So here we are, well over the finish line with 31 new characters (ok, 30 and a monster), for a bunch of different systems. What did I learn from each? What did I get out of the process? What would I do differently? Here we go.
Each game’s section title is a link to the entries for that game.
Overall I was pleased with the intergenerational story I built through the characters’ backstory details. Possibly I should have varied the career more to add more variety, but them being tied to the arts does fit with some Lovecraftian themes.
Unfortunately due to building them as a family history means they aren’t usable as a ready made party without some adjustments. However they have inspired the CoC characters I intend to build for next year who could possibly be a party, locals, fans, and police investigating a mass disappearance at a concert in a small French town.
Paranoia’s character creation was so simple and quick that it kinda felt like cheating. The creation process doesn’t have much room for character personality, mainly mechanics.
It does do a great job of setting the backstabbing tone of the game in character creation by making it an adversarial process. Especially if you know what the player next to you wants to build towards.
These both lead to characters that I don’t think I’d get too attached to, which is ideal for a game where you are encouraged to burn through clones over a session.
I found these characters deceptively easy to put together, to a point where I’m still not sure that I’ve done it right.
At first I was dubious about how characters with the specialised careers would stack up next to characters with more normal abilities. However, so much of the character’s points in creation are dedicated to their career that they are often below average in regular skills. Balancing them quite nicely
My main complaint is the form fillable character sheet. Whilst I appreciate single page sheets in general this one is lacking. The text size when on screen without zooming in is a little to small to be comfortable. Two sheets where you can see everything clearly would be preferable here.
As I expected, I really like the character generation for this game. After having done a few Free League games the last few years I expected this to be comfortable, and it was.
Simple selection of stats and you have enough numbers to roll for most situations you can imagine, and pick a few narrative elements and you have a character foundation to build a personality on.
I’ll definitely be doing another FL game next year.
Fallout: The Role Playing Game
This was a surprise. After getting Dune a while back and not really warming to it I was kinda cold on the 2D20 system, but I decided to pick this up and give it another shot, and I’m glad I did.
Where Dune can be a bit vague with its terms and mechanics, leaving a lot of narrative wiggle room, Fallout is a lot more mechanically definite. Roll this result, get this detailed thing. The kind of system I am much more comfortable with.
Between this and familiarity with the Fallout games I enjoyed character creation for this It’s fast yet has enough detail for most situations. Also having so many of the Perks from the videogames translated to this system makes characters incredibly customisable even if they have the same origin.
I’m still a fan of this system, and a fan of the DLCs that add neat new options to the game. It always means there’s something new to play with in the game, a little tweak, a new system, or some cool gear.
After rolling a cop and a corp this year though, I did see something with the skills that I think could be better. Some skills arguably overlap in their use. For the cop there’s Criminology and Deduction, most cases would be clear cut, but there are possibilities where one could argue for either. With the Exec there’s Accounting, Business and Bureaucracy, I think this list could stand to be slimmed down.
Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition
I still like it, I still like making characters for it, and I like the ones I came up with this year. Not really much to say when this is my “comfy shoe” game.
Getting 20ft reach with a 3rd level character is one of the sillier specialised builds I’ve done.
Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st Edition
The last minute addition to the challenge, as I only bought it on Ebay a couple of days prior to the entry. After seeing the “Creatures from the Lower Planes” tables in Appendix D (or as I now call it, the Weird Little Guy generator) I knew I had to do something with them.
I still find it odd that it has generators for creatures from lower planes but no others. But I still have a lot of reading of that book to do, so there may be more stuff in there.
Conversion to 5e was not as awkward as I hoped. Using advice I found online and an official conversion document I got about 70% of the way there, and the rest was comparison and educated guesswork. Of course, the result would need properly playtesting to see if it’s actually a viable enemy, but on first glance appears passable.
I think I’ll roll up a few more weird little guys this way.
General
One thing I’ve noticed from looking at other peoples’ entries is that I tend to put much shorter backstories and personality descriptions that a lot of folks. This is just an observation and it really reflects my style of getting rough bullet points in there and refining the rest in play.
Overall I am pleased with the characters I made, though I could have spent more time on a few and given a bit more depth to some. But I got them done and got them written up, so that’s a win. Maybe this is just because I’ve been feeling a bit run down and creatively blank for a few months.
However, doing this exercise has made me want to start writing stuff again, it’s really blown away the dust and cobwebs. It’ll take me a while to get back into practice, but I do intend to write more on this blog in future.
And I’m really looking forward to next year’s challenge.
Acknowledgements
Massive thanks to Tardis Captain for organising this whole shebang for another year. It’s a great creative exercise and one I’ll support for as long as I can.
Shout out to Fantasynamegenerators.com for being a great site for those moments where I was stuck on a name, or looking for one in a language I’m not familiar with. A site every TTRPG player should have bookmarked.
All the folks at RPG.net who posted in the thread over there, reading their entries kept me inspired during the challenge.
Everyone else who gave it a go. I’ll have to track down the other sites where people have posted and give things a read.
And YOU, for reading my bullshit, thanks!
Three Kobolds With A Trench Gun 