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 14

And to close off the second week it’s back to Tiny Dungeon for another quick character. Igg, the Street Cleaner and kinda rogue.

Igg being short for Iguana as he’s a Lizardfolk.

Again an incredibly quick character creation process, from initial heritage choice to completion.

The trade came about as I did this sheet a couple of days ago when the local bin men were about. From there I figured a fantasy version of that would be pretty hazardous and lead to developing some rogue like skills, hence the trait choices.

Im going to keep using Tiny Dungeon as a filler game for Saturdays as my copy of Blade Runner should be here before the end of the month. So I might be able to switch over to that and get one or two characters done, but until then Tiny Dungeon it is.

January 2023 Character Creation Challenge – Part 7

Saturdays were supposed to be Cyberpunk Red, but that got moved to Friday to fill the gap from my copy of Blade Runner being delayed. And as it’s still delayed I need to fill today as well. So today’s game is Tiny Dungeon 2nd Edition. This gives us Birch, the Treefolk Forest Warden.

Honestly, not a great deal of planning went into this character as it was a last minute “Oh, shit, I need something now!” Thankfully, as you’d expect from even glancing at Tiny Dungeon, this was an impressively quick build. Pick a Heritage, pick a couple of other bits, done and ready to go. It was that quick it almost felt like cheating.

The biggest choices were family trade, and I thought a tree person whose job it is to guard a forest worked well. I also just thought a warhammer worked as a “Wood hammers you.” kinda gag.

As I still don’t have a delivery date for BR I’m not sure what upcoming Saturdays will be. I may continue with Tiny Dungeon, or I may try a different game each week, only time and my laziness will tell.