Chimerical Realm

  New Year, New Character   Day 26  Cyberpunk 2020  Cyberpunk 2020  (CP2020) is the "roleplaying game of the grim future." It paints a bleak vision of the far off year of 2020. A future filled with ecological collapse, near constant wars, overwhelming corporate power, and a divide between the small number of elites who control the wealth of the world, and the vast majority of humanity ground beneath their greed. As the masses are fed a constant diet of fake food and faker entertainment, the true power and decisions are happening in corporate towers and backroom alleys. An incredible imaginary world, indeed. Ok, so, they got some things right. Others they got wrong--did anyone besides hipsters still listen to tapes  in 2020? Is "protest rock" even remotely a "thing," let alone the voice of mass movements? Any "near future" work is going to be eclipsed sooner rather than later, and CP2020 was always on the tail end of the literary movement anyway. ...

 New Year, New Character   Day 25    Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  In Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  (TMNT), one is not required to play a teenager, a ninja, or even a turtle. You do, however, end up playing a mutant. An animal who, through some manner, has been altered and changed and turned into something resembling a human. Resembling, but not quite.  Though there is a bias towards learning ninjitsu, because this was the published in the '80's and ninjas were just the shit back then. The game is, obviously, a licensed property. But one based on the Eastman & Laird comic books, rather than the animated show that really made the Turtles a "thing." As such, the game is much more brutal and violent than one might expect from the title alone. In fact, the "kiddiefication" is allegedly why Palladium end up dropping the game back in 2000, and so this is not only an old game, but a long out of print on...

  New Year, New Character   Day 24    Wolves of God  Wolves of God is a stripped down, OSR-influences game of adventure and survival in Anglo-Saxon England. While placed in an historical time and place, much like Ars Magica this is a "fantasy" version of the real world, with ancient magic buried in Roman ruins, and the potential of supernatural monsters lurking amongst the bogs and fens of the wild.  Despite the fantastic elements, Wolves of God  is hyper focused in creating the society and world of the time. The most obvious comparison, for me, is with Pendragon, another game that sets the characters firmly in the historical world of post-Roman Britain. But despite using the real world to fill in the gaps of the sagas, Pendragon was always more focused on recreating the characters of the legendarium. Wolves of God  attempts the opposite, to include the legends, but also to tell adventures of something like a real person of the time and pla...

  New Year, New Character  Day 23   Aberrant  Aberrant was White Wolf's take on the comic book/super-hero genre. It was the 2nd game in their "Aeonverse" trilogy, which reimaged a new "pulp" history for our world. In this world, a disaster on a research space station led to a dousing of the world with radiation, and the people began to change , and to exhibit strange, superhuman powers. While still relatively rare, the presence of these "Novas" fundamentally altered the world.  Unlike traditional comic books, or those games that seek to emulate the like Mutants & Masterminds or Heroes Unlimited ,  Aberrant  is an attempt to explore "what would really happen." There are few, to almost no, "supervillains." Sure, there are super criminals, but they don't dress up in gaudy outfits and rob banks--they control or are top-enforcers for crime syndicates and cartels. Those that do dress up in gaudy outfits are more likely to be hire...

  New Year, New Character   Day 21    Shadowrun  Of all the games from my initial list, Shadowrun was the one I was most dreading. I've never actually made a proper character for the game. The only GM I've ever played it under is an expert in the game and world, not only running it for decades, but he even wrote a few source books as a freelancer. For my first character, he worked closely with me, and we used an auto-calculating spread sheet. Subsequent characters were "pre-generated" by the GM, using Hero Lab.  So, this will be my first attempt to make a real character, by the book, with no help. It's rather intimidating. Even separate from Character Creation, Shadowrun is an intimidating game. Its a mix of cyberpunk and fantasy, melding together over the top action, cyborg super soldiers, magic of various type, netrunning...there are just so many sub-rules covering all of these "types." And the world is just as complex, being gripped in decades chaos...

  New Year, New Character   Day 20   Legend  Legend is a semi-generic fantasy RPG from Mongoose, based on the classic game Runequest II. Now, I've never played Runequest II. Heck, I haven't played Runequest I, or III or...you know, I know nothing about Runequest, except that it had some really awesome looking books back in the day. But it was never a game that had a presence in my gaming circles, so it just sort of lurked at the edge of my awareness. I didn't buy Legend  due to its legacy, but rather what it promised. About a decade ago, I was getting rather burned out by Dungeons & Dragons . 3rd Ed, Pathfinder, 4th Ed--none of them were all that much fun anymore. Still enjoying the tropes of fantasy gaming, I sought out something else. Of the games I checked out around that time, Legend  stood out the most.  I'm not sure I "get" Legend , as to this day I haven't had a chance to run or even play it. It seems mainly driven by percentile s...

  New Year, New Character   Day 19   Traveler: The New Era  I'm not sure, but I think I got conned when I purchased Traveler: The New Era (TNE). As a young gamer, I had heard of Traveler , of course. It was famous for its rock hard Sci-Fi setting, it's long history, and its notorious "you can die in character creation." Despite the hushed whispers and gossip, though, none of my friends actually had a copy of it, nor had ever actually played it.  I was at my very first convention, and talking to one of the vendors when, somehow, the topic of Traveler  came up. He immediately pressed into my hands a copy TNE. Maybe he was a fan of the New Era, maybe it was just the "new" one at the time, but I had no idea I was getting something...different from the Traveler  I had heard about.  TNE was a "reboot" of the setting, taking place centuries later than the "classic" era of the game, after the iconic Empire of the setting had fallen into chaos. ...

  New Year, New Character   Day 18   Vampire: The Dark Ages  The first proper "sequel" to Vampire: The Masquerade, Vampire: The Dark Ages sends the players back a thousand years to when vampires ruled the night as lords and masters, before the internecine war known as the Anarch Revolt and before humans rose against them in the form of the Inquisition. Rather than skulking about in alley ways and cheap bars, vampires in Dark Ages  exist more or less openly. Their battles are fought just as fiercely, but with fang and sword rather than false promises and gossip. It is an age of war and adventure.  To be honest, I've never been a huge fan Dark Ages. I've played, and run, a few Chronicles for this game, and they've been enjoyable. I guess it's just not what I wanted when the game first came out. The few hints we had of this time in the original book made it seem...quieter. Smaller. A time of ignorance, isolation, and overwhelming personal ties. An e...

  New Year, New Character   Day 17   Call of Cthulhu  Call of Cthulhu (CoC) is one of oldest, most famous, and venerable RPG's out there.  Even if you haven't played it, you know about it. Inspired by the writings of horror author H.P. Lovecraft, CoC takes the players into the world of weird horror. They play investigators of the mysterious, bizarre, and unknown. While horror has always been one of the keystones of RPG's--even Blackmoor had "Sir Fang," the vampire--few tackled with anything resembling the care and precision of CoC. This was no casual horror adventure, where the monster was slain and the heroes moved on.  Rather, battling the "Cthulhu mythos" would cost the PC's their lives, their careers, and even their sanity.  To some, it can come across as overly dark and nihilistic. Why bother finding out what the mysterious statue represents, or what happened to the eccentric artist cousin of yours, if all you were going to find was death an...

New Day, New Character  Day 16  Star Wars  I'm not sure I can give the West End Games version of Star Wars  a proper introduction. Others have written about its influence not only on RPG's, but in a perhaps unique occurrence, influence on the original IP itself.  In any case, I'm certainly not qualified to speak of the game in terms of its "greater impact," only in terms of my history with gaming.  This version of Star Wars  was the first licensed RPG I ever played, and my first experience delving into a world I had already "played" in, even if that play was classic make believe of running around with friends and having "lightsaber" battles with flashlights, or smashing our toys together in pretend battles for the fate of the galaxy. Being able to combine my love for the movies with my love of RPG's was absolutely amazing! Even if the first games I played tended to focus a lot of time on smuggling "spice" under the watchful glare ...

New Year, New Character  Day 15  CAPERS CAPERS (yup, all caps), is a superhero RPG by Craig Campbell, with two unique twists. First, in 1920's America, at the height of Prohibition. Rather than "fighting crime," the default PC is  a criminal, running alcohol and protection rackets. They're not super-villain's but rather, well, super-criminals. There's the option of playing super G-men as well, but the thrill of the game is to play proper 1920's gangster with super-powers.  It also has, for me at least, a unique resolution system, driven by drawing playing cards. Ones value in any given statistic indicates how many cards one can potentially draw to resolve any issue. Obviously, the card value is a key component, indicating success or failure. The suit of the card determines the quality  of the success or failure, with clubs being the lowest and spades the best possible. Thus, the PC's not only gamble with their life and freedom to find a place in the wo...

New Year, New Character Day 14 Werewolf: The Apocalypse Werewolf: The Apocalypse was the second in White Wolf's "World of Darkness" lines, a "storytelling game of savage horror." It followed Vampire: The Masquerade and was in turn followed by Mage: The Ascension . In it, players take on the role of, well, werewolves in the modern day. Your kind once stood as proud, spiritual protectors of the Earth, guarding it against the deprivations of the all consuming and destroying Wyrm. The tools of the Wyrm range from raw demonic minions to the corruption of humanity, leading to violence, vice, pollution, environmental devastation, and the slow poisoning and death of the world. To put it simply and overly glibly, you are huge monstrous eco-terrorists fighting a tragic and loosing battle against destruction.  While Vampire was my first love , I played Werewolf far more when I was younger. Its combination of tragic heroism, brutal violence, splatterpunk, and adventure ...

 New Year, New Character  Day 13  Heroes Unlimited  Heroes Unlimited  is Palladium Books take on the Super-Hero genre. It's a "universal" toolkit to make a variety of types of heroes, though not quite as universal as it likes to pretend. Each hero is based on a specific "category" of archetypes ranging from Alien visitors to Mutants to Robots to hyper-trained Super Spies. Each has their own distinct rules, and little effort is made to "balance" the various characters. Instead, the intent is to create a distinctive character, with, much like a comic book, the balance coming from what happens in the story, rather than any sort of mechanical enforcement.  Like the rest of Palladium's books, Heroes Unlimited  (HU) is derived from their Palladium Fantasy game, and follows much of the same rules. There are obvious additions, of course, through super powers, psychic abilities, alien life forms, and complicated cyborg and robotic creation rules.  Perhaps...

New Year, New Character  Day 12  Stars Without Number  Today marks something of a landmark for my take on the " New Year, New Character " challenge. When I started, I created a list of 31 different games I wanted to make a character for. I thought of sorting them by system or theme or age or something like that, but decided to go random. Given the odd numbers involved, I had been using Wizard of the Coast's old online dice roller . I simply add in however many systems were left as a custom die and "rolled" that. I've now completed 11 of these, meaning I have 20 left. Which means I actually got to roll an actual, physical d20. I did, and got a 4 giving Stars Without Number. Stars Without Number (SWN) is a fairly "hard" Sci-Fi game, in the tradition of Traveler . Players take the roles of mercenaries, traders, and explorers in the far future. A few hundred year prior to where the game begins, a massive catastrophe devastated all of settled space. The...

 New Year, New Character  Day 11 Mage the Ascension Mage the Ascension is a "Storytelling Game of Modern Magic." It is, in many ways, a successor game to both Ars Magica and Vampire: The Masquerade , so we are treading fairly well worn ground when it comes to creating a character. In it, players take the roles of "awakened" Mages, seeking both to understand the true nature of reality as well as to share that understanding with a world that not only fails to understand them, but which can barely tolerate their existence. They are locked in a millennia old war against the Technocracy, a group that desires to control reality and humanity. It is a war the Traditions (the disparate groups of mages the players belong to) are losing, and reality itself rejects their feeble attempts to change or alter it.  It was the first of the White Wolf "World of Darkness" books that hadn't been released when I first started playing their games, and one I eagerly anticipa...

 New Year, New Character Day 10 Vampire: The Masquerade (V5) After my brief detour towards "actually making a character for a game I'm going to play" with Starfinder, I'm back to randomly determining the next game for this series. I ended up landing on Vampire , which is easily my favorite game of all time. Even a casual perusal of this blog will show the majority of posts are somewhat related to this game. On my initial post , I listed the 1st Edition as the game for this challenge, as it has become my favorite version of the game. But, I rather like using this series to play around with games I'm not as familiar with, so instead I'm going to go with the latest version--5th Edition, or as it's also known as, V5.  For those who aren't familiar with it, Vampire  is a "Storytelling Game of Personal Horror." In it, players take on the role of a blood thirsty vampire living in the shadows of the modern world. Stories in the game can vary widely f...

As I was going through my various creations for the New Year, New Challenge , there were two tools I keep referring to--the Universal NPC Emulator and The Everyone, Everywhere List . Both of these are incredibly useful tools that I use both for my frequent Solo games as well as when I'm running a traditional group game. Neither is terribly complicated, but I feel that both could benefit from a proper, if belated, introduction.

New Year, New Character Day 9 Starfinder This post is a little bit of a cheat. So far in this series, I've been using a random number generator to decide which game I would be creating a character for. So, for example, on Day 1 I used a random dice roller and rolled a custom "D31." Comparing the result to the chart I made , I ended up with Mechwarrior . And all subsequent posts since then have followed the same basic format. But for this post I'm deliberately choosing Starfinder .   The reasoning for this is pretty simple--I need to make a character for a Starfinder  game. Technically, I already have a character in the game, but it's going through a bit of a change. My current PC isn't quite working out the way I wanted him to, and so I want to try something else. I have a better feel for the group and its interactions now, and I feel like I can make a character I'll enjoy a bit more this time around.  Starfinder itself is something of an odd game. A mix ...

 New Year, New Character Day 8 Mutants & Masterminds Mutants & Masterminds (M&M) is a superhero RPG, based on the then dominate "D20" system, though with a number of unique features and systems. Unlike other systems, it truly is a "D20" game, with every roll being based on a roll of a d20, creating a fairly streamlined system. It does away with such legacy systems as "hit points," instead using things like "toughness saves" to show how unstoppable and untouchable certain comic book characters are.  It's also probably the superhero game I've played the most. It's first edition came out when everyone was still incredibly excited with the D20 system, and it was easy to get my friends and other nearby gamers interested in trying out the game. The fact that it was a point based system and allowed for a wide variety of types while still keeping everyone more or less "balanced" also factored heavily in its popularity. ...

 New Year, New Character Day 7 Thousand Year Old Vampire Thousand Year Old Vampire (TYOV) is a different kind of game than any of the others I've done so far for this Challenge .  It's not a traditional table top roleplaying game, but rather a solo journaling one. It's an intensely personal game of memory and loss, seen through the eyes of an immortal vampire as they navigate the long centuries. I've played a few games of TYOV, and I have to admit that the game affects me in ways that few other RPGs can hope to match. I'm actually rather annoyed and frustrated that I never conceived of this idea, but I still have nothing but great admiration for Tim Hutchings and what he managed to accomplish.  Given it's unusual nature, character creation is similarly unique. There's no list of skills or abilities, and there's no way to "optimize" a character or worry about making the wrong decision. This is the story of your  character, however you conceive ...

 New Year, New Character Day 6 Silent Legions Silent Legions  is an "OSR" style Lovecraftian horror game, where valiant investigators plumb the mysteries of strange and inhuman monstrosities and cults. It's a fairly "light" system from the point of view of the players, with the unique hook of it being a "sandbox" style game. Most of the core book is a series of charts and other tools to help the GM come up with their own horror setting, with multiple vile groups working their schemes, and the players interacting with them based on their own motivation, rather than the conventional "mysteries" in other, more famous takes, on this genre. I have a lot of love for the Sine Nomine games, but other than Scarlet Heroes , I haven't yet had a chance to actual play any of them. So, this will be another "first character" for this Challenge. 

  New Year, New Character Day 5 GURPS While not the first,  GURPS   is probably the most famous of the classic "Universal" Systems. More recent games have stolen some of its thunder--Fate, Savage Worlds, Powered By The Apocalypse, etc.--yet it still remains a corner stone of gaming. Even if you don't want to use their system, GURPS has put out some absolutely amazing supplements that cover almost every conceivable game idea you might have.  But I did use the system--a lot. Back in the day, GURPS was my go to game for any time I wanted a system that ran fast at the table, and would otherwise stay out of my way, and played/ran a ton of games with the 3rd Edition rules. But sometime around the release of the 4th Edition, my group and I just stopped using GURPS. There was no particular reason why, just other games took our attention and we have never found our way back. So, for this Challenge, I'll be trying to create my first character with 4th Ed. 

  New Year, New Character Day 4 Advanced Dungeons & Dragons, 2nd Edition I'm pretty sure that the 2nd Edition of AD&D was the first RPG I ever played, and was probably the default game in my life for more than any other. In fact, I'm pretty sure it was the longest lived of any given edition of Dungeons & Dragons . Despite that, it appears to be something of forgotten beast these days. The first edition and the various permutations of "basic" get much more attention in the "OSR" community, while 2nd Ed is often barely remembered. Still, it had some wonderful settings and supplements, and fired up my imagination for years.  Having said that, this is still going to be a bit of a learning experience for me. There were a ton of supplements over the years, and I don't think I've ever created a proper "by the book" character in all that time. Elven Fighter/Mage "Bladesingers," Orcish dark clerics, "Ratcatcher" dwar...

 New Year, New Character Day 3 Palladium Fantasy For Day 3 of the New Year, New Character challenge, I roll up Palladium Fantasy . This is a pretty obscure game these days. As far as I am aware, it's origins lay back in the early '80's, as a series of house rules for a game of Dungeons and Dragons . Eventually, the house rules so changed the game as to become something different. While it has its adherents, Fantasy  was never that popular, at least among my small group of gamers. Its system, though, spawned several successor games-- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness  and Robotech  were probably the first batch to gain wide popularity. But, if it is know today, it is probably from the game Rifts , which was immensely popular back in the '90's. Still, Fantasy  has its own, unique charms.  Overview Fantasy  has the classic fantasy races--Humans, Elves, Dwarves, etc--as well as a number of more unique ones like Changelings (shape chang...

  New Year, New Character Day 2 Ars Magica For Day 2, my rolling brings me to Ars Magica , one of the oddest and most interesting games I own, but have not yet been able to play or run. The game takes place in "Mythic Europe"--a world based on our own history, but where magic, demons, faeries, and saints work their will on the world. What makes the game so interesting is that you do not play one character, but rather a member of a Covenant. In one game, your mighty Magus might lead a troupe to engage with the trolls who live nearby. In the next, your mage might stay home to study and practice their illicit arts, while you play your friendly thief Companion, assisting another PC's magus in the rough and tumble city. In the next, you might play a tough as nails Grog, there to provide muscle and protection for yet another Magus' schemes.  For this Challenge, though, I will be limiting myself to creating a single Mage for the 3rd Edition of the game. While I own the 5th a...

  New Year, New Character Day 1 Mechwarrior It’s Day 1 on the New Year, New Character Challenge . As per my outline post, I had no idea which game to start with. I headed over to my favorite online die roller (The old Wizards of the Coast one ) entered in a custom “D31” and got a 28 , which results in Mechwarrior .  Mechwarrior is an old RPG put out by FASA as part of their Battletech line of tabletop games. In the 1st and 2nd Editions of the games, the assumption is that the PC’s are “mechwarriors”—pilots of the huge, humanoid war machines that dominate the battlefield of the far future.  Later editions aren’t quite as tied to the concept, but it’s still pretty core for the game. Of course, the name “Mechwarrior” is probably more well known for the series of videogames, rather than the table top RPG. 

New Year, New Character Over on Facebook (yes, I’m an old), I stumbled upon a pretty interesting “X Day Challenge”— The New Year, New Character Challenge , which basically boils down to creating 31 Characters in 31 Days.  I’m starting fairly late, but this sounds like a pretty fun setup. Timing might be a bit of a challenge, but, well, that's in the name. From  The Other Side Blog Still, the challenge itself is fairly vague. 31 Characters, granted, but what else? One could, I suppose, create 31 5th Ed D&D Characters, or all Fate, or anything else. As such, I’m going to add a few more “house rules” to my creation. This is just for own personal guidance, others who are doing this challenge have their own.