The premise of Torg is that earth has been invaded by a coalition of extradimensional warlords, each representing an alternate Earth whose dominant paradigm is a particular genre of science fiction or fantasy: Victorian horror, prehistoric lost world, high fantasy, cyberpunk, etc. Player characters fight against the warlords to preserve Core Earth’s possibility energy and drive the invasive realities back to their own planes. Some are Core Earth natives; others come from the native resistance movements of the invading worlds.
Though it’s possible to build a Torg character from scratch, the game provides two dozen templates to choose from, and I intend to select one of those templates and customize it. We haven’t done a lot of hero-pulp over the course of this challenge, so I’ll choose a template from the Nile Empire with its combination of 1930s technology and pseudo Ancient Egyptian styling. I have three options: Fast Hero, master of flight; Gadget Hero, master of clever devices, and Tough Hero, master of… well, beating people up. I’ll go for a Fast Hero.
The template provides a set of Attributes, one character-defining Tag Skill, some starting equipment, a quantity of Possibility points (a not-quite metagame currency with a variety of uses) and a set of four Axiomratings based on the magical, spiritual, social, and technological levels of the hero’s home reality or cosm. The Nile Empire is fairly high in social (20) and technological (21) level, a bit lower in spiritual power (17), and lowest in magical energy (12, but still higher than Core Earth’s 7).
There are seven Attributes: Dexterity, Strength, Toughness, Perception, Mind, Charisma, and Spirit. These tend to range in value from 6 to 13, with 8 being the human average. The Fast Hero’ scores are mostly 8s and 9s, with higher ratings in Dexterity (12) and Charisma (11):
DEX 12 STR 9 TOU 8 PER 8 MIN 9 CHA 11 SPI 8
The Fast Hero actually doesn’t start with a tag skill. Instead, they get a Flight Power with a value of 15, and in exchange lose a Possibility point so that they start with 9 instead of 10. For equipment, I don’t start with much: a flying costume, some street clothes, identification papers, and 50 Nile Royals worth of cash (equivalent to $500 US).
Now it’s time to start customizing. I get 13 points to assign to skill adds, which will be added to the skills’ base attributes to determine total values. There are 11 skills on my list (not counting my Flight Power even though it’s listed under this section), so if I want to I can add at least one to everything. I have to assign at least one Add to Reality; the skill that allows me to carry my cosm’s rules across dimensional boundaries as well as engaging in combat during reality storms. It’s based on Spirit, so I may want to add a little more (I can add as many as three) to make up for my mediocre attribute score.
Apart from Reality, my eye is drawn to the DEX-based Acrobatics, Dodge, Maneuver, and Unarmed Combat. CHA-based Charm and Taunt also look attractive. That’s seven skills altogether and seems like a good basis for heroics. I’ll put one each in Taunt and Charm; two in Reality, Acrobatics, Dodge, and Maneuver; and three in Unarmed Combat.
Next I’ll go down my list of skills and figure their values, combining the base attributes with Adds where I’ve assigned them.
My Flight power works a little differently. To maintain it I'll need to spend 3 Possibility points at the end of each adventure, so I'll want to make sure I have those points when we get there. It's based on DEX, but boosted by 3 in lieu of a tag skill, so the speed value is 15 (maneuvering is covered by a separate Flight skill, which is DEX-based so I decided to rely on the Attribute and hope I don't crash). That's not covered by a movement maximum, so my flight speed can go up to 1000 meters per round.
After I’m done with skills, I can augment my equipment with the money on my initial gear list. I’d like a multiblade pocket knife or some sort of tool kit, but those don’t seem to be available. I’ll settle for spending 15 royals on a .38 revolver as personal protection; hopefully I can figure the rest out before danger finds me.
Figuring movement values proves to be something of a challenge, because in attempting to bridge multiple genres Torg includes a conversion system so that you know what your abilities are worth when you're acting in somebody else's cosm. The game imposes upper limits on movement rates based on the cosm’s axioms, and these may or may not be lower than your actual numbers. The Core Earth limits would seem to apply to Nile Empire (or at least there’s no indication that they’re different), so I’ll use those. Running speed is based on Dexterity, but the limit is 10, so I note that instead of my value of 12. Swimming and Long Jumping are also based on DEX, but have even stricter limits: 6 and 3. The Climbing limit is 2, also lower than my Strength value of 9, but at least the Lifting limit of 9 doesn’t shortchange me. There’s a (logarithmic?) chart to convert these values to actual rates (or weights, for lifting), and there I learn that my running speed is 100 meters per round, swimming is 15 m/round, jumping distance is 4 meters, climbing speed is 2.5 meters/round, and my lifting max is 60 kilograms.
Now I can go to the top of the record sheet and fill in basic non-statistical information. The drawing on the Fast Hero template depicts a dark-haired woman in pilot’s gear: flight helmet and goggles, leather jacket with scarf, trousers tucked into high boots. I can work with that. She’ll go by the nom de guerre The Falcon; in civilian life her name is Nour al-Askar. Height, weight and age are not of particular importance for game play; I figure she's pretty young to be zipping around under fire from evil goons, maybe 23 years old. Height 1.6 meters (about 5'3") and weight 55 kg (a little over 120 lb). And we're pretty much done, so let's see the statblock:
Nour al-Askar, aka the Falcon
Gender: F Height 1.6m Weight 55kg Age 23
Attributes:
DEX 12 STR 9 TOU 8 PER 8 MIN 9 CHA 11 SPI 8
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