From each genre, I’ll take a look at the games, their appeal, and, of course, their character creation posts to eliminate some. Hopefully, once I’ve done that, I’ll be able to come to a well-informed decision.
Decisions, Decisions
So, the characters have been created, the conclusions have been drawn, I am as familiar with the 7 games on offer as I’m going to get before actually playing them—its time to make a decision.
Before getting to that, though, I think it’s worth pointing out that this is, far and away, the most effort I’ve ever put into a decision of what game to play next. Since starting to write this blog I’ve spent a lot of time and not a little cash on new games. I’ve never had so many to choose from before. And I’m not even including the ones I’ve only got in PDF form. Long ago, as a teenager, I actually did run a variety of games; AD&D, of course, but also Gamma World, TMNT and Other Strangeness, Beyond the Supernatural, Robotech, Shadowrun. Back then, I just wanted to run the newest thing, the shiniest game, whatever had the bulk of my attention. But, I didn’t have so many to choose from, of course. There was no such thing as buying a game and never running it! I didn’t have that sort of money! These days, we are living in a golden age of tabletop games. There are so many RPGs of so many genres, utilising such an array of play styles and rulesets that it can be bewildering, overwhelming and paralysing. So, as I sail out of my majority-D&D era, navigate my way through the OSR and explore the unknown waters of the story-game, I have found this process incredibly helpful, if time-consuming. It has also been educational, interesting and fun. But there’s another aspect to this too: whatever game I choose, it’s one that my players and I will be with for weeks, hours of play and hours in between sessions thinking about. I want that to be good, or, hopefully, great!
The Competition
There are seven games to choose from, as laid out back in the original post. I could just take them one by one, as I did when writing their character creation posts, but, instead, I will separate them into genre groups. From each genre, I’ll take a look at the games, their appeal, and, of course, their character creation posts to eliminate some. Hopefully, once I’ve done that, I’ll be able to come to a well-informed decision.
Supernatural Investigations
The cover of Triangle AgencyThe cover of Apocalypse Keys
We’ve got two games in this genre (I suppose this is more a of a sub-genre, but heigh-ho, it’s my blog-post.)
Triangle Agency – this was the first character creation post I made as part of this series. I think, at the time, that was because it was the game I was most interested in. It didn’t hurt that it came in a very impressive box. The presentation is altogether impeccable. This applies also to the text itself, which styles itself as the manual to a game to be played by actual agents of the Triangle Agency. The character creation process taught me a lot about how the game would be played and was particularly successful at making, not just a character, but a personality, history and motivation.
Apocalypse Keys – this, was the last of the character creation posts I did. I’m going to cut to the chase with Apocalypse Keys; I don’t think it’s for me. It might suit some of my players, but not others. I would rather the Triangle Agency’s tongue-in-cheek take on the genre than the melodrama inherent in Apocalypse Keys.
Triangle Agency wins!
Fantastic Voyages
The cover of the WildseaThe cover of Orbital Blues
I’m stretching the term ‘genre’ here once again. But I’m adding two games to this one anyway. Both of these involve ship creation as part of the character creation process, and a crew of misfits to go with it.
The Wildsea – Its got a fascinating setting, a rich and engrossing vibe and a beautiful presentation. This is very much a fantasy game that’s determined to get you into trouble out on the emerald waves of the Wildsea. You will spend a long time making your character, as evidenced by the length of my character creation post. There are many, many choices to be made at every step and that doesn’t even take into account the ship creation process. For the campaign I’m imagining, a maximum of about ten sessions, I feel like this is too much. I’d rather spend the time playing than making Wildsailors. But, its definitely one that I might return to someday.
Orbital Blues – This is a game set in a far flung future where everyone has spaceships but its grimy, debt-ridden and kind of sad. Its a game that’s underpinned by themes that we can easily all understand, the hell of living in a late-stage capitalist economy, the mental health toll taken by the struggle to just survive from day-to-day in the gig economy etc. The character creation really stoked my imagination and conjured images of my sad space cowboy. And it was the exact opposite of the Wildsea in that it was just so quick and easy.
Orbital Blues wins!
The Others!
Blades in the Dark Front CoverDeath Match Island Front CoverSlugblaster GOTY boxed set cover
I gave up trying to come up with a way to link these final three games. Slugblaster and Blades in the Dark share a system, sort of, and Deathmatch Island is based on a system that was originally created by the author of Blades in the Dark, but that’s pretty tenuous. They all do have an important similarity in the way they are played in distinct phases, though.
Blades in the Dark – This is such an iconic game and its the favourite of many an RPG enthusiast whose opinions I respect. The vibes of Blades are also perfect. Dark city, supernatural threats and heists. I think my players would love that shit. Also, the character creation is comparatively straight-forward and gives you a good idea of your character before you even start playing. This is the only game on the list that I have actually played before and, I’m not going to lie, it has an advantage because of that.
Deathmatch Island – This game is on the list because I finished a rewatch of Lost this year and because I backed it and got a lot of really cool materials for it. But it has so much more to recommend it. The premise is great, the fundamental decisions your characters have to make about the nature of their realities are compelling and the rules are simple enough to require very little time to master. However, its strength in this respect is also a weakness. I think I could easily get a small group together at short notice to play this game as a one-shot or very short campaign and I might consider it for that. But I’m not sure I want to run it for longer. Which is pretty much the conclusion I came to the first time I looked at it on this blog.
Slugblaster – Another gorgeously presented book. It has world-building oozing from every paragraph, illustration and fictional ad. The subject matter is not quite my bag though. I have no idea about skater culture. Although I am inspired by many of the touchstones Mikey Hamm names for Slugblaster, it doesn’t seem quite enough for me, I’m afraid. I also had some issues with the character creation process which I went into in that post. Maybe I’ll come back to this one someday. But, for now, it’s a no from me.
Blades in the Dark wins!
The Semis
Nice One IdiotThe Lurk playbook in Blades in the DarkHeart and Blues, Gambits and Troubles
I’m glad to be dealing with a semifinal now after Ireland went out of the Women’s Rugby World Cup in devastating fashion at the quarter final stage earlier today. We’ll see a semifinal one day!
Anyway, we have three games left:
Triangle Agency – A unique take on the genre of supernatural investigation with an original ruleset and a lightly comedic vibe
Orbital Blues – A space cowboy sci-fi game of disillusionment with the universe and characters who grow through expressions of depression as they journey through the stars
Blades in the Dark – a classic supernatural, victorian heist game that has launched a thousand other games.
I have to eliminate Orbital Blues here. This is a bit disappointing, to be honest, but I have a good reason. I’m already running a Spelljammer game at the moment, as well as Ultraviolet Grasslands. That’s a lot of journeying from one place to another in a ship/caravan. I don’t want to start a new game with a similar format. Maybe if and when either of those two games comes to a conclusion, I’ll come back to Orbital Blues. But for now, it’s got to go, I’m afraid.
The Final
The Triangle Agency Normal Briefcase EditionThe cover of Blades in the Dark
So we have two games to choose from in the end, as it should be.
Triangle Agency
Blades in the Dark
I can’t choose between them. I’d be very excited to run either one. If I could find the time, I would run both. If I could find the time, I’d run every game on this list! But as they say in Highlander, there can be only one. Fittingly, It’s going to come down to a dice roll. 1d6. 1 to 3, its Triangle Agency, 4 to 6, Blades in the Dark.
Here we go!
Its a 4!
It’s time to sharpen your blades and take that Devil’s Bargain with the rest of the crew. We’re off to Doskvol…
it has a very specific flavour. The PCs are monsters in the vein of Doom Patrol or the X-men. There is a lot of significance to the emotions of the characters and there is a fair bit of angst and drama involved from what I can tell.
This is the eighth in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule for our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here. You can find the Blades in the Dark one here. We took a slight detour for this one, here’s the Wildsea Ship Creation post. And then got back on track with the Wildsea Character Creation post. This is where you can find the Deathmatch Island one. You will find the Orbital Blues character creation post here. Back in this post I named Apocalypse Keys as an outside contender for the new campaign. This will be the last post in the series so I’ll be forced to make a decision on the next campaign soon.
DIVISION and Conquer
The illustrations of each of the Playbooks all together.
Apocalypse Keys by Rae Nedjadi is a Powered by the Apocalypse game in which you play members of a super-team of sorts. You are wielded like weapons by a shadowy organisation called DIVISION (which is an initialism, kinda like S.H.I.E.L.D.) in an effort to prevent apocalypses. How? Well, you gather Keys, which are essentially clues you will use to find and open Doom’s Door before the bad guy can. The bad guys are known as Harbingers and they are Omens, like you, but more world-endy.
The game is very much PBTA in its design, with a few extras. Although you roll 2d6 for most things, if you roll an 11 or higher, you overshoot, you blow the whole warehouse up instead of just the gates, your powers leave the security guard a blubbering mess instead of just plucking some thoughts from his head, you get the idea.
Also, it has some Carved from Brindlewood flavour to it too. The Keys you gather improve your chances of finding the Doom’s Door you’re looking for. For each one you get, you increase your chance that the theory you have come up with is correct and you know where to find it.
Ruin seems to have been taken from Trophy. Although it’s used a little differently. As you gain it, you get closer to becoming one of those bad guys, the Harbingers. It can also give you special Advances (abilities.)
One last thing: PCs gain Darkness Tokens as they make particular types of narrative choices that align with the emotional themes of the playbook. You spend these tokens to give you modifiers to rolls.
I think it’s important to know these things as we go into character creation for this game. Also, it has a very specific flavour. The PCs are monsters in the vein of Doom Patrol or the X-men. There is a lot of significance to the emotions of the characters and there is a fair bit of angst and drama involved from what I can tell.
Creating Monsters of DIVISION
The book provides us with a step by step guide to character creation which I love to see. It was something I missed from the process in Orbital Blues. Lets take a look:
Step 1: Choose a Playbook
Step 2: Bring Your Character to Life
Step 3: Refine Your Abilities
Step 4: Introduce Your Character to the Other Players
Step 5: Create Your Starting Bonds
As this is purely an exercise the last couple of steps probably won’t happen.
Choose a Playbook
Like other PBTA games, you choose a playbook to get started. Your character might decide to switch playbooks further down the line, depending on the narrative choices that are made at the table but most are likely to select one and stick with it. It’s like a character class in other games.
Here are the available playbooks in Apocalypse Keys:
The Summoned: a being summoned from another place. Violent, aggressive, antagonistic to prophecy, wants love more than anything
The Surge: Massively powerful but not in control. Wants help to contain it. “Explosive, uncontrollable and alienating.” Friendly fire and collateral damage and toxic relationships are the themes
The Found: Psychic amnesiac. They are very odd, but curious and highly emotional. They can have surprisingly intimate knowledge of other peoples’ inner lives and thoughts but do they know what’s best for others?
The Shade: A super intellect who cheated death. Thematically, they are for players who want to forge a difficult relationship with death and struggle with the costs of great knowledge
The Last: The last of their kind from another world. “Their power is reflective, sorrowful and hopeful.” Unsurprisingly the themes here are heavy, loss, tragedy and how these things are inevitable.
The Fallen: Elements of Lucifer, a fallen angel. “Their power is intoxicating, damaged, deceitful.” Thematically, hubris, the two sides of worship and an over-riding want for what was lost.
The Hungry: It is what it says. “Their power is intimate, transformative, and harrowing.” Getting big vampire vibes here. They are looking to feed, get truly close to someone and deal with the idea of body horror, unsurprisingly.
I could roll 1d7 to pick here, but there is one I’m drawn to most. That is the Fallen. They are all pretty goth but it feels gothiest to me.
The Fallen
The Fallen illustration from the book
I am a pale reflection of the glory I once was I embody the hubris and volatility of the Apocalypse My power is faded, cracked, and deceitful My heart yearns to worship and be worshipped
Bring Your Character to Life
I’ll be using a series of prompts provided in the playbook description to do this next part.
Your Name
There are four options here:
A name god gave me with love
a name I earned through fear and terror
a name that can never be said out loud
a name you need to give someone else one day
I choose the third one, because it’s cool, honestly. The name is Duma, after the Angel of Silence. In fact, I think this character will only communicate through signing.
Your Look
There are several options here. I won’t list them all, just the three I’m taking:
a multitude of wings made of light and sound
a cracked halo that bleeds
mismatched clothing hastily thrown together
I love these touches. I imagine the halo just constantly dripping blood onto Duma’s face, forcing him to close his eyes to the horrors of the world. The wings, once flapping silently, feathery and white, now buzz and flicker like an insect’s. The clothing, whatever he could find, an old army surplus jacket, some discarded cream chinos and a pair of scuffed tennis shoes.
Your Origin
I have to choose one of these four options for Duma’s origin:
I was once a mighty god of this Earth but I was killed by my worshipers
I once claimed hell for my own but I was betrayed
I was an angelic creature destroyed by my jealous god
something else that describes how far I have truly fallen and all I have lost
It’s nice to have that last option there for anyone who has their own idea of their character’s origin. For me, though, it has to be the third one. I think Duma was silent before as a way to show his devotion to his god, but is silent now because he has vowed never to speak until he regains the trust of his god or destroys him.
Who are the Gods Who Taunt You?
I only choose one of these:
those who I betrayed seek to destroy me once and for all
ancient gods who have lost their power and ache for what is left of my divinity
twisted gods I corrupted who are now monsters of myth and legend
divine servants who grow in power as I have weakened
something else that feeds my spite and sharpens my hubris
I like the idea of other bully angels coming down to tease Duma while he seethes and silently curses them so I’ll go for the fourth one.
Your Impulse
This is an interesting departure from other PBTA games I’ve played. Usually, you have particular character goals that mostly remain static, and if you manage to achieve them in a session, you gain 1 XP. In Apocalypse Keys, you choose one of the listed Impulses each session and work to explore it. If you do, you can gain 1 XP OR 1 Ruin. I’m not going to list them all, but here are a couple that I like:
Did you bless the weak with the immeasurable glory of your presence?
Did you taunt or seduce those who would seek to destroy you?
I think, as a starting Impulse, I would go with the first of those two, just to start things off as I meant to go on.
Your Powers of Darkness
These are largely thematic flavour for your character to throw on a standard move. They are pretty much open to interpretation every time you use them. I can choose two from the following:
Soul Venom
Fae Glamour – Just so Duma can walk around town.
Fear Manipulation
Weapons of Light and Sound – This seems very angelic.
Many Forms of Mythic Animals
I’ll take Fae Glamour and Weapons of Light and Sound
What Does the Darkness Demand of You?
This is such an important question to the character and for the Keeper to know how to interact with them. There are quite a few, so I’m going to only list the two I am choosing:
To storm heaven
to curse the one I love
Man, that’s melodramatic!
Gaining Darkness Tokens
This is an important part of the process. It will define the way I play the character to a large extent. Duma will get 2-4 Darkness Tokens every time he does any of the following:
Feel others are beneath me
React with spite or arrogance
Ask someone to worship me
Ask someone to betray another
Embody a condition that effects me
Interestingly, the Conditions I might gain as the Fallen are different to those other playbooks might get. Here are mine:
Lustful
Raging
Forlorn
Obsessed
All extremes of emotion. Unsurprising really.
Breaking Point
The Fallen’s Breaking Point page.
This is what happens when you are full up on Conditions. If you mark all four, you hit your Breaking Point. It is unique for each playbook and it serves to illustrate your character at their most emotionally overwhelmed. You just can’t take it anymore. You must have a scene to describe what happens. For your troubles you get to clear your Conditions and get a point of Ruin.
You were once beautiful and loved, perfect and beyond despair. You are gripped with how far you have fallen, how much of your glory was ripped away from you. You are unworthy of love, and your heart screams in anguish Describe how you use what little power you have left to bring you painfully close to your former divinity, and how it twists and consumes everything around you. The Keeper will tell you what horrors you birth and what twisted shadow of a god escapes quietly into the world.
Ooof.
Playbook Moves
Each Playbook gets one move that is only for them. Normally when you advance, you can take moves from other playbooks, but not the signature one. The Fallen gets:
Call Me Master
This is a move designed to snare other beings into worshiping you, or at the very least, doing your bidding. If it goes wrong, it might make an old enemy act against the Fallen or maybe make you display your real being, forcing you to lose a Bond, or, at worst, awaken a sleeping horror.
One More
Other than Call Me Master, I get to choose one more from the playbook description. Here is a list of those I can choose from:
Mother of Monsters – Just imagine what could go wrong…
Fleeting Divinity – Relics with your power contained in them. Use them for modifiers to rolls
Honeyed Tongue and Clouded Minds – Use this to get extras when you Unleash the Dark, such as gaining more knowledge or making lies truth
You Loved Me Once – Make an NPC one of your former worshipers. They might still be, or they might serve your ancient enemies
The Lies that Serve Me – Your mistruths can become real for a time but if you fail… you might lose that part of you that made it.
I love the idea of just declaring a new NPC or faction were once your devotees and seeing what happens. Wow, that could go so wrong in so many interesting ways. But the ways it might go right are equally interesting so I am going for “You Loved Me Once.”
Ruin Moves
I only get to choose one of these. Another option is to choose a DIVISION move instead. And, although that is of interest, I’d rather stick to the stuff that’s specific to the playbook. Also, Ruin is just more interesting to me. Here are the Ruin Moves for the Fallen:
Tremble Before Me – One of the basic moves is Unleash the Dark. It is used when imposing your will on someone. Tremble Before Me allows you to mark a point of Ruin to get a better result when you do that.
My Beloved Nemesis – When you do this, you have two options, mark one Ruin and get to clear your Conditions while explaining how your betrayer is out in the world, or mark two Ruin and have them appear in the scene! You form a Bond with them either way. If you choose the second one you form a Bond with What the Darkness Demands of You.
Desire Dressed as Faith – You can make people want to do something or possess someone. Spend one or two Ruin for varying extremes of desire.
I Will Rise Again – When you work towards regaining your old glory, you make this Move. You get to choose from a long list of steps forward you can take which include doing things like avoiding all notice, imbuing your forces with magic weapons and killing the only one who could stop you. But the Keeper gets to screw you for it.
For me, the one that works most for the playbook and the character is that last one. It feels like the kind of thing the Fallen should be working towards from the start. So I will take I Will Rise Again as Duma’s Ruin Move.
Conclusion
This has turned into another monster post, pun very much intended. So I am going to skip the Bonds for this character, mainly because I don’t have any other PCs to Bond with anyway.
There are things about this game that I find too overwrought, too melodramatic for my tastes. But there are things in the character creation process that I enjoy. The moves are great and so imaginative and evocative of the genres this game is inspired by. But it’s similar enough to Triangle Agency to put them into direct competition with each other. Also, I’d like to actually play Duma, but I don’t know if I want to GM this game…
I’ve played RPGs where your character is supposed to be weak, where they’re meant to be weird, where coolness or badassness is the point, but I have never before played one where the entire premise is that you are a sad, potentially depressed outlaw trying to get by in a universe that’s against them.
This is the seventh in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule for our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here. You can find the Blades in the Dark one here. We took a slight detour for this one, here’s the Wildsea Ship Creation post. And then got back on track with the Wildsea Character Creation post. This is where you can find the Deathmatch Island one. Back in this post I named Orbital Blues as an outsider in this process since I’d barely even cracked it open. This was good motivation to read the book. Since then, I have read most of it and I have to say, I’m generally impressed. It’s very much in the running now.
Sadness is the Point
I’ve played RPGs where your character is supposed to be weak, where they’re meant to be weird, where coolness or badassness is the point, but I have never before played one where the entire premise is that you are a sad, potentially depressed outlaw trying to get by in a universe that’s against them.
That’s Orbital Blues, by Sam Sleney and Zachary Cox, illustrated by Josh Clark and published by Soul Muppet. This is how it is described on the back of the beautifully realised book:
It is an intergalactic age of bounty hunters, vagrants and bleeding heart outlaws. The galaxy is a lawless expanse, and you are an INTERSTELLAR OUTLAW. Together with your SHIP and your CREW, you must eke out a living in the frontier, and close down the intergalactic dream of freedom and success.
What this blurb doesn’t convey is that, for an Orbital Blues character, the sadder you are, the better (mechanically anyway.) Your PC is going to start with Troubles and they are going to give them the Blues and those two things just serve to compound each-other over the course of the game to give them more abilities as well as more narrative motivation.
Before I get into this, I would like to once again plug the My First Dungeon podcast. They have a complete season of an Orbital Blues actual play that has helped me to get to grips with the game, the system, the vibe and, of particular importance to this post, character creation. Go check it out here.
Start with the Concept
Character Creation chapter with poncho clad back of a space cowboy
I haven’t played a lot of games where the player is supposed to start with an idea of their character first. Never Tell Me the Odds does it, but I am struggling to think of another. Of course, a lot of players will go into every game with their concept in their heads already, but few demand it. Orbital Blues wants you to do some imaginative labour before moving on to stats and abilities.
So, let’s look at the touchstones for this game. What kinds of characters does this sort of game want you to make? Cowboy Bebop, Firefly and Guardians of the Galaxy are all pretty obvious sources of inspiration that are explicitly mentioned in the book, so I’m going to use the characters from those IPs as fodder too.
I remember watching Cowboy Bebop during its original run when I lived in Okinawa in the late 90s. It captivated me with its evocative and anachronistic world and its lowlife, flawed yet oh so sympathetic characters. I was obsessed with Spike. He was such an asshole and yet he could always surprise you with moments of genuine heart and kindness, while being forever haunted by his dark past. It’s a classic character archetype, of course, but that’s with good reason. We relate to their brokenness while we aspire to their ultra-competency.
Anyway, that’s my main point of reference, a slick-looking guy with a past he’d rather forget. I’m imagining him as a crack-shot and a card-sharp, not an arm-wrestler or a fist-fighter. This guy drinks too much and always has a cigarette between his lips.
Name
The very next thing in the process and the book, is to roll up or choose your name. There is an excellent d100 table here for this so I am not going to pass up the opportunity to roll on it. Now, this is not necessarily meant to be your PC’s full legal name. In fact, it is more likely to be a nickname or a persona and usually just a single name. There are some great names in here, including “Indiana,” “Ripley,” and “Valentine.”
I rolled a 34 so that’s Avery. Nice!
On the same page is an exhortation to “pull it together.” This means thinking about what brought the character to the life of an outlaw. What kinds of problems follow them and what might they do about them?
I’m thinking Avery, a former military sharpshooter, quit the space-corps to find his own way in life, only to end up working as a hitman for some bad people. The crime boss he worked for had some juicy blackmail material on Avery. Thinking about this from a game perspective, I would want to eke this story out during play rather than spilling it all in character creation. But I am thinking he killed the wrong person, someone known to his family, and he doesn’t want that to get back to his parents. But he left the employ of the crime boss by faking his own death. This was all before he started going by the name, Avery.
Stats
Stats: Muscle, Grit and Savvy
You only get three stats as an Orbital Blues character:
Muscle: speaks for itself really, Although it could be used for intimidation too. Also, it has a bearing on your Heart score, which is analogous to your hit points
Grit: How far will you go? How much can you take and keep on trucking? Your Grit determines that
Savvy: Quickness of mind and trigger finger. This is where I’ll be investing highly for Avery.
There is no dice-rolling involved in your stats. Instead, you choose one to be 0, one to be +1 and one to be +2. Simple.
Avery:
Muscle: 0
Grit: +1
Savvy: +2
This seems to suit the character concept I’ve come up with so far.
At this point, it’s worth noting that you do stuff in this game by rolling 2d6, usually, and add the relevant stat to the roll. The target is always 8.
Sometimes, if you are rolling with the Upper Hand you roll 3d6 and take the top two rolls. In contrast, if you are rolling Against the Odds you roll 3d6 and take the lowest two rolls.
You can use Exertion to spend points of Heart to add to your rolls too.
The Crew
Crew titles
This next part will be a little difficult for me since this is a Solo endeavour (that’s just a little space outlaw humour there.) But still, I can follow the advice presented to a certain extent. There is a colourful double-page spread of titles to help. I can adopt one of these for my own character. Once I have done that, I can choose at least one more title and decide how Avery might relate to another character with that title.
Avery has a lot of options here. There are titles such as “the Queen,” “the Freak,” “the Heart-breaker” and, of course, “the Cowboy.” But I think the one that suits him is “the Quick.” He’s fast on the draw, nimble-fingered and quick-witted.
I think there is another member of the crew who has “the Ace,” title. Let’s call them Rivers. They’re good and they know it. This pisses Avery off and wakens his competitive side.
Heart and Blues
Heart and Blues, Gambits and Troubles
This is an easy one. Heart, which, as I noted, is the HP score, is calculated by adding 8 to your Muscle score. So:
Heart: 8
Blues are the way you measure the effects of your character’s “past sins, personal grievances and guilty hangups.” As you build Blues points, you get to improve your character. You gain Blues points, unsurprisingly, through your Troubles.
Troubles and Gambits
Gambits ExpandedTroubles Expanded
A space cowboy starts with one Gambit. It’s a talent, ability or resource that can help in all sorts of situations. You can gain more during play. For every 2 Troubles, you can get another Gambit. Here are a few that I might consider taking for Avery:
Devil’s Right Hand – Roll with the Upper Hand when using pistols
The Gambler – get two points for every point of Heart spent when using Exertion while gambling
But the one I’m going for is:
Marksman – Long range attacks ignore penalties from range etc. and always get the Upper Hand when taking time to aim. It’s the one that suits Avery’s story the most
You could be forgiven for thinking that a character’s Troubles are purely narrative, maybe coming from their backstory. But in this game, you have a set list of Troubles to choose from and they have specific mechanical effects. Avery will start with one Trouble although, he could resolve it and pick up some more during play. Here are a selection of Troubles to choose from:
Devil in the Bottle – You get to answer questions like, what was the worst thing you ever did while pissed, who’s your oldest drinking buddy and what’s your favourite booze. You get Blues whenever you have to deal with a hangover or go cold turkey for a couple of days.
On the Run – Some of your questions: Who are you on the run from and why? Who helped you get away? Who was left behind? You get Blues when evading a problem, and abandoning someone else to escape.
But Avery’s starting Trouble has to be
“In too Deep – You got involved with the wrong people and did things you ain’t proud of”
Which underworld organisation did you get involved with? The Reno Snakes is a gang that’s mentioned in the scenario provided in the book, so that’s what I’ll go for
Who, in law enforcement remembers you? Galactic Marshall Dell Walker. He’s never believed Avery was really dead
I’ll get Blues when I:
rely on a talent I learned from an old friend
restrain myself from the familiar old violence
make someone do something they don’t wanna
Equipment and Mementos
Equipment and Mementos
Avery gets one weapon, a memento and one piece of crew equipment. I could roll a d12 to determine the starting weapon but I think it makes sense that Avery takes a sniper rifle given his background and gambit.
There is also a (1-18?) table for mementos but I spotted one on it that simply fits so well, its “Bounty on a former lover.” I would like to change it from “former lover” to “step-father,” though.
Finally, the piece of crew equipment: A night-vision scanner makes sense here, I think.
Soundtrack
Your Soundtrack
Avery needs his own theme tune to act as a leitmotif for him at those most dramatic of moments. This is such a cool idea that reminds me of Tales from the Loop and the best actual plays. I think Avery’s soundtrack tune is Sweet Jane by Cowboy Junkies
Conclusion
I might actually come back and make a ship for Avery and his pals as well, but this post is already long enough. I’ve had fun making this character. The process asks some really interesting questions of the player to make a troubled and complex outlaw who is likely to get more and more troubled as time goes on. The rules are simple, and very easy to grasp. Character creation was also pretty straightforward, although I did find there was quite a lot of flipping back and forth through the book during character creation. But that is just a small quibble really.
Today, I’ll be making a competitor for Deathmatch Island, a regular person with a normal-arse job, someone you might meet at the gym or in the supermarket.
This is the sixth in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule for our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here. You can find the Blades in the Dark one here. We took a slight detour for this one, here’s the Wildsea Ship Creation post. And then got back on track with the Wildsea Character Creation post.
Competitor Registration
Competitor Registration
Today, I’ll be making a competitor for Deathmatch Island, a regular person with a normal-arse job, someone you might meet at the gym or in the supermarket. This is not going to be a superhero, or a secret agent or a wizard. This totally ordinary person is going to be thrown into a situation unimaginable to most of us, having to fight for their lives, form alliances recruit followers and solve puzzles, with the reward of nothing more complicated than survival. And they will have to do all this with an enormous gap in their memories that relate to their lives before the competition.
I wrote a piece about the game, which will give you the basics. You can read it here. So I am going to push straight on with Competitor Registration. One of my Kickstarter rewards was a Competitor Induction booklet. This holds a player’s hand through the relatively painless registration process and also provides some tips for Competitor Players in playing Death Match island. So, let’s open it up and get started.
Occupation
Occupation tables
The first step is rolling up my Occupation. This part MUST be rolled randomly. It will allow me to add a die to my dice pool in contests if I believe my Occupation would be relevant. The Occupation will also determine my Competitor’s Favoured Capability (the type of contests the Competitor is specialised in.) All Competitors have the following Capabilities:
Social Game – using charm and social bonds to resolve contests
Snake Mode – solving contests using deception, stealth and straight-up lies
Challenge Beast – Not just physical ability but also a talent for puzzle solving
Deathmatch – The violent option: tactics, firearms and ruthlessness
Redacted – This is the one used when the Player Competitor strays out of the bounds of the game and into restricted areas. The Production Player (GM) has ways to counter these methods…
The Favoured Capability gets a d8, all the rest get d6s. These can be improved through gameplay later.
So, let’s roll on the tables. There are four Occupation tables, so I’ll start by rolling 1d4 to determine which one I roll on. That’s a 2! Then I roll 2d8 on Occupation Table 2. That’s a 7 and a 4. That gives me:
Firefighter (Challenge Beast)
So, with this Occupation, I’m imagining someone physically fit but also intelligent in spatial awareness, environmental hazards and safety concerns.
Name and Competitor Number
Name tables
The name of a Player Competitor is more than just what the other characters call them. It has a mechanical impact. Part of the game is attracting followers, getting your name out there and increasing your popularity. This is so important that you add a Name die to every Contest roll in the game. It starts as a d6 but gets bigger as you accumulate followers.
You don’t have to roll for your name. If you want to play a Competitor with a specific nationality, ethnicity etc, you might want to choose the name for yourself. But, in the tradition of my character creation posts, I’m going to roll for as much as I can. There are three first name tables so I’ll start by rolling a d3 to pick the one I’ll roll on. That’s a 3! Now I’ll roll 2d8 to determine my first name. That’s a 5 and a 7, giving me:
Sakae – a Japanese name, normally male but sometimes female. It usually means, glory or prosperity, which seems auspicious. I think I will go with he/him pronouns for Sakae
The surnames are a little more straight-forward. I just roll 1d8 and 1d20 to figure it out. That’s a 4 and a 5, which gives me:
Kogoya – an Indonesian name. Egianus Kogoya is a military leader in the “Free Papua” movement
Sakae Kogoya is, I think, a civilian firefighter from the island of Okinawa (a place I actually lived for a year in the nineties.) His mother is Okinawan Japanese and his father is an Indonesian American who came with the American military forces but stayed when he found love. He opened an Indonesian restaurant in the city of Ginowan where Sakae grew up.
Next, I just roll a d100 to get Sakae’s competitor number. That’s 095.
Distinguishing Features
Uniform and Characters
There are a few random tables to determine some random features for your Competitor in the booklet. Once again, the player is free to choose from these tables or make up their own if they have a clear idea of them already. These features have no mechanical effects at all, unlike Name and Occupation. They are just to help distinguish the character. I’m going to roll on each table for the sake of randomness.
Eyes (1d20) – 19 – Beady (could also have had the likes of Glacial, Twitchy and my personal fave, Haunted)
Build – (1d20) – 20! – Willowy (other possibilities include Beefy, Towering and Average)
Hair – (1d20) – 5 – Striking (I’m imaging something that takes a lot of product and looks like something from an anime. I could also have rolled up Nest, Bangs or Boring)
Detail – (1d20) – Another frikking nat 20! – Strong hands (other options here included Unusual face, Eye-patch and Pleasant scent)
Uniform
Uniform tables
All the Competitors start with the same uniform when you begin a game of Deathmatch Island. This also has no mechanical impact. There are six style options presented and six colours. I would say a lot of groups would want to discuss this amongst themselves and select the one that most appeals to them but, obviously, I’m going to roll for it.
Uniform Type (1d6) – 4 – Blazer and turtleneck!
Uniform Colour (1d6) – 4 – Goldenrod!
Wow! That’s quite a combo. Seems incredibly impractical. Not much stretch in a blazer and that colour is going to make sneaking extra challenging! But that’s what I rolled, so that’s what Sakae Kogoya and his fellow contestants are stuck with.
Please see below, the welcome letter that Sakae is presented with when he first wakes up on the boat taking him the ISLAND ONE.
Welcome to ISLAND ONE letter
Conclusion
Sakae Kogoya Competitor Registration sheet
And that’s it! That was refreshingly fast. You’ll notice, from the screenshot of Sakae’s character sheet, that there is a lot of empty space on it. There’s a lot that you only get in play in Deathmatch Island, so, even though I’m finished character creation, there’s a lot of room for growth, improvement and notes. I like this approach a lot. It leaves much of the character building to happen in the context of the game, rather than before you even start. It’s particularly appropriate in the scenario where your character is suffering from selective amnesia. I feel like, with this quick Competitor Registration and the relatively simple rules, you could get some people around a table and run a session of Deathmatch Island with little or no hassle or delay. The structure of the game and the way the Production player chooses casts allows you to run it with very little prep, also. This is a big tick in the pro column for me these days.
So, dear reader, what do you think of the Deathmatch Island character creation process in comparison to the other games in the series? I still have a few more I could fit in here, like Apocalypse Keys and Orbital Blues, which I listed as outside contenders way back here, in the post that started it all. But right now, I think Deathmatch Island is a strong contender, if only for the fact that I could get it off the ground so quickly and potentially complete a campaign in 3 or 6 sessions.
The book presents many, many options in each step, and that’s even using the Quickstart kits. Without the Quickstart rules, you can really choose any options from any bloodlines, origins and posts, to truly customise your character as you like.
This is the fifth in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule for our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here. You can find the Blades in the Dark one here. And most relevant to today’s post, here’s the Wildsea Ship Creation post.
A Character to Fit the Beacon
In my last post, I created a ship for my Wildsea character to pilot across the Thrash. The ship, it turned out, is a research vessel, fast and dangerous, but not very manoeuvrable or stealthy. It’s got a beehive for an engine and an acid-cannon for protection. It also has a colony of glow bugs that follow the crew around illuminating their surroundings for them. I named the ship the Beacon.
So, what kind of wildsailor am I going to come up with to match the vibes of the Beacon? Let’s find out, dear reader!
Character Creation Steps
Character Creation chapter illustration
There are three important choices to be made in this process:
Your Bloodline
Your Origin
Your Post
Now, while these choices are minimally restrictive, the beginning of the Character Elements chapter encourages you to build a narrative background around the framework of the mechanical choices. In fact, throughout character creation, you are encouraged to be creative and to make unique wildsailors that no-one else has ever made before.
Also, there are many other elements to a Wildsea character, it’s just that most of them hang off these three choices. All of these are explained in the Character Elements chapter.
At this point, I think it’s important to point out that the Character Elements chapter is there only to explain those elements, not to help you create your actual character. That’s all in the following chapter. One thing I have found with the Wildsea is that it devotes a lot of space to explaining everything. Occasionally, I find that this is at the expense of functionality. The book goes to some lengths to inform you what the Cook skill allows you to do, when, in a storytelling game, this could usefully just be left up to the players around the table. It’s also because so many of the terms used in play are quite unique, Twist, Edges, Whispers, Cut etc. Although most of these bear some resemblance to elements of other games, the resistance to using those better known terms means they require more explanation. I found this also in Slugblaster, an ostensibly Forged in the Dark game that uses a lot of setting/genre-specific terminology for concepts that are more functionally named in Blades in the Dark.
Anyway, I’m going to move on from the Character Elements chapter immediately. If I need to explain anything, I’ll do it as I build the character.
Young Guns or Old Dogs
This is a welcome choice to start with. It reflects the type of game you’re preparing for. If you go for a Young Gun, you start with fewer skills, aspects and resources, leaving the character more room to grow. The Old Dog has more going for them, but is meant for one-shots or short campaigns. For my purposes, I’m going to create an Old Dog, to show off more of the character elements in this blog post. So, an Old Dog starts with the following:
1 Bloodline, 1 Origin, and 1 Post
3 edges
15 skill / language ranks (maximum starting rank 3)
6 aspects taken from any bloodlines, origins, or posts
6 resources
3 drives and 3 mires
Ardent Quickstart Kit
For ease of one-shot character creation, there is a Quickstart Kit presented in the section for each bloodline, origin and post. These break it down to a selection of easy choices.
In the interests of keeping this post below 2000 words, I’m going to use the Quickstart kits as and when I feel its appropriate.
Bloodline
Here are the options for Bloodline:
Ardent – human
Ektus – cactus-folk
Gau- fungus-folk
Ironbound – ship-ghosts with bodies of salvage
Ketra – gelatinous humanoids
Mothryn – moth people
Tzelicrae – hive-mind spider colonies in a human skin
A Ketra with a chart
Remember this is a Researcher we’re making here, so I think it would be useful for them to be good with technology. The Ketra are described in the book as “tech-savvy.” So, I think that’s what I will go for.
The ketra are the descendants of those fragments of ancient humanity trapped in tunnels and sturdy temple complexes, mineshafts, and mountain-seams. Like the ardent, they have adapted to face the post-Verdant world, but with a far more dramatic biological change – tentacular mantles, translucent fl esh, and swirling, ever-moving inkblot patternings are common. Many ketra reinforce their malleable forms with selfmade skeletons of salvaged driftwood or repurposed scrap-metal.
Questions
The first thing to do with your new ketra is answer the following questions:
Q: Have you spent any time in the ‘ancestral’ ketra places and, if so, how did you find their dark, crampled confines? A: Yes, my character spent the early part of their life below the waves. Only as a young adult did they venture above the Thrash where they were discovered by the original owner of the Beacon, an Ardent named Benida Hoffspring
Q: How original is your skeleton, and if you’ve replaced parts of it yourself, what new materials do you rely on for support? A: Many parts of their skeleton have been replaced, most notably, the lower jaw is shaped by a perfectly formed piece of Ironwood. It juts out more than it should. Other bones have been replaced with sturdy pieces of salvaged metal and ceramic.
Q: Were you passed down any stories of your family’s old human days, or is your preverdant lineage lost to history? A: There was an old album of photos, preserved in plastic. It revealed a world long gone, of Ardent cities and water-going ships. Their ancestors were sailors…
Bloodline Aspects
Aspects differentiate your character from another one with the same bloodline, origin or post. They make them unique. They can take the form of a physical trait, a companion, or a piece of gear. So, with the Old Gun type of character, you can choose 6 Aspects from bloodline, origin or post. As a Quickstart character, I’ll choose two from each step. If I list off every Aspect from every step, this post will be another giant. Instead, I am going to list only those that catch my eye for the character. Here are the bloodline aspects I want to choose from:
Scrapper Enzymes 3-Track Trait You can use salvage as a component when concocting a potion or chemical mixture, no matter its form.
Scrap-Metal Skeleton 3-Track Gear The internal structures you’ve collected can store biovoltaic energy. Use a task to create a resource, Scrap-Bone Battery.
Drone Attendant 3-Track Companion A simple punchcard-driven repair construct. Increase impact when repairing or tinkering with other machines.
From these three, I love the idea of this character brewing up potions and stuff on the fly so I am going choose Scrapper Enzymes for that. I also have simply got to choose a companion when available and narratively fitting, so Drone Attendant is coming too.
Bloodline Edges
Edges are areas of talent. They literally give your character an edge in certain situations, meaning you get an extra 1d6 in your dice pool if appropriate. They are rather poetically named, but mostly speak for themselves nonetheless. Here are the edges presented in the Ketra Quickstart kit:
Iron – “An edge of force, determination, & willpower”
Sharps – “An edge of logic, wit, & planning”
Veils – “An edge of shadows, ciphers, & secrecy”
For this ketra researcher who crawled out of the depths on their own, I’m going to choose Iron and Sharps.
Bloodline Skills and Languages
These get ranks. You start at rank one and go up to rank three. You get an extra d6 in your dice pool for each rank in the skill you are using when appropriate. I have to choose five of these. Here are the available skills in the Quickstart Kit:
I’m going to take Concoct, for sure, to go with the Scrapper Enzymes Aspect. I’m also going to take Delve, as someone show used to live in the ruins beneath the wildsea. And for my final Skill, I will take Scavenge, an important one for a scientific researcher/person who replaces their bones with random stuff.
And here are the available languages (you get a certain amount of lore with these too):
Chthonic – old human
Raka Spit – “The rapid patter of hunting-families and leviathaneers”
Signalling – inter-ship communication
Got to take Chthonic, probably their native tongue. Also, I just love the name of the language, Raka Spit, so I’ve got to take that too. Everyone gets a rank three skill in the trade-tongue, Low Sour, also.
Bloodline Resources
Resources can be used to get advantage on an action roll. They come in four different types as you can see below. I have to choose two of these to start with:
Salvage: Ceremonial Dynamite, Old Driftwood Specimens: Luminescent Bone, Curled Centipede Whispers: The Comforting Dark, All Tunnels End Charts: A Faded Schematic
As a researcher, I think I have to take at least one specimen and the “Luminescent Bone” is the most thematic for this character. Perhaps it’s one of their own old bones?
I love the concept of Whispers in this game. They are like memes that can be passed on, inherited or sold, but once they are used, they are gone forever. I’ll take “the Comforting Dark.”
Bloodline Drives and Mires
Before making this decision, we need to understand the concept of Milestones in this game. They come in minor and major flavours and you write them for yourself. They work a bit like Beats in Heart. Achieving a major milestone allows you to improve your character more than a minor one.
So Drives, then, are the goals your character works towards to gain milestones. You can also gain a Whisper, or clear a mark of Mire when you move towards your drive goals. It’s important to note that they can change over time too, particularly if and when you achieve one of them.
Mires, then, are the negative psychological and physical effects of long-term exposure to the Wildsea. They will cut one or two dice from your rolls whenever you act against the effect of the mire.
Here are my options: Drives
“Raise a pre-verdant structure” – this makes the most sense to me as a curious scientist
“Hoard treasures of the wider waves”Mires
“Sparks and jolts course through your extremities” – got metal bones, will take this one
“Your inkblot patterns whirl dizzyingly”
Origin
What were you before you were a wild sailor? The options:
Amberclad – like Captain America but in amber
Anchored – ghosts of the Wildsea returned to life
Ridgeback – mountain folk
Rootless – born on the waves
Shankling – raised in the tallest trees
Spit-Born – brought up in the safety of an island or ruin
For this scientifically minded wild sailor, with the sort of backstory I have already incorporated, I think it would be very fun if they were an Anchored!
An Ardent Anchored
the anchored, a tangible, physical presence on the waves despite being, by almost all definitions, very much dead. These souls are given substance by their anchor, a single physical object that was left at the surface when their body fell. It might be a memento, a favoured weapon, a chart pointing the way home – whatever it is, it was enough of a tether to keep them from passing over, and to confer a level of impressive material control.
Normally, this would mean they came from above and their body was lost below, but for this ketra, I think it would be the opposite. When their original body died, just as they first emerged from above the surface, they reformed around a tether, something they brought with them from home. That was when they were brought aboard the Beacon for the first time. Their Anchor was the only thing left of them when they died, that wooden jaw.
Anchored Questions
Q: Do you remember your death? If so, what caused it? A: No. The exact circumstances are hazy and plot-relevant Q: To what extent do you feel connected to the world around you, now that you don’t follow quite the same rules of physicality as most? A: They constantly strive to understand the world around them, scientifically, intellectually, and emotionally Q: Have you ever come close to losing your anchor? If so, what happened? A: No, as an integral part of the body, it has never been removed.
Anchored Aspects
Spectral Variance 3-Track Trait Mark to become insubstantial for a short time, allowing you to float and pass through solid objects.
Geist Hand 3-Track Trait You can manipulate nearby objects without touching them, though the heavier they are, the harder it is.
Tempered Anchor 5-Track Gear Your anchor to the world is reinforced against damage and tampering, a wise move for a fleeting ghost.
I’m going to go for Geist Hand as suitably spooky and Tempered Anchor for purely practical purposes.
Anchored Edges
Here are the options: Iron – already took this one Tides – “An edge of exploration, learning, & lore” Veils – “An edge of shadows, ciphers, & secrecy”
I guess it has to be Tides and Veils. Tides is particularly fitting for the researcher, I think.
Going to take lots of skills this time. Brace is a defensive skill that will be generally useful. Outwit is a good one for a ghost, Sense seems equally appropriate for the Anchored. Also Wavewalk, normally meaning the ability to navigate the wildsea without a ship, could mean gliding along it spectrally. Also going to take Old hand (sign language) as a language.
Anchored Resources
Salvage: Old Memento, Broken Locket Specimens: Glowing Plasm, Spectral Flower Whispers: Back from Beyond, Drowned and Not Charts: A Sketch of Shadowed Paths
Absolutely must take Back from Beyond as one of these. Also, a Broken Locket from Benida Hoffspring.
Anchored Drives and Mires
Drives
“Send other spirits to a peaceful rest”
“Reconnect with your friends and family” – This could be a fun adventure beneath the waves. I’ll take it!
Mires
“Your material control wavers erratically” – classic ghost-trope. Thanks.
“Visions of your past death are difficult to banish”
Post
Your Post is essentially your job on the ship. There are a lot of options here: Alchemist – speaks for itself Char – cook (sorta) Corsair – swashbuckler Crash – demolitions expert Dredger – scavenger Hacker – hacking through the wildsea Horizoneer – adventurer Hunter – ‘nuff said Mesmer – mind-controllers Navigator – yep Rattlehand – engineer Screw – Magnetos Slinger – ranged attackers Steep – tea-brewers Surgeon – you know what this is Tempest – Electro Wordbearer – postman
There are several that are very tempting, like the Tempest, the Mesmer and the Char, but I think there is only one logical answer here, Alchemist. Right?
Alchemist
Alchemists are masters of concoction and reaction, able to combine chemicals and arconautic knowledge with unexpected (and occasionally unstable) results. Some alchemists focus on the healing arts, some on transformation and understanding, and others on more… explosive pursuits.
Alchemist Questions
Q: Do you specialise in certain ingredients, or take whatever you find and do your best? A: They are curious about everything. Experimentation is key Q: What was the worst unexpected side-effect you (or an unfortunate crewmember) ever experienced from one of your alchemical creations? A: For a brief time, a crew mate died and became spectral like them, but just for a few minutes Q: What draws you to such a specialised field of study? The lure of knowledge and understanding, or the power to change the world to your own design? A: They are obsessed with the building of knowledge to understand this world and what they are doing in it still.
Alchemist Aspects
I will choose two from the following three:
Ulcerous Alembic 3-Track Trait You can swallow two alchemical components, keeping them safely in your stomach. You can concoct them internally when you choose, benefitting immediately from the results or spitting the resulting solution out.
Baseline 3-Track Trait Mark to briefly ignore any positive or negative effects stemming from a temporary benefit or injury. You are always immune to the negative effects of crezzerin.
Explosive Vials 3-Track Gear Not an endless supply, but potent and disorienting. Mark to deal LR Blast, Salt, Acid, or Toxin damage to multiple nearby foes.
I’m going to take Baseline, since it makes sense due to my bloodline and origins. I’m also going to take Explosive Vials for fun.
Alchemist Edges
These are the options:
Grace – “An edge of elegance, precision, & agility”
Sharps – got it
Tides – and this
So I will take Grace, but I will need to choose another that isn’t listed. There are only two more that I don’t already have. I will go with: Instinct – “An edge of sense, intuition, & reaction.” Which just feels right.
No doubt I’m taking Break, Harvest and Study as skills. And with my last two skill ranks, I am going to upgrade Concoct and Study to Rank 2.
Alchemist Resources
Salvage: Pouch of Vials, Rust Extract Specimens: Dried Locusts, Draketongue Root, Beast Blood, Poison Glands Whispers: A Tale of Choking Mists Charts: A Stained Snapograph
I will take one Salvage this time, Pouch of Vials, and also another Specimen, Poison Glands.
Alchemist Drives and Mires
Drives
“Discover a previously unknown alchemical effect”
“Gather bile from an ancient leviathan” – maybe on the way down to visit their family?
Mires
“You’re the perfect test subject for your own work”
“Explosives are unstable around you” – this is too funny to pass up.
Final Touches
Name: Dhalsim Goodbottle Pronouns: They/Them
Lets put it all together
Background
Bloodline: Ketra Origin: Anchored Post: Alchemist
Edges
Grace
Iron
Instinct
Sharps
Tides
Veils
Skills
Brace 1
Break 1
Concoct 2
Delve 1
Harvest 1
Outwit 1
Sense 1
Study 2
Wavewalk 1
Languages
Low Sour 3
Chthonic 1
Raka Spit 1
Old Hand 1
Resources
Salvage: A Broken Locket, a Pouch of Vials
Specimens: Luminescent Bone, Poison Glands
Whispers: The Comforting Dark, Back from Beyond
Aspects
Scrapper Enzymes 3-Track Trait You can use salvage as a component when concocting a potion or chemical mixture, no matter its form.
Drone Attendant 3-Track Companion A simple punchcard-driven repair construct. Increase impact when repairing or tinkering with other machines.
Geist Hand 3-Track Trait You can manipulate nearby objects without touching them, though the heavier they are, the harder it is.
Tempered Anchor 5-Track Gear Your anchor to the world is reinforced against damage and tampering, a wise move for a fleeting ghost.
Baseline 3-Track Trait Mark to briefly ignore any positive or negative effects stemming from a temporary benefit or injury. You are always immune to the negative effects of crezzerin.
Explosive Vials 3-Track Gear Not an endless supply, but potent and disorienting. Mark to deal LR Blast, Salt, Acid, or Toxin damage to multiple nearby foes.
Drives
“Raise a pre-verdant structure” “Reconnect with your friends and family” “Gather bile from an ancient leviathan”
Mires
“Sparks and jolts course through your extremities” “Your material control wavers erratically” “Explosives are unstable around you”
Conclusion
Well, that was pretty epic, wasn’t it, dear reader? Excepting only the Dark Sun character creation post, that was the longest one I’ve ever done. There are a lot of choices to be made in this process. The book presents many, many options in each step, and that’s even using the Quickstart kits. Without the Quickstart rules, you can really choose any options from any bloodlines, origins and posts, to truly customise your character as you like. I imagine that would be nigh on impossible to do without an encyclopaedic knowledge of the options presented in about 60 pages. I would not even attempt to do it without having made a Quickstart character or two first. On the plus side, it was quite fun. The options presented are incredibly evocative and helped me envision my character aboard the Beacon. The drives and mires, in particular gave me a peek into the heart of Dhalsim Goodbottle. The other options gave me an exceptionally good look into the world of this game.
Dear reader, have you had any experience with the Wildsea? Have you sailed its verdant waves? Have you plumbed its leafy depths?
Felix Isaacs has suggested that you start by creating your ship and only then move on to the creation of the characters who will crew it. And who am I to argue with Mr Isaacs?
This is the fourth in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule for our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here. You can find the Blades in the Dark one here.
Shipbuilding
I recently reposted a piece I wrote last year about the Wildsea and how it exemplifies the tradition of giving your PCs something to care about and then fucking with it. Please check it out for the basics of the game, the setting, and the ruleset. In that post, I pointed out that, creator of the Wildsea, Felix Isaacs, has suggested that you start by creating your ship and only then move on to the creation of the characters who will crew it. And who am I to argue with Mr Isaacs?
Stakes
How much do you have to spend on your new ship? Well, the buying process is abstracted out to a number of stakes. You don’t need to worry about defining the exact amount of currency required to outfit a new boat, you just split it up like a pie. Each crew starts with 6 stakes to spend on ship creation, with an additional 3 per PC who will be crewing it. Most options will cost a single stake but some more powerful ones will cost two or three. Since I don’t have a real party, I’m going to pretend I have a full compliment of three, leaving me with a total of 15 stakes.
You can’t get any more Stakes to improve your ship during play, but it is possible to trade cargo for the same upgrades later.
Next, in the Ships & Shipbuilding chapter, it has a short section on “Personal Touches.” I think these are important to making a ship feel like your own, but I think I’ll keep them to the end of the process.
Creating Your Ship
A Wildsea ship
The next page tells us about the steps to make your ship. There are three overall stages:
Design – you have to choose an option for each of the following:
Size
Frame
Hull
Bite
Engine
Fittings – these are all optional but they come in the following categories:
Motifs
Additions
Rooms
Armaments
Outriders
Undercrew – optional choices that come in the following types:
Officers
Gangs
Packs
On the same page, there is a helpful example ship statted out for us. It is essentially just a list of chosen options beneath each of the three stages. Beside each option is the cost in Stakes and the benefit it provides for the ship if appropriate.
It also lists the Ratings for the ship.
Ratings
These are tracks (tracks are like clocks in Blades in the Dark, in some instances and like health bars in others) that are used to record the current status of various aspects of the ship. Every ship will have all six of these:
Armour – speaks for itself
Seals – How well your ship keeps out the nastiness from the Wildsea
Speed – ‘nuff said
Saws – most ships use giant chainsaws or something similar to power their way through the waves of leaves and branches.
Stealth – how well can your ship pass undetected?
Tilt – this is your ship’s manoeuvrability
Each one of these Ratings starts as a 1-track but we’ll be adding to that as we progress. Keep these Ratings in mind as we go through the process!
Step One – Design
Normally, this would be done by committee. Every player should be involved in the decisions on which the foundations of the ship are built. But, obviously, in my case, that’s not possible. Anyway, here we go!
Size
There are four sizes available and they each cost 1 Stake:
Nano – big enough for one person and maybe a passenger. +1 Stealth
Small – can easily accommodate between two and four sailors. A good starter ship. +1 Speed
Standard – perfect for five to ten people. +1 Armour
Large – ideal for ten to twenty people. +1 Armour and -1 Stealth
I have a limited number of Stakes so I feel like a Small ship is the way to go. Also, it’s for a crew of up to four, so it’s just right.
Frame
The Frame, the book tells us, betrays a certain attitude that you want your ship to give off to other wild sailors. Your choice will also give Rating modifiers like Size does. Here are the six available Frames:
Sturdy – meant to weather storms and bombardments both. +1 Armour
Moulded – somehow constructed from a single piece of some material. +1 Seals
Light – lightweight and dainty. +1 Speed
Scything – all about cutting through the treetops as well as they can. +1 Saws
Sleek – Keeps you “low to the waves,” and as quiet as possible. +1 Stealth
Flexible – bend before breaking. +1 Tilt
I personally think that one of the coolest aspects of these wildsea vessels is the fact that they use enormous chainsaws to cut through the canopy. So, I’m going to lean into that and choose the Scything Frame, giving +1 Saws and costing 1 Stake.
Hull
Interestingly, you can have more than one of these, if you like, but you must have at least one, for obvious reasons. There are twelve Common Hulls and three more Unique ones listed here. The cost ranges from free to 3 Stakes. Here are the Common ones:
Reef-Iron – 1 Stake, +1 Armour
Leviathan Bone – 1 Stake, +1 Seals
Broadwood – 1 Stake, +1 Tilt
Rough Bark – 1 Stake, +1 Stealth
Chitinous – 1 Stake, +1 Speed
Razorscale – 1 Stake, +1 Saws
Beastback – 2 Stakes, +1 Seals, +1 Tilt, “A half-living hull of flesh and bone, flexible and unsettlingly warm.”
Ceramic – 2 Stakes, +1 Armour, +1 Seals
Chrysalid – 2 Stakes, +1 Seals, +1 Stealth, “A hull adapted from the cast-off chrysalis of a massive insect, excellent protection against the sea’s incursion.”
Ghost-Oak – 2 Stakes, +1 Armour, +1 Stealth
Arachnesque – 2 Stakes, +1 Tilt, +1 Stealth, “Less of a hull and more of a giant insect grown to fit the specifications of your frame, usually something spider-like.
Exile’s Copper – 2 Stakes, +1 Armour, +1 Speed
Here are the three Unique Hulls:
Junk-Strung – Free, +1 Armour, -1 Seals, can salvage parts from it
Monument – 3 Stakes, +2 Armour, +2 Seals, made from mountain stone so can’t “Forge-ahead during a journey”
I like the idea of adding a little Armour Rating at this stage but also building on the Speed I improved before so I am going to go with Exile’s Copper for the Hull giving me a +1 Armour and +1 Speed. It will cost 2 Stakes but I think its worth it.
Bite
This determines the way your ship is propelled. It will also have an effect on your ramming damage and the ease by which others might track you. There are twelve Common Bites listed, as well as several different types of sails and a trio of Unique Bites as well. Here are the Common ones:
Sawprow – 1 Stake, +1 Saws, big chainsaws! Close Quarters (CQ) Serrated damage
I am not going to go into all the Sail and Unique options here because there are too many already, to be honest, and I know I don’t want any of them. I need to stick to my guns, or my chainsaws in this instance. As I am worried about the number of Stakes I have left to spend, I won’t go for the Longjaw. Instead I’ll go for option number one, Sawprow, for 1 Stake, giving me +1 Saws.
Engine
This is the last bit in the Design stage. A few things to note about the ship’s Engine:
It can be used for more than just propulsion
It will require a specific type of fuel
In most instances, don’t worry about tracking the fuel
There are eleven Common Engines and four more Unique ones. Here are the Common ones:
Chemical Compressor – 1 Stake, +1 Speed. Fuel – crushed fruit and insect husks
Springwork – 1 Stake, +1 Saws. Fuel – manual labour
The Unique Engines are fun too. One of them is this:
Tamed Hive – 2 Stakes, +1 Speed, +1 Seals. It’s a massive hive and can produce honey. Fuel – flowers and pollen
I love the whimsy of the Tamed Hive so much that I must have it! That’s 2 Stakes but it adds +1 Speed and +1 Seals
There won’t be any more changes to the Ratings from the remaining steps so our final Ratings are:
Armour – 2
Seals – 2
Speed – 4
Saws – 3
Stealth – 1
Tilt – 1
A weird looking wildsea ship
Step Two – Fittings
Pretty much every part of this is optional, which is just as well because I only have eight Stakes left…
Motif
So this is the general theme and purpose of the ship. Choosing one can help the whole crew get a clear vision of the vessel and will also influence how others see you and it. They provide specific things like emergency medicine, gaudy appearance or a reinforced engine room. They do not provide mechanical effects but they may play a part narratively.
Here are the available Motifs. They each cost two Stakes:
Transport
Hauling
Hunting
Salvaging
Pathfinding
Raiding
Rescue
Research
Entertainment
You don’t have to choose a Motif for your ship but I am enamoured by the idea of a Research vessel out there on the wild waves. Perhaps the unconventional engine was something we discovered during a past expedition and we figured out how to make our ship go with it through the power of research!
A Research vessel:
has better tech on show than most ships
contains a research library
houses a snapograph arrangement. Its a sort of big camera
Additions
There are so many of these, most of them costing a single Stake. We’ve got Firefly Lanterns, a Cargo Crane, a Steam Whistle and lots more. But, as I am getting worried about how much I’ve spent already, I am only going to pick up:
Anchor System – Its Free!
Tethered Kitesail – 1 Stake – its a glider that is hooked to the deck. Lets us go up and get a bird’s eye view when the wind’s up
Rooms
On a Small Size vessel it’s not a great idea to split your already limited space up any further. You already have the following rooms on your ship:
A Pilot’s Cabin
A Main Deck
Crew Quarters
An Engine Room
A Cargo Bay
You can add a lot of different types of rooms like a Galley, a Navigational Suite, a Tap-Room or a Brig and they are all optional.
But this is a Research vessel now and I feel like we need a good way to observe stuff. We have the glider to allow us to watch from above. I would like to add a Cupola to the hull, near the rear of the ship, giving a great view of the Underthrash. That costs one Stake. I am down to just four Stakes left.
Armaments
Weapons are next on the Fittings list. These, too, are optional. In this case, they are either placed on deck or fixed to the Hull. I’m not crazy about the idea of armaments for a Research vessel, however, since our Stealth sucks, I think it’s prudent.
We have a lot of choices, from Trebuchet to Storm-Rail to Broadside Cannons and a Bladed Prow. But I’m going to pick up something suitably sciencey:
Viper’s Tooth – 2 Stakes, sprays an acid of some sort dealing Long Range Acid Damage.
Outriders
This is another option for defence. Honestly, with a Small ship, I don’t have the space for this and I also don’t have the Stakes to spend on it. You have to build an Outrider much like a ship, although it only has two components. You will also then need to add a way to store and deploy it from your actual ship. It seems like a fun extra but I can’t afford it.
Step Three – Undercrew
Octopus crew
These come in three varieties: Officers, Gangs and Packs. I’m not going to go into detail on each variety as this post is already way too long. Suffice it to say, the officers are Skilled, Experienced or Well-Travelled, the Gangs are not necessarily what you might think of when you think of Gangs (some of them are Tinkers, some are Spear-Fishers, but some are actual Marauders) and the Packs are animals…
You can have Spring-Foxes which leap along beside your ship to warn of danger, Rig-Ferrets who can do knots, Squirrel Flingers who will fight to defend your vessel. But what I want is one of the Insect Packs:
Glowbug Parade – 2 Stakes, they follow the crew members around and illuminate their surroundings for them!
Personal Touches
And so, with all Stakes spent, we come back to the start and our little idiosyncrasies. The book suggests describing the following, so I will:
Colour and Style – I think it was once a scientific grey and white, all straight lines but now it is a dark shade of honey as the insects crawled all over it. It’s all smeared and waxy. The crew have left it that way as they think it protects from parasites
Shape and Construction – I think this ship is quite blocky, almost as though it was constructed from prefab elements. But, once again, the engine bees have shored up all the joints and seams with wax and honey, making it look far more organic
Quarters Decoration – I don’t have my character created yet so I am going to revisit this when I have made them. I expect that all the crew sleep in a single chamber, though. They might each have a personalised corner
Quirk – Sometimes the bees go to sleep at night and we can’t get the engine to start
History – This has always been our ship. It has been on a mission of discovery and research for several years now. We were originally led by an old eccentric who built it and funded it. Now she’s gone, we carry on in her place
Research Motif (2 Stakes) Anchor System Addition (Free) Tethered Kitesail Addition (1 Stake) Cupola Room (1 Stake) Viper’s Tooth Armament (2 Stakes, Massive LR Acid Damage) No Outriders
Undercrew
No Officers No Gangs Glowing Parade Insect Pack (2 Stakes)
Conclusion
I’ll keep this short as that was very long. You should set aside a session just for this process, dear reader. There are a lot of choices and I can only imagine how much longer it would take with four or five people trying to come to agreement on it! However, it has given me a very clear idea of the Ship I just created and a few ideas for the type of character who might crew it.
You play a scoundrel…doing [heists] with your crew. The setting is Doskvol, a city in perpetual darkness beset by inter-faction strife, corrupt leaders, and supernatural entities. The end goal for the character is usually to retire from that life with enough coin in their stash to live safely and securely without worrying about rivals or the authorities.
This is the third in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule of our next campaign. You can find the Triangle Agency one here. And you can find the Slugblaster one here.
Forging a New Era
From top left, clockwise, the covers of Bump in the Dark, Band of Blades, The Wildsea and Slugblaster
Blades in the Dark, by John Harper has had such a profound impact on the TTRPG landscape since its release in 2017, that it’s hard to overstate it. It has a devoted following, it consistently appears on top ten RPG lists and it has spawned a bewildering array of games based on its system and setting. Forged in the Dark games like Band of Blades, Girl by Moonlight, Bump in the Dark, Slugblaster and Wildsea (debatably.) You can find a non-exhaustive list here.
The system is story-focused, encouraging players as well as GM to take a hand in building the narrative. Near the start of the book, it is pointed out that, “no-one is in charge of the story.” If I were to encourage you to take anything from this short summary, it would be that.
As in Slugblaster, you roll a D6 when attempting something. 1-3 is a failure, 4/5 is a success with consequences and 6 is a full success. The consequences from a failure or mixed success can come in the form of Stress, and thereby Harm and Trauma Conditions, which have more of an narrative effect on the story than a mechanical one (although they certainly have that too.) You can also add more dice to your roll and build a dice pool to give you more chance of rolling higher. You do this in several ways, by using pushing yourself, getting assistance or taking a Devil’s Bargain.
In all of these Forged in the Dark games, the rolls you make are highly abstracted. Instead of making a stealth roll, an investigation roll or a thieves’ tools roll, you describe what your character wants to do and then roll with the appropriate Action Rating. In most cases the Action encompasses a character’s whole part in a scene, rather than a single, explicit skill or combat thing like in D&D and similar games. The choice of the Action Rating used is explicitly left up to the player, but if the GM thinks it might be more effective to use a different one, they can reduce the impact of the action or increase the danger of the PC’s position, making the consequences for failure more severe.
Blades has several really cool mechanics, like the Flashback to go back and prepare something for the situation you find yourself in, but I don’t have the space to go into every rule here. Maybe I’ll do more of a deep-dive into the rules in another post. For now, let’s go about creating my Scoundrel.
Dark Heists
It’s important to remember the setting and the type of game this is. You play a scoundrel of some sort, doing jobs/heists/cons with your crew. The setting is Doskvol (or Duskwall), a city in perpetual darkness beset by inter-faction strife, corrupt leaders, and supernatural entities. The end goal for the character is usually to retire from that life with enough coin in their stash to live safely and securely without worrying about rivals or the authorities.
Blades in the Dark character creation steps
Playbooks
The types of characters available to play are suitably goth.
Cutter – violent and intimidating
Hound – crack-shot tracker
Leech – explosive alchemist
Lurk – shadowy sneak-thief
Slide – social and manipulative
Spider – factional mastermind
Whisper – magic and ghosts
There are seven of them, as you will have noticed. So, I’m breaking out the DCC zocchi dice again. I got a 4 on the d7 making this character a Lurk.
The Lurk
The Lurk playbook in Blades in the Dark
There is no longer any sunlight — the world is plunged into eternal night. There are scoundrels who live in the darkness, who prowl the underworld unseen, trespassing where they will. They are the burglars, the spies, the infiltrators, the cut-throats — commonly called Lurks.
After this pleasing intro, the playbook description tells me that my Lurk will gain xp whenever they “address a challenge with stealth or evasion.” Each of the playbooks have a different way to earn xp that’s individual to them.
Here also, it asks a couple of questions to get the player thinking, not just about the mechanics of the playbook, but about the personality and background of their character:
Q. How did you learn the stealthy arts of the Lurk? A. I was taken in at a young age by a band of pickpockets and sneak-thieves.
Q. Which Aspect are you drawn to most? The invisible watcher, spying on the unwary? The adroit acrobat, racing across rooftops? The deadly ambush predator, waiting for a victim in the darkness? A. The intimate knowledge of the city’s underworld, its back alleys and interconnected cellars, its rooftops and sewers. Where to spy from, where to approach a potential mark/victim from and how.
Starting Actions
Everyone has three Attributes:
Insight
Prowess
Resolve
Each of these has four Action Ratings hanging off it. Insight has
Hunt
Study
Survey
Tinker
Prowess has
Finesse
Prowl
Skirmish
Wreck
Resolve has
Attune
Command
Consort
Sway
You can have up to four points, or dots, in each Action Rating although you can only have up to two dots at the start. The Attribute Ratings will equal the number of associated Action Ratings they have any score in. So if you have any dots in Attune and any dots in Command, you will have a Resolve of 2. You use the Attribute Ratings to resist different types of stress.
In the case of the Lurk, I start off with 1 point in Finesse and 2 in Prowl. I will add four more points to Action Ratings at a later step.
Shady Friends/Rivals
Your connections to NPCs can be key to a successful or disastrous career as a scoundrel. There is a list of five in a table here. I’m going to roll my d5 once for a Friend and once for a Rival
Friend – 3 – Frake. This is a locksmith who has taught me everything I know about lock-picking. He has an encyclopaedic knowledge of every type of lock, chest, safe and safe room in the city
Rival – 2 – Darmot. Once, he was one of our band of pickpockets, now, he uses his knowledge against them. He’s busted me many times
Lurk Special Abilities
You only get one of the eight listed abilities to start with.
Infiltrator – you don’t suffer negative effects due to higher quality security measures employed by higher Tier enemies
Ambush – Gives you an extra d6 when attacking from hiding
Daredevil – get a bonus die if you take a desperate action as long as you take -1d6 to resist any consequences of it
The Devil’s Footsteps – push yourself to do the impossible. This ability has a variety of effects
Expertise – you have to choose an action rating and when you lead a group action with that, you can only take a maximum of 1 stress
Ghost Veil – go completely invisible by shifting into the ghost field. Just take some stress to do it
Reflexes – who should act first? You should, of course!
Shadow – use your special armour to resist consequences from security measures or pushing yourself in physical endeavours
The book suggests taking the first one listed if you can’t decide between them. However, I am going to roll a d8 to make the decision for me. That’s an 8!
Shadow
You may expend your special armor to resist a consequence from detection or security measures, or to push yourself for a feat of athletics or stealth. When you use this ability, tick the special armor box on your playbook sheet. If you “resist a consequence” of the appropriate type, you avoid it completely. If you use this ability to push yourself, you get one of the benefits (+1d, +1 effect, act despite severe harm) but you don’t take 2 stress. Your special armor is restored at the beginning of downtime.
I like this a lot. It matches the growing image of this character that I have in my mind.
Lurk Items
There is a section in the playbook description for items specific to the Lurk, but there is no need to choose anything at this stage. In Blades in the Dark, you simply indicate at the start of a Score how heavy a Loadout you have on you. That gives you a number of Load points to assign as the Score progresses. When you come across a situation in which you need “Dark-sight goggles” for instance, you write them down and mark the 1 Load that they take up. You never need to describe the items you have in your pack beforehand.
Heritages
The Shattered Isles map and description
There are six options here. Your Heritage is more akin to a real-world ethnicity or national background than a race or species. It is quite likely to shape your character’s politics, social circles and general way of thinking. It is unlikely to have any mechanical effect. Here are the Heritages:
Akoros – big, industrialised land. Like Europe. Duskwall is here.
Dagger Isles – peopled by corsairs and merchants who sail the seas between their isles and beyond
Iruvia – a desert kingdom to the south. Think Egypt.
Severos – a wild place with nomadic people who survive in the ruins of ages past
Skovlan – recently colonised by Doskvol. Many refugees from here have come to the city to look for opportunity
Tycheros – a far-away land where the people are part demon. These characters get demonic telltales that mark them physically
Rolling a d6 for this as well: That’s a 1! Akoros. This is a local person whose family fell on hard times. While their parents were out looking for work, this guy was out running around with their gang, stealing and sneaking.
Backgrounds
What did this character do before going their crew? There are 7 options:
Academic
Labour
Law
Trade
Military
Noble
Underworld
I would normally roll for this but I feel like I already have such a solid picture of this Lurk in my head that I am going to have to go for Underworld here. They were a street kid, a pickpocket within a network of urchins that spanned the city.
Assigning Action Dots
There are only a couple of rules to the way you can assign these dots (points) on your character sheet. You can’t start with more than two points in any one Action Rating. Also you should add one dot to an Action rating that reflects your Heritage and one dot to an Action Rating that reflects your Background.
I think, as a local in this industrial city, this character would get a dot in Tinker and as a wee guttersnipe, they would need a dot in Skirmish. I get two more dots to spend freely so I would like to add one to Hunt and one to Attune.
Vices
In your downtime between Scores, you might want to blow off some steam to relieve stress. That’s why you need a good vice!
Here are the options:
Faith
Gambling
Luxury
Obligation
Pleasure
Stupor
Weird
There is a great deal of leeway to describe the specifics of your vice within the confines of the category. I’m going to roll a d7 for this. That’s a 1, Faith. I think my Scoundrel has found his place amongst an underground cult in the city. In fact, I think the band of urchins they have been part of since childhood is led by a prophet, a visionary with the ability to speak to god through the dead.
Name, Alias and Look
Name: Arvus Arran (I chose this from the long list of names in the book) Alias: Bug (small, sneaky, seems to fly) Looks: Non-binary, delicate, Fitted Leggings, Hooded Coat, Long Scarf.
Just like in Slugblaster, you really need a crew to finish out a Blades in the Dark character, but this isn’t really possible here, except to say there are a few crew types:
Assassins
Bravos
Cult
Hawkers
Shadows
Smugglers
And Cult seems to make sense here, imagining that the rest of the crew are also members of Arvus’ gang.
Conclusion
This is such a straight-forward character creation process that involves very little flipping between sections of the book. With a new character, you don’t have too many decisions to make and you can begin to get a feel for the character you’re creating very quickly. You can also see the potential for future stories and drama in elements of the process such as the friends and rivals.
I have only played the one campaign of Blades in the Dark but writing this post has whetted my appetite for more!
But what is the aim of this game? Well, its to be the most teen teen you can been.
This is the second in a series of character creation posts I’m using to figure out which game I want to schedule of our next campaign. You can find the last one here.
Kick-flip Over a Quantum Centipede
That’s it. That’s the game. This is the kind of weird shit your character should be doing, or, at least, trying to be doing. “What is a Quantum Centipede?” I hear you ask. If you have to ask, you’re just proving you’re a dork. Not like me and my crew. We’re Slugblasters and we go Slugblasting across the frikkin’ multiverse on our boards. Or, like, it will be me, after I get finished making this character.
Slugblaster
Slugblaster GOTY boxed set cover
Slugblaster is a game by Mikey Hamm. It was released by Mythworks in 2024. It uses a Forged in the Dark system which means it’s based on Blades in the Dark. I will be making a Blades character as part of this series too, but for some perverse reason, I decided to do this one first.
Essentially, in a Forged in the Dark system you build a dice pool of D6s through various means. When you roll your dice pool to try and achieve something, the highest roll is generally the only one that counts. A 6 is a full success (and, actually, if you get more than one 6, in Slugblaster, it gives you 1 Style point.) A 4 or a 5 means you succeed but introduce a problem of some kind. Anything else is a failure.
There are other rules, of course, but that is the essence of it.
But what is the aim of this game? Well, its to be the most teen teen you can been. You have to do kick-ass tricks on your board, hack gear, get into drama with your teammates and rivals, and have “touching narrative downtime arcs.”
And the “classes” available to us reflect all of that so well.
Pick Your Personality
In this game, Personality is the closest thing to a character class or playbook. Here are the available Personalities:
The Grit
The Guts
The Smarts
The Heart
The Chill
As the book tells us, “Your personality isn’t about what you can do, it’s about how.” Which seems appropriate in a game about teenagers. It also means that any PC can do anything, as long as they describe it in terms of the way their Personality would handle it. I like this a lot. It’s a strong foundation for a heavily narrative game. Anyway, I’m going to roll a d5 to see which Personality I go with. I got a 5, which makes my character the Chill. This is, by far the most important decision/roll you make regarding your character. The Personality itself defines most of the things that make you you.
The Chill
The Chill description, extra gear, attitude and traitsThe Chill Beats and illustration
“Play as the Chill if you want to crack jokes, eat some snacks, let problems solve themselves, and not think too much.”
Maybe the Chill is just lucky or maybe they notice things the others never do. Things work out for the Chill, that’s all.
Here are some of the things the Chill gets:
Extra Gear
1-2 Something You Found on Your Way Here or 3-4 A Pet
I rolled a 2 on a d4 so I’m going to take Something I Found on My Way Here. That is incredibly wide open. Could be anything at all. I’m going to say it’s something that all adventurers should have, a long length of cabling. It was just lying there on the pavement in front of Old Swenson’s ‘shop, wrapped in plastic and taped up. It took a while to get it open with my Swiss Army knife to see what it was. It adorns my shoulder, cross-body.
I think, technically, this item is whatever you need at the time during the Run. I don’t think you need to actually decide what the item is until its needed.
Style Bonus
I get 1 Style after a run in which I express “ease or flow.” Style is a currency that you gain by doing cool stuff and playing to character. You can spend it during downtime to gain Beats, propelling the story in the way you want it to go.
Attitude
I get to add an extra d6 to all actions! Ad infinitum! This is massive. If I could otherwise only manage 1d6 for an action, this immediately doubles my chances of a favourable outcome. Don’t forget, it’s only the top result on your dice that matters.
Traits
You only get to pick one of these to start with. As you hit your Trait Beats, you get to choose more. For now, let’s take a look at what’s available. There are five to choose from:
Steezey – Gets me an extra style if I roll doubles
Umm… Guys – I happen across the stuff nobody else does
Button Masher – I can utilise a “locked mod” but only for one action. You can normally only mod your devices when you have the correct set of components for them. You can also normally only use mods that you have on your own Signature gear. This would let me momentarily yoink a crewmate’s mod and use it for my own nefarious purposes
Lucky – I can use this to have one thing go my way that otherwise would have gone south. But I could only use it once per Run
Quirk – I would get to choose one thing that I’m inexplicably proficient in doing. If I can relate it to the action I am taking, I can upgrade any 1-3 roll to a 4/5 instead. What am I good at? Could be practically anything.
It would obviously be better to choose the perfect starting trait for the character you want to build, but I’m going to roll for it again. I rolled a 4 on my d5! That makes me Lucky! I’m quite happy with that. It is very thematic for this Personality and can be used in almost any situation.
Beats
So, you don’t start with any of these, since they are all about the advancement of your Slugblaster. But, I thought it would be fun to introduce the concept and some of the Arcs they can lead to. This system of Beats is heavily inspired by its namesake in Heart the City Beneath, which I discussed in this post last year. In Slugblaster, the Beats are a little more focused and you have to spend currencies like Style and Trouble to buy them. That allows you to play out a scene and send the story off in a way that you and your character want it to. This might be something to do with your Traits, like introducing your Origin Story, it might be something to do with your Family, showing your Trouble at Home or the Final Straw for your parents. It might be more to do with your Personality. Here is the Chill Arc:
Caught in a Plot – this costs 1 Style. Wrong place at the wrong time? Right place at the right time? Somehow your luck makes sure you discover some sort of plot.
Serendipity – this costs 2 Style. The plot thickens. Your crew might have something to say about it. This one gives you +1 Legacy. Legacy goes towards your ultimate Epilogue, deciding the type of life your teen will have in the future.
In Too Deep – This one costs 4 Trouble, which is quite a lot. The corner you painted yourself into with this case of mistaken identity has gotten very narrow and claustrophobic. You get found out. Things are going bad and one of your teammates notices how bad. This one gives you +1 Doom, which has a similar, if more negative effect on your Epilogue.
Somehow Works Out – The last Beat in the Chill Arc costs 3 Style. As the Chill, everything always works out in the end. Why were you ever worried? -1 Doom, +1 Legacy and +1 Trait.
Like I said, I can’t pick any of these at this stage, I just wanted you to get a feel for the types of Beats available to a Slugblaster character, dear reader.
Vibes
This one is an actual d6 table. Nice. Here are the options: “
Space cadet
Just woke up
Laundry day
deadpan
Always eating a bag of chips
Kisses their mom on the lips and isn’t weird about it” (!)
Here we go! That’s a 3 on a d6. That gives my Laundry Day. Just out there wearing the punishment underwear and the ripped jeans.
Look
There is another table, this time a d6xd6 table that will help me define this Slugblaster’s looks. The first roll is a 1 and the second roll is a 5. That gives me the result, “ballcap.” I think this a baseball cap given to me by my brother, who has left for college.
I’m going to roll again on this table, because just “ballcap” isn’t much of a look. This time I get a 4 and a 4. That’s “chains.” I’m imaging a lot of different sized chains hanging off a thick leather belt connected to a bunch of different things like keys, that Swiss Army knife, a little flashlight, an oversized Garbage Pail Kid keyring.
Family
Another d6xd6 roll here: I get a 5 and a 4, which gives me “sheltered.” Maybe that means they are a family who distrusts the rest of society, and they just want to be left alone to do things their own way. I imagine this could lead to an interesting Family arc! You are supposed to roll on this table twice, so I rolled again and got a 6 and a 2, “relaxed.” This seems to be at odds with the first one, but maybe it just refines the story a bit. Maybe the family has been sheltered for so long that they have become complacent about the outside world. Maybe, when to comes back to bite them, things will change.
Bond
This one is not really possible for right now. It requires there to be other actual players. The book suggests that everyone should choose the PC of the player sitting to their right to have a bond with. This is a nice random way to conduct this sort of thing. Sometimes, you find that a player is most likely to choose the other player that they already know best for this sort of bond. In my car, I am going to just roll a d4 to decide the other Personality type that I am Bonded with. I rolled a 2, which gives me the Guts. That’s the Personality with lots of confidence and “sass.” There is a d6 table here that you can roll on to better define the type of relationship you both have. I rolled a 1, which means we were childhood friends.
Gear
Rayguns
Everyone starts with a phone, a raygun and a hoverboard as well as the extra gear provided in your Personality description.
Since the Phone section suggests that it doesn’t need to be phone shaped, I think I will go for a wrist-console
I get a Raygun… There are two steps to making it. Step A and Step B, each of which involves a d6xd6 table. I got a 1 and a 3 for Step A and a 3 and a 5 for Step B. This gives me a Particle Blaster.
And then there’s the Board. Obviously the average Slugblaster’s most price piece of kit. The “Your Board” section of the book has a nice intro to the origin of the Nth Gear Hoverboard and how it revolutionised the world. The section also has several tables to help you design your board. So here we go!:
Grip Colour – 2 and 3 gives me “red.” I’m thinking gaudy, tie-dyed red Grip Cut – 4 and 3 gives me “logo.” The stylised face of a little gremlin Deck Graphic – 2 and 5 give me “name of a sponsor.” The sponsor is called “Gremling” Type of board – I got a 5 and a 1, “oldschool”
You also get two pieces of gear from the list on page 66 of the book. I’m going to check that out right now.
Here are the two items I have selected from page 66:
Grappling Hook – it has 100 feet of cable, can stick to almost anything and has a handy winch
Pro Camera Gear – This could be anything from a decent DSLR camera and tripod to “shoulder-mounted 3D rigs”
Pick Your Signature
Signatures
This is the item you are probably going to use to solve most of your problems given half a chance. People know you by this item and it’s your most prized possession. I’m going to use the table to help me describe it! 3 and 3 means its dirty/worn.
But, what exactly is the item? There are twelve listed so I’m going to roll a d12 for it obviously. That’s a 10, which gives me a Kinetic Deck, which allows my oldschool board to go faster over solid ground and make it super-heavy at will.
I get one mod to start with, although there are five listed. I’m going to go for the Stasis Anchor which can make the board totally immovable until its deactivated.
You get some more tables to add flavour to your Signature.
Origin – 4 – made it myself
Form – 3 – There’s an enamel pin made by my best friend, the Guts, stuck to the front of the board
Slogan – 26 – “ALT” and its got a holographic face that keeps changing as the angle changes
Name Yourself
My parents know me as Benji McWhirter. My friends call me Bench and I call myself Alter.
Conclusion
And that’s it, that’s the whole character creation process. I imagine, if you’re not writing about every step, it is probably quite quick to roll up a new character. There are a lot of fun ways to customise the base character but the fun seems to be in advancing, gaining Beats and Traits, Doom and Legacy and Fracture (another type of currency which is used to break up the crew!) But it starts you off with the tools to make things really awesome and dramatic as the game goes on, and that’s what it’s all about. I have a couple of gripes and they involve the gear. What you get to start with is stated in a couple of different places, but in each one, the list of things you start with is different. Also, there is an element of confusion around the Signature still. I am not sure if my Signature is my oldschool board that has this Kinetic Deck upgrade, or is that another piece of equipment on top of my board? It’s not super clear.
Otherwise, I have one more mechanics-related complaint and that is about the jargon used in place of more (for me) understandable terms. Boost, kick, turbo, slam… is it because I’m not a skater? The meaning of these slides off my brain, unlike the terms used in Blades in the Dark: goal, action rating, position, effect, harm.
Maybe I would get used it in play.
It is a gorgeous book, I have to say. The artwork is colourful and creative and inspiring and the writing is witty and just right, theme-wise.
Have you any experience with Slugblasting, dear reader? I’d love to hear your thoughts.
“Triangle Agency is a tabletop role-playing game and exciting new job opportunity for humans like you.”
Be the change you want to play
I haven’t made any real progress in deciding what to run next. I asked the question here but have not enough feedback to be helpful. So I thought I would take a more practical approach to the problem. Several times over the last year or so, I’ve written up complete character creation posts for various games and systems to give me more of an insight into them, to see how I like them and to get me motivated to run them. You can read some of them here. I have always found these to be useful exercises and usually pretty entertaining for me too. So this will be the first in a series of character creation posts. I will do one for each of the games in the list in my aforementioned Time for a Change post. The first of those is one I am very interested in getting to grips with. I have been reading the rule book for a while and it’s one of the more unique and exciting on the list.
Triangle Agency
The back cover of Triangle Agency
Triangle Agency is a game by Caleb Zane Huett and Sean Ireland published by Haunted Table in 2024. Here is what the back cover has to say about it:
Triangle Agency is a tabletop role-playing game and exciting new job opportunity for humans like you.
Investigate supernatural Anomalies, wield tremendous power, and take advantage of our comprehensive life insurance benefits all from the comfort of your favourite table!
This book includes everything necessary for you to experience the chilling horror, wacky comedy, and emotional truth that can only come from working for Reality’s Most Trustworthy Corporation, 333 years running.
Welcome to the first job of the rest of your life!
I think that’s enough to go on for now.
Getting started
The book has more than fifty pages of material introducing the core concepts and rules of the game before it even dips its toes into the cool waters of character creation.
The first step into that stream would barely be considered part of character creation in most games (and I’m not entirely certain it is in this one, but that’s where I’m starting):
Identifying your Region
The book gives you a few options here, including your own hometown, a place you would like to be, a fictional place and Ternion City, the setting presented in the book as though it were a real place and so does not simply get included in the “fictional place” category.
I normally randomise everything in character creation posts but I’m not sure that will be helpful here. I’m going to go for Ternion City, which is, after all the location for the Agency’s primary HQ, a massive skyscraper that is “hard to miss and not included on maps.” In a real campaign, I’m sure this would have been decided upon through conversation with all the players or just by executive decision by the GM (General Manager.)
The same section wants you to determine the level of mundanity/reality of your setting, asking you to determine if a long list of phenomena are real or if they could be considered Anomalies. The list includes Ghosts, Artificial Intelligence and Debt. This is also probably something to be decided as a table or by GM decree.
Your agent’s ARC
The start of this section takes pains to remind you that you shouldn’t have skipped forward to this page. If you did, your agent will begin play with one demerit.
Essentially, your ARC is the set of components that makes up the essence of your agent. Each component is call an ARC piece. The A stands for your Anomaly, the R represents your Reality and the C is for your Competency.
Anomaly
As an agent of the Triangle Agency, you are bonded with one of the very Anomalies you are tasked with hunting down and dealing with. Such people are called Resonants.
There are nine Anomalies to choose from and I would expect the choice to be a hard one. Every one of them is split into three different abilities, each of which sounds like great fun to use in play.
They include:
Whisper: if you have Whisper abilities you can manipulate what people say, express the thoughts of others or silence your own noises
Catalogue: a Catalogue Resonant can create objects, change the properties of objects or even produce a duplicate of themselves
Timepiece: Timepieces can adjust time to suit their needs, help allies to overclock their own abilities and effect a target’s memory
Timepiece Anomaly page
There are several others that are just as compelling but I love the idea of time manipulation powers so that’s the one for me.
This gives my Agent three abilities. Each of these abilities comes with a survey question to help you build your character’s personality. This is a really nice touch and great way to link personality and ability traits.
We’ve Got Time, Q: I know A1: The deep magic
Overclock, Q: I’ll sleep when… A1: I’m tired
Remember When, Q: I’m more likely to ask… A: Where are they going?
Reality
Reality is as it says, really. It’s the regular, everyday shit we all have in our lives, family, relationships, background, etc.
I need to select one of nine Realities. They include:
Caretaker – devoted to a Dependent who they bring everywhere with them
Overbooked – Maintains a job (Vocation) in the mundane world as well as their Agency duties. Finds it hard to maintain Relationships.
Romantic – constantly distracted by the building of complex relationship webs. They fall in love easily and always want to please that person.
With the Timepiece Anomaly, Overbooked seems like a suitable Reality for my Agent.
Overbooked Reality page
Overbooked provides you with a Vocation. There is a d4 table for this so I am going to roll on it. I got a 1! That’s “Journalist.” Very Clark Kent.
Every Reality gets a “Reality Trigger.” You get a work phone for one of your Relationships to call you at any time. This is for the GM to fuck with you at the worst possible time. You get a 4 box track called “Something Gives.” Every time you fail to fulfil the requirements of your Vocation or lose the phone you mark a box on the track. If you mark them all, that’s it, you’re done. You have to choose a new Reality.
Every Reality gets a Burnout Release. This is something you can do that allows you to ignore all Burnout, which is great because Burnout reduces the number of successes you score when you roll your dice pool to do stuff. In the case of the Overbooked, the Burnout Release is Threading the Needle. It means you can do anything relating to your Vocation and ignore Burnout.
Burnout is something you accrue as you attempt actions using Qualities that you have no Quality Assurances in. Sometimes you lose QAs and sometimes you just don’t have any to start with. Your Competency determines the level of QA you have in any given Quality so we’ll consider them more in the next section.
We have some Onboarding Questions here in the description of the Overbooked too. Let’s look at them:
What is the most difficult decision you’ve ever made?
A: When I decided to take the position as an Agent, I knew it would severely impact the time and commitment I could give to my Vocation as a journalist. Even though I now know I was choosing between becoming an Agent and death, I sometimes regret my decision.
What terrible thing will happen if you give up your responsibilities?
A: No-one can report the news with the same degree of integrity as I can. The world will lose a ruthless truth-teller.
How do you celebrate victories?
A: I don’t. There’s no time for celebration. It’s just on to the next story or the next Anomaly.
I feel like I really learned a lot about this character in answering those questions. Very cool.
Finally, as part of my Reality, there’s the Relationship Matrix. You get three Relationships which you must identify by answering the questions provided.
Who is your other boss?
My editor, Sybill McPartland
Who cares the most about your health?
Mum
Who are you in charge of?
My rich kid intern, Hunter
I need to identify one of them as my closest Relationship. That will be my editor, Sybill. She gets 6 Connection. Mum and Hunter get 3 each.
If there were a full table of players for this, I would get three of them to portray each of my Relationships whenever a scene with them came up. These players would be chosen here. As it is, I will have to skip that step.
Competency
The final ARC piece is Competency. The book describes it as the most important aspect of your ARC (although, I have never before met a more unreliable narrator in an RPG book as the one in this section of Triangle Agency, so, you know, take it all with a pinch of salt.) Essentially, this is your role in the agency. It describes your responsibilities, code of conduct and equipment.
The available Competencies include:
R&D – The creatives who see what people really want and make it for them while also figuring out the universe’s enigmas
Gravedigger – These are the agents who are taking care of things no-one else wants to face in places they don’t want to be
Hotline – An ear to listen, a guide and a customer service professional
With this character, I think I’m going to go for Hotline.
Hotline Competency page
Here’s what the Hotline gets me:
Prime Directive – Never say, “unfortunately.” If I deliver bad news to someone, I get a demerit (demerits are used to negatively affect your standing in the Agency, while commendations have the opposite effect.)
Sanctioned Behaviours – I’ll get one commendation if I
Help someone unburden themselves
Take the blame for something I didn’t do
Connect someone to an unexpected fate
If I do all of these on a single mission, I’ll get three extra commendations!
Initial Requisition – Hold Music, Vol. 1 A fantastical tape player the bland music of which has the power to transport the agents to a safe waiting room for up to an hour!
Self-Assessment – I have to answer the three questions presented to determine the increases I will get to particular Quality Assurances.
A customer has a problem I have been unable to fix in my own life. I…
Share the approaches that have failed, to save them time (+3 Empathy)
A customer has a broken product and a convincing story. I…
Pull every string necessary to get their refund (+3 Persistence)
A customer’s call disconnected. I…
Call them back and submit an error report to IT (+3 to Professionalism)
Signature quote – “Your call is important to us. Your time is important to us. Everything you do, think, and are is important to us.” I think my Agent really takes this to heart.
Onboarding Questionnaire
The final part of character creation that I will be dealing with today. There are several more pages dealing with Competencies in detail, Requisitions, Work/Life Balance, etc. but the book insists that you leave this section until after your first mission.
The Questionnaire is a set of nine questions, the answers to which you should expect to be shared with the rest of your Field Team.
How did you come in contact with your Anomaly?
I was TAPped for fieldwork though the Triangle Academy Program. I was approached by another field agent who must have seen some potential in me. Once I had completed the program, I was left in a glass cell with an Anomaly that looked like an old egg-timer that kept spinning in the air until it fused with my body.
How did the Agency find you?
I found the Agency through a case I was reporting on. It was about the disappearance of a circle of trees in Trinity Park. When I went there to investigate, I discovered several field agents who were impressed with my professionalism and brought me on board.
What is your Annual Salary?
$80,000
What do you look like?
I’m a skinny, white guy who wears a lot of brown and beige coloured corduroy and polyester. I have thick rimmed glasses, brown hair and brown eyes. I look like I’m from the seventies.
Do your powers have a unique visual manifestation?
I sometimes leave little piles of sand behind after using my powers.
How do you take your coffee?
Black
Who among your Relationships is your primary contact, and why?
My editor, Sybill, because she would be the first one to miss me.
What do you bring to the table in a collaborative work environment?
I am a dogged investigator. When I am given a task, I will see it through to the end.
Finally, please list all prior work experience and level of familiarity with Adobe, Excel and the Google suite.
As a journalist, I have ten years experience working with all aspects of adobe software and most of the Google suite although I rarely use Excel for anything other than lists of things. Don’t ask me about formulas.
Two last things, I gave him the pronouns, he/him and the name Mark Dent for some reason.
This was a fairly involved process but one that got me thinking quite deeply about the type of person this Agent is and not just the type of character he is, if you see the distinction. I really liked doing it actually. I loved reading about the various Anomalies, in particular. If I was actually about to be a player in a game of Triangle Agency, I’d be eager to get to use them too! I feel like I learned a lot about how the game would be played as well. So, mission accomplished in that respect.
Characters created! Caravan stocked! My players are ready to head off from the outlying barrio of the Violet City into the trackless expanse of the Ultraviolet Grasslands. Honestly, between characters and caravan, our session went over time quite significantly. I did not expect to get any actual travelling done during the session, having gone through the character creation process myself already and having listened to the first couple of sessions of this Open Hearth Actual Play refereed by Marc Majcer. It took them the full three hours or so of the first session to do the same. In fact, they were still settling caravan details for the first part of the second session too.
I actually do regret not creating my own caravan before we had session 0 too. I think it would have helped the process go smoother. But not to worry! It went well enough and, indeed, the players enjoyed both processes. They particularly liked the sheer off-the-wall nature of everything about their characters, the anti-canon nature of the game and the setting and the randomness of almost every step. As for the caravan creation section, specifically; I have noted in a post from last year that I like to give the PCs a home that I can fuck with and I have done it repeatedly in various campaigns. But, in previous games, the creation of that home was never as involved or player -focused as it was in UVG. They immediately got into it. They understood the importance of the caravan, the supplies, the capacity of the vehicles, the types of animals they chose and the cost of everything of course. It took very little urging from me for them to get attached. They now have three carts and 9 mounts, all of which have names, some of which have favourite plushies and foods, a few hired cart drivers, also named and probably with tragic backstories. They have made it exceedingly easy for me to manipulate their little emotions when I fuck with the caravan almost immediately.
My approach
Anyway, today, I’m going to take a slightly different approach to caravan creation than they did. They opted for the “first caravan” package that is presented in the UVG core book. This is honestly a great option that does a lot of the work for you. It takes several key decisions out of the players’ hands and does all the cash calculations for them. Each of them took this package and added a few more animals. That’s how they ended up with so many carts and such a menagerie of pony-analogues.
I’m going to start from scratch, deciding on the method of transportation, the types of animals or animal alternatives, the trade goods and travelling gear. The caravan is going to be run by the character I created a few days ago, my D.W.A.R.F. Tumult Fisher Wizard, Del ‘Machinist. But I’m adding a couple more characters to their company of traders so that I’ve got more money to play around with. The caravan rules state that each character begins with a €1000 loan from a financier (with 100% annual interest!) so, I thought it would be more fun to start with €3000 than just the €1000 that Del would have had access to on their own. I’m not creating these characters in their entirety, I’m just going to roll on the background, strange item, motivation, path and name tables for them.
Hero Number 2: Oï Yu, the Timelost undercover Rainbow Inquisitor. He’s taken the Traveler path. He’s tracking a missing ledger. Oï Yu has brought with him his special carmine cactus that secretes drops of blood.
Hero Number 3: Maria bra Salsur, the bluelander pueblo heretic rancher. She has taken the path of the Fighter. She is following visions of glory and rebirth into the grasslands. She brings with her a self-playing zither with seventy tunes.
My caravan
Financier
You have to start somewhere. When you are trying to kickstart your dream of outfitting and running your very own grasslands-going caravan like Del and their friends are doing, you have to start with money.
Outfitting a caravan is expensive. The PCs should start with a loan of €1,000 per character. The financier is dubious and there’s 100% annual interest, but it beats scrabbling for pennies.
I’m going to go with the book’s advice here and get a loan of €1000 for each hero, so that makes €3000. That will, of course lead to a final debt of €6000, a nice round number, I think you’ll agree. Also, it’s future-Del’s problem, right?
The first step is to decide a few things about our financier. There are a couple of handy d20 tables in the back of the book for this very purpose:
Who are they? – Cat witch faction leader
What do they want? – Acquire forbidden magic
Their Organisation – Cat-first society
Their opponents – Savage capitalist scions
Weaknesses and oddities – appears only as a hologram
But Who’s really behind the patron?
Who’s coughing up? – Under-funded second-tier military complex
How do they hope to benefit? – Practical evidence to justify continued funding
What extra help can they send along? – Annoying but capable administrator
The beginning part of the Caravan section of the book goes into a lot of detail on trade goods, trade routes, the measurement of time, consumption of supplies etc. I’m going to maybe come back to some of this stuff later. For now, I’m going to establish the constituent parts of my caravan.
Vehicles and animals
Bearing in mind that I’ve only got six grand to play with, options are limited here. But this is what I would like to go with. We can’t really afford anything actually mechanical or biomechanical (which I would like as I feel like that would be Del’s jam,) despite their being some beautifully weird and desirable options such as the Road Yacht, the Porcelain Walker, the Autogolem and the Meat Crawler (yes, meat crawler.) But I can’t afford any of those! Instead, for vehicles, I’m going to go with a pair of Solid Coaches. They can each carry 12 sacks, with is pretty good, and they are less likely to suffer catastrophic damage on the road as they are level 7.
As an aside, most things are measured in sacks when it comes to hauling things across country. A sack is the basic unit for trade goods. A sack is equal to 10 stones. A stone is equal to 10 soaps. A sack is also about the same amount of space that a human takes up. Usefully, a sack of supplies is also just enough to keep one human fed, watered and otherwise relatively comfortable on the road for a week.
A week, as it happens, is the basic unit of travel in UVG. Journeys from one destination on the Grand Long Map of the Ultraviolet Grasslands to the next are said to take one week or two or more. This is adjusted for things like the relative speed of your vehicles, the types of misfortune you meet along the way, and whether or not you need to stop to forage when you inevitably run out of supplies half way to your destination.
Solid Coach x2 – €600 each – €1200 total bringing my cash down to 1800.
Each of these coaches needs a couple of draft animals to pull it. So, I guess we’ll need to roll on a table to determine exactly the type of pony-analogues we’ll be purchasing.
I rolled a 5 on this d6 table. It’s Goatelopes… I think we can all imagine what those look like, graceful antelope legs with a shaggy furred body, the ability to eat almost anything and the terrifying devils’ eyes of a billy-goat. Del is not going to fall into he trap of naming these poor beasts but the Timelost Oï Yu can’t resist. We have
Hopper whose favourite fruit is mango
Famante who has the genetic heirloom of utter baldness – requires liberal lashings of sunscreen.
Fiodor who has a wise move. He always lets you know when rain is coming by stopping and refusing to move until you cover his head.
Korven has a cute trick. She can stand on just her forelegs as though she’s doing a handstand.
Anyway, each draft animal costs €70, so that’s another €280. Down to €1520 now.
More humans
Next, we need to consider who will drive these coaches while the PCs galavant about pretending to know anything about running a caravan. As I am on a budget, I am going to hire a couple of people for this, or, as they are described on the Vehicles & Mounts table, Human, Common-ass. It is Wirth noting that the table also provides options for simply buying slaves but does take pains to point out that this sort of thing would be perfect for evil caravans and that they might be resentful, which its probably putting it mildly.
Human, common-ass x2 – €7 per week. I’ll reserve two weeks wages for them so that’ll take me down to €1492
Del, not wanting to get attached would not wish to name these lads either, but, being humans, they come furnished with their own names:
Torron Valpin is a Redlander
Ulfis i’Bosc is from the Greenlands
Supplies and other stuff
Right, now, let’s consider the supplies we need to keep us alive out there without having to stop all the time to hunt and forage. You need a sack of supplies per person per week. So, including our drivers, Torron and Ulfis, that makes five people. So that’s five sacks of supplies per week. Let’s make sure we are covered for a little while and get two weeks worth of supplies.
5×2 = 10. Each sack of supplies costs €10, so that makes €100 on supplies. This brings me down to €1392. It also brings the total number of sacks we have to 18.
How did I come to this number you might ask, dear reader?
5 humans +
the 3 useful kitbags that the heroes come with (each one takes up a sack of space) +
10 supplies
So, this leaves only 6 sacks of space for trade goods! Except it doesn’t. I’m going to refer back to the standard first caravan package and pick up a “bog-standard Pro-Hiker (TM) kit” for each hero as well. This will include a bunch of generally useful traveling gear like tents, sunscreen, schnapps and wine skins and a hat. Each pack of gear takes up one sack of space and costs €50. Most importantly, though, I get to roll on the hat table for each hero.
This hat-table-excuse brings the cash reserves down to €1370 and available sack space down to just 3!
More capacity, please!
Well, that seems like a shame to me. We could afford a few more mounts for the PCs to ride alongside the coaches and free up, not just the space the PCs take up, but also the space their kit occupies, since riding animals can bear 2 sacks. That opens up another 6 sacks on the coaches, meaning we can transport 6 more sacks of trade goods. Of course these mounts do cost €70 each too:
3 riding mounts – €70 x 3 = €210. This takes my total cash down to €1160
Oï Yu’s mount – Blinki the pony (dances with Oï Yu when the zither is played)
Maria bra Salsur’s mount – Pander the llama (a rare pedigree whose hair is soft as merino wool)
Del ‘Machinist’s mount – unnamed donkey (favourite fruit is dragon fruit)
But leaves enough space to transport 9 sacks of trade goods.
Trade goods
I rolled on the table on the first caravan package and got
“Vampire Wines,” which is just blood, right? I mean, right? (Actually wrong. The Trade Goods table says they are just made from grapes that are grown in soil rich in the flesh of creation)
These cost €100 each so that’s another €900 down, leaving us with €260
I’ll spend €68 to get bows and spears for each of the heroes and another €30 to get nomad robes for them. That brings my cash down to €162. I think it’s probably wise to keep that for the journey. Never know when you’re going to need to stop for burgers and milkshakes on the Steppes of the Lime Nomads.
Legalities and marketing
This caravan is established as a company in a legal sense and so it will need a logo/symbol, a name and a company motto.
The symbol is a stylised coach based on the first two owned by the company, speeding across the grasslands in silhouette
The name of the company is Ultraviolet Lopers
Their motto is “From the Circle to the Sea”
Conclusion
In conclusion, I think I may have enjoyed making this caravan that is probably going nowhere, at least as much as my players enjoyed making their actual caravan that they’ll be bravely shepherding into the Ultraviolet Grasslands in a week or two. There are so many great options to choose from or to roll up randomly. There’s usually a laugh to be had during the process and you get to name mounts and humans and stuff. Honestly, great craic; would do again.
The Dice Pool 