January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Post Mortem

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.

Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition

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

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.

Deadlands/Savage Worlds

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.

Vaesen

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.

Cyberpunk Red

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!

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 31

Day 31! Great Scott!, What is that bringing us across the finish line? Why it’s none other than “Doc” Emmet Green in his Auto-gyro, A Mad Scientist for Deadlands.

I wanted to round out the Deadlands characters with a stereotypical mad scientist and, as I’m finding with Deadlands/Savage Worlds characters, putting one together was surprisingly easy.

The Edge where you can start with Infernal Devices had to be taken, after all what’s a Mad Scientist with out some possibly about to explode steampunk bullshit ready to hand?

I gave hime a rifle and put a scope on it to counteract some penalties, which would hopefully make up for his low shooting score. Influenced, of course, by Doc Brown’s rifle in Back to the Future 3. (also the influence for his name)

And with that, I’m done.

I’ll ruminate on things for a few days and put up a blog post with some thoughts on the characters I created, the systems, the sheets, and any other things that spring to mind.

Oh, and I already have a few ideas for characters for next year’s challenge.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 30

Day 30. I was a bit stuck for something for today as I’d finished my Paranoia characters, but then my Ebay habit came to the rescue. I recently picked up the AD&D 1e DMG and it has an appendix for generating Creatures from the Lower Planes. Why just those planes and no others? I dunno, but there ya go.

So I decided to roll up a monster from that, and then using the D&D 5e DMG and Monster Manual, a few conversion guides I found online and a healthy dose of just guessing, I converted it to a D&D 5e creature/NPC.

As you can see it looks really, really weird. A snake head with one eye and a trunk, an apes body with bird wings and four arms. Yeah, the kind of monster description than makes me I wish I could draw. Though I see the trunk as more of an enlarged elephant seal nose, so it doesn’t get in the way of the insect mandible concealed in the mouth.

For conversion to 5e I say that it had 7 attacks originally and this is more than I can be bothered to roll for a single creature in a round. So I broke it up into a mutliattack with a bite and either hands or feet, or a missile based AOE as he launches spines from his back.

AC was simple as a one guide suggested just subtracting 1e AC from 19 to get a score for 5e. So 19-1= the new AC of 18

Ability drain and life drain reminded me of the Shadow’s Strength Drain. I decided to add this to the bite to represent the poison, but allow a saving throw as this is already a damaging part of a multiattack.

I reverse engineered the Proficiency modifier from strength, where the guidance is to leave 18str as it is), and attack modifier which is 1e Hit Dice halved +2, so 10/2=5 then +2 to get +7 to attack.

An 18 strength would give a bonus of +4, so the remaining 3 of the attack score must be the proficiency modifier.

Acid immunity remained the same with nothing to convert. Magic resistance is a very different system between editions, so I used the version seen on many 5e stat blocks of Advantage on saves against magic or spell attacks.

Comparing what I now had to several existing stats and creature building guides I saw we were at the CR5-6 level and the advice there is to hit around 28-35 points of outgoing damage a round. So each of the possible attack groupings were given dice ranges that average in this area.

Following this the rest was filed in by comparing to existing monsters and adding equivalent scores, and a fair bit of guesswork.

This gave us Abbwaloesh, Demon Soldier of the Acid Pits.

Oh, and his name well it’s Ape Bodied Bird Winged And Legged One Eyed Snake Headed, so I just took the first letter of each word in that.

Tomorrow we have the last Deadland’s character and the last character for this year’s challenge, “Doc” Emmet Green, a Mad Scientist.

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 28

Day 28. Another week down and the last Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition character for this year. Today we have “Professor” Montgomery Fitzwilliam, a Changeling Haunted One College of the Spirits Bard.

Monty’s chosen face for performances was a thin, dark haired human man with a pencil moustache, think younger John Waters. His powers came to him after doing one of his “spiritual readings” with a new Tarokka deck he actually attracted the attention of the spirits that now follow him.

Mechanically I had to make Monty a level higher than the previous D&D characters to get in the Cartomancer feat from the Book of Many Things. I picked this as it fit with the whole stage magician/spiritualist who uses cards in his act deal. Also the Spray of Cards spell from the same source was chosen for thematic reasons, and is a pretty decent spell too.

I have done a version of this character before, but tweaked and rebuilt him for this as I wanted to add BoMT material to a character, and he was already a perfect match.

This does show however, how limited the space on the standard D&D 5e character sheet is for anyone noting down anything other than feature names. I had to spill over into the Treasure box and have very little room left. How many more sheets would I need if I bumped him up to level 20?

Tomorrow’s Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition character is Damian Hale-Seyton 27 year old rock star.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 27

And the final Cyberpunk Red character for this year’s challenge is Laura Mipsum. Media who reports on stickball matches and codes news of what Night City’s gangs are up to in the scores.

Like the other characters I wanted to tie something from the last year’s DLCs into Laura, so I hit on a Stickball reporter, and also gave her a Sitckball stick as a weapon.

As you can probably tell by the bit of blurb on her Lifepath she is very much influences by the DJ in The Warriors played my Lynne Thigpen. A character I have ripped off homaged in many games over the years.

I adjusted her stats a bit from the starting package to give her more points in Streetslang. Considering who she reports to and about I thought this important, being more of a street broadcaster than one for general audiences.

Not much else to type, especially as insomnia has me feeling all wobbly.

Tomorrow’s D&D 5e character is “Professor” Montgomery Fitzwilliam, A Changeling, Haunted One, College of the Spirits Bard, Cartomancer.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 26

Day 26, and it’s out last character for Fallout: The Role Playing Game by Modiphius. To round out the team this week we have Grimm, the Super Mutant.

So backstory and personality wise I went with the obvious one for the “strong guy who’s not too bright” archetype, he was injured and left behind and another friendly character healed him and now he helps them. Yeah, I pretty much stole Grog from Crit Role’s backstory.

Mechanically Super Mutants get some nice benefits, increased Strength and Endurance and Rad and Poison immunity. Built to thrive in the wasteland. I’m not too keen on the skill limits imposed on Super Mutants, but then I’ve never been much of a fan of enforced negatives linked to race/species/ancestry.

From the start Grimm has very high strength, above human maximum and close to Super Mutant maximum. This was because I wanted to build him as a melee fighter. And Damn! those bonuses from hihg strength to melee damage ay off. He rolls an extra 3 damage dice for melee/unarmed attacks. This leads to his board rolling 7 of them, more damage than most firearms… with a plank!

Tomorrow’s Cyberpunk Red character is Laura Mipsum, Media.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 25

Day 25, back to Vaesen for another Thursday’s Child. The final character for this game, Gustav Svensson a Vagabond.

The basics for Gustav’s personality came from the chosen options from the Archetypes page of the core book. Avenging fallen family and seeing a revenant rise from it’s grave were combined into avenging fallen comrades that rose from the grave. This tied into Henriksson’s characters men rising from the dead, so the idea to make Svensson one of the few men from his unit that survived.

Overall, Vaesen’s character creation is as straightforward as other variations of the Year Zero Engine. I am always impressed by how it shakes out for each game, with specific tweaks for the genre.

And that’s it for Vaesen, as the month approaches it’s end. I’ll probably do another Free League game next year to see how the system fits with whatever I pick.

Tomorrow’s Fallout character is Grimm, a super mutant who hits incredibly hard.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 24

Day 24, back to Deadlands for Loretta Fisher, a Huckster who knows when to hold ’em, when to fold ’em, and when to run away.

A traveling gamble who always seems to be on the run, Loretta’s been accused of cheating multiple times and and ended up in many duels from that. All of which she’s won despite never carrying a gun.

As with most of the characters for this I’ve bought minimal gear. The riverboat ticket for getting away from where she is, some cards to ply her trade and hide her magic, and a nice gold watch.This does leave her with a sizeable chunk of change, which is another tool of her trade.

Mechanically I am getting much more used to building Savage Worlds/Deadlands characters. It’s still in the “That was simple, too simple, have I done that right?” phase, but the comfort is growing.

Next week’s Deadlands character is Emmet “Doc” Green, a Mad Scientist.

Tomorrow’s Vaesen character is Gustav Svensson, a vagabond.

January 2024 Character Creation Challenge – Part 23

Day 23 and back to Paranoia for the last time, this week we have Mark-R-AMN-4, a Power Services worker with an incredibly low engineering skill.

As pointed out above, Marky here has a -4 to Engineering, which is not great when working for the power company. Another example of how players could screw each other over in character creation.

As he works keeping the juice flowing, I thought it interesting to make his treason buton the lights going out. Combining this with his low engineering skill possibly resutling in a lot of blackouts this could see a lot of treason. A good explanation for why he’s already on clone 4.

Paranoia’s character creation is quick, suitable for making clones that you don’t get too attached to and play in a “drive it like you stole it” kind of way. It really suits the tone the game is going for and helps set everyone’s expectations.

Next week’s character is TBD, I have a couple of ideas floating around but nothing concrete.

Tomorrow’s Deadlands character is Loretta “The Shark” Fisher, a Huckster.