Alright, here are the rules for making characters for this game. As this game is action-narrative driven, I’ve tried to keep it as simple as possible while giving me all the information I need to make the characters work. While the character sheet itself is simple, the amount of words Ive posted here is not. DO NOT BE FOOLED, THIS IS EASY.
To start off there are the
5 Attributes. These are your characters general abilities. They range from 1-5 for each score, 1 being below average ability and 5 being the just slightly beyond the pinnacle of human ability (hells yeah paradoxical ability values). They are as follows.
Physical - This determines just about every physical attribute of your character. This is your strength, hardiness and general fitness level. This affects your character's melee skills, Health Points and gives bonuses to physical actions (duh?). D&D Terms: Strength + Constitution.
Mental - This determines your character'ss mental abilities. This is intellect, wisdom, common sense, and controls your ability to process information. This affects the number of skills/specialisations you have, and gives bonuses to knowledge, awareness and any skill which favours preparation and study, ie Medicine or Programming. D&D Terms: Intelligence + Wisdom
Social - This determines your character's (say it with me people) social abilities. This your charm, manipulative qualities and general ability to relate to people. This gives bonuses in all social interactions. D&D Terms: Charisma, and the slightest bit of Intelligence.
Skill - This determines your character's general dexterity, hand-eye coordination, and ability to perform complex actions. This gives bonuses to ranged combat, skills such as driving and lock picking, as well as determining just how hard you are to hit. D&D Terms: Dexterity + some intelligence.
Awesome - Yes, this is an attribute. This determines just how awesome you are. All of you are awesome, understand this. And in this attribute, 1 is not below average but just slightly above normal human awesome. Non-special NPCs lack this attribute, as they're not awesome enough, but you are. Awesome is described in detail just below. D&D terms: Action Points + DM's Favourite + Lucky Rolling + I AM ON FIRE.
You have 16 points to distribute amongst these 5 attributes. Points go 1 for 1 attribute point. Each attribute requires a minimum of 1 point, and has a maximum of 5.
Awesome Points
If you've ever played a game with an action point system, this is similiar, but more awesome. You have awesome points, which are limited my your awesome stat. At any given time you may have as many awesome points as you have points in your awesome stat. I know that sentence says awesome and points a lot but I assure you it makes sense.
You spend awesome points any time you want to do one of two things. First, you can add an awesome dice to any one roll. And Awesome Dice varies, based on your awesome score. If you have 1 point in your awesome attribute, you add a d6. 2 points a d8, 3 a d10, 4 a d12 and 5 a d20. These are added directly to the roll, as if you rolled a single giant dice. Does your weapon critical on a natural 20? You just rolled a natural 28, that's higher than 20...that's a critical. Fun times.
The other use of Awesome Points is essentially, to cheat. Want to jumping out a circular window 1 foot in diameter? Spend an action point and give me a good reason why (My character is so drunk, he forgets he has limbs, and forgets so powerfully that for a brief moment, the universe forgets too!) and voila, I will make it possible. Be creative. Be awesome.
Next up are
Skills/Specialisations. These are easy, so hopefully I don’t end up writing another page and half explaining them. There are 15
Skills and you can choose as many as you have points in your Mental Attribute to be proficient in (hell yeah, Skill attribute does not help skill selection…suckas!). These are things you’re great at, and you get large bonuses to them. Your attributes also affect your skills, each skill is affected by a single attribute. Skills are as follows.
Combat (Ranged) (Sk) – Affects all ranged attacks
Combat (Melee) (P) – Affects all close combat attacks with objects
Combat (Hand to Hand) (P) – Affects all close combat attacks with your body (headbutt ftw)
Computer Use (M) – Anything to do with computers, this is the skill.
Medicine (M) – Patching wounds, setting bones, performing crude surgeries with jars of jam. Yes.
Driving (Sk) – Choose a particular class of vehicle (boat, plane, helicopter, car, bus, unicycle) and this allows you do things with it normal people could not.
Stealth (Sk) – Hiding and sneaking, also the ability to conceal items “on your person”
Thievery (Sk) – Sleight of Hand, Picking Locks, Forgeries, etc. Anything really underhanded.
Athletics (P) – Climbing, Jumping, Rolling, Swimming, Handstands (sure?) all that and more!
Sabotage (Sk) – Setting traps, disabling security/devices, rerouting power,
Speechcraft (So) – Gives bonuses to anything involving you bluffing, discussing, convincing, etc
Performance (So) – Can you play the guitar. Yes. Yes you can. Also dancing…and maybe the zither.
Knowledge (M) – Requires a general area of specialisation (ie geography, architecture, history, weaponry, cars) and gives you information based off this.
Awareness (M) – Sight, Hearing, Scent, Subtle Vibration detection, allows you better detect all these and more!
Impersonation (So) – Disguise, Voice Mimicry, habit recreating, allows you pretend to be someone you’re not.
P = Phyiscal Attribute, Sk = Skill Attribute, So = Social Attribute, M = Mental Attribute
Awesomeness attribute minimally affects all skills.
Specialisations are based off your proficient skills, but are far more specific. For example, say you have medicine as a proficient skill, you picked specialisations based on that. You could have Surgery as a specialisation, or maybe first aid, or maybe circumcisions this one is entirely up to you. When you use that skill for this purpose, you get large bonuses to it.
You get twice as many specialisations as skills, so 2x your Mental Attribute. You do not need to pick 2 specs for each skill, you could have 10 for one skill if you wanted, entirely up to you.
This is the last part I swear.
Advantages and Disadvantages are kind of like feats from D&D, but cranked up a notch. These are things your character can that not many other people can. I have a list of generic advantages, but this is another area I would appreciate you being creative and giving me suggestions. If you want your character to be able to do something not listed here, let me know, and Ill try to whip something up.
If you want a custom disadvantage, we can work on that too, but keep in mind I want disadvantages to be slightly worse than advantages are good. So yep.
Your character can have
up to 3 advantages, and must have at least 1 disadvantage.
Some generic advantages, along with a small sentence containing sentence fragments slightly explaining it.
Hand of Stone
- Unarmed Attacks do lethal damage
Off the Grid
- Don’t appear in any database, ever
Ozzy-munity
- Doubles resistance to drugs, poisons, alcohol
Pre-Cognitive Senses
- Automatic check to detect trouble before it presents itself, rolling awareness before you could even be aware.
Internal GPS
- Always know longitude, latitude, directional facing, time of day, etc.
Extraordinarily Awesome
- Awesome dice increase by one step, ie d20 awesome die on a attribute of 4, no affect on Awesome attribute of 5.
Throw Anything
- Throw melee/improvised weapons at no penalty
Implacable Man
- Cannot be moved/knocked down unwillingly
Kung Shui
- No penalty for using improvised weapons
Crazy Prepared
- Free action to ready against specific trigger, always have a sort of contingency action readied.
Double Tap
- Semi-Auto weapons can fire two shots for every one
Collateral Damage Specialist
- Triple damage to objects
Unnaturally Buoyant
- Double hangtime length in any case, whether falling, jumping or ramping a car to the moon
Offensive Reload
- Can reload as part of a melee attack
Hollywood Hacker
- Can “hack” anything on a “network” to get desired results (hilarity ensues!)
Stunt Driver
- Can do impossible vehicle stunts (one-wheeled turn, etc)
When It’s Good It’s Great
- Extra success on critical success (my god that bullet just killed two people?)
Polyglot
- Speaks all languages and “accents”
Olde Schoole
- Combat bonuses for using non-modern weapons
Instantaneous Analysis
- Can determine vital statistics of someone just met within a minute
And a few generic disadvantages, with more broken sentence explaining.
Delayed Damage
- all damage is dealt one turn after it should be to enemies
When It’s Bad It’s Worse
- Extra failure on some failures. Not only did you fail to hit that guard with your rifle, but your bullet somehow hit an alarm panel and keyed in the 5 digit alarm code…awesome.
Not A Dog/Cat Person
- Dogs/Cats irrationally hate character. Choose one or the other. You can have both, but Im not giving you anything to make up for it.
Exceptionally Flammable
- Completely combust when exposed to flames
Bullet Magnet
- Increased priority for being target of just about everyone. For some reason, no one likes your face.
Well, those are all the examples I had “prepared”. Like I said, for advantages/disadvantages I’d like you to give input and try to design your own to fit your character. This is supposed to be fun.
As of the start of the game, weapons, equipment and items are determined by what your character would have on hand/immediately available. If you have something you really want you wouldn't have on hand, let me know and I'll try to work something out, but at the very beginning you're travelling light.
Sample character sheet in next post.
Sweet jesus this post is long.
Any questions, please ask.
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