January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 29

Day 29, and time for our fifth and final Call of Cthulhu character for this year’s challenge. Today we have Damian Hale-Seyton, a rock star who is just turning 27 and launching a new album.

The final member of the family to be influenced by the book found in the first entry. About to perform a concert based on it, in a small village in France that is implied, if not stated to be the village where the book was found.

All this on his 27th birthday, and nothing bad ever happens to 27 year old musicians.

This is also the first sheet where the personal details are written in the present tense. I wanted to imply that it was Damian writing all of these as if recounting his family history.

Tomorrow’s character wil be a break from creating PCs. I have recently acquired a copy of the 1st Edition AD&D Dungoen Masters Guide, so I’m going to use the “Creatures from the Lower Planes” appendix to randomly generate a monster/demon. Then I’m going to use the 5e DMG and a couple of conversion guides to make him into a D&D 5e NPC.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 22

Day 22 is Call of Cthulhu 7th edition time again. This week we have Dolores Hale-Seyton, a photographer from 1999.

Another artist in the family influenced by the book that has been passed down through the generations.

I branched out to the Investigator’s book for this one, as I was starting to run out of options from the Keeper’s book that fit the concepts I was going for with the family.

One thing I noted from the career listing is that Chemistry is listed as a skill, to simulate dark room use. However I added Computer use as one of her optional career skills to represent the increasing popularity of digital image processing. If I were making a Photographer for CoC set in the 2010s or later I would possible completely replace Chemistry with Computer Use.

Next week’s CoC7e character is Eugene Damian Hale-Seyton, musician poised to do the biggest show of his life on his 27th brithday.

Tomrrow we conclude the Paranoia troubleshooter team with Mark-R-AMN-4

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 15

Day 15, back to Call of Cthulhu 7th edition. This week we have Angela Hale from 1974, a musician who plays piano, guitar, and uses computers for the parts humans cannot play.

Marrying into the Seyton family, Angela was the next member to become interested in the book Aloysius found. She noticed that some of the marginalia could be interpreted as musical notation ans started to feature this in some of her work.

I see her as quite and intense and slightly mysterious figure, some of which is natural and some of which is put on as part of her image.

Finally a character with no reason to choose combat skills, so a lot went into bumping up her musical abilities from her career skills. Also I added computer use here to show to represent her enthusiasm for more experimental technology in her compositions.

Next week’s CoC7e character is Angela and Cedric’s daughter Dolores Hale-Seyton.

Tomorrow’s Paranoia character is DeeDee-R-AMN-3.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 8

Monday again, and time for this week’s Call of Cthulhu (7e) character. This week we have Barnaby Seyton, the son of Aloysius from last week. He is an artist and a World War 2 veteran.

As this character is from 1949 I used the 1920s character sheet for him as it felt more in keeping with the times, I’ll switch over the the modern one for next week and onwards.

Unlike last week where I had a career in mind for Aloysius, Barnaby’s was decided after rolling his stats. Artist was chosen as he has a very high POW stat, giving him a lot of points to spend and making up for his middling EDU. I still think EDU dominates the career skill points in this game a little too much.

As with Aloysius I chose some of the interest skills for Barnaby from the soldier career, representing his military experience.

Personality wise I see him as quiet and a little awkward, preferring to express himself though his art. Art he is encouraged to keep painting by rich patrons who appreciate it, especially after it’s darker turn post war and since he started incorporating things from some books he received from his father.

Next week’s CoC character will be Angela Hale, the partner of Barnaby’s son Cedric.

Tomorrow’s character is another paranoia troubleshooter, John-R-AMN-2.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 1

How is it new year already? Ok, time to dust off the blog for 2024’s Character Creation Challenge.

As with previous years’ entries I’ll be theming days of the week by game. Mondays will be for Call of Cthulhu. As a change to the past couple of years instead of a bunch of characters from the same time period this year I’ll be focussing on one family and doing a different member from each generation. 1924, 1949, 1974, 1999, and 2024.

First character is from 1924, Aloysius Seyton, a World War One veteran currently employed as a librarian.

I based his career skills on the Librarian listing in the main rulebook, and his other skills on a mixture of personal interests and the Soldier career to represent his experience.

I left the equipment blank as this is not too important at this stage, and did not give him a weapon as it would be very unlikely a British librarian would have access to a rifle.

A last minute decision was choosing to write his story in past tense as if a future relative were writing this, researching the family history. I think I’ll keep this go0ing for future entries except the 2024 character.

I left the cash etc. derived from his credit rating the same as listed in the book, just swapping the $ for £. With this being an abstraction, and as long as all other monetary values are treated the same, this shouldn’t cause too much of an issue.

CoC is still a joy to build for , relatively straightforward creation. Auto-calc character sheets are a blessing and should be standard.

Next week’s CoC character will be Barnaby, Aloysius’s son.

Tomorrow’s character will be Alpha Complex troubleshooter Joe-R-AMN-1 for Paranoia

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Post Mortem

Yep, I know this is late, I know I said I’d do it in the first few days of the month. It was delayed for several reasons;

1. I’m Lazy.
2. Hitman 3 just added Freelancer mode and it’s addictive as hell.
3. I’m lazy

Thoughts presented in no real order, other than how they occurred to me when I was putting together the bullet point draft of this post.

Firstly this has been a fun way to engage with the TTRPG hobby whilst I’m still without a gaming group. Going through the rules, creating a character, learning the ins and outs beats looking at the books on my bookshelf.

I am noticeably better at character creation in systems that I carried over from last year. This year’s D&D and CoC characters didn’t take anywhere near as much time as last year.

Also I improved at character creation on games that were new this time as the weeks progressed. Week 4 characters taking a fraction of the time week 1’s did. Dune was the noticeable example here as the looser more narrative system threw me at first, but was more comfortable by the end. I think I’m now at a stage where I’d be comfortable playing Dune, but not running it,I don’t think I have quite enough of a handle on the game system or style just yet.

Free League’s Year Zero system continues to impress. It’s quite something that the system in Twilight:2000 and Blade Runner from this year, and Alien from last year’s challenge, is so similar across games enabling fairly quick character generation if you’re familiar with another system in the family. Yet the tweaks made for each game really tune it in for the required flavour. Twilight:2000 feel desperate and like they’re trying to survive against the odds, Blade Runner characters feel like noir detectives with better gear and a shitty job.

D&D 5e remains familiar. it was my route back into the hobby and possibly where I’ve made the most characters. This year I took the characters up to 3rd level as that’s where subclasses and more interesting features kick in. This didn’t take much longer if at all than last year’s 1st level characters.

Tiny Dungeon was a last minute addition to the roster after my copy of Blade Runner was delayed. I picked this up last year sometime on offer and it was well worth it. The light pick a few options and done character generation was a breeze and would enable you to get into the game quickly. The rest of the game looking as light makes it seem ideal for quick pick up games.

Speaking of quick, Mörk Borg, quick and very dirty, in a grimy way. This was only made possible by the release of the plain text version of the rules last year. I tried with the normal release and can’t look the the page for too long without a basilisk sized headache developing. Character generation for this was fun and quick, ideal for a game that seems to see characters as disposable. The flavour dripped, almost literally, from some of the descriptions too. As I said in one entry, I think this would be fun for one shots or short campaigns with being so over the top. I don’t think I could face a several month long campaign with this much grimness though.

Cyberpunk Red was very straightforward, it’s an update of an older game so you know what you get; skills, stats, gear, and a lifepath character history. The skill list maybe a bit too long, things like accounting, business, and bureaucracy could all be rolled into business maybe. I guess it depends on how specific you want your character’s skills to be.

The free DLC add ons from R.Talsorian’s site were fun. They really help add a bit more flavour to each character, be it a skateboard and no brains, a bunch of TCG cards, older gear for a more mature character or custom netrunner gear. I hope these continue for as long as possible.

Call of Cthulhu was fun, after making mercenaries and soldiers and spellcasters coming up with normal people with normal jobs is a nice change. Though they’re lives are about to be very not normal.

I think I noted it last year, but the charts for background information really spark my imagination and help flesh out who each character is. This is a common thing across games now but I think CoC‘s is one of the best.

However I would like to see some careers that don’t use EDU for career skill points. Whilst I will always say there’s no suck thing as unskilled work, some careers just don’t use your education that much. I guess true to HPL’s characters this does lead to creating weird intellectual nerds though.

Also I’m not keep on Appearance going down and Education increasing as you age, I’ve only got handsomer and stupider as I’ve aged. More seriously, I’m just not fond of APP as a stat. Maybe it’s just my personal dislike of superficial people.

Overall I’ve been quite pleased with this year’s entries. It’s shown the range of possible characters in hobby, even with these pretty mainstream games. From bartender and professional soldier to insect person druid and minotaur ports hero.

Also this year I learned shortcut keys for ü and Å, this will probably only come in useful in next year’s challenge, as we don’t use those characters in English. Maybe we should though, we need more letters with bits on them.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 29

And into the final three day wrap up period where three games get a fifth character. Today’s game is Call of Cthulhu and today’s character is Walter Clark, Judge by profession, wildlife painter recreationally.

For a game that’s so bound to the EDU score even high medium roll like Walter’s 65 can make skill choices difficult. It limits how much can be put into career related skills. Fortunately there’s the Personal Interest skills that can be used to shore up any you see as necessary, but a hypothetical low roll in both of those could lead to a really weak character.

Overall I’m pretty pleased with how Walter turned out. An eloquent specialist with a hobby that gets him out into the local countryside, where anything could happen.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 22

Sunday again and back to Call of Cthulhu for the penultimate character for that system for the challenge. This week we have Howard Blair, local Rail Union Representative.

Howard was a moderately difficult character to pick a career for, with having fairly low stats. His EDU of 65 being the best shot for careers, so inspired by the podcast I was listening to at the time which was talking about the state of rail services in the UK, I went with the Union Activist from the Investigators’ Handbook, but changes the title to representative.

To explain the low STR and CON stats for a man of this size I see Howard as being on the receiving end of a nasty injury at work reducing those stats. The help he got from the local union in compensation and aid then led to him working for them.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 15

Sunday again and time for our third Call of Cthulhu character. This week we have Lisa Norris, Occult Romance Author.

As with all the CoC characters I’ve made for this challenge, Lisa was made by rolling stats in order then seeing what career fitted. As Education is her only really high stat it made sense to go for a career that had 4xEdu for skill points. Having already filled the classic scientist role last week with a Doctor I went for the arts and picked author.

As occult is one of the careers skills I invested a lot of points into that as it may be useful. But I didn’t want her to be a horror writer, I did that for last year’s challenge, so occult romance it was, the kind of thing that would truly horrify HPL.

As for connections, making her favourite place the Bar the others work at or frequent gives a link to the other characters, and having and NPC be her significant person is an easy link to any adventure she could be used in.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 8

And with the first week done we’re back to the start of the game list. So Sunday means another Call of Cthulhu character. This weeks character is Dr. Brian Copper, medical doctor and recreational archaeologist.

Dr. Copper is a 52 year old widower with a daughter he is very proud of. Between these family connections, his profession, and his main hobby, alongside him potentially being a regular at Catherine Bennings’ Bar (From the first entry this year), there’s lots of potential hooks to involve him in a mystery.

I am still really enjoying CoC character creation. I find just rolling stats in order and seeing which career fit the numbers I’ve rolled really sparks my imagination.