Character Creation Example: Vampire the Masquerade 5th Edition (Part 2)

Part 2

Hey Game Fans we’re back for another look at building a Vampire: the Masquerade character for the new 5^th edition rules set.  If you read last week’s article, then you know we’ve built a science focused Ventrue with a penchant for hopeful idealism and a strong belief that science is a universal cure-all.  We still haven’t named our precious vampire child yet, but we’re about to.  If you want to check back on the character so far, check out the example sheet here.  Also you can go read the article from last week here.  So picking up where we left off, we need to fill in some details and move forward in character creation. 

Monday Morning Prime Time thoughts (How do you make a character?)

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another article on one of our favorite topics in the multiverse, Role-Playing Games. This is always an interesting topic that sparks debates, arguments, hate mail, death threats, and the occasional civil discourse. Today’s aspect is an essential one for the hobby, and it’s as individual a process as anything else in the universe. How do you create your characters for your next RPG? I asked this question last week on twitter and i got a ton of answers (don’t worry, I’ll be linking this article to that question so you can pop back and check out the answers from the rest of the twitter-verse).


Today i’m going to sort of walk you through my process for creating characters for most role-playing games. Now some games have an entire process of their own that lets you start at point A, follow the dots and bing bang boom you have a character that’s ready to play. Those are their own sort of animal, and they have a very strong internal consistency for their character creation process. (We’ll talk about one of those later on once we’ve gotten through this process).

Wednesday Wisdom: Tinkering with Backgrounds (and how you can borrow from the best)

Hey game fans, i know we talk a lot about a lot of stuff for games and today is probably not going to be a surprise for any of you. Today, we’re going to take a look at how to borrow elements of your favorite thing (TV show, book series, movie, music) and mash it up into something that you can use to make a character for an RPG. This project is the backstory for the Cleric i play once in a while, and he has some non-standard rules (don’t panic, they’re not helpful to him), and i’ll cover those at the end.

Exalted Character Write up #2 (Merchant Princess)

Hey Game Fans, today we’re going to make another character for Exalted 3rd Edition.  You all voted on Twitter for this one, so today we’re going to take a crack at making a Merchant Princess type of characters.  Now we’ve had a little more practice at this, so we’re  going to omit some of the explanations along the way.  If you want a step by step breakdown of the hows, check out our articles on Rey, which you can find here, here, and here. This is after 3 solid reads of the relevant chapters and digging into the nuts and bolts of everything.  So let’s dig into this article and get things started.  If you’re curious what we’re talking about and don’t know what Exalted is, check out our First Looks article Here.  

D & D 5th Edition Character Creation Example (All hail Grand Bahama)

Hey Game Fans, I realize we talk an awful lot about how to build characters across a lot of games, but we’ve never actually shown you a character creation example for Dungeons and Dragons, 5th Edition.  Well, fear not friends, with the thunderbolt inspiration of naming things awesomely, I had the inspiration for what I think is a great character to bring on an adventure.  Now there are two ways this character could have gone, so we’re going to build it both ways.  One of them I’ll be rolling attributes, the other I’ll put together with a point buy (meaning you could technically borrow my character and take them to adventurer’s league at your local gaming establishment).  Alright friends, let’s build some characters.

Exalted Character Creation Part 3 (Little Bits and Final thoughts)

Hey Game Fans, as promised, we finished up the Charms Section for Rey’s Character sheet which is now complete.  You can find that version of the character sheet here.  One of the aspects of the character i didn’t get to write up last week is the various nicks, cuts, scars and other distinctive physical characteristics that Rey has.  I’ve been pondering how this works for a couple of weeks, so i have a firm idea of what Rey’s been through and the long, hard roads he’s been down.

Exalted Character Creaton Part 2

Hey Game Fans, today we’re going to take a stab at making a character for Exalted 3rd Edition.  This is after 3 solid reads of the relevant chapters and digging into the nuts and bolts of everything but charms (that’s a big chapter).  We’re going to do a bit more than we usually do because Exalted has such a mythic feel, you can tell stories that are larger than life, and that means we’re going to be doing things slightly out of order.  We promise to double check our math and hopefully get everything right, but we make goofs once in awhile too.  So let’s dig into this article and get things started.  If you’re curious what we’re talking about and don’t know what Exalted is, check out our First Looks article Here.  

 

Exalted Character Creation Plan Part 1

Hey Game Fans, today we’re going to take a stab at making a character for Exalted 3rd Edition.  This is after 3 solid reads of the relevant chapters and digging into the nuts and bolts of everything but charms (that’s a big chapter).  We’re going to do a bit more than we usually do because Exalted has such a mythic feel, you can tell stories that are larger than life, and that means we’re going to be doing things slightly out of order.  We promise to double check our math and hopefully get everything right, but we make goofs once in awhile too.  So let’s dig into this article and get things started.  If you’re curious what we’re talking about and don’t know what Exalted is, check out our First Looks article Here.  

Personality for Dungeons and Dragons

Hey Game Fans, we’re back to take another look at the character creation process for Dungeons and Dragons. Today we’re going to take a look at some of the more role-playing heavy aspects of the game.  We’ll be discussing alignment and and go over some of the basic personality characteristics.  (we’re in Chapter 4 of the PHB if you’re following along at home). First up, Alignment.

 

Edge of the Empire Character Creation Example

Hey Game Fans, we’re back with another look at Edge of the Empire, and today we’re going to put together a brand new character using the rules for Edge of the Empire.  This game focuses on the space between the Empire and the Rebellion, and tells the stories about people who are caught in the middle, trying to survive in an otherwise unfriendly universe.  What kind of a character would you want to play? A rougish smuggler?  A hardened bounty hunter?  A Gun for Hire?  What ideas are percolating in your brain, and how do you want to interact with the Star Wars Universe?  Let’s take a closer look at the mechanics of building a character, and dive into the game.

Quick reminder, you can catch the new show, Pencils and Parsecs on Friday nights on https://www.twitch.tv/hyperrpg for the live show, or you can catch past episodes on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLHKocVDXoWBsVQVwv6HgYVzRYzZFYR4N4

Now then, let’s build a character worthy of being described as someone’s kind of scum.  

There are 10 steps to character creation, so let’s dive in and see how much ground we can cover.

Step 1.:  Determine Character Concept and Background.  

Now the character i have in mind for this build is an outsider, hailing from a species that doesn’t interact much with the galaxy at large.  Because of this, i’m leaning towards a character from the Outsider background, with a Failure of character as the hook that pulled them into the life living along the Edge of the Empire.  This background looks like:

Exiled from the Ascendancy after an incident he will not speak of, the Chiss Tech Specialist known as Marret is an oddity among his normally cool and reserved people.  With a legendary temper and a disposition that doesn’t sit well with most people, it’s only been his tech skills that have kept him out of a shallow pit or floating home in the void of space.

Step 2: Obligation

Continuing on with our character building exercise, i have to think about what kind of trouble could force a Chiss into the shadows, and how he interacts with the other things living on the Edge.  If i wanted, i could just roll the dice and see what options appear, but i have some ideas for this character.  I end up selecting the debt obligation, because Marret seems like a person who’d end up owing the wrong people money for something eventually.  Because Marret is intended for a starting party of four PCs, he has a starting Obligation Value of 10*  His Obligation write up looks like this:

Debt:  After one outbreak of violence too many, Marret was in serious trouble.  He’d almost destroyed an entire space station.  He was pretty sure the next steps he took would be out an airlock.  He was surprised when the lawyer showed up, and escorted him off the station.  It didn’t take long to figure out that the lawyer was a representative of the Black Sun.  Most of the equipment and ships he’d damaged belonged to them, and they were going to make him pay back the damages one ship, blaster or droid at a time.

Note 1:  Marret increases his starting obligation by 10 because he wants a little more cash to buy stuff.  

The Final way i’m going to write this down is Obligation 20: Debt, Black Sun

Step 3:  Select a Species

This step is easy, I’ve chosen Chiss. I record all of my racial attributes, the special abilities, my thresholds, and most importantly for a starting character, my starting experience point total. This is the pool of experience points i have to customize my character throughout the rest of the character creation process, and what let’s me make my character different from all the other tech specialists in the galaxy.

Starting Experience Points: 100

Step 4: Selecting a Career

This one’s fairly straightforward, and of the selections available, i’m going to build a techie for this character.  I’ve considered a lot of the potential options, but i’ve envisioned this character as a support character who keeps the ships and gear running for other people, and the most efficient way to build that character is Technician.   For my four starting skills, i select Computers, Mechanics, Perception and Piloting: Planetary.  (I also noted the rest of my career skills on the character sheet).  

Step 5:  Selecting a Specialization

Of the three starting specializations for the Technician, i’ve settled into Mechanic.  I like the concept and the ideas for mechanic, and i make that selection.  I add the Mechanic’s additional career skills to my list, and add an additional point in Mechanics and Piloting: Space.

Step 6: Invest Experience Points

Now i’ve got 100 experience points to customize my character, and the first thing i do is increase Intelligence to 4.  This costs me 40 of my starting experience points.  I also want to unlock the Outlaw Tech Specialization, which costs me 20 more starting experience points.  With 40 experience points left, i think it’s time to pick up a couple of skills and maybe a talent or two.  I increase my Computers Skill to 2 ranks for 10 experience, and Astrogation to 2 ranks for 10 more.  This leaves me with 20 experience points to pick up talents from the Outlaw Tech and Mechanic Trees.  From the trees, i grab Gearhead for 5, (mechanic), Fine Tuning for 5 (Mechanic), Tinkerer for 5, (Outlaw Tech), and Utinni! For 5 (Outlaw Tech).  Now I’ve spent my starting 100 experience points, and am ready to move to the next step.  

Step 7: Derived Values

As we covered in our reading a character sheet article, there are four derived values we need to determine.  Soak Value is currently a 0, because we didn’t pick a race with a natural armor value.  Strain Threshold and Wound Threshold are both 12 (10 + relevant statistic).  Finally, Defense Value for both melee and ranged is a 0 (again, no special armor to make that better).  This might change in a moment, but i consider it unlikely that Marret is going to pick up heavy armor.  

Step 8:  Motivations

Motivations are different from Obligations in that they are intrinsic motivators that characters have.  Some have ambitions, some have causes, some have a variety of things.  Marret has a heavy case of Greed, but it’s purpose driven Greed.  He knows he doesn’t get along well with anyone but droids, and eventually hopes to have enough credits to buy his way out from under the Black Sun and open his own shop/station where he only has to deal with droids and gear.  

Step 9:  Gear and Equipment

The Star Wars Universe is full of exciting equipment and things to spend money on.  Marret is a relatively light packer, and only has the following equipment:  

Light Blaster Pistol

Heavy Clothing (Increases our Soak Value to 1)

Handheld Comm Link

Datapad

Emergency Repair Patches (4)

Fusion Lantern

Tool Kit

Utility Belt

This cost him a total of 1,025 credits, leaving him with 1,975 credits left.  

Step 10:  Select a Starting Starship

This is a group decision, but Marret’s personal choice would be for a YT-1300 transport to get around the galaxy and holding his droid and parts and stuff.  

And that’s putting a character together for Edge of the Empire.  We’re going to put up a link to our example character, and put up the form fillable sheet we used to put the character together.  If you guys are interested, we may put in two or three other characters that fill out the rest of this group.   

The Link for this character sheet is https://drive.google.com/file/d/0BzVSyoCP1piMN181anRIRXZ4Yzg/view?usp=sharing

And the Original character sheet can be found at https://community.fantasyflightgames.com/topic/85616-compiled-resources-list/

So what would you like to see next?  A Breakdown of the careers, a look at the species, or another example character?  

Let us know, and we’ll see what we can put together for you wonderful people.

Game On, Game Fans

Gearing up for Cthulhu (Last step of Character Building)

All right Game Fans, it’s Halloween and we’re going to cover the last step of building an Investigator for Call of Cthulhu today.  The last thing we’re going to need for our Investigator is to gear up for the myriad of potential things you could bump into while investigating the Mythos. Bear in mind, you aren’t playing Oregon Trail, so you need to figure out exactly what your character has on hand, and what he or she can lay his or her grubby mitts on when the situation demands. Let’s take a closer look at equipping yourself in Call of Cthulhu.

Filling in the Background (Character Building advice for Call of Cthulhu)

All right Game Fans, we’re back to finish up our character building for Call of Cthulhu

We’ve Rolled our Attributes, generated our statistics, picked a profession, and assigned our skill points.  We’re coming in on the home stretch but we’re at one the most important parts of constructing a character, building the Backstory.  Let’s take a look at Building a Backstory, Call of Cthulhu style.  Call of Cthulhu gives you a lot of leeway for building a backstory, and they offer a variety of tables to help inspire you.  We’re going to use that narrative tool for building a backstory, to give you folks at home an idea of how the tables works.  

 

Open Legend Character Creation and Basic Rules

Open Legend is the new hot Universal Role-playing Game from Seventh Sphere.  We’ve talked about it a couple of times so far during their Kickstarter campaign, and today we’re back with a look at the Core mechanic (I do like games that have a core mechanic, “One mechanic to rule them all” so to speak), and the character creation process.  Open Legend is a story first game, and anytime the player or the GM pick up the dice, it’s always for a specific, story driven reason.  Let’s take a closer look at the core mechanic, and the character creation process.

 

Shadowrun: Anarchy (Time to Bake the Cookies, Part III) Keebler Harder

All right Chummers, we're back with the third and final part of our character creation example for Shadowrun: Anarchy.  Shadowrun: Anarchy is the brand new, rules lite, story heavy alternative rules set for telling stories and playing games in the Shadowrun Universe.  It's a story telling focused game, and the mechanics of the game are built for players to tell awesome stories that look and feel like Shadowrun.  Now Last time, we were working through the many steps of building your own character, and got through the first five or so.  If you're new to the blog, check out https://zardozgames.blogspot.com/2016/10/shadowrun-anarchy-time-to-bake-cookies.html for the first part of the article.  If you missed the second part of the series, check it out at http://zardozgames.blogspot.com/2016/10/shadowrun-anarchy-time-to-bake-cookies_24.html Let's dig into the chrome and the meat of building a character.

Shadowrun: Anarchy (Time to Bake the Cookies, Part III) Keebler Harder

All right Chummers, we're back with the second part of our character creation example for Shadowrun: Anarchy.  Shadowrun: Anarchy is the brand new, rules lite, story heavy alternative rules set for telling stories and playing games in the Shadowrun Universe.  It's a story telling focused game, and the mechanics of the game are built for players to tell awesome stories that look and feel like Shadowrun.  Now Last time, we were working through the many steps of building your own character, and got through the first five or so.  If you're new to the blog, check out https://zardozgames.blogspot.com/2016/10/shadowrun-anarchy-time-to-bake-cookies.html for the first part of the article.  If you missed the second part of the series, check it out at http://zardozgames.blogspot.com/2016/10/shadowrun-anarchy-time-to-bake-cookies_24.html Let's dig into the chrome and the meat of building a character.

Shadowrun: Anarchy (Time to Bake the Cookies, Part II)

All right Chummers, we're back with the second part of our character creation example for Shadowrun: Anarchy.  Shadowrun: Anarchy is the brand new, rules lite, story heavy alternative rules set for telling stories and playing games in the Shadowrun Universe.  It's a story telling focused game, and the mechanics of the game are built for players to tell awesome stories that look and feel like Shadowrun.  Now Last time, we were working through the many steps of building your own character, and got through the first five or so.  If you're new to the blog, check out https://zardozgames.blogspot.com/2016/10/shadowrun-anarchy-time-to-bake-cookies.html for the first part of the article.  Let's dig into the chrome and the meat of building a character.

Shadowrun: Anarchy (Time to Bake the Cookies)

All right Chummers (See, we know at least one piece of Runner Slang), we’re back and taking a look at creating a new character for the Shadowrun: Anarchy rules set.  We’ve talked about how characters drive stories, and today we’re going to show you how to build your own.  Remember this is a collaborative storytelling game set in the Shadowrun Universe, so let your creativity run wild when you come up with your concept (You’ll see how whacky we’re going to get).