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 Playing Cards at Crossroads - Let's Make a Character for Through the Breach Last year Wyrd Miniatures, the creators of the Malifaux skirmish minis game, ran a Kickstarter for a tabletop RPG set in the Malufaux setting, called Through the Breach. The game comes out in summer (it went to press this week), and since backers got the pdfs, figured I'd share and make a character. Through the Breach (TtB for short) runs like it's parent game; instead of using dice, it uses cards - a standard deck of 54 cards (4 suits, 13 cards per suit, plus two jokers) called a Fate Deck. While Malifaux/TtB uses different suits for it's Fate Decks, you can use a standard deck and swap out suits. Game mechanics share a few things with Numenera - the GM (called the Fatemaster, or FM) rarely touches the cards. Players draw from a communal deck, add the result to their stats, and see if they hit a TN. If a player (called Fated, I'll explain why later) wants to hit a baddie, she draws and adds to her attack. If she gets attacked, she draw and adds to her defense. There are eight stats (called Aspects), four physical and four mental. They are ranked from -6 to 6, and chargen limits to -3 to 3. Characters also have skills and Talents, but I'll talk about them next time. They also have a Pursuit, which is similar to WFRP's Careers, but instead of being locked into a Pursuit until you complete an XP track, TtB assumes you can and will change Pursuits to fit either the story (say your Mercenary has to dig up information, and can jump into the Academic Pursuit) or character (if you think your Merc starts Dabbling in magic, go for it). The Aspects are: Might: Raw strength Grace: Accuracy, fluidity Speed: Self-descriptive Resilience: Resistance of disease and damage Charm: Your friend making stat, how likeable and trustworthy you seem. Cunning: Quick thinking, shrewdness Intellect: Book (or street) learning, logical thought Tenacity: Raw willpower, confidence Chargen is pretty random, and helps explain why player characters are called Fated. Nobody knows their destiny, they blunder through their life with no idea about their fate - except for you. Something happened to your character (could be when they crossed through the Breach to Malifaux, could have happened on a life-changing decision, could just be the wiles of Fate Itself) that clued her in to her Destiny, her Fate. And since you know your Fate, you can choose to fight against it - or to make it come true. We determine your fate - and your stats - with drawing cards into the Crossroads Tarot. Five cards are drawn, one at the center, four to each point (north, south, east, west) and from them we determine how many Stat and Skill points you get, along with your Destiny. So let's draw, shall we? Our first card is the Station Card, which represents where we came from, what our family was like, what our parents did, etc. They're vague on purpose, so you and the FM can flesh out your character's backstory. Mechanically, we get a Station Skill, a bonus skill we can get when we pick our skills. We draw and get 9 Rams - our Station is Barrister, so our parents were lawyers or law clerks or really anyone who knows about law. Our Station skill is Academic:Bureaucracy, which could come in hand when dealing with red tape or figuring out legal loopholes. Our Destiny at this step I'll save to the end of this post. The second card goes to the West of our Station, and represents the Body. Body contains four values we can plug into our physical Aspects, we can't add or subtract them, they go in as is. Our Western Card is 5 Rams, which gives us the values of -2/0/0/+2 to work with. If anyone's seeing that -2 and panicking, calm down. There's a sidebar that explains that having negative stats doesn't mean we're incompetent in that aspect. For example, a character with -3 Cunning isn't a slack-jawed mouthbreather, but rather someone who reduces complex concepts to absolutes, seeing the world in black and white. Also some Talents require a negative number. Since making a Bird Bard is still a thing, let's put our +2 into Grace and our -2 into Might. Third card goes North of the Station, and gives us Root Skills. They represent the skills we learned early in life growing up. We get another set of values to plug into skills, just like the Body Stats, and we can't mix them around. We get what we get, and we get 10 Crow, which gives us 3,3,1,1. I'll plug in the skills later, but will keep an eye out for bardic-type abilities. Fourth card goes East, and represents the Mind. Again, we get four values to plug into our mental Aspects. Drawing, we wind up with 8 Crow, and -2/0/+1/+1 for mental Aspects. Let's give our Birdie Bardie -2 Intellect/0 Cunning/+1 Charm/+1 Tenacity. We may be slightly dim, but we're confident, charming, and cunning. The last card is South, and represents Endeavor Skills. These are things we picked up as we grew older, picked either through need or interest - probably stuff we can tie to our starting Pursuit, or where we expect to see our char in the future. Just like Root Skills, we'll get values to plug into more skills. We can't add these together or to other skills we already have. Our final card is 9 Tome, and skill values of 3,2,2,2. Now that we have our numbers, we can Modify things a bit. Our Station Card gives us a Station Skill. We can either use it to get that skill at level 1, or if we already bought it with our skill points, we instead get one Experience Point, which we can spend after some play. We also get 2 pts to increase our Aspects, spent any way we want, as long as we don't take any Aspects above +3. While we can leave our Station Skill alone while we do all our skills later on, let's put one point into Intellect (-1) and the other into Speed (+1). Now comes the important part - Divining our Fate. We take the cards in reverse order from when we drew them - the last card we draw is the first line in our Destiny, while our Station Card is the last line - We End Where We Begin. So counting down from 5 to 1, here's our Fate: When you open the dead man's eyes the sting of a single wasp will light the agony and the reaper walks the path alongside you. At last, you will sacrifice her on the altars of desperation and you take the last step. Fun times! Perfect bardy fate! Skip and sing, everybody! So right now, our charsheet resembles this: pre:Name: Francine McGillicutty Might: -2 Grace: +2 Speed: +1 Resilience: 0 Charm: +1 Cunning: 0 Intellect: -1 Tenacity: +1 Skills: 3,3,1,1,3,2,2,2 Station Skill: Academic:Bureaucracy Destiny: 5. When you open the dead man's eyes 4. the sting of a single wasp will light the agony 3. and the reaper walks the path alongside you. 2. At last, you will sacrifice her on the altars of desperation 1. and you take the last step.
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Mar 8, 2014 03:32
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So each card you draw maps to a "line" of your Destiny? That's pretty cool. How does your Destiny come into play? Is there a line for all 52 cards?
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Mar 8, 2014 04:30
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Evil Mastermind posted:So each card you draw maps to a "line" of your Destiny? That's pretty cool. How does your Destiny come into play? Is there a line for all 52 cards? There's a line for all 54 cards - the two jokers are in there as well. Each part of the Tarot has a different chart, so what'd you draw for the Station would be different than the Western. Destiny comes into play via the FM. Without getting too far ahead, at the end of each session (TtB calls the post-game wrap-up the Epilogue), the FM and players talk about who, if any, got closer to fulfilling or denying a step on their Destiny. When you finish a leg of your Destiny, your character improves storywise (by getting a step closer to figuring their Fate) and mechanically - you can either put a point into an Aspect, or pick up a Manifested Power - you and the FM figure a spell that you can now know and cast, which can be edited and tweaked to fit your character.
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Mar 8, 2014 04:56
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 Let's Make a Character for Beyond the Wall Beyond the Wall is an interesting system that has a randomly generated background. A lifepath system perhaps. As you roll your character you find out a bit about who he or she was before the start of the game, the events that shaped them and gave them the stats and equipment they start with. Beyond the Wall uses the same 6 stats that have been used by D&D and numerous knockoffs and clones. The stats range from 1 to 19, with modifiers more in line with earlier editions than the last few editions of D&D. The modifiers are used for some things, but skill rolls are trying to roll under the relevant stat, a relevant skill adds +2 to the stat for determining what you need to roll under. Strength: Used for trying to lift a large statue, break down a door, or shove an enemy over a cliff. The Strength modifier is added to rolls to hit in hand-to-hand combat and to all damage rolls in hand-to-hand combat. Dexterity: Used for trying to sneak through the woods or juggle in a tavern. Dexterity modifier is added to rolls to hit with ranged weapons and to a character's Armour Class. Constitution: Used when trying to run long distances in pursuit of the enemy or stay awake for a whole night on watch. Constitution bonus is added to your hit points at each level. Intelligence: Used to solve a difficult riddle, decipher a confusing bit of text, or figure out how a strange mechanism works. Intelligence modifier is added to the number of languages that you know. Normally a character only knows a single language. Wisdom: Used to discover motivations of someone who is trying to deceive you or find your way in the wilderness when you are lost. Wisdom modifier is added to all saving throws to resist magic which attempts to charm, frighten or control your mind. Charisma: Used to impress the king's steward, charm the innkeep's daughter, or talk your way past the guards at the city wall. Charisma modifier is added to the number of allies that may follow you. Normally a character may have four allies. Technically there is a way to make a character without use of a Character Playbook, this method is less random, except for rolling for stats, and also kind of boring. Instead we want to use a Character Playbook. Going to pick the Dwarven Adventurer playbook. Which gives us: Class: Warrior Starting Skill: a crafting skill (goldsmith, woodworking, gem cutting, etc) Starting Ability Scores: base 8 each, base 12 Con, 10 Str, 6 Cha Starting Equipment: a dagger, a dwarven weapon (+1 to hit and damage), chainmail (+4 AC), drink and food for a week and 4d10 silvers Lets roll those silvers real quick. Got a 23. Retroactively, through the power of edit, we come from the future to determine that the Dwarven Adventurer helped calm things down when the Untested Thief's first job failed, buying drinks for the Untested Thief and her mark both, and joining the party, as such he gets +1 Cha. Next we roll on the How did you come to the lands of men? charts. First up is: What is the history of your clan? Roll 1d12: I got a 1 which is: 1. They made great warriors in the goblin wars. Gain +2 Str, +1 Dex, +1 Con, +1 Wis. Next is: What drove you from the lands of your people? Roll 1d8: I got a 1 again which gives us: 1. You broke a sacred oath and must now live in shame elsewhere. Gain +2 Wis and +1 Con. Next is: When you left your own people, you found it difficult to live with humans. The other characters became your fast friends, however. Who else became your friend? Roll 1d8: I get a 8 this time. 8. The old witch knows your True Name but is far too kind to ever use it against you. Gain +1 Dex, +1 Int, and +1 Wis. Now we move on to the You began to seek your fortune by strength of arms. set of tables. First is: How do you plan to build your hoard? Roll 1d6: Got a 4. 4. You hold in your memory the locations of the entrances to several lost elven tombs and you plan to take their faerie gold. Gain +2 Con and the skill Trapping. You bear the weapon of your father. What is it? Roll 1d6: Got a 4 again. 4. A pair of fine hand axes. Gain +3 Dex and Weapon Specialization: Throwing Axe. What was your first big hassle amongst the tall people? [Note: With Player to Right] Roll 1d6: Got a 6 this time. 6. You mistakenly stepped into a faerie ring and had to face the guardian. Gain +2 Int and Knack: Resilience. The friend to your right broke the circle and helped you escape; they gain +1 Int. Yes one of our rolls effects another player, which means this character technically isn't finished until the person to their left goes. Might make a full set of 4 heroes later. What treasure do you keep that first drew the other characters to you? Roll 1d6: 3 this time. 3. A bright hood of beautiful silk. Gain +2 Con and a travellers hood which never frays. code:pre:Class: Warrior Skills: goldsmith, Trapping (+2 to relevant stat) Ability Scores: base 8 each, base 12 Con, 10 Str, 6 Cha Str 12 +0 Dex 13 +1 Con 18 +3 Int 11 +0 Wis 12 +0 Cha 7 -1 I should still get a +1 to one stat from the person on my left, but that will be another 3 characters before we find that out. Retroactively we find out it is +1 Cha from the Untested Thief. Equipment: a dagger, a dwarven great axe (+1 to hit and damage), a pair of fine hand axes, chainmail (+4 AC), drink and food for a week and 23 silvers, bright hood of beautiful silk that never frays, a great axe BAB: +1 Poison Save: 14 Breath Weapon Save: 17 Polymorph Save: 15 Spell Save: 17 Magic Item Save: 16 HP: 15 Special Abilities: Weapon Specialization Throwing Axe, Great Axe (+1 to hit, +2 damage) Knacks: Resilience (+1 to all saving throws), Great Strike (+1 damage with all weapons) Dwarven Vision: May see in any light. So long as their surroundings are not pitch black, they can see as well as humans in full daylight. Strength of Stone: Use a hit die one size greater than that of the class. True Name: Have a True Name, those who know the Name can call it out and gain a +5 bonus to all actions taken against the dwarf, including attacking it. The playbooks I have are: The Self Taught Mage, The Untested Thief, The Village Hero, The Witches' Apprentice, The Would Be Knight, The Young Woodsman, The Apprentice Court Sorcerer, The Elven Highborn, The Forgotten Child, The Future Warlord, The Gifted Dilettante, The Halfling Vagabond, The Nobleman's Wild Daughter, and The Novice Templar. Ryuujin fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Mar 8, 2014 05:08
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Before I move on to Central Casting: Heroes Now!, I'd like to get some feedback from the audience. Specifically, the book purports to be able to make five types of characters:
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Mar 8, 2014 05:31
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Let's see the Nobleman's Wild Daughter/Son.
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Mar 8, 2014 05:33
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Dedman Walkin posted:Without getting too far ahead, at the end of each session (TtB calls the post-game wrap-up the Epilogue), the FM and players talk about who, if any, got closer to fulfilling or denying a step on their Destiny. I presume you'll cover what happens when a character gets to the end of the track, as it were?
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Mar 8, 2014 05:47
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Let's Make a Nobleman's Wild Daughter for Beyond the Wall She will be to the right of the Dwarf Adventurer, so she helped break the faerie circle the dwarf adventurer got caught in, and she gets +1 Int. So this time we pick the Nobleman's Wild Daughter playbook. Which gives us: Class: Warrior Starting Skill: Etiquette Starting Ability Scores: base 8 each, base 12 Dex Starting Equipment: a dagger, a stashed dress, chainmail (+4 AC), a tabard of your house, your favored weapon, fine boots and 2d6+12 silvers Lets roll those silvers real quick. Got an 11 so 23 silvers. Next we roll on the What was your childhood like? charts. First up is: How did your noble family earn its name? Roll 1d12: I got an 11 which is: 11. Tending the finest gardens and brewing the most helpful concoctions. Gain +2 Int, +1 Wis, +1 Con, and the skill Herbalism. Next is: How did you distinguish yourself as a child? Roll 1d8: I got an 8 which gives us: 8. Everyone has something to teach and you learned a little from them all. Gain +1 Dex, +1 Int, and +1 Wis. Next is: The other characters were your best friends. Who else near your family’s estates did you hang around? Roll 1d8: I get a 8 again. 8. The grizzled captain of the guard took a liking to you. Gain +1 Dex, +1 Con, and +1 Wis. Now we move on to the You learned the arts of war. set of tables. First is: Who taught you to fight? Roll 1d6: Got a 5. 5. The handsome young hunter. Gain +2 Dex and Weapon Specialization: Bow. How did you finally earn the men’s respect? Roll 1d6: Got a 4. 4. When a rival family’s army besieged your castle, you snuck past their guards and brought back help to break the siege. Gain +3 Dex and the skill Stealth. Your father threw a tourney and you entered in secret. What happened there? [Note: With Player to Right] Roll 1d6: Got a 6 this time. 6. You made it halfway through the tournament but broke your arm. Gain +2 Con and Knack: Resilience. The friend to your right helped you off the field and nursed you back to health; they gain +1 Con. That +1 Con will go to the next character we make. One night you went deeper beneath your family’s castle than ever before, into long abandoned dungeons. What did you find? Roll 1d6: 6 again. 6. Your family’s ancient standard, somewhat tattered but still bright. Gain +2 Con and your family’s ancient standard. code:pre:Class: Warrior Skills: Etiquette, Herbalism, Stealth (+2 to relevant stat) Ability Scores: Str 08 +0 Dex 19 +3 Con 14 +1 Int 12 +0 Wis 11 +0 Cha 08 -1 Equipment: a dagger, a stashed dress, chainmail (+4 AC), a tabard of your house, your favored weapon, fine boots and 23 silvers, your family’s ancient standard BAB: +1 Poison Save: 14 Breath Weapon Save: 17 Polymorph Save: 15 Spell Save: 17 Magic Item Save: 16 HP: 11 Special Abilities: Weapon Specialization Bow, Longsword (+1 to hit, +2 damage) Knacks: Resilience (+1 to all saving throws), Defensive Fighter (+1 to AC) Ryuujin fucked around with this message at 07:42 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Mar 8, 2014 07:04
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Let's get Wizardly with the Self Taught Mage.
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Mar 8, 2014 07:09
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Let's Make a Self Taught Mage for Beyond the Wall So he will be to the right of the Nobleman's Wild Daughter, he helped her off the field and helped nurse her back to health when she broke her arm in the tournament, and he gets +1 Con. So this time we pick the Selft Taught Mage playbook. Which gives us: Class: Mage Starting Skill: Ancient History Starting Cantrip: Mage Light Starting Ability Scores: base 8 each, base 12 Int Starting Equipment: a dagger, common robes, an ancient tome, the components for a single Level 1 ritual, 4d6 silvers Lets roll those silvers real quick. Got a 17. Next we roll on the What was your childhood like? charts. First up is: What did your parents do in the village? What did you learn from them? Roll 1d12: I got an 1 which is: 1. You are an orphan. Things were hard for you. Gain +2 Wis, +2 Con, and +1 Int. Next is: How did you distinguish yourself as a child? Roll 1d8: I got an 1 again: 1. Children often fight, but you never lost. Gain +2 Str and +1 Wis. Next is: The other characters were your best friends. Who else near your family’s estates did you hang around? Roll 1d8: I get a 7. 7. The old widow needed help around the house. Gain +1 Str, +1 Int, and +1 Cha. Now we move on to the You found an old tome of forgotten lore set of tables. First is: Who wrote this precious book? Roll 1d6: Got a 6. 6. A mighty wizard who marched with great armies. Gain +3 Con and the skill Command. What sort of sorcerer was the author of the book? Roll 1d6: Got a 6 again. 6. A traveling sorcerer. Gain +2 Int. You begin with the spell Feather Fall, the ritual Gather Mists, and the cantrip Blessing. A spirit of Chaos was drawn by your power. How did you fight it off? [Note: With Player to Right] Roll 1d6: Got a 5 this time. 5. You stood behind the wall of your power until it grew weak. Gain +2 Int and the spell Mystical Shield. The friend to your right learned a lot from your brave stand. They gain +1 Int. That +1 Int will go to the next character we make. A real wizard from the south passed through the village when you came of age. What did he think of you? Roll 1d6: 5 again. 5. He inducted you into his secret order. Gain +2 Int and a wizard’s staff. Hmm that would put us at 20 Int, I did not think it could go that high. code:pre:Class: Mage Skills: Ancient History, Command (+2 to relevant stat) Cantrips: Mage Light, Blessing Spells: Feather Fall, Mystical Shield. Rituals: Gather Mists. Ability Scores: Str 11 +0 Dex 08 -1 Con 14 +1 Int 20 +3? Wis 11 +0 Cha 09 -1 Equipment: a dagger, common robes, an ancient tome, the components for a single Level 1 ritual, 17 silvers, a Wizard's staff. BAB: +0 Poison Save: 14 Breath Weapon Save: 15 Polymorph Save: 13 Spell Save: 12 Magic Item Save: 11 HP: 7 Special Abilities: Spell Casting - Mages may harness the power of magic in three different ways: cantrips, spells, and rituals. Sense Magic - May determine if a person, place, or thing is magical. Doing so requires concentration and a few minutes, so mages cannot tell if something is magical simply by being in its presence, and people tend to notice if a mage is staring at them intently and ignoring their food during a meal.
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Mar 8, 2014 07:42
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Ryuujin posted:
Then let's take along The Untested Thief and see what they bring to the table.
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Mar 8, 2014 08:12
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Ars Magica: grognards.txt Now it’s time for our grog. A scribe, whom I shall name Alphonse. He is German. That’s step 1 taken care of. Step 2 doesn’t apply, so on to step 3! Grogs have different Virtue and Flaw rules, because they aren’t important characters.
Simple enough! For Alphonse’s personality flaw, I will go with Soft-Hearted. Alphonse is the sort of guy who cries during ballads and tries to raise wounded animals. For his other flaws, let’s see...we’ll go with Afflicted Tongue. Alphonse’s terrible stutter is part of why he wanted to become a scribe. However, he is Disfigured, too - an accident as a child tore open his face, leaving hideously ugly scars. So he couldn’t get a job anywhere outside the covenant. pre:Alphonse the Scribe Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) pre:Alphonse the Scribe Virtues Custos (+1) Educated (+1) Affinity with Profession: Scribe (+1) Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) pre:Alphonse the Scribe Virtues Custos (+1) Educated (+1) Affinity with Profession: Scribe (+1) Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) Abilities General Area Lore: Swabia (History) 2 (15 XP) Athletic (Climbing) 1 (5 XP) Awareness (Small Details) 1 (5 XP) German (Academic Vocabulary) 5 (75 XP) Stealth (Forests) 1 (5 XP) Survival (Forests) 2 (15 XP) We’ll put both Com and Per at +2. That leaves one point, which we’ll drop into Stamina. We know Alphonse survived some nasty poo poo, after all. We’ll drop Strength -1, raising Dex to +1. We drop Presence to -2 - he’s an ugly, uncharismatic guy and has no idea how to leverage his ugliness properly. He is a great writer, though, so we’ll raise Communication to +3 with the 3 pints we got from Presence. pre:Alphonse the Scribe Characteristics Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +1 Presence -2 Stamina +1 Communication +3 Quickness +0 Perception +2 Virtues Custos (+1) Educated (+1) Affinity with Profession: Scribe (+1) Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) Abilities General Area Lore: Swabia (History) 2 (15 XP) Athletics (Climbing) 1 (5 XP) Awareness (Small Details) 1 (5 XP) German (Academic Vocabulary) 5 (75 XP) Stealth (Forests) 1 (5 XP) Survival (Forests) 2 (15 XP) Academic Latin (Academic Usage) 4 (50 XP) pre:Alphonse the Scribe Characteristics Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +1 Presence -2 Stamina +1 Communication +3 Quickness +0 Perception +2 Virtues Custos (+1) Educated (+1) Affinity with Profession: Scribe (+1) Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) Abilities General Animal Handling (Horses) 2 (15 XP) Area Lore: Swabia (History) 2 (15 XP) Athletics (Climbing) 1 (5 XP) Awareness (Small Details) 3 (30 XP) Brawl (Dodging) 1 (5 XP) Carouse (Power Drinking) 1 (5 XP) Chirurgy (Binding Wounds) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Priests) 2 (15 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 4 (50 XP) German (Academic Vocabulary) 5 (75 XP) Guile (Covering For Mistakes) 2 (15 XP) Stealth (Forests) 1 (5 XP) Survival (Forests) 2 (15 XP) Swim (Diving) 1 (5 XP) Profession: Scribe (Summae) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Academic Artes Liberales (Grammar) 2 (15 XP) Civil and Canon Law (Papal Laws) 1 (5 XP) Latin (Academic Usage) 5 (75 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Laws on Books) 1 (5 XP) Magic Lore (Magical Beasts) 2 (15 XP) Magic Theory (Creo) 1 (5 XP) Medicine (Diagnosis) 3 (30 XP) pre:Alphonse the Scribe Characteristics Strength -1 Intelligence +0 Dexterity +1 Presence -2 Stamina +1 Communication +3 Quickness +0 Perception +2 Personality Traits Loyal +2 Kind +3 Awkward +3 Virtues Custos (+1) Educated (+1) Affinity with Profession: Scribe (+1) Flaws Soft-Hearted (-1) Disfigured (-1) Afflicted Tongue (-1) Abilities General Animal Handling (Horses) 2 (15 XP) Area Lore: Swabia (History) 2 (15 XP) Athletics (Climbing) 1 (5 XP) Awareness (Small Details) 3 (30 XP) Brawl (Dodging) 1 (5 XP) Carouse (Power Drinking) 1 (5 XP) Chirurgy (Binding Wounds) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Priests) 2 (15 XP) Folk Ken (Peasants) 4 (50 XP) German (Academic Vocabulary) 5 (75 XP) Guile (Covering For Mistakes) 2 (15 XP) Stealth (Forests) 1 (5 XP) Survival (Forests) 2 (15 XP) Swim (Diving) 1 (5 XP) Profession: Scribe (Summae) 5 (50*1.5 XP) Academic Artes Liberales (Grammar) 2 (15 XP) Civil and Canon Law (Papal Laws) 1 (5 XP) Latin (Academic Usage) 5 (75 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Laws on Books) 1 (5 XP) Magic Lore (Magical Beasts) 2 (15 XP) Magic Theory (Creo) 1 (5 XP) Medicine (Diagnosis) 3 (30 XP) Next time: We add a book to the mix.
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Mar 8, 2014 15:30
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Let's Make an Untested Thief for Beyond the Wall So she will be to the right of the Self Taught Mage, she learned a lot from his brave stand against the spirit, and she gets +1 Int. So this time we pick the Untested Thief playbook. Which gives us: Class: Rogue Starting Skill: Stealth Starting Ability Scores: base 8 each, base 12 Dex Starting Equipment: several daggers, dark clothing, a light-weight sack, a 10' coil of rope, 4d6 silvers Lets roll those silvers real quick. Got a 17. Next we roll on the What was your childhood like? charts. First up is: What did your parents do in the village? What did you learn from them? Roll 1d12: I got an 12 which is: 12. Your father was a merchant. You learned to name your price and charm your customers. Gain +2 Cha, +1 Int, +1 Dex, and the skill Haggling. Next is: How did you distinguish yourself as a child? Roll 1d8: I got an 7: 7. You solved everyone else's problems, and never mentioned your own. Gain +1 Str, +1 Con, and +1 Cha. Next is: The other characters were your best friends. Who else near your family’s estates did you hang around? Roll 1d8: I get a 1. 1. Laboring with the blacksmith took your mind off your troubles. Gain +2 Str and +1 Cha. Now we move on to the You learned the ways of thievery set of tables. First is: Who taught you how to cheat or steal? Roll 1d6: Got a 1. 1. An old pickpocket from the city to the south. Gain +3 Dex and the skill Pickpocketing. How do you attain your ill-gotten gains? Roll 1d6: Got a 5. 5. Despite your other skills, you still work an honest profession. Gain +2 Dex and a trade skill, such as weaving, farming, or brewing. As happens with many thieves, your first job went bad. What did you do when you got caught? [Note: With Player to Right] Roll 1d6: Got a 6 this time. 6. You fast-talked the mark and made nice. Gain +2 Cha and the skill Survival. The friend to your right bought you both drinks and joined the party; they gain +1 Cha. That +1 Cha will retroactively go to the Dwarf Adventurer. What was your greatest heist? Roll 1d6: Got a 1. 1. A great bag of coins from a rich merchant. Gain +2 Dex and +6d6 silvers Roll that 6d6 and got 17 more silvers. Hmm that would put us at 20 Dex, again the chart does not go up that high and I did not think it was possible to get that high. code:pre:Class: Rogue Skills: Brewing, Haggling, Pickpocketing, Stealth, Survival (+2 to relevant stat) Ability Scores: Str 11 +0 Dex 20 +3? Con 09 +0 Int 10 +0 Wis 08 -1 Cha 14 +1 Equipment: several daggers, dark clothing, a light-weight sack, a 10' coil of rope, 34 silvers. BAB: +0 Poison Save: 13 Breath Weapon Save: 16 Polymorph Save: 12 Spell Save: 15 Magic Item Save: 14 HP: 8 Special Abilities: Fortune's Favor - Rogues receive 5 Fortune Points instead of the normal 3 Highly Skilled - Rogues receive two additional skills at 1st level. They gain an additional skill every odd numbered level thereafter.
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Mar 8, 2014 17:27
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Ars Magica: The Journey Begins In 2004, the core for Ars 5th Edition came out, accompanied by an adventure and what appear to be LARP rules. I have never looked into the LARP rules and don’t plan to start now. In 2005, we got three books. One of them was later overriden by a revised edition, so Realms of Power: The Divine will wait. The two books left are Guardians of the Forests: The Rhine Tribunal and Houses of Hermes: True Lineages. Let’s look at what new options came out of Guardians. Mechnaically, not a ton. We got some new Virtues and Flaws. Social Status
There is one additional new Virtue and one additional new Flaw.
Nothing there to really make a new character from, though. We do get a new Arcane Ability, however: Forest Lore. Studying it only happens during play, because it involves various quests into the magical forests of Germany to gain new powers. Forest Lore also counts as Area Lore for the forest it was learned in, but also includes supernatural knowledge about forests, and applies to any forest - just at 3 levels lower than your home forest. Forest Lore can only be gained via practicing in a magical forest. We’ll skip the Paths since they’re not chargen-appropriate. There is a sidebar on making a member of a werewolf lineage, but it’s nothing we couldn’t do from the core. We do, however, get a new Major Social Status Flaw and a Minor General Virtue related to slaves.
But that’s all that’s new in the Rhine! True Lineages, on the other hand, provides quite a bit of information! Next time: We make a Bonisagus! Mors Rattus fucked around with this message at 20:12 on Mar 8, 2014 |
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Mar 8, 2014 20:07
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I haven't seen any replies to my earlier post. If folks aren't interested, that's fine; saves me some effort. If, on the other hand, you just missed it, well... here it is again.FredMSloniker posted:Before I move on to Central Casting: Heroes Now!, I'd like to get some feedback from the audience. Specifically, the book purports to be able to make five types of characters:
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Mar 8, 2014 21:32
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Well, if no one else has an opinion: hit me with something pulpy.
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Mar 8, 2014 21:34
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FredMSloniker posted:I haven't seen any replies to my earlier post. If folks aren't interested, that's fine; saves me some effort. If, on the other hand, you just missed it, well... here it is again. I would be happy with anything on that list. I just love the crazy characters that central casting comes up with.
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Mar 8, 2014 22:29
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I'd like to see something Sci-fi Now, with a visit to the Ah Love! table. But really, anything's good.
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Mar 8, 2014 22:54
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I'd kind of like to see a Superhero with a Secret Origin, and also maybe a small diversion to see Something Wonderful...
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Mar 8, 2014 22:57
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Seconding the Ah, Love table because nothing says Central Casting like tabulation of deep emotional states.
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Mar 8, 2014 22:57
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Pulp. Make me a Rocketeer.
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Mar 9, 2014 01:33
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Let's see how weird it can get with horror and love
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Mar 9, 2014 02:18
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In the meantime, what's that looming into view on the horizon? Is it the deadEarth player's handbook? I believe it is! Some background: deadEarth is one of the most laughably bad RPGs ever to grace the face of this Earth. It's a post-apocalyptic RPG which claims to be super-realistic and grim in that early 90s way (n.b. it was released in 2004). Spoiler warning: it's about as realistic as wax fruit, if it was labelled in block capitals 'THIS IS WAX FRUIT'. On the plus side, when the creator's company died he graciously released his pet system into the wild, free for anyone who feels like picking it up. So kudos to him for that. Anyway, we're not here for that. We're here for a character. Warnings! The character creation chapter points out that you may not create more than three characters: if you discard the first two, you must play the third. Apparently it's entirely possible to die in character generation, but what happens if your third character dies is left unspecified. 1. Moves Our Moves both translate into movement speed (which is not defined anywhere I can find), and the number of actions we can take in combat. We get 2d6 = 4, which is terrible. 2. Resiliency Resiliency is toughness. If it ever reaches 0 or less we have a 33% chance of death each day from common viruses. Our resiliency is 1d6 + 3 = 9, which is as good as it can get. Huzzah! 3. Strength Everyone's Strength starts at 0. Human maximum is 3. Anything 4+ is superhuman. Remember this, because it'll be important for 'realism' later. 4. Age Our age is randomly determined: 49 means we are... 49? Maybe. The table doesn't say. What it does say is that we get -5 Moves, 960 + d6 * 10 skill points (1d6 = 1, so +10), -1 Strength, -3 Resiliency, and 3d6 radiations. That sucks hard, leaving us at Moves -1 (which has interesting implications for the space-time continuum), 970 SP, -1 Strength ("crippled and will have a hard time carrying their own body weight"), 6 Resiliency, and 3d6 = 11 Radiations, which we'll get to later. 5. Height and Weight Like many other games, your height and weight are randomly determined. Unlike many other games, they then go on to modify your stats in critical ways. Height is 6d6 + 48 = 68 inches, or 5'8". Weight is 5d6 = 11 which I'm supposed to look up on Table C1... which doesn't exist. Welp. Since that was a really low roll, I'll just select a low weight of 130 lbs. You then cross-reference height and weight on Table C2 to get modifiers to Moves, Resiliency and Strength: in this case +2, +0, and -1. (I selected 130 lbs precisely in order to get our Moves above 0 again. We can take action! And move forward in space and time!) Current total is Moves 1, Resiliency 6, Strength -2. 6. Maximum Carrying Weight Your character's base carrying weight is 30 lbs, plus 10 lbs for every point of Strength. For every 10 lbs over your carrying capacity your effective Strength and Moves are reduced by 1. This gives our amazing muscle man a carrying capacity of 10 lbs, and if he lifts 20 lbs he's rendered immobile. ...yeah. Just for comparison, let's take me as an example. I've been lifting weights in a half-assed manner since January last year. I'm terrible at it - very much on the lower half of the bell curve of human strength - but on a good day my deadlift (my maximum lift) is ~200 lbs. I wouldn't want to walk around carrying that much, so I'll assume that it's far enough above my carrying capacity that my human average number of Moves (7 - also pretty optimistic) is reduced to 0. A bit of maths means that when I deadlift 200 lbs, then, I'm 70 lbs over my carrying capacity. Which would then be 130 lbs. Which is equivalent to a Strength of 10, in a system which puts the maximum human Strength at 3. Realism! Oh, before I move on, Strength also affects your hand-to-hand damage: meaning that as you carry more weight, you do less damage when you punch someone. Realism! 7. Gender We get to choose our gender. I choose MANLY, because this is absurd. 8. Natural Abilities/Inabilites For every skill on the character sheet, you roll 2d6. On a 12 you have a natural talent in that skill and on a 2 you naturally suck at it. Skill checks are on d6s. If you have a natural talent you get to reroll any 1s on skill checks (although any new 1s remain as 1s), and a natural inability means you have to reroll any 6s. There is no character sheet in the book. Also, this whole exercise is pointless so I'm going to skip this step. 9. Player's Choice You get to pick one of three options: you can roll a d6 and add it to or subtract it from one of your stats (including maximum carrying weight, which seems like a total waste when you could just add the same d6 to Strength); you can get 2d6 * 10 skill points; or you can purchase rolls on the radiation table for 10 skill points a go. I'm going to boost our Strength by 1d6 = 1, which sucks. Our Strength is still -1, which means we have trouble supporting our own bodyweight. On the plus side, we can now carry up to 30 lbs (!) before we are strained into immobility. Remember: The human maximum Strength is 3. If you start with a normal Strength of 0 you have a 50% chance of being superhuman at this stage. Realism! 10. Skill Points Skills are rated in d6s. You have 2d6 in everything to start and it costs 10 skill points to become trained in a skill (I think - it's not clear), and 20 skill points to get advanced training. You can advance again (40 SPs) and again (80 SPs) to a maximum of 6d6. We have 970 points to spend. Choosing skills purely on my whim, I snag Bemuse 6d6 (which lets you remove people's ability to fight by saying stupid poo poo at them), Brawl 4d6, Boxing 6d6 (which apart from making us an insane hand-to-hand fighter also gives us +1 Resiliency and +1 Moves), Reason 6d6, Drive Railed 3d6 (I'm a train driver!), Guile 4d6, Hork 3d6 (It's 'steal small items', so I have no idea why it's called 'hork'), Intuition 4d6 (required for Reason, for unknown reasons), Memory 4d6, Outright Lie 6d6, Senses 4d6, Streetwise 4d6, Weight Training 6d6 (+2 Strength, and also we're swole as gently caress), and Weapon skills in Ballistas (covering rocket and grenade launchers, because I think the author misunderstood 'ballistic' as a pseudo-category) and Handguns at 3d6 each. What does all this mean? It means we're a crazy hardcase in hand to hand combat, slightly improved in terms of physical skills, we can lie like Satan himself, and we can say 'Look! A zeppelin!' in the middle of a firefight and stun our opponents into blind insensibility. Realism! 11. Radiations This is the bit I've been waiting for.  Basically, the vast bulk of the deadEarth rulebook is taken up with a d1000 table of post-apocalyptic radiation effects. To give you some sense of how batshit this table is, in the first ten entries we have 'become super virtuous', 'gain the abilites of someone within 25 feet for d6 minutes', 'homebody' (which grants you +1 skill point every time you roll the Domestics skill) and 'belly up' (which means you die the next time you come into contact with a body of water). Realism! Anyway, we've got 11 rolls on this table. Orokos gives us 20, 108, 177, 571, 620, 658, 680, 761, 829, 840, and 900. Unfortunately the very first result (20) is "Decapitation" which involves taking 10d6 damage to the head. ...I don't feel like wading through chargen again, so we're just going to assume we survive that. Somehow. The other results are:
12. Gear I can't even be bothered. It's 2 am and the pages-long list of firearms with only tiny distinctions is nothing we haven't seen before. Zarbon the Infirm Height: 5'8" Weight: 130 lbs Strength 1 Moves 0 Resilience 7 Maximum carrying capacity 40 lbs (!) Zarbon can psychically make people itchy, drain the life of someone he's touching and hear things three football fields away. Also, his enemies are bestowed with a weird 'guilt-sense' that applies only to him and he's likely to become suicidally depressed at his amazing hearing and kill himself within a week of starting play. Oh, and he's magnetic. Floppy disks beware! Also, he's a headless corpse. Oops.
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Mar 9, 2014 03:24
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 Playing Cards at Crossroads - Let's Make a Character for Through the Breach When we left off, we got the Aspects down, along with our Destiny. We also got skill scores, so we need skills to plug into them. Conflict resolution in TtB is adding Aspect and Skill together, flip a card and adding that value, and comparing the sum to a TN. There are ways to modify this flip, I'll talk about one of them later. There are some bonuses and penalties that allow us, instead of drawing a single card, to draw up to three extra and picking either the highest card, or the lowest. Right now, let's pick some skills. Skills are collected into eight different Types, which describes roughly what kind of skill it is. Each skill is ranked from 0 (untrained) to 5 (master), and is also associated with an Aspect - except for rare circumstances, when you make a Bureaucracy check, you'll usually it's associated Aspect of Cunning to it. Academic: Book learning, things learned through study. Close Combat: The art of hurting things up close and personal. Crafting: Building and creating items, from horseshoes and bullets to automatica and patchwork corpses. Expertise: Trained skills, like doctoring, forging, pocket-picking, tracking things, and working with explosives. Magical: Self-Explanatory. Also covers tapping into Soulstone. Ranged Combat: The art of hurting things from a distance. Social: Interpersonal skills, how to mingle with/bullshit/convince people. Training: Physical skills, like acrobatics, stealth, general blue-collar work, and Toughness, which is kinda important because it helps determine how much damage we can take. So, let's figure our Birdy Bard would focus on Social skills, and pick up a little Ranged Combat for self-defense. We have eight skills to pick, plus our bonus Station skill of Bureaucracy. So looking around, let's pick... Academic:Bureaucracy 1(Cunning) Expertise:Gambling 1(Cunning) Expertise:Music 2(Charm) Expertise:Scrutiny 2(Cunning) Ranged Combat:Pistol 1(Grace) Social:Bewitch 3(Charm) Social:Convince 3(Intellect) Social:Deceive 3(Charm or Intellect) Training:Toughness 2(Resilience) Most of these should be self-explanatory; Bewitch is our "make others like us and do stuff for us" skill, Deceive is lying to others, Scrutiny is checking if you're being lied to. With our skills picked, we move on to the next part of chargen - Pursuit. As I said prior, Pursuits are similiar to WFRP's Careers - we start with some gear, a little bonus, and as we level up we can unlock more goodies by following a Rank Ladder. Unlike a Career, we can change Pursuits freely, changing bonuses and getting a new Rank Ladder to get goodies from. We aren't penalized by changing Pursuits, and can resume a previous one where we left off. There are two types of Pursuits - Novice (starting careers) and Advanced (available if players reach certain story-based criteria, it's not automatically gained by picking it. Anyone can be a Mercenary, but not everyone can pass muster and pass training to be a Freikorpsmann, for instance) There are 14 Novice Pursuits, ranging from shades of Fighting Man to Magic Dabblers to Support Types but for a Bard, we need Performer. As a Performer, we start with a non-magical skill toolkit (our bag of makeup, sewing kits, probably a small musical instrument) and our bonus is called Flare for the Dramatic - when we fail Social duels, we can draw a card from our special Twist Deck (Which I'll explain in a bit). There's another ability that works post-game in the Epilogue. Now we figure Derived Aspects. This is dull and boring to compute, so I'll just post the results. Defense (Df): 3 Willpower (Wp): 3 Wounds: 6 Walk: 5 Charge: 5 Height: Not feet/inches, but the relative space we take up. Human default is 2. Characteristics: All Fated have the keywords Living and Fated, used usually for spells. Next we pick a Talent. Talents come in two kinds: General (everyone can pick them) and Pursuit (can only be gained by following a Pursuit's track). And as said prior, some of the nicer Aspects require a low or negative Aspect. Since we have Intellect at -1, we can pick the talent Simple Logic, which give us a bonus to resist Bewitch, Convince, and Deceive duels against her. It's going to be harder to trick our gal! Now we need some Gear. It's assumed we already get stuff we don't need to pay for (a reasonable wardrobe of attire, a place to live suited to background and concept, five reloads for any firearm we own - if we decide to go all gunslinger and buy two or three pistols, we have to share our 5 reloads with our guns), plus our free equipment for our starting Pursuit. Anything else we get 10 Guild Scrip (Gp) to buy. The last thing to do is make our Twist Deck. When we flip cards to make checks, there are times we can Cheat Fate and replace that card with a card drawn from our Twist Deck. Each player gets to make a Twist Deck of 13 cards, varying of what suits you want precedence over. Making our Twist Deck, we end up with: Ace Mask Two Tome Three Crow Four Ram Five Mask Six Tome Seven Crow Eight Ram Nine Mask Ten Tome Jack Crow Queen Ram King Mask During play, we might be able to get more cards for the Twist Deck, but we can't have two cards of the same rank and suit. We can't have two Nine Masks, but we can have Nine Mask and Nine Ram. So let's look at our charsheet now: pre:Name: Francine McGillicutty Pursuit: Performer Might: -2 Grace: +2 Speed: +1 Resilience: 0 Charm: +1 Cunning: 0 Intellect: -1 Tenacity: +1 Defense (Df): 3 Willpower (Wp): 3 Wounds: 6 Walk: 5 Charge: 5 Height: 2. Characteristics: Living, Fated Skills: Academic:Bureaucracy 1(Cunning) Expertise:Gambling 1(Cunning) Expertise:Music 2(Charm) Expertise:Scrutiny 2(Cunning) Ranged Combat:Pistol 1(Grace) Social:Bewitch 3(Charm) Social:Convince 3(Intellect) Social:Deceive 3(Charm or Intellect) Training:Toughness 2(Resilience) Talents: Flare for the Dramatic - Pursuit Simple Logic Gear: (10 Gp) *Non-magical skill toolkit Twist Deck: Ace Mask Two Tome Three Crow Four Ram Five Mask Six Tome Seven Crow Eight Ram Nine Mask Ten Tome Jack Crow Queen Ram King Mask Destiny: 5. When you open the dead man's eyes 4. the sting of a single wasp will light the agony 3. and the reaper walks the path alongside you. 2. At last, you will sacrifice her on the altars of desperation 1. and you take the last step. Dedman Walkin fucked around with this message at 05:58 on Mar 9, 2014 |
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Mar 9, 2014 04:21
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potatocubed posted:Warnings! Wow. Just wow. Thank you for sacrificing one of your only three character chances for us. Hope you get enough play time out of the other two to justify whatever the book costs. (Bet you don't.) Going to actually start the write-up for our Lady Bard in a bit. I've got the numbers crunched, just gotta get 'em down.
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Mar 9, 2014 04:24
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Ars Magica: First among equals True Lineages introduces new stuff for Houses Bonisagus, Guernicus, Mercere and Tremere. It has a two-page discussion of how to use intrigue and politics, because Bonisagus magi are split into two groups - the Magi Bonisagi, who are research wizards, and the Magi Trianomae, who are politicians. We get a few new Virtues and Flaws!
Figurine Magic is probably the most interesting new thing - it’s a magic power that lets you create wax or wooden figures, which you can imbue with Minor General or Supernatural Virtues. (With a bit of research, you could also integrate the ability to imbue them with spells.) These abilities or spells can then be used by whoever wields the figurine. Now, none of this will make a wizard significantly different than the one we already made and it won’t make a bird bard. So we move on! (Note, though, that the fluff parts of the section are extremely good, and I do reccommend them. This is true for the entire book.) The House Guernicus section adds a new Mastery Ability that can be taken via Spell Mastery.
We also get some new spells for investigation or hiding the truth, and a new sort of Ritual spell that requires large groups of wizards to work together to create truly massive effects over the course of entire seasons, which no one is sure actually work, and lesser rituals of similar type but less power and easier to cast. Only members of House Guernicus can learn either type of ritual. Even less in the way of new mechanics, but that’s okay. I know that the next section has a doozy. Next time: Holding out for a hero until the end of the night
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Mar 9, 2014 19:40
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RickVoid posted:Pulp. Make me a Rocketeer.  Looking at what folks in the thread have requested, I've come up with these requirements for our new character:
On to Table 101: Character Origins! We could select our desired options on Table 101A: Country of Origin and Table 101B: Ancestry Details, but Rick Void is a man of action! We swiftly roll d20=17 and find he's a red-blooded American with a Technology Modifier of 3 and English as his native tongue. Table 101B has a 'roll twice more and combine results' option. d20, d20=6,16 on Table 101B is an interesting result, as it confirms his folks are as American as he is... Native American. But he doesn't self-identify as Indian. Table 102: Culture & Technology has two subtables. Table 102A: Tech Level asks us to roll d100 and add the last two digits of the year. If Rick Void is a rocketeer, we need Nazis, so I'm going to pick 1942 as the year of the campaign; that means we roll d100+42=100 and get +4 to our Technology Modifier for a total of 7. Table 102A posted:Engineering Age [Lit: 60%, Education Points: 12]. Internal combustionn engines or electricity power most forms of transportation, including personal cars, war machines, and fixed-wing aircraft. Radio, television, suborbital rockets and small automatic weapons are developing. This is typified by Western nations of the late 19th century through pre-WWII 20th century, just before atomic escalation; most non-Western nation urban areas in the late 19th century; and rural areas of Western nations. Table 102B posted:This is not a common 20th century culture, though it might be representative of Cold War era Eastern Europe. Table 102B posted:Barbaric cultures live by the cruel exploitation of others. They can be found at any Tech Level, though they are more common at lower levels. Barbaric cultures are typified by charismatic dictators, feudalism, divine right of kings and so on. Power is secured and maintained by racism, violence, ignorance, and fear. Rights for those without power are unheard-of. Cruelty is commonplace. Sentient life has little value ("not-like-us" people have no value). Although it is possible that Barbaric cultures might develop their own technology, it is just as likely for them to take it from another culture by force. Typical Barbaric cultures might be pirate outposts, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Soviet Union, Cold War Era eastern Europe, South Africa, and many third world dictatorships. Many 20th century nations (even allegedly enlightened and free ones) possess this culture attribute to some degree. Table 102B posted:pirate outposts Table 102B posted:This is a culture marked by rapid growth, development, and expansion. New ideas and technologies are being discovered and exploited. Technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, often progressing a full Tech Level within a generation or less. However, the fast growth also outpaces the ethical application of the new discoveries, leaving the culture wide open for future disasters. Governments are similar to Developing cultures, but access to real political power moves out of the grasp of common people. Class stratificatin increases as fewer and fewer people profit from new discoveries. It is a time of "Humanistic" theology, imagining the people of the culture to be the apex of creation, the "gods" of their universe. This is the USA in the latter decades of the 20th century. We proceed to Table 103: Social Status. This is a d100 + Culture Modifier. (These modifiers don't seem to exert a lot of influence.) d100+2=74. Rick Void is of Comfortable means; he has a Social Level Modifier of 4, a Title Modifier of 3 (which I don't believe is relevant), and 1d4=4 additional Education Points. He has an additional 5% chance to be literate, a 35% chance to own a sport weapon, and typical starting money for the scenario. Table 104: Birth & Family has four subtables. We first roll d20=10 on Table 104A: Birth Legitimacy and confirm that Rick Void is legitimate. We then roll d20=3 on Table 104B: The Family and find that he was raised by both mom and dad. Table 104C: Siblings and Birth Order has us first roll d6-1=1 to find he has a sibling; we then roll d2=1 to determine that it's his older (d2=2) sister. We don't visit Table 104D: Other Relations because we weren't instructed to. Next is Table 105: Place of Birth, which has three subtables. We roll d20=19 on Table 105A: Place of Birth, which is 'in a vehicle while traveling'; d4=2 tells us it was a motorized land vehicle. Rick Void has a Birth Modifier of 5. We don't wind up visiting the other two subtables. Table 106: Unusual Births has three subtables: Table 106A: Unusual Births, Table 106B: Birth Events, and Table 106C: Horror Birth Events. Normally, we'd roll d100 and add our Birth Modifier on Table 106A to determine how many unusual occurrences there were at Rick Void's birth, but in the name of maximum chaos, we choose the highest result on Table 106A that our Birth Modifier allows. Four unusual occurrences--GM selects 1d3 at +20. So we roll 1d3=3 and determine that Rick Void knows one of the four unusual occurrences, but the others are unknown to him. On to Table 106B, rolling d100 plus Birth Modifier. d100+5=19. The character's birth was well publicized, whether due to deliriously happy parents or due to his family merely being in the public eye, or just the strangeness of the situation. The local communication networks just overran with the news. I have some ideas what this might mean, but I'm going to avoid elaboration until we have all our random results. d100+25=101. (I decided the GM would add the Birth Modifier and the +20.) A mysterious stranger bestows a gift on the character at birth. Go to Table 853: Gifts & Legacies to find the nature of the gift. Roll a d6. On a result of 6, the character later learns the identity of the stranger. Use Table 743: Others to find this identity. Interesting! Rolling d6=2, the GM finds that Rick Void never did learn who his Mysterious Benefactor was. As for what he received... Table 853: Gifts & Legacies has us roll d20=16. He gets a piece of clothing. As it happens, there's a 'roll 1d4 times' option on the table, so the GM goes ahead and picks that, and further makes the number 4. d20 four times=6,12,2,14. That's pants, an unusual coat, shoes, and priestly garb. The GM makes some notes, but doesn't tell us just yet. Back to Table 106B. d100+25=34. Character has identical twin (20% chance of being separated at birth). Also, roll a d6. On a result of 6, the twin's personality is drastically different than that of the character, possibly even opposite (if one became good and noble of spirit, the other might become evil and cruel). The only way to keep this secret is to force the 'separated at birth' option, so the GM does that. He also rolls d6=3, which is slightly disappointing, but there'll be plenty of opportunity for mayhem later. Finally, d100+25=109. Character is part of an unusally large multiple birth. Roll 2d4+1 to determine the number of surviving siblings. The GM can't think of a good way to keep this secret, so he rolls again. d100+25=61. No one bothered to record the character's birth, and as a result, he's slipped through the cracks of official documentation. He cannot be traced, ID'd from a photo bank, or even fingerprinted, because no one knows that he exists. Of course, this makes buying anything on credit rather difficult (impossible?) Again, the GM is stumped on how to keep this secret, so he tries once more. d100+25=83. Character's mother attempted to kill character immediately after birth, but was prevented. No justification was given at the time for her behavior. Now that's something the GM can work with. Table 107: Parents & NPCs has two subtables. We first roll d20=7 on Table 107A: Occupation and determine that the head of the household (dad, duh) has a job, but mom works at home. That means we need to head to Table 413A: Occupations to find out what he does. Here we have to roll d10 and add Rick Void's Social Level Modifier. d10+4=7 sends us to Table 413C: Occupation Table II, on which we roll d20=17. His dad is a ship captain, with a (10+Social Level Modifier)% chance of owning his own ship. d100=64. Nope. Then we go to Table 107B: Noteworthy Items to determine what Rick Void remembers about his folks. We'd normally roll d3 to determine how many times to roll, but in the name of maximum chaos, we just roll three times. That means a d20 on Table 107B and a d6 (1-4 is dad, 5-6 is mom) for each item. d20,d6=11,4. Dad is a military veteran. We go to Table 529: Military Duties to determine his branch of service. d6=6 on Table 529A: Branch of Service is Air Force; a further d8=2 tells us he was a bomber pilot. Given that the US has only just entered World War II and didn't carry out bombing during World War I, I'm guessing he never saw action. d20,d6=2,2. Dad had 1d3 unusual birth circumstances. d3=1. We head back to Table 106: Unusual Births and determine (d100+5=55) that he was put up for adoption on birth. PCs would start the background process over at this, starting at Table 102, but I decide to skip this; I could use this to determine his dad's birth family, but it's unlikely to be relevant. Finally, d20,d6=6,6. Mom was affected by an exotic event which is spoken of often. We go to Table 536: Exotic Events to find out what it was. d20=9. While poking around in some abandoned, ruined place that other people avoid, the character comes across a hidden treasure. Unfortunately, the character is not able to do anything with the treasure. To the best of his knowledge, it remains untouched. We roll a further d4=2 and determine that the treasure is 1d3 devices from Table 854B: Wondrous Devices. d3=2. d20 twice=5,8; she found a detection device (basically, a scanner for something or other) and... ...a personal jet pack. Oh yes. Mom may not have been able to retrieve it, but I know where Rick Void is going when he grows up. "[u posted:Rick Void[/u]'s Character Sheet"]
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Mar 9, 2014 22:37
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FredMSloniker posted:I shall do my very best!  It's nowhere near what I expected, and yet everything I've ever wanted. To summarize, Rick Void (not to be confused with yours truly) is 1/60th Cherokee, and as such does not self-identify as Native American. Mom was Laura Croft, Dad captains a pirate ship. Culturally, Rick considers himself to be a Divine Right Sky Pirate. He's got a number of issues, starting with the fact that his mother tried to kill him immediately after birth. He has a twin brother, who may not know he exists, which is fine because there are no records that he exists anyway. He knows where to find a Soliton Radar System and a Jet Pack. And we were only just born. I didn't even get into the stuff some stranger dumped on him that totally isn't going to become Sky Pirating outfit, no sir. With regards to missing out on the "our twin is evil" thing, come on. Rick is clearly the Evil Twin here.
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Mar 10, 2014 07:20
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Ars Magica: Mutant Powers House Mercere actually introduces quite a few new tricks! First, it has Mastery Abilities. Anyone can learn them, but will need to either be taught by someone from the group that invented them, or learn them from a text that details the information.
Now, new Virtues!
A Mutant is an interesting new wizard subtype, though they are created identically to normal magi. Still - interesting to play as! Oh, and we get some new Flaws.
All of that is interesting, of course. But it’s not what you’re here for. See, House Mercere has the Cult of Heroes, who seek the descendants of legendary heroes like Jason, Odysseus and Cu Chullain. This introduces a new character type: The Blood of Heroes. The Blood of Heroes descend from heroes or powerful supernatural creatures. They are not Gifted, but are considered to be equivalent to magi by the system. All Blood of Heroes characters are somehow tied to a legendary ancient or medieval hero, though not always by direct lineage - still, it’s obviously manifested in them. Blood of Heroes can take Heroic Virtues and Flaws. Every Flaw they take is worth two points of Virtues rather than one. Further, they get one free Minor Virtue based on their heritage. They must take the Heroic Personality Flaw, which we’ll see. Most of them are House Mercere, and so, without special permission by the group, must also take the Redcap Virtue. Blood of Heroes, while seen as less than magi by most non-Mercere, have much more chance of actually getting away with, say, voting than most Redcaps, though they still typically abstain out of respect. They get the free Virtue Blood of Heroes, much as magi get The Gift, to represent all this. Grogs, obviously, can’t be Blood of Heroes, and in most cases, neither can Companions. We’re going to be making a Hero. If anyone has a concept they want to see here, post it. If not, I will choose one by next post. Next time: Holding out for a hero ‘til the morning light!
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Mar 10, 2014 19:49
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I'd like to see a trickster genius like Odysseus.
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Mar 10, 2014 20:21
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Ars Magica: He’s Gotta Be Strong, He’s Gotta Be Fast, He’s Gotta Be Fresh From The Fight Okay! We’re making a modern Odysseus. For given values of modern. We will call him Oliver. That’s step one taken care of! And we knew he’s a Redcap, because he has to be. So, let’s look at Flaws. First, the one we have to take.
So that’s one point of Flaws! We get two points of Virtues from it. Now, we get one Story Flaw. We’ll go with, oooooh, how about Plagued by Supernatural Entity. Much like Odysseus, there are many people who hate Oliver. One of them is quite potent - a faerie that styles himself a servant of Poseidon. Or maybe a faerie that styles himself Poseidon himself. Either-or. So that’s 3 points there! Next, we grab Personality flaws. The obvious one is Major Proud. We used Proud before, but what better word to describe Odysseus or his descendant? For his second Flaw, we will take Lost Love. Like his forebear, Oliver’s love is deep and enduring. Unlike his forebear, however, the woman he loves was forced to marry another. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2)
Well, I don’t think there are any great tragic flaws that we’d have here. Maybe Perception: Often Gets Lost would fit, but on the other hand, we are a Redcap. Looking over other Flaws, we’ll grab Infamous. Oliver is well-known as a scoundrel and a foe of the English nobility, because his lost love was forced to marry an English noble. He’s done some bad poo poo to get revenge. I think that’ll do us. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2)
Well, let’s see. Obviously we want Mythic Intelligence: Clever Plans. And we’ll grab Mythic Mimicry, too. That seems like a useful trick for a crafty Hero! We’ll make Mythic Intelligence our free Virtue - that’s an obvious thing to get from Odysseus! So that’s 6 points of Virtues taken, plus our free one. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2)
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Mar 11, 2014 03:56
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How broadly does the book define 'hero'? The book-copying abilities of Mythic Mimicry and the "prolific author" specialty for Mythic Communication give me the idea of a descendant of St. Paul as kind of a super-scribe character. Can a Blood of Heroes character have access to Holy Magic or even just True Faith, or is that stacking too much?
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Mar 11, 2014 05:05
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Ars Magica: It is not important how a scion of Odysseus ended up in England True Faith is a-ok! Holy Magic is not, because it requires the Gift. However, IIRC, you could take True Faith and eventually pick up the Ars Notoria, which are basically explicitly Christian holy writing powers. That seems like it’d be pretty doable! When left Oliver, we’d taken 6 out of our 18 Virtues. I’ll spend two on Improved Characteristics and Great Intelligence - we’re going to make Oliver pretty drat smart and good at a lot of things. We’ll drop one more on Warrior to give him some bonus combat XP. So that’s 9. We’ll grab Magic Items because Magic Items are always fun! Ten points. I also remember to note that we get Well-Traveled for free. Let’s see...we aren’t taking Gift of Tongues, so why don’t we grab Linguist from the Bonisagus chapter? That’ll get us to 11. We’ll also take Clear Thinker, to give Oliver the osrt of mind that can break through the plots of others easily. 12. And, what the hell, a second copy of Magic Items. 13. We’ll grab Invisible to Magic - that makes a good trickster superpower, I think. So that’s 16 now. Four our final 2 points, let’s see...we’ll take Puissant Guile, so we get +2 to all lying and disguise rolls, and Mythic Communication: Peerless liar. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) Abilities General Brawl (Wrestling) 2 (15 XP) Guile (Brazen Lies) 3 (30 XP) English (Speeches) 5 (60*1.25 XP) Stealth (Shadowing) 2 (15 XP) pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) Abilities General Area Lore: England (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Brawl (Wrestling) 2 (15 XP) Folk Ken (Nobles) 1 (11 XP) Guile (Brazen Lies) 3 (30 XP) English (Speeches) 5 (60*1.25 XP) French (Criminal Cant) 3 (24*1.25 XP) Stealth (Shadowing) 2 (15 XP) Martial Single Weapon (Long Sword) 4 (50 XP) pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) Abilities General Area Lore: England (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Awareness (Searching) 2 (15 XP) Brawl (Wrestling) 2 (15 XP) Charm (Being Witty) 3 (30 XP) Etiquette (Nobility) 1 (5 XP) Folk Ken (Nobles) 2 (15 XP) Guile (Brazen Lies) 3 (30 XP) Intrigue (Plotting) 2 (15 XP) English (Speeches) 5 (60*1.25 XP) French (Criminal Cant) 3 (24*1.25 XP) German (Military Talk) 3 (24*1.25 XP) Gaelic (Scots Gaelic) 2 (12*1.25 XP) Stealth (Shadowing) 2 (15 XP) Martial Single Weapon (Long Sword) 4 (50 XP)
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Mar 11, 2014 14:35
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Ars Magica: Oliver, Oliver, never before has a boy asked for more When we last saw Oliver of Mercere, he was 12 and had just been picked up for apprenticsehip. Jump to 15 years later - he is now 27 and has 300 XP to spend. He can spend it on anything he likes. We’ll drop 40 of it on Latin, which boosts up to 50 from our Virtue. This lets him speak to magi in their common tongue. We’ll also grab Artes Liberales at 15 XP, so he can read all his languages. That’s 245 XP left. We’ll drop another 45 XP into Guile and become one of the best liars out there. 200 XP left. We’re going to need more Folk Ken and Intrigue, so we’ll drop 35 XP into each of those. 130 XP left. We’ll put 15 into Organization Lore: Order of Hermes and 5 XP into Code of Hermes. 110 left. Boost Etiquette to 3 with 25 XP, and buy Carouse at 3 with 30. That’ll leave us with 55 XP. We’ll take Legerdemain at 3 with 30 XP, leaving 25. With that, we grab Concentration at 2 with 15, and then both Hunt and Survival at 1 with 5 each. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) Abilities General Area Lore: England (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Awareness (Searching) 2 (15 XP) Brawl (Wrestling) 2 (15 XP) Carouse (Games of Chance) 3 (30 XP) Charm (Being Witty) 3 (30 XP) Concentration (Invisibility to Magic) 2 (15 XP) Etiquette (Nobility) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Nobles) 4 (50 XP) Guile (Brazen Lies) 5 (75 XP) Hunt (Tracking) 1 (5 XP) Intrigue (Plotting) 4 (50 XP) English (Speeches) 5 (60*1.25 XP) French (Criminal Cant) 3 (24*1.25 XP) German (Military Talk) 3 (24*1.25 XP) Gaelic (Scots Gaelic) 2 (12*1.25 XP) Legerdemain (Pickpocketing) 3 (30 XP) Stealth (Shadowing) 2 (15 XP) Survival (Coastlines) 1 (5 XP) Organization Lore: Order of Hermes (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Academic Artes Liberales (Logic) 2 (15 XP) Latin (Hermetic Usage) 5 (40*1.25 XP) Martial Single Weapon (Long Sword) 4 (50 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Redcaps) 1 (5 XP) Now, Reputation. We know he has Infamous, so he has a level 4 bad Reputation. We’ll say that’s among nobles, and he is infamous as a thief and saboteur. No one knows who he works for, but he has to disguise himself to move among the nobility because otherwise they’ll recognize him. In truth, he works for no one but himself - he’s trying to get his love back via cunning plans and revenge. Step 10: Confidence! He has a Confidence score of 2 and 5 Confidence Points, due to Hero. pre:Oliver of Mercere, Blood of Odysseus Characteristics Intelligence +4 (Clever Plans) Strength +0 Perception -2 Dexterity +2 Presence +1 Stamina +1 Communication +2 (Peerless Liar) Quickness +1 Personaltiy Proud +4 Cunning +5 Brave +3 Virtues Blood of Heroes (0) Mythic Intelligence (0) Well-Traveled (0) Redcap (3) Mythic Mimicry (3) Improved Characteristics (1) Great Intelligence (1) Magic Items (1) Magic Items (1) Linguist (1) Clear Thinker (1) Invisible to Magic (3) Puissant Guile (1) Mythic Communication (1) Warrior (1) Flaws Heroic Personality (-2) Plagued by Supernatural Being (-6) Proud (-6) Lost Love (-2) Infamous (-2) Abilities General Area Lore: England (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Awareness (Searching) 2 (15 XP) Brawl (Wrestling) 2 (15 XP) Carouse (Games of Chance) 3 (30 XP) Charm (Being Witty) 3 (30 XP) Concentration (Invisibility to Magic) 2 (15 XP) Etiquette (Nobility) 3 (30 XP) Folk Ken (Nobles) 4 (50 XP) Guile (Brazen Lies) 5 (75 XP) Hunt (Tracking) 1 (5 XP) Intrigue (Plotting) 4 (50 XP) English (Speeches) 5 (60*1.25 XP) French (Criminal Cant) 3 (24*1.25 XP) German (Military Talk) 3 (24*1.25 XP) Gaelic (Scots Gaelic) 2 (12*1.25 XP) Legerdemain (Pickpocketing) 3 (30 XP) Stealth (Shadowing) 2 (15 XP) Survival (Coastlines) 1 (5 XP) Organization Lore: Order of Hermes (Politics) 2 (15 XP) Academic Artes Liberales (Logic) 2 (15 XP) Latin (Hermetic Usage) 5 (40*1.25 XP) Martial Single Weapon (Long Sword) 4 (50 XP) Arcane Code of Hermes (Redcaps) 1 (5 XP) Reputations Vicious Thief and Saboteur (Nobility) 4 Confidence: 2 Confidence Points: 5 If anyone has any specific magic item effects that they’d like to see, do feel free to tell me. If they’re not possible, I will tell you. If they are, I’ll show you how to make ‘em, and make items for whatever’s left over. Magic item creation is similar to the spell creation we’ve seen, but not completely. Next time: SPEAR AND MAGIC HELMET
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Mar 12, 2014 15:56
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Before we go too much deeper into this thread, do people think we should index these creation demos like we do for the F&F thread? If so: Syrg, if you're reading this would it be possible to get a section of the F&F wiki?
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Mar 12, 2014 15:59
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I did think an index would be pretty helpful, if for no other reason than to avoid doubling up.
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Mar 12, 2014 17:00
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Yeah an index would be nice. Also, I realize that you can't force discussion but maybe a little more breathing room between write-ups. Right now it feels like each game doesn't really get its "moment in the sun". I have no idea on how to properly implement this though. Hulk Smash! fucked around with this message at 18:12 on Mar 12, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 18:07
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I agree with indexing. It is a good thing. As far as spacing out posts goes, that's a lot tougher to accomplish without some kind of meta thread where the content creators discussed what came next and how heavy the write ups would be. It almost has to happen organically. Maybe encourage more people to discuss the characters and systems after they've been posted? It would clear the pages up a little bit. That being said, here's my meta on the thread so far: I'm loving loving these. It's far more accessible to me to read this thread than F&F, and I get a more fast and loose feel for the systems. I like the story that is either mechanically or organically generated for all these PCs, and want to play with them just to hear what happens next. (I am also selfishly elated that people ran with the bird bard idea). This thread is a good thing and it's one of the best reads in TG. E: fixing punctuation. Dr. Lunchables fucked around with this message at 02:22 on Mar 13, 2014 |
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Mar 12, 2014 21:34
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Yeah this has fast become one of my favourite threads. I kinda need to convince my friends that we should play some Ars Magica. One of Oliver's magic items needs to be some kind of hollow wooden horse.
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Mar 12, 2014 23:01
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RickVoid posted:
A few points of correction here. The second result on Table 101B was 'Character is a member of an indigenous native people, now a racial minority (example: American Indians).' So Rick Void is at least Cherokee enough to be classified as one by the government, even if he himself isn't particularly tribal. Also, Table 106B didn't specify that a 6 meant his twin was evil, just diametrically opposed to him. Since that didn't come up, it's entirely possible they'll get on together, once they meet up of course. Anyway, where did I leave off? Oh yes. Table 208: Significant Events of Youth. In the name of maximum chaos, we're going to roll a total of six times on this table, three for childhood and three for adolescence. First we roll d12 for when each childhood event took place and d6+12 for when each adolescent event took place. Rolled ages, sorted=11,12,12,14,15,18. All events are determined by rolling d20 and adding Rick Void's Social Level Modifier, which is 4. Let's get started. Age 11 event: d20+4=9. Learn head of household's occupation to Rank 2 competency. If no head, use patron, or random selection from Table 413A: Occupations. [N] Rick Void's dad is a ship captain, so he'll learn that occupation. First age 12 event: d20+4=18. Gain a friend. Select friend from Table 743: Others. [L] We roll d10=3 and get unusual people; a further d6=2 gets a professional hero. Second age 12 event: d20+4=23. The character has a crush on her teacher. Roll a d6, and on a 6, the teacher is beginning to return the character's attention (this is generally not a good thing to have happen). [R] We roll d6=3 and are safe from the creepy. Age 14 event: d20+4=16. 1d3 more Significant events occur during this time. Ooooh. In the name of maximum chaos, this becomes a 3. First age 14 event: d20+4=12. Family has the following attitudes toward the character. We roll d6=6 on the subtable and get One parent is distant and cold towards the character. [D] 1d2=1 says it's Rick Void's dad. Second age 14 event: d20+4=7. Learn an Unusual Skill from Table 863: Unusual Skills. Rolling d20=2 here gives us Professional gambling. A further d6=5 tells us Rick Void learns this at Rank 3 (if it were a 6, he'd get it at Rank 4.) Third age 14 event: d20+4=22. Character has an exciting and possibly weird adventure (or misadventure). [R] Here things get particularly interesting, because we roll d8 on a subtable to determine which event table we use for this... and not only is there a 'roll twice more' option, which we choose, but this means that (d8,d8=2,3) we're going to be combining events from the Superhero and Magical tables, despite that not being Rick Void's genre! Table 522: Superhero Events is a straight d20 roll... but there's an option to roll twice more and an option to roll again, adding d6! I decide that, in the name of maximum chaos, I'm going to decide we hit result 19 to roll twice, then get a normal (1-18) entry, then roll again and hit in the 21-26 range! So d20=18, d6+20=22. 18 is despite his efforts to the contrary, the public believes the character to be either a dangerous menace or just plain evil. 22 is The character leads a double life. Neither identity seems to be aware of the other, nor is the world at large aware of her dual life. In one guise, she is a normal, everyday person--in the other, a heroic crime-fighter. Decide which personality is the one to be played and develop the other as an NPC, using Table 107: Parents & NPCs. Here I see a note I didn't see the first time I visited this table, telling me to visit Table 861: Appearances to get something interesting about the NPC's appearance. d4,d10=4,2 leads to a subtable. d4=3. Rick Void's alter ego is known for close-cropped hair. Back to Table 107, d20=20 on Table 107A is... NPC does not have a readily apparent occupation of any kind. When money is needed, it just seems to be available. GM ONLY: See entry 107A on Table 965: GM's Specials. The GM takes a look and rolls d6=1 on a subtable and gets NPC has an adventurer's hoard of gold and treasure. He makes a note, and we move on. We roll (in the name of maximum chaos) three times on Table 107B. (And here the my attempt to use nested lists for this broke down. Again.) d20=2. NPC had 1d3 unusual birth circumstances. Here I exercise my authorial veto and decide to roll that again; d20=11. NPC is a military veteran. Select the branch of service on Table 529: Military Duties. This I do; d6=5, then d8=3, is a transport pilot for the Air Force. d20=8. NPC has an obsession regarding something that had happened (or might happen), something that dominates the rest of his life. We roll d6=2 on the subtable. A significant event from the past. On Table 208: Significant Events of Youth, determine what happened. Back to Table 208 we go; d20+4=24. A special age-specific event occurs. If the character is currently a child, select the event on Table 209A: Special Events of Childhood. If the character is currently an adolescent, select the event on Table 209B: Special Events of Adolescence. It doesn't say what to do if we're sent here from Table 107B (where the character in question could be an adult), so I decide to roll d2=2 and go to Table 209B. 2d20=18. The character attends a specialized school based on proven aptitudes. We roll d8=4 and get Acting, which Rick Void receives a rank 4 skill in. d20=10. NPC has a patron. Determine the details about this service relationship on Table 535: In the Service Of... We first roll d20=13 on Table 535A: Who? and find it's a medical organization; then we roll d10=3 on Table 535B: Scope of Influence and discover it covers a state/province/territory; and finally we roll d3 times (three for maximum chaos) on Table 535C: Service Events, rolling d20 each time. d20=18. Patron teaches character an occupation to 1d3 ranks. Select occupation on Table 413: Occupations. Rick Void gets d3=1 rank in (d10+4=12, d20=15, d6=4) flying prop planes. d20=10. The character leaves the patron's entourage after 1d6 years. Gains gift/bonus of years * $1000. d6=6. d20=12. Patron trains character as if she were in the military. Select 'branch of service' on Table 530: Military Duties and appropriate skills on Table 531: Military Skills. This is a typo; Military Duties is actually Table 529, as we know. d6=4, d10=7; a technical specialist in the Navy. Looking that up on Table 531A: Service Skills, we see we need to give Rick Void rank 2 in a specific ranged combat weapon, rank 1 in martial arts, +1 to Wilderness Survival, and additional rolls for 'being' in the Navy (1 on 531B, 3 on 531D) and a technical specialist (1 each on B, C, E, and F). The first time we roll a skill, he gets it at Rank 3; each further time is a +1. All told, he gets (d10 7 times, d6 once=7,9,1,10,3,3,3,5) Spot Weakness 3, Communications & Sensors 3, Swimming 3, Survival Sense 3, Camouflage 3, Helicopter Pilot 3, and Drive (vehicle not normally used by navy) 3. He also gets +1d3 to an existing military skill. That's just the superhero part of the event! Table 537: Magical Events also has a maximum chaos option, though it doesn't include a 'roll at a bonus' option. d20,d20=6,7. 6 is The character witnesses a woman accidentally walk into a 'turf war' (gangs, mob, etc.) and emerge unscathed. Bullets never touch her, people seemed to freeze near her, and after she passed through, she literally disappeared around the corner. 7 is In the middle of a large metropolitan city, in the middle of the day, a huge hand came out of the clouds and scooped up 2d6 people. One of them was a friend of the character. ... There are still two adolescent events to roll (ages 15 and 18), but I think I need to take a break at this point. I'll just do one more thing: jump ahead to Table 312: Alignment & Attitude and determine the personality traits Rick Void has picked up so far.
"[u posted:Rick Void[/u]'s Character Sheet"]
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Mar 13, 2014 23:04
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