Burgundar: The Musical

I play Enoch, a gravedigger, at the Mystwood LARP. Mystwood takes place at two sites: The Keep, in Jefferson, ME, and Burgundar, in Harrison, ME.

Lately, in Burgundar, the town has been beset by a vile Chaos demon named Old Grom. As Grom is wonderfully played, delightfully scene-chewy, and possessed of a somewhat generic appearance (an old man in a black cloak and an eyepatch), he has started to get blamed for things he hasn't even done.

This amused me so much that I wrote a song about it. Here it is.

NOTE: I am not a musician or a poet. I don't know the tune to this song, or if one could even be crafted for it. I doubt that it will scan. Please be gentle. Also, this will likely make sense only to about 40 people, but I hope the conceit is amusing enough that people conversant with the fantasy genre will also enjoy it.

The RPG Character Library: Gamma World 3rd Edition

At least, I think it's 3rd Edition.

I decided to jump from the earliest edition of this game (Metamorphosis Alpha) to the most recent version of the game that I own (and also, the only other version of the game that I own), to see what had changed and what had remained the same.

The short-short version is: The rules are better. It feels like it's a much better thought out game and game world. A lot of the early ideas (mutants, etc.), have been updated and expanded to differentiate them and make them more interesting. There's still a bizarre preoccupation with future tech, for reasons I can't quite explain. The game is set on an irradiated, post-apocalyptic earth instead of on a space ship, which helps to explain all the wilderness and the stable populations of various mutant beasties.

Once again, I went in without any idea of what I was going to make, other than that I wanted to make some kind of mutant creature, because that's way more fun than playing a straight human.

The game starts me off with the Mutated Animal template. I get some Physical and some Mental Mutations. +2 Stealth, -6 to Robot Recognition (robots once served human masters, and I am not human), and I get some abilities from the animal stock, which I must choose.

Amused that it's an option, and reminded of a certain character I played at a LARP once, I choose Weasel. Weasel gives me a Physical Strength (PS) 9, Dexterity (DX) 12, and Constitution (CN) 5. I can also bite for 1d6 damage, get Night Vision (per the mutation), and have a Base Speed of 14 (9 if I walk just on my hind legs).

I can also choose to have my mutant be of a stable strain, which means there's a village of weasel-people just like me off in the world somewhere. Cool. I can dig that. Let's do that. Maybe they live somewhere in the ruins of Venice. (Inside joke)

I now get to do adjustments. To start with, I look exactly like a weasel, except I’m smart. If I was under a meter in height, I’m now a meter in height. I cannot talk or use tools, however, various mutations can remedy this. If I don’t take any mutations to make me more human, I get +1 Physical Mutation, but have -8 Robot Recognition.

I get all of the stats listed above, plus a 2d4 roll. There are also other attributes for which I must roll. Different species (Mutant Plant, Mutant Animal, Human) all have different ways of rolling for their listed attributes. For every other attribute but Senses and Mutation Power, I roll 3d6 (like you do). The other two are calculated by 4d6 drop the lowest. Thank you, TSR.

I should also point out that Mutation Power seems to need to be rolled for each power that requires it (it's basically a casting roll). At least, I think it does. The rules are quite extensive, but I was skimming.

Now I roll for my mutant powers (1d6, consult chart). I will always get five mutations, but the roll tells me how they split. In my  case, I get three Physical and two Mental. I now roll percentile dice and consult the appropriate charts. 

Unlike Metamorphosis Alpha, there's a wide variety of powers that are all very well described and defined. In addition, the GM doesn't get the ability to hobble me with a randomly awful power. There are still powers that are defects (marked with a D), but I'm not guaranteed to have one (or any), and if I roll them, it's my fault. In addition, I can only have one physical and one mental defect maximum, so I won't wind up playing a character whose mutant abilities only weaken them.

Now, the mutant powers that turn my animal from a mutant animal into an uplifted, bipedal animal are not listed in this section. They are listed in the animal section, however, and they are Talk, Bipedal, and Manipulate Tools and Objects. I spend all three of my Physical Mutation points to buy these. I am now a chatty, humanoid weasel. Yes.

And now I determine my mental mutations.

99: Roll 2 mental mutations. Okay!

95: Pick any one mental mutation of your choice.

I was bound to roll well sooner or later!

I roll for my two random mutations and get:

04: Death Field Generation (This ability has a Mutation Power score. It's 11.)

28: Heightened Mental Attribute

This is funny, because the character that I played, who was nicknamed "Weasel," was a super-smart necromancer. So I decide to go whole hog (full weasel?) and name the character "Callen."

Death Field Generation allows me to damage the life force of all living things around me. The field isn't as game-breaking as one might thing it is, because it also targets me. I can also only use it once per week. 

Heightened Mental Attribute randomly affects one of my three mental stats (Mental Strength, Intelligence, or Charisma). I add a number of points equal to 6 - the attribute's modifier. This is nice, because it's guaranteed to give low attributes a nice bump. I roll 1d3 and get 3. My Charisma gets improved. It's modifier is +6, so I raise it to 18. Hello, cutie!

Telekinetic Hand is the power I took for my selected power. It doesn't have the oomph of true Telekinesis, but it allows me to make fine motor manipulation as if I was using my hand.

Now I get to pick my character class. There are four: Enforcer (Fighter), Esper (Magic User), Examiner (Good with Tools), Scout (Rogue). I decide to go with Examiner, because it's the different one, and because the character that this character is loosely based on was interested in ancient history and magical artifacts. 

My class gives me a whole pile of things, including one randomly rolled Tech IV item (I get a parachute), +1 Robot Recognition, +1 Use Artifacts per level, 16 points to distribute between four skills: Avoid Artifact Disaster, Jury-Rig, Read Schematics, and Repair Artifact. Since I have 16 points and 4 skills, I make them 4 each. Mostly because I don't know what's better.

All classes have several common skills, with percentages based on the class itself. These are Read, Write, Ride, and Swim.  Examiners have Read 100%, Write 100%, Ride 25%, and Swim 10%. 

After that, I get my derived attributes. They are also called skills and everyone gets them. I will say that this rulebook is laid out in kind of a strange way. For instance, my derived attributes are based on my primary attributes, but are listed after classes, not with the attributes themselves. But what do I know? I'm not a game designer.

The derived attributes are a big, long list, and it sort of clunks up a game whose design I felt was running pretty smoothly thus far. I won't copy the list here, but you can see it at the end, with the character. I will note that they kept CN as hit dice, just like it was in Metamorphosis Alpha, which is something I rather liked.

I now have the option of joining a Cryptic Alliance. I take a read through them and they are all silly. Like, okay, not silly-silly like Paranoia, but not too many steps removed from that. I find that I can't take any of them seriously and, so, I don't join any. Besides, I'm playing a charismatic loner. I don't need no allies!

Now we get to the Equipment section and, to my mind, the most baffling part of the game. The world is listed as being Tech III generally, which makes it Renaissance-times, according to the book. This would be fine, except things like laser pistols and micromissiles are listed under Common Equipment. It's fine, because I can't afford them anyway, but it seems like a very strange design choice. I would almost prefer it be split up like D&D, with regular equipment being more primitive and fancy future stuff being the "magic items."

The section also says that the GM gets to decide how much money and equipment I get based on where the game starts. Then it says, "oh, just kidding. Give them 250 + 1d10 x 10 donars." I roll a 1. So I get 260 donars. I purchase some basic weapons and armor and decide to call it a day.

Callen, Level 1 Mutant Weasel Examiner

Physical Strength: 13, +1

Dexterity: 18, +3

Constitution: 10, +0

Mental Strength: 13, +1

Intelligence: 12, +0

Charisma: 18, +3

Senses: 11, +0

Physical Mutations

Talk

Bipedal

Manipulate Tools and Objects

Mental Mutations

Death Field Generation: 11, +0

Telekinetic Hand: 14, +1

Heightened Charisma: +6

Class Skills 

+1 to Robot Recognition and Use Artifacts

+1 bonus to Use Artifacts per level

Read 100%

Write 100%

Ride 25%

Swim 10%

Avoid Artifact Disaster: 4

Jury-Rig: 4

Read Schematics: 4

Repair Artifact: 4  

Derived Attributes

THAC melee: PS mod (1)

THAC ranged: DX mod (3)

Armor Class:  10 + DX mod (13)

MD: 10 + MS mod (11)

Hit Points: CNd6, or 10d6 (39)

Health: 10 + CN mod (10)

Use Artifacts: IN mod, (0)

Perception: SN score + IN mod (11)

Stealth: DX mod (3)

Remain Unseen: IN mod (0)

Speed: Base + DX mod (14/9)

Robot Recognition: 20 - mods (15)

Equipstuff

Flintlock Pistol 2d8, 40 D

Dagger 1d4 5 D

Studded Leather AC 3 25 D

24 musket balls, gunpowder, and horn 10 D

Donars: 180

The RPG Character Library: Metamorphosis Alpha

I've always been a fan of the genre in which an apocalypse turns a far-future society into post-apocalyptic fantasy. There's just something about it that seems really cool and interesting. I had high hopes that the Covenant LARP (a game explicitly set in a post-apocalyptic fantasy world) would turn into Gamma World. Or, at least, Metamorphosis Alpha.

You've been on a giant worldship this entire time. Oh, and you're going to crash into a star. Good luck!

Oh, and it's written by Drawmij himself. So that's nice. I wonder if he can make the game rules appear in his hand as a free action?

It turns out that what one might think one wants can easily turn out to be something that one doesn't really want at all, and that, as it happens, is the case with Metamorphosis Alpha. I think I like the idea of this game much better than it's execution. I feel like if I were to do this sort of a game, my emphasis would be focused more on the culture, society, and world inside the ship and have much less to do with all of the cool ray guns and robots located on the storage levels.

I will say though that, in the game's defense, it was made in 1976, where the focus on games was quite a bit different than it is now. It's forgivable, but I don't think I could run this game without significant rewriting.

It also doesn't help that the rules feel more than a little bit slapdash (the errata in the back doesn't help). There's not a lot of them, but I definitely get the feeling that some of them are missing somewhere. It doesn't help that the book's layout is crude and kind of all over the place.

Still, I was able to make a pretty interesting character. Here's how I did that.

As per usual, I went in with no preconceived notions. There are six stats (Radiation Resistance, Mental Resistance, Dexterity, Constitution, Strength, and Leadership Potential). Frustratingly, the list of stats is given in that order, but the paragraphs describing the stats are arranged in a different order. Oh well.

I learn right off the bat that True Humans get all six stats, while Mutants of varying stripes only get the first five. I think making True Humans the only charismatic people in the game is one of the ways that they balance the fact that humans don't get awesome powers, but it still feels like not quite enough of a boost.

I decide that I will be a mutant, because that sounds fun. I do the roll and place in order, giving me an average character who is very clumsy and who has an almost statistically significant Constitution. I'm not getting much from these stats, but there's still more to do.

I should probably explain the stats at this point, as well as how secondary stats are derived from them, since they're somewhat unique among RPGs.

Radiation Resistance is the likelihood that I will resist dangerous radiation. A failure means that I will either die horribly or mutate.

Mental Resistance is my chance to avoid psychic attacks and mental mutations. Unlike the other stats, it is strengthened by use, provided I survive an attack that harms me.

Dexterity determines when I act in combat. So I'm not necessarily clumsy, but I am slow as balls. Interestingly, my Dex doesn't seem to impact my movement speed at all, from what I can tell.

Strength indicates whether and if I do any extra damage in combat. I don't.

Constitution determines the number of hit points I have and how likely I am to be poisoned. Since I have a Con of 11, I get to roll 11d6 to calculate my hit points. I roll reasonably well and get 45.

Because I am a mutant, I am allowed to have mutant powers. I get to roll 1d4 to determine how many physical mutations I have. Then I get to roll 1d4 again to determine how many mental mutations I have. It also says that my mutations are hand-picked by me, and not randomly rolled. Considering that there is quite a wide power range between powers (for instance, one of them allows me to control time or set up an aura of death around my body), this seems unwise. On the other hand, it's much easier to build the character you want.

The GM then gives me a physical or mental defect, so that I do not become god upon the Warden. If I have five or more mutations, I get both a physical and a mental defect.

I rolleth forth my d4s and get 3 physical mutations and 2 mental mutations. Since I have five total, I get two defects. Fun!

Here's the point where my character starts to gel. I decided that I would not game the system, instead choosing powers based on a core concept. I am given further guidance by the rulebook telling me that all mutants start in the forest level of the ship with no equipment.

Okay. So what do we have so far? A slow-moving, reasonably tough, arboreal mutant. Let's see if I can pick things to complement this.

Heightened Dexterity: Despite the name, this does not improve my Dexterity in any way. My AC is 1 (equivalent to the best armor listed in the game), as long as I am not encumbered. Since no one plays by the encumbrance rules anyway, I should be fine.

Physical Reflection: My skin reflects one type of damage away from my body in a random direction. One of the damage types listed is Radiation, so I'm going to powergame the shit out of this and choose that one.

Quills: I grow quills along my arms and legs. Anyone grabbing me takes dagger damage. I can also throw them 1-10 feet away from me.

Heightened Intelligence: Unlike Heightened Dexterity, this actually does modify my intelligence. I need it if I'm going to be a mutated plant or animal to have human-like intelligence, and I have to take it if I rolled a 4 on mental mutations. Since no Geoff character is complete without improved intelligence, I decided to purchase it despite neither of those things being true. It adds +4 to my Mental Resistance (to a max of 18) and allows me a better chance to operate devices found on the ship.

Intuition: Taking a page from the Jewel songbook, I have grabbed this mutation. It gives me limited precognition, which translates to a +1 to hit, +3 damage, and am never surprised. The power notes that it cannot work if any of my other powers are active, but, since my other powers are either passives or automatic, I don't think I need to worry about that.

I tried to pick defects that would make sense for my character, learning later that the GM could simply roll randomly and assign the defects to me. The defect tables don't make it obvious that a random roll is allowed (there's 6 physical and 10 mental defects, but the chart lists all the mutations in a group in order from 1-47, so you won't notice it unless you count). I managed not to cheese it, or hurt my character too badly, and picked the following.

Skin Structure Change: My skin has been altered significantly. The examples that are given are scales that reduce my movement (but not my Dexterity) and that I cannot bear heat above 76 degrees F. I decide to reverse the second one, taking one die of damage per hour if I am stuck in temperatures of 40 degrees or lower. I don't know if that's cheesy or not, but the book doesn't give much in the way of boundaries or examples.

Fear Impulse: I am afraid of certain objects or animals. I can't look at the thing (whatever it is) without feeling total fear and running away from it. Since I'm little more than a forest creature at this point, I decide that I have a fear impulse to "Uncontrolled Fires." Campfires will make me nervous. Forest fires will make me run screaming.

Since I don't have any equipment, I can safely ignore the majority of the equipment section. However, I do need to figure out how to calculate damage for my quills. Metamorphosis Alpha has an interesting way of doing this: Armor has a Class rating (which, I think, is different from AC), and weapons also have a Class rating. The higher the class of weapon, the better damage it does against armored opponents.

I thought this would be more descriptive. Like I have an Organic Dagger, which might be pretty good, but a Plasma Dagger would be way better. I'm going to have to wait a few decades to get something like that, though, because the determination of Class is a bit more byzantine and less free-form than that. I do find out that daggers of any type are a Class 3 weapon and do 1d4 damage against opponents.

Nav the Arboreal Mutant

Radiation Resistance:  9

Mental Resistance: 9 +4 = 13

Dexterity: 4

Constitution:11

Strength: 9

AC: 1

HP: 45

Physical Mutations: Heightened Dexterity, Physical Reflection (Radiation), Quills

Mental Mutations: Heightened Intelligence, Intuition (Follow Your Heaaaart)

Physical Defect: Skin Structure Change (Take 1d6 Damage/Hour at 40 F or Less)

Mental Defect: Fear Impulse (Uncontrolled Fires)

Equipstuff: None

The RPG Character Library: Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes

Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes is a game that bills itself on being an adventure game in which you can play the three eponymous things from the title, as well as pretty much any other "modern day" type of character. Happily, it also dips its toes into the pulp pool, giving rules on making characters with psychic powers and providing a whole section on running a Lost World campaign. Including stats for dinosaurs! Pretty spiffy!

MSPE, as the game is more acronymically known, is based on the rules for Tunnels & Trolls. It eschews T&T's 5-gallon-bucket-of-d6s rolling mechanic in favor of a much easier, more straightforward one based off of it's primogenitor's saving roll mechanic. Briefly: Roll 2d6, if you get doubles, roll again and add, add the total to one of your stats, meet or beat that number on a chart to succeed. MSPE, unlike T&T, also has an extensive skills system, it's entirely possible this is where T&T got its Specialties rules for future incarnations of itself.

The mechanics of this game are also going to be super familiar to anyone who is old enough or retro enough to have played the old Wasteland computer game, as the skill mechanics are pretty much a direct port.

Character creation starts off nice and familiar. You get a list of attributes. You roll 3d6 for each. You place them in order. MSPE uses T&T's TARO rule (Triples Add and Roll Over) with a modification. If you get a triple on an attribute (three fours, for instance), you get to roll two additional dice and add that to the base total. Thus, the possible maximum for attributes is 30--big enough that truly exceptional characters are possible, but with a much lower ceiling than T&T or Power Trip.

Once again, no idea what I'm going to make. I'm just going to roll. Let's see now...Strength 8...Luck 6...Uh...Intelligence 14, that's good...Dexterity 11...Constitution 10...Charisma 18!

Wait! 18 is three sixes! I rolled a triple! I get to roll two more dice. Holy meatballs! My character's Charisma is 27! I don't think I've ever played anyone as drop-dead sexy as this person before in my life.

Oh, and Speed 9.

I calculate my derived attributes and discover that I am not going to be doing very much in the way of fighting. You get +1 to your adds for every point of St, Lk, and Dex over 12...and -1 for every point below 9. This gives me a total of -4 adds. My missile combat adds are based solely off my Luck, so I get a -3 there. Definitely lover material, this person!

I get 3d6x100 starting cash. The problem in this game isn't that I don't have enough money to buy things, it's that I don't have enough things to buy. There are extensive (like, Palladium-level extensive) lists of various types of weapons, but not much in the way of general equipment. I do get to purchase a sword cane, though! And I also buy a leather jacket to give myself a nominal amount of protection.

When it comes to the game, it seems like Intelligence (IQ) is the most important attribute. You get a number of skill points equal to your IQ and all skills are rated based on IQ. Thus, if I had an IQ of 8, I couldn't buy any skills that had a prerequisite of IQ 9 or higher. This means that you won't have any dullards that are PhD candidates or doctors, but it can also be severely limiting as far as making characters goes. There also doesn't seem to be any real way to improve your IQ during the game to get more skills, though there's a lengthy paragraph about how you can lose IQ (and skills) from brain damage.

You can buy multiple ranks in a skill. According to the book, the cost doubles each time. The book then lists this cost as 1,3,7, which I don't think quite maths right, but I get what they're saying. When you make a save roll where a skill comes into play, you get to add your skill rank to your total. Interestingly, this game explicitly states that skills are not tied to attributes. What this means is that you could use your knowledge of guns to be better at firing guns, to do forensic analysis of ballistics, to build your own gun, or similar.

That's just the sort of thing I like in my spy adventure games!

I whipped through the skills section and bought all of the Charisma-heavy skills first. Then I went back and grabbed a few other skills to round out the character and make him more interesting. I think he's a brilliant, very handsome, persuasive, Italian gentleman who was recruited to some agency or another for his interpersonal skills. I bought no fighting skills and am hoping on his glib tongue and quick wits to save him.

What a shock, it's another Geoff Bottone character...

Paulo Navino, Handsome Gentleman

Attributes

Strength	8	Level	1
Luck	6	Gender	Male
Intelligence	14	Nationality	Spanish
Dexterity	11	Race	Iberian/N African
Constitution	10	Age	35
Charisma	27(!)	Height/Weight	5’10”/190 lb
Speed	9	Money	$610

Skills

Combat	Melee Adds -4
	Ranged Adds -3
IQ 4	Horsemanship 1
IQ 8	Chic 1
	Fast Driving 1
IQ 10	Bureaucracy Mastery 1
	Confidence 1
	Diplomacy 1
	Elocution 1
	Gambling 1
	Seduction 1
IQ 12	Disguise 1
	Master’s Degree 1
	Observation 1
IQ 13	English (Free)
	Castilian Spanish 1
IQ 14	Psychiatrist

Equipment

Sword Cane $90, 3 dice

Leather Jacket $100, absorbs 1 die of damage from each attack.

The RPG Character Library: Lords of Creation

Lords of Creation is a role-playing game that I purchased thanks to something that combined an idle whim and bit of the butterfly effect. To wit: I was looking up funny gaming stories on the internet and found a whole bunch written by a gentleman, whose name escapes me, but who is quite an excellent writer. The games he described were singularly awful occurrences--involving an adventure in which the players were supposed to help Hitler, truly psychotic fellow players, and a basement covered in toxic mold--so bad and distasteful that I really, really hope he was making them up.

Anyway, he mentioned in these stories that he played Lords of Creation quite a bit (in fact, many of the gaming stories centered around LoC games). I had never heard of this game, but it sounded interesting. And so, I proceeded to buy the entirety of the game line from a seller on Ebay (it includes a box set for the rules, as well as three boxed sets for each of the game modules, including: The Horn of Roland, The Yeti Sanction, and Omegakron).

I read it and really liked what I found. The game is somewhat universal, very flexible, and has a lot of interesting ideas and mechanics sprinkled throughout. It is laid out somewhat poorly, but that has more to do with the technological limitations of the time than it does with any failure on the part of the game designer. 

The premise is simple: You are a normal person from late-20th century Earth. You go on adventures, as is typical, gaining experience and treasure and all that fun stuff. Over time, you begin to discover that you have strange powers--powers that allow you to travel to different times and dimensions. You will eventually master these powers, ascending to semi-demi-godhood as a Lord of Creation (title drop!), able to build worlds and shape reality to your whim!

Neat!

As is typical with my play-style, I went in without a character concept and just started rolling. The game has five stats, each of which are rolled on 2d10. The higher your stats, the bigger your modifiers to your secondary stats. Most secondary stats start out at 1 or 2, but could conceivably get a lot bigger once your stats go up as you ascend to godhood. The only one that's slightly different is Luck Roll, which is the modifier + a 1d6 roll.

My Physical Score is the average of my three physical stats, and is my base chance to hit in combat (1d20 roll, roll under).  

My Physical Force appears to be the most important of my stats, as it determines when I get special powers, how far I can drop to negative Life Points without dying, and how many skill ranks I start with. It's the total of my stats, divided by ten, round up.

I get to roll 1d100x10 for my starting cash, which is, I think, the most I've been allowed to roll for cash thus far (and it's still not enough!). The equipment tables, I soon discovered, are divided in to three time periods: Modern, in which all prices are listed in dollars; Futuristic, in which all prices are listed in credits; and Antique, in which all prices are listed in silver centums (a coin, not a multivitamin). To make things easy, the game says that all money is equal (so $50 = 50 c = 50SC). As most of the futuristic gear costs many thousands of credits, that doesn't help me much. Still, good to know.

My Life Points are a total of my Stamina + 1d10 per level. Since I'm first level, I get one die roll. And I rolled really well! How about that!

As a first level Lords of Creation character, I get the title of Neophyte. I don't have the option to get powers yet (that happens at second level) and above, but I do get an ability called Dimensional Sight. This ability allows me to see other-dimensional creatures that are otherwise invisible, such as ghosts and certain monsters. So, even though I am effectively a normal person, I can already see and do some weird things.

On to skills! This is my favorite part of the rules system and something I may steal for one of my own games in the future (sorry, Mr. Moldvay!). There are 20 or so skill professions, each of which have five skill ranks. Some ranks are marked with a *, which means that I can't take them to start. As most of those skills are listed as futuristic or magical, this is another way that the game forces players to start as a normie, unaware of the vast weirdness of the cosmos. All skill ranks cost 1 point, but I have to buy them in order. I can o

For example, the Detective Profession looks like this:

1. Police Connections
2. Basic Criminology
3. Wiretapping
4. Advanced Criminology
5. Futuristic/Magical*

In most cases, if I have a skill, I can use it and it works automatically. "I talk to my Police Connections!" "Great, you sure do!" In the event that I'm using a skill in an unorthodox way, or I'm using it in difficult circumstances, the GM will have me roll. In familiar circumstances, my percentage chance to succeed is 20% x my top rank in my profession (so, if I was Detective -- 4, I'd have an 80% chance to succeed). In very weird circumstances, it's 10% x top rank (same example, 40%).

Combat skills are the only skills that work differently. You have to buy combat skills in specific weapons and they range from 1-5. I could have Sword -- 2, or Ray Gun --3, or similar. This adds to my base chance to hit (determined by my Physical Score).

At this point, I had looked at all the professions and decided that I would make a character who was as unlike me as possible. Thus was born Jeff Barton, Handsome Male Secretary! I spread my six stats out between Bureaucracy, Computer, Espionage, and Pilot (Jeff Barton, HMS, has some interesting skeletons in his closet, for sure!) and was just about ready to go.

Then I decided to buy some gear, just so I could show you how weapons and armor work. I decided that, unlike me, Jeff Barton is interested in medieval fighting styles, so I spent a good chunk of his money on a sword and a steel cuirass. As mentioned above, my weapon skill (IF I HAD ONE!!!) would improve my chances to hit. As you'd expect, my armor reduces my opponent's chance to hit me, giving them a -4 to their base chance.

And thus a mild-mannered, but very handsome, secretary is ready to take his first steps into a larger, weirder world.

Jeff Barton, Handsome Male Secretary™

Level 1 Neophyte

Muscle	5	Close Com Dmg	1
Speed	16	Initiative Bonus	2
Stamina	13	Healing	2
Mental	9	Power Mod	1
Luck	13	Luck Roll	6

Life Points: 23

Personal Force: 6

Physical Score: 12

Base Move: 60’/turn 

Powers

None

Abilities
Dimensional Sight

Skill Professions

Bureaucracy – 3

1.      Record Keeping

2.      Record Tracking

3.      Bribery

Computer – 1

1.      Computer Operation

Espionage – 1

1.      Government Connections

Pilot – 1

1.      Land Vehicle

Equipment

Steel Cuirass (Armor Protection -4), Sword (Regular Weapon; Damage: 1d10; Initiative: +2)

Money: $320

The RPG Character Library: Cyborg Commando

Cyborg Commando makes me sad. It has a wonderful premise that gets bogged down and ultimately suffocated by poor organization, random tangents, and unfortunate game design. I mean, here's the elevator pitch: You're a psychically-sensitive individual whose brain has been placed in a robot body so that you can fight the bugs invading earth from outer space? How cool is that?!

Not terribly, unfortunately.

Much of this can be laid squarely at the feet of the GM's guide, which contains scientific minutiae about how the cyborgs work, that the aliens are made up of super-large, geometrically-shaped cells that link together Tangrams style, and what sort of commando bases can be found on which continent. It's all terribly dry with none of the fluff that would make the game interest. I guess the age of fluff was still to come (the game was released in the '80s), but even contemporary games like Star Frontiers or Top Secret gave you some idea of what the world was like and what you could expect while adventuring through it.

Character creation in this game proved to be a lukewarm spill (not a hot mess, but close), requiring me to jump back and forth between sections repeatedly, hunting for obscure rules, and squinting and saying, "what" in disbelief at one sentence or another. I should also point out that I used the basic character generation rules. There's a more complicated one, but I don't recommend that for anyone, ever.

How does the basic character generation system work? Well, I'll tell you. It starts off innocently enough: You get 60 points to spend on your character, of which you use some number to purchase stats and the remainder to purchase skills. The game doesn't go out of its way to give concrete numbers, saying only that a character should spend 20-50 points on stats. I went with the top end of that spread and spent 50.

You have three stats, Mental, Neural, and Physical. I soon learned that Physical referred to your organic body which, by this point in your character's career, is sitting in a bacta tank somewhere for when the alien menace has finally passed. Your cyborg body is equal to your organic physical rating + 100 (because a brain in a jar counts for a lot when compared to the exoskeleton containing it).  Based on that, and on the fact that Neural heavily influences your secondary stats, I went with high Neural, moderate mental, and minimal Physical.

At this point, the game mentions that Psychogenics could be a stat if you and the GM wanted it to be. All characters are, by their nature, somewhat psychically-inclined, because it's your mental powers that allows your brain in a jar to use their robot body. I went full-bore and said, "Yes, my GM has allowed Psychogenics, so I will put points in that," only to not find any rules on how to calculate or use Psychogenics. It turns out those rules are in the Advanced Character Generation section.

Moving on!

My secondary stats were calculated as follows: I can have a maximum number of Skills (but not really), equal to 1/3 my Mental. I will Train a point in a skill by spending 100 - Mental hours in study. My rather high Neural allows me to take 3 actions per round, function for three days without rest or sleep (despite being in a cybernetic body), and move three hexes per combat round.

I also do 11 damage in unarmed combat, have 210 Integrity (or Hit) Points, and heal 11 points of damage per day--wait, no--I heal 11 points per damage on any organic parts that I have remaining. So if my brain takes damage, I can heal it. If my cyborg body takes damage...well, presumably there's rules for that somewhere.

Fine. I also get to calculate my Throw, Carry, and Lift values. The system gives me the option of using Imperial or Metric units, but then states that using Metric gives me an advantage, so I use Metric. This ain't my first RPG, son.

And, again, how much I can throw, carry, and lift is based partly on my starting Physical stat, because that body that's floating in a tank of preservative is really helping out with its muscle power, here.

Okay, now for skills. All untrained skills have a rating of 1. I get to pick any five skills of my choice and distribute my remaining 10 points between them. There are skills for art history, science, and for appreciating the classics, but this is also Cyborg Commando, so I specialized in all of the fighting skills. Because, duh.

Then, on top of that, the game gives you a handful of other skills that your character gets from basic training. If you didn't train these skills, you get them at a rating of 10. If you did train them, you get them at a rating of 9 + your current rating.  This leads me to believe that I didn't leave enough points for skills and that I'm relatively unskilled at the skills that I purchased.

But no! It turns out that Cyborg Commando uses the d10x system, in which you roll 2d10 and multiply the results together. If the final result is less than your stat or skill, you succeed. This creates a freaky probability curve that I don't quite understand, but it does seem to make rolling against my relatively low stats and skills somewhat more likely.

The last part of character creation involves copying down a big long list of things that my character's cyborg body provides. I note that I have a 200 power unit battery, and that I can slowly recharge by touching an outlet (I get back 7 PU per minute). The body is equipped with numerous functions, including on-board weaponry, that cost variable amounts of PU to use.

Or I could buy a gun, use that, and save my PU for other stuff. I mean, the characters in all of the game art are equipped with pistols or rifles are whatever, so that makes sense. Except that nowhere in any of the books are any tables that tell you how guns work, how much damage they do, or what they cost.

All that being said, here's my character.

Steve, the Cyborg Commando

  

Mental: 15

Neural: 30

Physical: 5/105

Skills:  5 

Train: 85

Actions: 3/round

Rest: Function for 3 days until rest or sleep is required

Speed: 3 hexes per time unit

Damage:  11 damage from punches or kicks.

Heal:  11 points of damage healed per day, organic parts (brain) only.

Integrity Points: 210 HP

Throw: 53 kg

Carry: 1,050 kg

Lift: 2,100 kg

Skills

All unlisted Skill Fields have a rating of 1.

Vehicles: 4

Personal Movement: 4

Strategy & Tactics: 13

Personal Weapons: 4

Unarmed Combat: 13

Energy Sciences: 10

Communications: 10

  

Power Units:  200 

Defenses: Resistant to corrosion, shielded versus electricity, create an Emmer Net at a cost of 1 PU per turn to deflect radiation and scramble radio symbols, effectively have a bulletproof vest all over my body, convert 10 points of impact damage to 1 PU, so shooting at me makes me stronger, eyes are not affected by bright lights or glare, I can reflect lasers with a mirror I carry, I think, smoke blocks my vision, I can use conductive material in the area to cleanse an area of smoke--10 cm/5 cm of material per minute.

Ultraspeed: Costs 20 PU per combat turn. X5 to Speed and Number of Actions. No apparent effect on Initiative.  My onboard computer uses all means necessary to stop incoming projectiles.

Electrostat: 10 PU, Range 3 meters. Lightning bolt that does massive Neural damage.

"Laser": 5 PU, Range 1 km, damage d10x.  Pew pew! I can spend more to burn holes in things.

Microwave: X PU equal to range, Range 1-100 meters, damage d10x.

Sonic: 10 PU per combat cycle, Range 50 meters, damage d10x. Fire off a pulse wave from the diaphragms in my hands.

The RPG Character Library: Mazes and Minotaurs

I have been delighted by this game ever since I acquired it and hope to either play a game or run a game someday.

The premise of the game is as follows: This is the modern-day reprint of the 1970s-era version of the World's First RPG(tm), except that this RPG comes from an alternate timeline where, instead of being about swords and sorcery and high fantasy, it's about Greek myths and legends.

And it's great!

There are some parts that don't really work all that well, of course: All of the graphics are clearly more modern Ancient Greek clipart instead of crudely drawn images by someone who is not an artist, and it preserves the rather dubious sexist traditions of real early RPGs, but overall it's an elegantly designed, clever, and well-written game.

The author also adds in a bit of flavor text as annotated commentary of the history of the game, its numerous versions, other (fake) contemporary games, and behind-the-scenes snippets. One particularly amusing one involves the fact that the original version of the game, despite being set in the Mediterranean, had one page of rules for ship combat. There's a lot of back and forth about how angry the fans were, about homebrew kludges to the system, and about a much-promised expansion (I think it was Tritons & Triremes) that was, of course, never published.

The character generation mechanic is one that most role-players have seen before: Roll 4d6 and drop the lowest. Do this six times. Place the results where you would like them to go.  There are six stats: Might, Skill, Luck, Wits, Faith, and Charm. Each of these stats is important to one of the six character classes:  Barbarian, Spearman (and only men!), Noble, Sorcerer (or Sorceress, who are more common and get to start out younger and hotter), Priest (or Priestess), and Nymph (only women, and there are six sub-types).

The game explicitly states that you should pick the class you want to play and then assign stats so that that class has their favored stat as the highest. I was going to do Sorcerer (again), but decided to mix things up a bit and try for a Spearman.

Your character also gets a special ability, some starting equipment, and some starting coins (Nobles get the most, Nymphs get nothing). My Spearman started fully outfitted for battle, which helped out dramatically, and a decent amount of coin to help me buy other supplies, if I wanted to.

Some rules notes:  My Basic Defense is improved by +2 for every piece of armor I wear (and, according to the rules, I start with all of the armor pieces that exist, so that's pretty good). Danger Evasion is a save versus various forms of peril, like avoiding the gaze of a Medusa or realizing that your new, centaur-made sweater is poisoned. First Reaction is that Charisma roll that no one makes to see if strangers like you. Mystic Fortitude is my save versus spells.

In closing, I would really love to play this game at some point. I'd probably ditch the age requirements for Sorcerers, allow Spearwomen, and use the much maligned alternate rules that allow Satyrs. I'm sure it'll be just as fun!

Xelor of Kyros

Class:  Spearman

Level: 1

Glory: 0 (Local Hero)

Race:  Greek

Gender: Male

Age: 19

Might: 11 (+0)

Skill: 16 (+2)

Luck: 13 (+1)

Wits: 15 (+1)

Faith: 9 (+0)

Grace: 13 (+1)

Melee Attack: +2

Missile Attack: +3

Initiative: +3

Basic Defense: 13

Total Defense: 19

Hits Total: 12

Danger Evasion: +2

First Reaction: +2

Mystic Fortitude: +2

Special: Fight Defensively--When fighting with spear and shield, they add their Skill modifier to their Defense Class (DC) against all melee attacks. This bonus does not apply against surprise or missile attacks.  

Equipment: Spear, sword, dagger, shield, helmet, breastplate.

Wealth: 140 silver pieces. 

The RPG Character Library: Dragonball Z RPG

I never got into Dragon Ball, or any of it's spinoff shows, despite kind of wanting to. Every episode turned into people standing around in a desert, or similar, screaming, comparing their power levels, and powering up. I think a case could be made that if you cut out the episodes and just showed the teasers (Last Time/Next Time...on Dragon Ball), you could have a very briskly-paced series that hits the same beats but isn't quite as tedious. If I ever have a large window uninterrupted time and some editing software, I might test this theory to see how it goes. Until then...

I picked up the Dragonball Z RPG at a con just on a whim. I remember having a vague desire to create a game kind of like Dragon Ball, in which the characters had one attribute (POWER!) that they parceled out in different ways to do different things. The game never came to fruition, in part because the DBZ RPG (OMG!) already exists, in part because I'm easily distracted, and in part because I don't love anime nearly as much as I love Star Trek.

In the game, you can pick from any three species provided you roll well enough (3 or less on 2d6 to be a Namekian, 2 or less to be a Saiyan). In practice, this mean that I was playing a human. Humans can look like pig people or dog people or whatever, because Dragon Ball, but in the end, their stats are the same.

The rulebook is laid out in a weird way, which made character creation a bit of a challenge. In the first place, stats and skills are listed in one order in the book, but in another order on the character sheet. In the second place, there's nowhere in the rules (that I could find) that tells you how to calculate your Power Level and Power Up stats. Fortunately, the dice mechanics to determine these stats are listed on the sample character sheets, so I was able to actually make a character.

One thing that I found rather strange was that Power Level isn't actually indicative of anything. I had assumed, prior to making a character, that it was more like XP in Dungeons & Dragons 5E, where a sixth level character would be powerful enough to trigger meme-like screaming from Vegeta. It's not. It's actually randomly rolled. Presumably it improves with character advancement, but I'm probably never playing this game, so I didn't read that part of the rules.

In true Geoff fashion, I rolled and got the lowest possible result for my Power Level, so my character would likely be a one-scene comic relief wonder before being stomped into the dirt by the actual fighters in the series.

This is the first game that I'm doing for the library that features a point buy character creation system. While I'm all for point buy creation in theory, in practice it's a little tricky. I tend to gravitate to "normal" characters with have average stats in everything, especially if I don't know what I'm doing yet and don't really know the ins and outs of the system. I started out doing that for this game, only to realize that Combat is the most important stat (it modifies four skills), followed by Physical (which determines your Hits). For a game that's all about fighting, dumping points into those seemed like the logical way to go.

I was glad that the character generation section offered up character hooks (Personality, Important Value, etc.) that I could pick from to round out my character. Those, plus the off-handed mention in the rules that said my character could maybe be a wrestler if I wanted, allowed me to crystallize my concept and create former pro wrestler "The Flying Triangle."

I'm not sure if I did Fighting Techniques right. There's seemingly no limit to the number you can have or how high they can go, except that your FT rating adds to your damage dice when you hit with the Technique, but subtract from your attack dice, making you less likely to hit. They may be wrong, is what I'm saying, but I do have fewer of them than most of the sample characters, so at least I'm not a munchkin.

And yeah, that's right. Most of those numbers on my character sheet are dice pools.

The Flying Triangle

Power Level	110	Power Up	200
Mental	8	Combat	15
Physical	12	Move	5
Defense	60	Hits	120
Fighting	15	+Combat	30
Evasion	15	+Combat	30
Weapon	5	+Combat	20
Power	5	+Combat	20
Body	5	+Physical	18
Mind	5	+Mental	13

Species: Human

Personality:  Silly and Fluff-Headed

Important Value:  Having a Good Time

Valued Person:  Myself

History:  Mentored by the Penultimate Fighter in the Encircled Square

Shtick:  Drinks Lots of Soda, Belches, Hates Universe Man, Hates Particle Man

My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable

The Flying Triangle: 5

Triple Suplex!: 3

Particle Pile Driver: 4

Belch from Dantien:  2