), Knockback -3, Initiative +10

Point Count: Abilities 60 + Skills 12 + Feats 14 + Powers 12 +Combat 40 + Saves 12 = 150

With this character, we have a hero with high physical abilities, and reasonably high intellect, wisdom, and charisma, not unlike Captain America, at least as a starting character. His saves are reasonably high, as well, meaning he will be able to resist or avoid a lot of damage. His skills are chiefly physical, with a high knowledge of tactics, making him a good soldier and tactician, making him a prime candidate for a group leader, at least in combat. His feats provide him with a number of combat tactics, both physical and to aid in devising plans (Master Plan to devise a tactical scenario, Inspire to fire up teammates, support with Teamwork and Leadership) and some benefits, like security clearance, that are more ephemeral. In an homage to Captain America, this character has a shield, which he can use to strike foes, throw at them (the Blast power means the shield returns when it is thrown), and also deflect attacks. He is, essentially, a super-soldier fresh off the line, with few abilities outside a narrow range, but he is good within that range.

Burning Wheel

2010-04-24T19:25:00.000-07:00

Burning Wheel is an interesting game written in 2002 by Luke Crane. I recommend it for a good read, if nothing else, but as with my D&D posts, this isn't abut the game itself, but about creating a character. First, though, some stuff about the character creation system. Burning Wheel uses a lifepath system; you choose each portion of your character's life, from birth until when your character begins play. The number of lifepaths your character gets is based on the power level of the game your GM wants to run; for absolute novices, you could go as low as 2 lifepaths, while veterans could go up to 5, and even more potent characters could start with more. Each lifepath gives you points for skills and traits,; some skills and traits are required, while some are just recommended. Also, each of the four races provided in the Character Burner book has at least one special trait; Dwarves have Greed, Elves have Grief, Humans have Faith and Sorcery, and Orcs have Hatred. These traits shape the way each race is played, and are defining factors. Unlike D&D, the characters aren't necessarily mechanically balanced; that is left up to the players.

So, here we go. I've decided to make an Elven character, and to go with 4 lifepaths; that gives me a decent amount, but not an overly powerful character. I want a character who can handle himself in a fight, so I'll aim for a martial career as his final lifepath. So, let's start with the first lifepath. I generally don't play characters from the nobility, so let's try that out; I'll take the Born Etharch lifepath. Etharchs are the nobility of the Elven world, so my character was born to privilege. This lifepath takes up 25 years, and give me 5 General skill points (which can be spent on any skill), as well as 2 regular points, with Elven Script, Etiquette, and Sing. For traits, this lifepath gives all standard Elf traits, as well as 2 points of traits, one of which must be spent on the Etharchal trait. It also gives 10 Resource points.

Moving on, the second lifepath is Attendant; this is essentially the squire of the Elven nobility. This also takes up 25 years, and gives him +1 to his Physical Stats pool. It gives 4 skill points, to be spent in Etiquette, Ride, Brawl, or Sword. He also gets 2 trait points, one of which must go to Calm Demeanor, and 15 Resource points.

As his third lifepath, my character will take Second; this is essentially training to become a Sword Singer, a specialized Elven warrior. The Second path takes up 35 years, and gives +1 to his Physical Stats pool. He gets 8 skill points, to be spent among Song of Bonding, Sword, Knives, Bow, Mending, Riding, and Mounted Combat. Again, he gets 2 trait point, one of which goes to Lesson of One, and 15 Resource points.

Finally, I'll take Sword Singer, but from the Protector path grouping; lets say my character, feeling a sense of duty, spent his time as a Sword Singer in the Elven military rather than training for a noble's guard. This takes up 31 years, and like the previous 2 paths, gives him +1 to his Physical Stats pool. He gets 10 skill points, to be spent between Sword, Armor, Shield, Knives, Brawling, and Song of the Sword, and 1 trait point, which goes to Sword of the White Towers. Finally, he gets 10 Resource points. Totalling the age up, it comes to 116, and the table for Elven ages means that his Mental Stats pool is 9 points, and his Physical Stats pool, with his lifepath bonuses, is 18 points. Mental points are divided up evenly betweel Will and Perception, while Physical points are divided between Power, Forte, Agility, and Speed.

Now, the Elven trait that really defines a lot of what an Elf is is called Grief. Grief is a result of having to watch the rest of the world age and die, while you remain young - the only things that can kill an Elf are violence and an excess of Grief, which causes an Elf to waste away. An Elf's Grief starts at a level determined by a series of questions in the Character Burner book, and if it hits a high enough level, your character just stops doing everything except feeling grief, and wastes away.

There are some derived attributes from other statistics. Health is one; it is the average of Will and Forte, rounded down. It can be affected by a series of questions in the Character Burner, but let's forgo those. Mortal Wound is the average of Power and Forte, rounded down, while Reflexes is the average of Perception, Agility, and Speed, and Steel is started at B3, and affected by another series of questions.

Finally, we have Beliefs and Instincts. Beliefs are what drive your character, and the more specific, the better - so, since I want my character to be a disillusioned Elven warrio who is living among huans to find a sense of himself, let's make one of his Beliefs 'With my own people I am lost - with man, I will be found'. You can have up to three Beliefs as a starting character. Instincts are in-game mechanical triggers that tell how a character reacts to a situation - they tell the GM 'this is how my character will always react in a situation'. Things like 'Always treat others courteously' or 'Never work quickly' are Instincts, and they beat anything a GM can do.

So, at the end of it all, the character comes out like this:

Aelazair, disillusioned warrior

Lifepaths: Born Etharch, Attendant, Second, Sword Singer

Age: 116

Stats: Pe B4, Wi B5, Ag B5, Sp B4, Po B4, Fo B5

Attributes: Ref B4, Ste B7, Hea B6, MW B10, Hesitation 5, Grief B5

Circles: B2 (+1D minor reputation among his former army, +1D affiliation with Etharchs)

Resources: B0

Skills: Elven Script B4, Etiquette B4, Sword B4, Song of the Sword B4, Bow B3, Brawling B3,
Knives B3, Mending B3, Riding B3, Sing B3, Song of Bonding B2

Gear: Elven Sword, Elven Plated Leather, Elven Clothes, Elven Shoes, Printed Volumes, house

Traits: Etharchal, Calm Demeanor, Lesson of One, Patient, Sword of the White Towers, Nimble

Beliefs: Among my people I am lost, among man will I be found; Killing should be the last option among civilized people; Help should be given to those who ask

Instincts: Always act courteously; Never work quickly; Always keep my blade handy

Why the D&D Interest?

2010-04-23T23:10:00.000-07:00

Why did I choose to make a character for all current D&D classes? I did it because, for the first time since I started playing, which was many, many years ago during 2nd Edition Advanced D&D, I feel that I would be willing to play a character of every class. Every class interests me in some way; each class has a role to play, and each class has its own, special way of going about that role. Each class is approximately equal in power, something that has not occurred for a long time, and yet each class seems like it would be fun to play.

Also, D&D now has some amazing software for use with it, including the character generator that I used to create each character; this makes character creation extremely easy on the mechanical side; it probably took me no more than 5-10 minutes to create each character, and making characters of levels higher than 1st probably wouldn't have added a great deal of time. D&D also has a monster creator, to help DMs with easy creation of monsters that are different than the norm; the program can adjust the level of existing monsters, or create entirely new ones. The D&D Insider subscription option is one of the best deals inn gaming for getting new information each month, with not just Dragon and Dungeon articles every month, but also an update to the character creator every month with any new official updates from any books published.

So, tomorrow, I'll start on other characters - and since I got a request way back when I first proposed this idea, the first game on deck is Burning Wheel. Should be interesting.

D&D: The Ardent

2010-04-23T15:42:00.000-07:00

The final Psionic class, and the final D&D class period for the time being, is the Ardent. Unlike the other Psionic classes, the ARdent did not gain her abilities through training, but likely just accidentally triggered them one day. You see, the Ardent is able to expand her emotional state to include others, and this can help them fight, or negotiate -or it can be deadly for an enemy. The Ardent is the Psionic Leader class; it is her job to use her emotional state to help her allies and punish her foes, as you will see with Adrie, Half-Elf Ardent!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Adrie, level 1
Half-Elf, Ardent
Ardent Mantle: Mantle of Elation

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 18, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 16.

AC: 16 Fort: 15 Reflex: 11 Will: 15
HP: 30 Surges: 11 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Endurance +8, Bluff +9, Diplomacy +11, Streetwise +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics, Arcana, Dungeoneering, Heal, History, Insight +2, Intimidate +4, Nature, Perception, Religion, Stealth, Thievery, Athletics -1

FEATS
Level 1: Heartening Surge

POWERS
Ardent at-will 1: Demoralizing Strike
Ardent at-will 1: Ire Strike
Dilettante: Enfeebling Strike
Ardent daily 1: Battleborn Acuity

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Chainmail, Halberd
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

As an Ardent, Adrie can choose either the emotional mantle of Clarity or of Elation; Adrie has Elation, which lets her use the encounter power Ardent Outrage, which causes all adjacent enemies to grant combat advantage if Adrie becomes bloodied, and she gains the Ardent power Ardent Surge, which lets her both heal allies and grant them a bonus to attack. As she has the Mantle of Elation, she also grants nearby allies a bonus to Diplomacy and Intimidate checks. As to her combat powers, the Dilettante power granted by her Half-Elf heritage is a Paladin power, Enfeebling strike; if she hits, it deals damage, and gives the foe a penalty to attack. Her Psionic powers are Demoralizing Strike, which deals damage and gives the target a small penalty to defense, and can be augmented to grant a higher penalty to Will defense or give all nearby foes a penalty to all defense, and Ire Strike, which lets an ally attack a nearby foe and if they hit, the foe gains a damage vulnerability; this can be augmented to increase the vulnerability, and also the range at which the ally can attack. Finally, Adrie has the power Battleborn Acuity, which damages one foe and gives all allies a bonus to attack and damage for a turn, and can be sustained.

D&D: The Psion

2010-04-22T16:28:00.000-07:00

Those of you who are familiar with previous editions of D&D should be familiar with the Psion; it is traditionally the class who has been the main user of Psionic powers. In 2nd Edition, there were a number of Psionic disciplines, like telepathy, telekinesis, Clairsentience, Psychoportation, and others, but in 4th Edition, each Psion gets to pick one disciplines to specialize in; currently they only offer telepathy and telekinesis, but I would think the Psionic Power book will expand that. As the main mover of mental mojo, the Psion is a Controller; he uses his powers to control the battlefield, through screwing with the minds of others or by using his mind to hit you with a brick. And so here is my example, Pelaios, Tiefling Psion!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Pelaios, level 1
Tiefling, Psion
Discipline Focus: Telepathy Focus

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 10, Int 18, Wis 12, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 10, Int 16, Wis 12, Cha 16.

AC: 14 Fort: 11 Reflex: 14 Will: 16
HP: 24 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Intimidate +9, Arcana +9, Bluff +11, Diplomacy +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics, Dungeoneering +1, Endurance +1, Heal +1, History +4, Insight +1, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion +4, Stealth +2, Streetwise +4, Thievery, Athletics -1

FEATS
Psion: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Imperious Majesty

POWERS
Psion at-will 1: Memory Hole
Psion at-will 1: Mind Thrust
Psion daily 1: Mental Trauma

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Staff Implement, Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Sickle
RITUALS
Tenser's Floating Disk
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

As you can see, Pelaios is a Telepathy Psion, which means he can send short messages to companions telepathically, and distract enemies with barrages of mental power. His feat allows him to use his Charisma bonus, rather than Dexterity, for determining initiative, meaning he is more likely to act first in combat. As with the Battlemind, the Psion has no Encounter powers, but can augment his At-Will and Daily powers, so here they are. Memory Hole damages a target with psychic power and causes Pelaios to become temporarily invisible to the target, and can be augmented to extend invisibility or expand the power to hit all nearby foes. Mind Thrust, however, does psychic damage, and can be augmented to give the target a penalty to Will defense, or do extra damage and take a penalty to all defenses for a turn. Finally, Mental Trauma does quite a bit of psychic damage, and makes the target vulnerable to further psychic attacks until it makes a saving throw.

D&D: The Monk

2010-04-22T08:04:00.000-07:00

The favored class of every wuxia fan, the Monk has an odd sort of history with D&D. In 3rd Edition, she was a sort of unarmed martial artist but with no real established power source, and before that she may have been a robed holy person. But in 4th Edition, the Monk is a Psionic character; she focuses her psychic abilities inward, to improve herself and allow her to do things other people cannot. The Monk is a Striker; it is her purpose to move in swiftly, deal damage, and get away before her enemies can pin her down. The Monk is a bit of a strange character, as you will see with Aelar, Bladeling Monk!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Aelar, level 1
Bladeling, Monk
Monastic Tradition: Centered Breath
Razor Storm: Razor Storm Dexterity

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 18, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 10.

AC: 16 Fort: 13 Reflex: 15 Will: 15
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Stealth +9, Perception +9, Acrobatics +9, Insight +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +1, Heal +4, History, Intimidate +2, Nature +4, Religion, Streetwise, Thievery +4, Athletics

FEATS
Level 1: Improved Monk Unarmed Strike

POWERS
Monk at-will 1: Dancing Cobra
Monk at-will 1: Crane's Wings
Monk encounter 1: Drunken Monkey
Monk daily 1: Masterful Spiral

ITEMS
Monk Unarmed Strike, Adventurer's Kit, Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Quarterstaff
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Aelar, as a Monk, has a choice between the Centered Breath and Stone Fist schools; Stone Fist does slightly more damage, but Cenetered Breath allows her to drive nearby opponents away, so I chose the latter. As her feat, she gained the ability to do slightly more damage with her unarmed attacks, which is nice for a striker. Most Monk powers have both an attack and a movement component; the movement component gives Aelar a movement option for that round when she uses the power, and can be used or not. Dancing Cobra deals damage, and includes extra damage if the target has made an opportunity attack against Aelar, and the movement portion allows her to move slightly farther than normal, while Crane's Wings does damage while pushing the target, and the movement portion allows her to jump as if from a running start and go as far as she can make it. the Drunken Monkey power does damage and slides the foe, and then makes the foe make a basic attack against an opponent of Aelar's choice due to disorientation, while the movement portion allows her to move through difficult terrain as if it was normal and gain a bonus to defense against opportunity attacks. Finally, Masterful Spiral does a great deal of damage, and allows Aelar to reach slightly farther with her unarmed attacks, allowing her to strike enemies normally out of her reach.

D&D: The Battlemind

2010-04-20T21:01:00.000-07:00

The Battlemind is the first class of the Psionic power source. As psionics, they have powers of the mind, but they also have physical skills, and the Battlemind combines those two in a deadly way. Psionic classes are different from others; they have no encounter powers, but they can augment their At-Will powers to do more damage or affect enemies. The Battlemind is the Psionic Defender; it is to the Battlemind that the other Psionic classes look for protection, and they take their blows admirably. But showing is always better than telling, so I present Lhyra, Hobgoblin Battlemind!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Lhyra, level 1
Hobgoblin, Battlemind
Psionic Study: Speed of Thought

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 18, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 16.

AC: 19 Fort: 14 Reflex: 12 Will: 16
HP: 33 Surges: 13 Surge Value: 8

TRAINED SKILLS
Diplomacy +9, Endurance +7, Intimidate +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics -2, Arcana, Bluff +4, Dungeoneering +1, Heal +1, History +2, Insight +1, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion, Stealth -2, Streetwise +4, Thievery -2, Athletics

FEATS
Level 1: Pursuing Step

POWERS
Battlemind at-will 1: Demon Dance
Battlemind at-will 1: Whirling Defense
Battlemind daily 1: Steel Unity Strike

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Scale Armor, Heavy Shield, Scimitar
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

The Battlemind can be either Quick or Resilient; Lhyra is Quick, and with it she gains Speed of Thought, which lets her move a number of squares before combat technically begins, letting her get out front. She can also shift when an enemy shifts with Blurred Step and use Mind Spike to give psychic backlash to a marked target who hits an ally. As to her combat powers, Demon Dance lets Lhyra hit a foe and give it a big penalty to opportunity attacks, or augment it to remove threatening reach from an opponent or do more damage. Whirling Defense, meanwhile, does damage to and marks a target, and can be augmented to do more Mind Spike damage or include more enemies. Finally, Steel Unity Strike does a great deal of damage and lets Lhyra assume Steel Unity stance, which lets her reflexively hit a target adjacent to her that moves without shifting - handy for keeping foes near you.

D&D: The Runepriest

2010-04-19T22:54:00.000-07:00

The Runepriest is a curious class; at first, it appears to be designed for dwarves only, as runepriests have long been a part of dwarven background and culture. They use the power of runes, passed to them from the gods, to aid and strengthen their companions, which makes them Divine Leaders, alongside the Cleric. They scribe their runes in the air and on items, and bring the divine power of deities down to smite their foes. I chose to go with a slightly unusual race, so here is Tor, Shifter Runepriest!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Tor, level 1
Longtooth Shifter, Runepriest
Runic Artistry: Defiant Word

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 8.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 8.

AC: 18 Fort: 14 Reflex: 12 Will: 14
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Religion +5, Insight +9, Athletics +11, Heal +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +1, Arcana, Bluff -1, Diplomacy -1, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +3, History, Intimidate -1, Nature +4, Perception +4, Stealth +1, Streetwise -1, Thievery +1

FEATS
Level 1: Rune of Hope

POWERS
Runepriest at-will 1: Word of Binding
Runepriest at-will 1: Word of Exchange
Runepriest encounter 1: Flames of Purity
Runepriest daily 1: Rune of the Undeniable Dawn

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Scale Armor, Light Shield, Mace
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Runepriests have an odd ability; whenever they use a power that has the runic keyword, they can choose one of two effects, either destruction or protection. Tor is a Defiant Word runepriest, so he gets a bonus to damage any enemy that attacks him and misses. He also has a healing power, Rune of Mending, which lets him heal allies or himself twice per encounter. As to his attack powers, Word of Binding lets him strike an enemy and immobilize it for a turn, while Word of Exchange lets him strike a foe and either let an ally do more damage to the target, or lower the targets defenses for a turn. Flames of Purity is an area effect attack that hits all foes in the area with fire, and can either heal allies or give allies a damage bonus. Rune of the Undeniable Dawn is another area attack that hits all enemies in an area, and also creates an area that gives all allies a defense bonus.

D&D: The Seeker

2010-04-18T19:39:00.000-07:00

The arcane archer was an idea that came from 3rd Edition D&D; essentially, it was an archer that used a mix of magic and martial skill to do interesting and sometimes terrible things to foes while using a missile weapon. The Seeker is a class that takes that archetype and runs with it. While the Seeker is Primal rather than Arcane, the Seeker uses a missile weapon, whether a bow or a thrown weapon, to cause all manner of havoc with his enemies; for this reason, the Seeker is a Controller, placing his shots in ways that give him control of the battlefield. As I prefer to show rather than tell, I present to you Theren, Elven Seeker!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Theren, level 1
Elf, Seeker
Seeker's Bond: Bloodbond

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 18, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 10.

AC: 16 Fort: 11 Reflex: 15 Will: 15
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Nature +11, Stealth +10, Perception +11, Acrobatics +10

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +1, Heal +4, History, Insight +4, Intimidate, Religion, Streetwise, Thievery +4, Athletics

FEATS
Level 1: Light Step

POWERS
Seeker at-will 1: Elemental Spirits
Seeker at-will 1: Biting Swarm
Seeker encounter 1: Flickering Arrow
Seeker daily 1: Rime Strike

ITEMS
Leather Armor, Adventurer's Kit, Longbow
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

I chose Elf as Theren's race for their innate skill with bows, and once per encounter they can use Elven Accuracy, which lets them reroll an attack. Theren has as his Seeker bond the Bloodbond, which lets him push away and slow any targets near him - giving him room to fire. As combat powers, he has Elemental Spirits, which lets him shoot a target, inflict elemental damage of his choice, and also inflict damage on any foe that starts its turn adjacent to the original target, along with Biting Swarm, which lets him shoot a target and give it and all enemies adjacent to it a penalty to attack for a turn. Flickering Arrow lets him shoot a target, keeping it from taking cover or concealment, and also giving all enemies within 6 squares of the target a penalty to attack rolls; as his daily attack, he has Rime Strike, which shoots an enemy with cold, immobilizes it, and then creates a zone of cold, difficult terrain around the target, doing damage to anything that enters or starts its turn there.

D&D: The Assassin

2010-04-17T16:10:00.000-07:00

The Assassin is well-known in both fantasy and non-fantasy literature; he silently steals into the abode of a target and kills them swiftly, then leaves before anyone knows he was there. In D&D, the Assassin has abilities that certainly help with sneaking about, but the D&D Assassin is no ordinary killer - he has a connection the the Shadowfell which makes him all the more dangerous. The only released class of the Shadow power source, the Assassin is a Striker; he sneaks up on his foes, and attacks swiftly and without mercy, doing as much damage as possible before melting into the shadows again. This will be revealed here, with Elkantar, Drow Assassin.

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Elkantar, level 1
Drow, Assassin
Guild Training: Night Stalker
Darkfire: Darkfire Charisma

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 18, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 10, Cha 16.

AC: 16 Fort: 12 Reflex: 14 Will: 15
HP: 22 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 5

TRAINED SKILLS
Stealth +11, Thievery +9, Bluff +9, Acrobatics +9, Streetwise +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Arcana, Diplomacy +4, Dungeoneering, Endurance +1, Heal, History, Insight, Intimidate +6, Nature, Perception, Religion, Athletics

FEATS
Level 1: Keeper of the Black Flame

POWERS
Assassin at-will 1: Leaping Shade
Assassin at-will 1: Shadow Storm
Assassin encounter 1: Nightmare Shades
Assassin daily 1: Grave Spike

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Leather Armor, Longsword
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Elkantar, as an Assassin, gets several special abilities; for one, he can, once per encounter, turn himself insubstantial and sneak up on an enemy, only becoming substantial again when he strikes; he can also jump through shadows in a sort of short-range teleport. He can also target enemies with Shrouds; Elkantar can target one enemy per round, and each target can take up to 4 Shrouds, and when Elkantar strikes that enemy, he can choose to expend the Shrouds on the target to deal additional damage. Also, as a Drow, he can both create an area of total darkness that only he can see through and surround a target with a purple light that makes it easier to hit them. As for his normal combat powers, Leaping Shade lets him strike a target and do a small bit of extra damage if he does not expend his Shrouds on that foe, and Shadow Storm lets him attack a foe and do more damage for each other creature adjacent to the target. Nightmare Shades lets Elkantar strike a foe hard and also gain a bonus to attack and damage against that foe until the end of his next turn, and Grave Spike is his cruelest attack - he attacks a foe, and the attack does ongoing damage, and every time the ongoing damage happens, it causes the target to fall prone - and in addition, Elkantar gets a bonus to attack the foe until the end fo the encounter as long as he has Shrouds on it.

D&D: The Artificer

2010-04-16T19:20:00.000-07:00

It has long been a staple of mythology and fantasy literature to have a character whose job it is to slave away at a forge, making the awesome magic weaponry and armor that the heroes use. D&D, specifically the Eberron setting, took that idea a step further, saying "What if that guy got out on a battlefield - what kind of havoc could he wreak?" It turns out, quite a bit. Since the original purpose of an Artificer is to create objects and weave enchantments about them, the Artificer is a Leader; he works much of his magic through the weapons, armor, and equipment of his allies. But it is better to show than tell, so I present Dayereth, Eladrin Artificer!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Dayereth, level 1
Eladrin, Artificer

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 18, Wis 12, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 16, Wis 12, Cha 12.

AC: 16 Fort: 14 Reflex: 14 Will: 13
HP: 28 Surges: 9 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Endurance +8, Arcana +11, Perception +6, Heal +6, History +11, Diplomacy +6

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +1, Bluff +1, Dungeoneering +1, Insight +1, Intimidate +1, Nature +1, Religion +4, Stealth +1, Streetwise +1, Thievery +1, Athletics -1

FEATS
Artificer: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Accurate Magic Weapon

POWERS
Artificer at-will 1: Magic Weapon
Artificer at-will 1: Aggravating Force
Healing Infusion: Healing Infusion: Resistive Formula
Artificer encounter 1: Burning Weapons
Artificer daily 1: War Proxy

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Crossbow, Leather Armor, Adventurer's Kit, Wand Implement
RITUALS
Brew Potion, Disenchant Magic Item, Enchant Magic Item, Make Whole
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Dayereth, as an artificer, gains the ability to craft healing infusions, which he can then carry around and use as needed; his basic one simply heals, but the other will be covered shortly. His feat gives him a small bonus to attack with any weapon or implement which has been used as a focus for his powers that encounter. Magic Weapon is a power that lets Dayereth fire at an enemy, and also give a bonus to the attack and damage rolls of any adjacent allies; Aggravating Force is similar, but it grants only one ally an attack bonus against the attack's original target. The Resistive Formula healing infusion, as the name implies, aids the resistance of the ally who gets it, increasing his AC. Burning Weapons attacks an enemy with fire, and causes Dayereth, and any ally within 2 squares, to add fire damage to their attacks until the end of Dayereth's next turn. Finally, War Proxy targets both an enemy and an ally; the enemy takes damage from an attack, while the ally, if the attack is successful, can be the originating point for all Dayereth's ranged attacks until the end of the encounter - allowing him to attack foes he normally could not.

D&D: The Invoker

2010-04-15T19:09:00.001-07:00

The Invoker is another Divine power source class, but it isn't anything like the others. Where the Cleric and Paladin were familiar, and the Avenger pretty much a church assassin, the Invoker is the wrath of his or her god, personified. He wields some seriously Old Testament powers, kind of like Moses - if Moses were played by Jet Li. Invokers have a tiny portion of their god's essence within them, and were originally created to help fight primordials - but now they just hit people with curses, maledictions, and general unpleasantness. The Invoker is a Controller; he shapes the battlefield to his liking with divine force. With this one, I've done something a bit different and made an evil character, so meet Vondal, Duergar Invoker of Bane!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Vondal, level 1
Duergar, Invoker
Divine Covenant: Covenant of Malediction

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 18, Dex 10, Int 12, Wis 18, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 10, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 10.

AC: 16 Fort: 15 Reflex: 12 Will: 15
HP: 28 Surges: 10 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Religion +6, Intimidate +5, Endurance +8, Insight +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics -1, Arcana +1, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering +6, Heal +4, History +1, Nature +4, Perception +4, Stealth -1, Streetwise, Thievery -1, Athletics -1

FEATS
Invoker: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Baleful Malediction

POWERS
Invoker at-will 1: Visions of Blood
Invoker at-will 1: Divine Bolts
Invoker encounter 1: Whispers of Defeat
Invoker daily 1: Execration

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Staff Implement, Adventurer's Kit, Chainmail, Mace
RITUALS
Hand of Fate, Create Holy Water
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Vondal is a malediction Invoker, meaning he curses enemies with unpleasant things like boils and visions of agony. His feat, Baleful Malediction, gives any enemy hit by one of Vondal's Ecnounter or Daily powers a -2 to attack him. Visions of Blood afflicts the target with terrible visions, damaging him and giving him a minor penalty to attack until Vondal's next turn, while Divine Bolts hits a target (or two) with bolts of divine lightning. Whispers of Defeat is an area attack that afflicts affected enemies with searing doubt, giving them penalties to attack and inflicting psychic damage. Finally, Execration is an area attack that curses your targets, causing not only initial damage, but also ongoing damage until they make a saving throw; sadly, to use this, Vondal also takes some ongoing damage, but those are the risks you take to defeat your foes.

D&D: The Sorcerer

2010-04-14T20:21:00.000-07:00

The Sorcerer came about in 3rd Edition; he was an arcane caster, like the Wizard, but instead of learning his spells through long study and practice, his skills were innate. While he knew fewer spells, he could use what he knew more often. They were charismatic individuals, who wielded their magic through force of personality. Much of that is the same in 4th Edition; they are still charismatic, and their magical skills are innate, but now they have a variety of methods for gaining their magic - general chaos, the blood of a dragon in the family line, the fury of a storm, or simply a connection to the cosmos. Each gives them something different, but as a Striker, their job is still the same - kill things fast with as much magic as possible. So I present to you Sim, Changeling Sorcerer!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Sim, level 1
Changeling, Sorcerer
Spell Source: Wild Magic

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 18, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 16.

AC: 14 Fort: 11 Reflex: 14 Will: 17
HP: 24 Surges: 7 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +5, Intimidate +9, Bluff +11, Diplomacy +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +4, Dungeoneering +1, Endurance +1, Heal +1, History, Insight +3, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion, Stealth +4, Streetwise +4, Thievery +4, Athletics -1

FEATS
Level 1: Disciplined Wild Soul

POWERS
Sorcerer at-will 1: Chaos Bolt
Sorcerer at-will 1: Energy Strobe
Sorcerer encounter 1: Bedeviling Burst
Sorcerer daily 1: Chromatic Orb

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Dagger, Staff Implement
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Sim is a chaos sorcerer, so a certain number of effects he uses are randomized; the energy type of his attacks, whether he gets an attack or defense bonus each round, all turn on the roll of a die. Chaos Bolt hits an enemy with a bolt of chaotic energy, and a random roll determines whether a secondary attack occurs, whereas with Energy Strobe, a bolt of energy strikes an opponent, and the roll of a die determines both the energy type and what energy type Sim gets a minor resistance to until the end of his next turn. Bedeviling Burst is a ranged magic attack that does psychic damage, and either pushes or slides the target, depending on whether the attack comes up even or odd. Finally, Chromatic Orb does good damage, and after a die roll, you find out what type of energy - and corresponding fun effect - the target is hit with.

D&D: The Shaman

2010-04-13T18:13:00.000-07:00

The Primal power source introduced in Player's Handbook 2 brought a number of new ideas to the game. One of these is the concept behind the Shaman. The Shaman is, as you'd expect, a shamanistic character, communing with spirits for advice and talking to nature. But the Shaman also gets a spirit companion - and it is through this spirit companion that many of the Shaman's powers play out. The shaman chooses a type of spirit companion, like a protector, a predator, or a watcher, and can then have that spirit be any kind of animal she wants - perhaps a bear for a protector, or a great cat for a predator. Then the Shama can move the spirit companion around on the battlefield, using her powers through the spirit to aid her allies. The Shaman is the Leader for the Primal power source, and thus it is up to her to aid her allies and keep them going - as you will see in Gwenna, the Shaman.

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Gwenn, level 1
Human, Shaman
Companion Spirit: Watcher Spirit

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 16, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 12.

AC: 15 Fort: 13 Reflex: 14 Will: 16
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Endurance +6, Nature +9, Insight +9, Heal +9, Perception +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +3, Arcana, Bluff +1, Diplomacy +1, Dungeoneering +4, History, Intimidate +1, Religion, Stealth +3, Streetwise +1, Thievery +3, Athletics -1

FEATS
Human: Watcher Spirit Adept
Level 1: Resilient Spirit

POWERS
Bonus At-Will Power: Voice of Battle
Shaman at-will 1: Watcher's Strike
Shaman encounter 1: Stormhawk's Fury
Shaman daily 1: Spirit of Consuming Terror

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Leather Armor, Totem, Spear
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Gwenna's companion spirit is a watcher spirit; the watcher spirit watches carefully for any sign of enemy weakness, and then strikes. For her feats, Gwenna has a feat to improve Insight and Perception checks for allies near her spirit, and also to increase her spirit's defenses - while it cannot die, it can be temporarily banished if hit hard enough. Voice of Battle is a psychic attack through the spirit companion, and it allows an ally near the spirit to shift 2 squares; Watcher's Strike, on the other hand, is also an attack through the spirit, but gives adjacent allies a bonus to attack and Perception checks. Stormhawk's Fury lets the spirit move swiftly, strike hard, and until the end of Gwenna's next turn, any ally who hits an enemy adjacent to her spirit causes that enemy to take additional damage. Spirit of Consuming Terror is Gwenna's daily, and it not only does decent damage, but until the end of its next turn the target gets a penalty to attack rolls, and Gwenna can choose to repeat the attack on the following turns.

D&D: The Warden

2010-04-12T18:10:00.000-07:00

Wardens are new to D&D, as a part of the Primal power source. Think of them like this: if the Barbarian is like an avalanche, and a Druid like a coming storm, the Warden is like a mountain; he is the bulwark against which attacks break and enemies fall. Wardens do not use heavy armor to break the attacks; instead, they rely on their innate toughness and high hit points as they wade into the fray and mark all those around them. Wardens are, as you may have guessed, Defenders; unlike the Fighter, Paladin, and Swordmage, though, the Warden can mark all enemies adjacent to him, which makes it useful for the Warden to really jump into the middle of things. Without further useless words, I present Lo-Kag, Goliath Warden!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Lo-Kag, level 1
Goliath, Warden
Guardian Might: Stormheart

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 18, Dex 10, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 8.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 12, Wis 12, Cha 8.

AC: 18 Fort: 15 Reflex: 12 Will: 13
HP: 35 Surges: 13 Surge Value: 8

TRAINED SKILLS
Nature +8, Perception +6, Endurance +8, Athletics +10

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics -1, Arcana +1, Bluff -1, Diplomacy -1, Dungeoneering +1, Heal +1, History +1, Insight +1, Intimidate -1, Religion +1, Stealth -1, Streetwise -1, Thievery -1

FEATS
Level 1: Markings of the Predator

POWERS
Warden at-will 1: Tempest Assault
Warden at-will 1: Strength of Stone
Warden encounter 1: Gale Strike
Warden daily 1: Form of Mountain's Thunder

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Hide Armor, Light Shield, Battleaxe
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Lo-Kag is a Stormheart Warden, which means when he uses his second wind, he can slide every marked enemy within 2 squares of him 1 square, and they are all Slowed until the end of his next turn. His feat gives him a +1 to defense when he bloodies an enemy, useful for a Defender. As for his powers, Tempest Assault strikes one enemy with the power of lightning, and one enemy nearby the original target takes thunder damage, while Strength of Stone allows Lo-Kag to hit an enemy and gain temporary hit points from it. Gale Strike lets Lo-Kag hit one enemy hard, and hit all other enemies marked by him for damage, as well as letting him slide them all 1 square. Finally, Form of Mountain's Thunder transforms Lo-Kag, giving him a protective shell of rock and earth; for the rest of the encounter, he resists a small amount of any damage he gets, gets a bonus to his AC, and once per turn he can deal a small amount of damage automatically to all targets he has marked after he hits - and once for the rest of the encounter, he can strike the ground with the fury of thunder, and all enemies adjacent to him take damage and are knocked prone.

D&D: The Druid

2010-04-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

Druids are an old favorite of D&D, and in 3rd Edition, they could be one of the most overpowered classes, because they could shapeshift into virtually anything, and get the same abilities of whatever they turned into. In 4th Edition, druids can still shapeshift, but they don't get any improved abilities other than the use of some special powers that can only be used while shapeshifted, but druids are still powerful - they're just a little trickier to use. They are Primal Controllers, meaning it is their job to control the battlefield, whether pouncing on enemies in beast form, overcoming them as a swarm of insects, or striking them with the full force of nature. So here I present, Banmarden, wilden Druid!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Banmarden, level 1
Wilden, Druid
Primal Aspect: Primal Swarm
Hardy Form: Hardy Form Reflex

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 18, Dex 12, Int 12, Wis 18, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 12, Wis 16, Cha 10.

AC: 14 Fort: 14 Reflex: 13 Will: 15
HP: 30 Surges: 11 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Nature +11, Insight +9, Heal +9, Perception +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics, Arcana +1, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +3, History +1, Intimidate, Religion +1, Stealth +2, Streetwise, Thievery, Athletics -2

FEATS
Druid: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Stinging Swarm

POWERS
Druid at-will 1: Swarming Locusts
Druid at-will 1: Grasping Tide (Druid)
Druid at-will 1: Pounce
Druid encounter 1: Scattered Form
Druid daily 1: Fog of Insects

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Adventurer's Kit, Hide Armor, Quarterstaff, Totem
RITUALS
Animal Messenger, Portend Weather
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Banmarden is a wilden, a race that is essentially sentient plant life. He has the Primal Swarm specialty, which means his beast form is a swarm of insects, and the feat he has, Stinging Swarm, means that he gets combat advantage every time he takes damage. Druids get three at-will powers; of those, Swarming Locusts is an area attack that causes Banmarden's beast form to explode outwards, and any enemy within grants combat advantage; Grasping Tide is a ranged area attack that causes a pillar of water to hit enemies, and if they attempt to leave the area, they can be knocked prone; and Pounce is a beast form attack that does damage and grants combat advantage to the next ally to attack the target. Scattered Form is a swarm attack that causes Banmarden's insect form to attack a small area around him, and he also takes half damage from all attacks until his next turn. Finally, Fog of Insects summons a great could of stinging insects to an area around Banmarden, doing decent damage and giving him a bonus to defense until the end of the encounter.

D&D: The Avenger

2010-04-10T19:38:00.000-07:00

The Avenger is a new concept in D&D. As a Divine class, it sits with the Cleric and Paladin, but where the Cleric is the voice of her god, and a Paladin is the shiled, the Avenger is the terrible swift sword. Avengers dispense their own brand of justice towards foes of their god; they do not wear armor, for they are armored by their faith, and any enemy they swear an oath against is not long for this world - the special mechanic of the Avenger lets them swear an Oath against one enemy per encounter, and against that enemy, they roll every attack twice, making it much harder for them to miss. Avengers are Strikers; they do not care for defense, only inflicting terrible damage on their foes. So without further ado, I give you Uweya, Avenger of Erathis!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Uweya, level 1
Githzerai, Avenger
Avenger's Censure: Censure of Unity

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 18, Wis 18, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 16, Wis 16, Cha 10.

AC: 17 Fort: 12 Reflex: 15 Will: 15
HP: 26 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Religion +9, Stealth +6, Perception +9, Heal +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +3, Arcana +4, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering +4, Endurance +1, History +4, Insight +4, Intimidate, Nature +4, Streetwise, Thievery +1, Athletics +1

FEATS
Level 1: Githzerai Blade Master

POWERS
Avenger at-will 1: Bond of Censure
Avenger at-will 1: Leading Strike
Avenger encounter 1: Rictus Grin
Avenger daily 1: Strength of Many

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Holy Symbol, Cloth Armor (Basic Clothing), Fullblade
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Uweya is a Githzerai, a race I think goes well with the Avengers because of their often somewhat monastic tendencies. Her feat gives her proficiency with more weapons and a damage bonus to using several weapons, which is nice. Her Avenger Censure is the Censure of Unity, so she does more damage if her allies are near her when she attacks her Oath target. Bond of Censure is a ranged attack that lets Uweya pull her target to her, and if they end up next to her, they take damage. Leading Strike not only hits a target, but gives a nearby enemy a bonus to hit the same target. Rictus Grin inflicts decent damage, and gives an attack penalty to any enemy adjacent to Uweya for a turn, and Strength of Many, her big finisher, does large amounts of damage and gives her a further damage bonus for each ally within two squares of her.

D&D: The Barbarian

2010-04-09T18:36:00.000-07:00

The Barbarian is a common theme in fantasy literature; he is often a member of some tribal culture that does not use heavy armor or sophisticated combat techniques; Barbarians often just charge at an enemy, screaming, wielding the largest weapon they can carry. Barbarians in D&D are somewhat along those lines, but far cooler. They use the Primal power source, meaning the source of any supernatural powers they use is the world around them, often an earth spirit or some other nature-based entity. Barbarians have Rage powers, which not only let them attack, but then give them a bonus effect for the rest of combat. As you might imagine, Barbarians are Strikers - they throw themselves into combat, inflicting as much damage as they can and relying on their high Hit Points to carry them through. So, here I present to you today's character, Weoren!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Weoren, level 1
Minotaur, Barbarian
Feral Might: Rageblood Vigor

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 18, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 8, Cha 12.

AC: 15 Fort: 16 Reflex: 12 Will: 11
HP: 33 Surges: 13 Surge Value: 8

TRAINED SKILLS
Intimidate +6, Endurance +8, Athletics +8

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics, Arcana, Bluff +1, Diplomacy +1, Dungeoneering -1, Heal -1, History, Insight -1, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion, Stealth, Streetwise +1, Thievery

FEATS
Level 1: Springing Charge

POWERS
Barbarian at-will 1: Recuperating Strike
Barbarian at-will 1: Howl of Fury
Barbarian encounter 1: Avalanche Strike
Barbarian daily 1: Macetail's Rage

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Hide Armor, Maul
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Weoren is a Minotaur, which means he gets a racial ability that lets him make a special charge attack using his horns. I gave him the Springing Charge feat, which lets him make a second charge attack if he makes a critical strike on his first charge - helpful with his racial ability and his class ability, which is called Swift Charge. Recuperating Strike lets him strike a foe, and gain temporary hit points for doing so, while Howl of Fury also lets him attack a foe, but then let loose a howl that damages all other enemies in an area around him. Avalanche Strike lets Weoren do massive damage, at the expense of leaving his defenses lowered, while Macetail's Rage sends him into a rage; he does decent damage initially, while also knocking his foe prone, and afterwards, for the rest of combat, Weoren gains temporary hit points every time he successfully strikes in combat.

D&D: The Bard

2010-04-08T17:25:00.000-07:00

The Bard is an old favorite of many people, mostly because it is just a fun class; who doesn't like to raise their allies' spirits by singing dirty ditties, or to cause their enemies to falter with insulting jokes and mockery? In 4th Edition, the Bard can do that and more; the Bard's role is as a Leader, so she supports her party with words and song, buoying their spirits while tripping their enemies up. She is not a front-line fighter, but she keeps the others going - and is pretty good as a diplomat, negotiator, and all-around wordsmith. So, here I present to you Sorashana the Bard!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Sorashana, level 1
Kalashtar, Bard
Bardic Virtue: Virtue of Prescience
Kalashtar: Diplomacy Bonus

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 18, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 12, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 16, Cha 16.

AC: 16 Fort: 11 Reflex: 12 Will: 15
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +5, Heal +9, Perception +9, Diplomacy +11, Bluff +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +1, Dungeoneering +5, Endurance +1, History +1, Insight +7, Intimidate +5, Nature +5, Religion +1, Stealth +1, Streetwise +5, Thievery +1, Athletics -1

FEATS
Bard: Ritual Caster
Level 1: Prescient Fortification

POWERS
Bard at-will 1: Vicious Mockery
Bard at-will 1: Jinx Shot
Bard encounter 1: Prophetic Action
Bard daily 1: Saga of Rivalry

ITEMS
Ritual Book, Longbow, Dagger, Chainmail, Adventurer's Kit, Wand Implement
RITUALS
Glib Limerick, Create Campsite
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Sorashana's bardic class virtue, the Virtue of Prescience, means that once per encounter, when an enemy would hit a nearby ally, Sorashana can grant the ally a bonus to defense to attempt to avoid the attack. Vicious Mockery, a power seen in my Warlock writeup, does what it says - harms an enemy with the power of cutting insults. The Jinx Shot power is a ranged attack that, if it hits, causes the target to fall prone if it misses with an attack before Sorashana's next turn. Prophetic Action harms an enemy, and if the enemy targets Sorashana or an ally before Sorashana's next turn and misses, Sorashana can have another ally move several squares in response. Her big finishing number is the Saga of Rivalry; Sorashana shoots an enemy with her bow, and if she hits, she chooses an ally; if the target is not adjacent to that ally by the end of its turn, it takes 5 damage, which lasts until the foe makes a saving throw, and the chosen ally gets a bonus to attack that enemy until the end of the encounter.

D&D: The Swordmage

2010-04-07T17:54:00.000-07:00

Now that we're done with the classes from the first Player's Handbook, I'm moving on to the next published class, the Swordmage. The Swordmage comes from a popular idea in previous editions of the game - the character who could wield a sword and also use magic at the same time. While the Swordmage won't likely be throwing any fireballs, the powers it uses are distinctly magical, and if used correctly, very devastating. The Swordmage is, like the Fighter and the Paladin, a Defender; it is his job to protect his fellow party members and attract the attention of enemies. Though he is lightly armored, his skills more than make up for that, as you'll see here.

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Serbahn, level 1
Shadar-kai, Swordmage
Swordmage Aegis: Aegis of Ensnarement

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 12, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 18, Wis 10, Cha 10.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 12, Con 16, Dex 10, Int 16, Wis 10, Cha 10.

AC: 19 Fort: 14 Reflex: 14 Will: 12
HP: 31 Surges: 11 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Arcana +9, Athletics +6, Endurance +8, History +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +3, Bluff, Diplomacy, Dungeoneering, Heal, Insight, Intimidate, Nature, Perception, Religion +4, Stealth +3, Streetwise, Thievery +1

FEATS
Level 1: Grasping Ensnarement

POWERS
Swordmage at-will 1: Luring Strike
Swordmage at-will 1: Lightning Lure
Swordmage encounter 1: Falcon's Mark
Swordmage daily 1: Sweeping Frostblade

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Leather Armor, Broadsword
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

As a shadar-kai, Serbahn has a racial ability allowing him to teleport a short distance once per encounter, which is a handy ability to have; his Swordmage ability, Aegis of Ensnarement, allows him to mark an opponent at range, and then if the opponent does not attack Serbahn, not only will the enemy suffer a penalty to attack rolls, but Serbahn can also pull the enemy to his side, leaving the foe open to attack. Luring Strike allows Serbahn to attack, move a square, and pull the target into the square he was just in, and also to move another square either before or after the attack, whereas Lightning Lure can attack a foe up to 3 squares away and then pull the foe to a square adjacent to Serbahn. Falcon's Mark requires Serbahn to throw his sword, but it allows him to mark the target with his Swordmage Aegis power, giving him two such targets. Sweeping Frostbalde lets Serbahn attack an opponent with an icy sword-strike, and if he hits, he immobilizes the target until the target passes a saving throw - so it can put a foe out of the game for a while.

D&D: The Warlock

2010-04-06T20:33:00.000-07:00

Warlocks made an appearance in 3rd Edition D&D, but not like they are in 4th Edition. In this edition, warlocks each make a pact with some terrible power; whether it is an infernal power like a demon, a fey power like a great nature spirit, or a vestige of some long-lost being that still lingers on today, they promise their service in return for power. The power granted is dependent on what power they serve; infernal powers give fire-based powers, while fey powers choose nature-based ways of causing damage. Warlocks are Strikers, but they are unique in that their damage is almost secondary tot heir mobility. For this character, I have chosen a vestige pact, so meet This the warlock!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Thia, level 1
Half-Elf, Warlock
Eldritch Pact: Vestige Pact
Eldritch Blast: Eldritch Blast Charisma

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 18, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 18.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 8, Con 16, Dex 12, Int 10, Wis 12, Cha 16.

AC: 13 Fort: 14 Reflex: 12 Will: 15
HP: 30 Surges: 10 Surge Value: 7

TRAINED SKILLS
Streetwise +9, Insight +8, Bluff +9, Intimidate +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics +1, Arcana, Diplomacy +6, Dungeoneering +1, Endurance +4, Heal +1, History, Nature +1, Perception +1, Religion, Stealth +1, Thievery +1, Athletics -1

FEATS
Level 1: Vestige Adept

POWERS
Dilettante: Vicious Mockery
Eldritch Blast: Eldritch Blast
Warlock encounter 1: Clarion Call
Warlock daily 1: Vestige of Mount Vaelis

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Wand Implement, Leather Armor, Dagger
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

As a vestige pact warlock, Thia always has one vestige power active; she gets two automatically from her basic class abilities (King Elidyr and Zutwa), each of which grants a minor ability, and can gain more from taking vestiges as daily powers. As a half-elf, Thia gains one daily power from any other class that she can use as an encounter power; I chose a Bard power, Vicious Mockery, which causes damage and gives an attack penalty to a target she insults. Eldritch Blast is the standard Warlock at-will power, hurling a ball of eldritch energy at a foe to deal damage. Clarion Call is an area effect power centered on Thia that damages and deafens all targets it hits, while also giving Thia temporary hit points. Vestige of Mount Vaelis gives Thia a third vestige to choose from, and also gives her a daily attack that damages a single opponent and causes her opponent to be unable to walk or run until the target makes a saving throw.

D&D: The Warlord

2010-04-06T20:12:00.000-07:00

The Warlord is a class that is entirely new to D&D, and it fills a role that, oddly enough, is often seen as iconic in films and literature - the military leader who leads from the front. Whether through sheer charisma or tactical ability, the warlord urges his companions on to greater feats and yells at them in his drill sergeant voice when they feel ready to lay down and die that he isn't finished with them yet. The Warlord is a Leader; it is his job to keep his companions going, and he does this by augmenting their attacks, inspiring them, and keeping them organized. The Warlord I have today is a bit odd, but seems like he could work well in the right hands, so here you go!

====== Created Using Wizards of the Coast D&D Character Builder ======
Ashar, level 1
Genasi, Warlord
Warlord: Combat Leader
Commanding Presence: Tactical Presence
Elemental Manifestation: Earthsoul
Earthshock: Earthshock Strength

FINAL ABILITY SCORES
Str 18, Con 12, Dex 10, Int 18, Wis 8, Cha 12.

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
Str 16, Con 12, Dex 10, Int 16, Wis 8, Cha 12.

AC: 16 Fort: 16 Reflex: 14 Will: 12
HP: 24 Surges: 8 Surge Value: 6

TRAINED SKILLS
Endurance +7, Diplomacy +6, Athletics +8, History +9

UNTRAINED SKILLS
Acrobatics -1, Arcana +4, Bluff +1, Dungeoneering -1, Heal -1, Insight -1, Intimidate +1, Nature +1, Perception -1, Religion +4, Stealth -1, Streetwise +1, Thievery -1

FEATS
Level 1: Explosive Leader

POWERS
Warlord at-will 1: Wolf Pack Tactics
Warlord at-will 1: Opening Shove
Warlord encounter 1: Warlord's Favor
Warlord daily 1: Lamb to the Slaughter

ITEMS
Adventurer's Kit, Chainmail, Glaive
====== Copy to Clipboard and Press the Import Button on the Summary Tab ======

Ashar is an Earthsoul genasi, which means he has a natural ability to cause a localized earthquake that knocks opponents down; Ashar's feat gives bonuses to attack for his allies against any enemy affected by this attack. Wolf Pack Tactics lets Ashar attack, and lets one ally adjacent to Ashar or his target move one square, whereas Opening Shove pushes an enemy one square, and then lets one ally shift up to 4 squares or make a basic attack on the pushed enemy. Warlord's Favor damages one target, and then gives a bonus to attack to one ally against the original target, and Lamb to the Slaughter is Ashar's big risk power - it lets him pull an enemy 5 squares, and then allow up to 3 allies who can both see and hear Ashar to make immediate charge attacks against the target.