The Plays of Aphra Marlowe: Faces in the Wall

 

Faces in the Wall: A Tragedy of Divine Justice 

Intended to be Marlowe’s masterpiece at New Olamn College, this "avant-garde" work rages against the Wall of the Faithless and calls into question the justice of allegedly good deities that allow it to exist. Reportedly, the original script passed by the faculty board was not the version staged for the public, and the opening performance was shut down before the end of the third, final act. Marlowe barely escaped blasphemy charges and was expelled from the college without receiving her degree. 

Considered purely as a work of drama, Faces in the Wall has many of the flaws of even advanced student plays. Most notably, its structure belies the “tragedy” promised by the subtitle. There is no tragic flaw to seal the central character’s fate; indeed, there is not even a central character. Arguably, there is not even a plot, since most of the play consists of “Faithless” victims telling their (admittedly powerful) stories of abandonment by the gods. Such monologues are often stilted, especially coming from younger poets, but Marlowe’s gift for poetic yet naturalistic expression is evident even in this earliest extant work. 

The Plays of Aphra Marlowe: From Netheril With Love

 

From Netheril With Love: A Political Thriller

A competent if mostly forgettable spy story, From Netheril With Love was noteworthy only for the location of its initial production—the Silverstrings Theater in Selgaunt. Sembian authorities shut the play down after its opening weekend—generous bribes seem to have helped it last that long—and Marlowe’s legend as the great “right play, wrong venue” dramatist of her era was born.

The plot of From Netheril With Love is fairly simple by the standards of the genre: a Cormyrean agent is dispatched to Sembia to prevent the murder of an important ally by a mysterious assassin in Netherese pay. The spies alternately seduce and attempt to kill each other, a cycle broken only by the climactic spectacle of the aforementioned assassination attempt. The dialogue is witty, the pacing is breakneck, and the ending leaps high over the roadblocks of plausibility.

 

The Plays of Aphra Marlowe (Prologue): Who the Heck is Aphra Marlowe?

Table card created with MS Publisher and Hero Forge

 

In my first experience with 3rd edition D&D as a player, it was just me and the DM, and I ran a party of four characters. Two of these I'd converted from earlier 2e play: Conrad the farmboy paladin and Julie the irrepressibly curious elf mage/thief. To round out the party, I created two more characters: an athletic halfling cleric called Brother Murphy and a half-elf bard--Julie's cousin--named Aphra. 

Aphra, I'd decided, was an actor and a playwright, drawn more to the vulgar theater of her human father's people than to the sophisticated poetry and music of her elven mother's. Her tag quote was "Of course you don't have any lines. You're a tree." The campaign wasn't particularly heavy on role-play, given that I was juggling four characters, but somehow Aphra stuck with me after we left D&D3 behind for other games. She had that aura of trouble, fun trouble, that clings to great RPG characters.  She made a brief appearance in my 4e play (game-store Living Forgotten Realms), but didn't quite click with the system or the venue. 

And then I found an opening in a 5e mini-campaign. This was also public play, but we'd left the strictures of Living Forgotten Realms and Adventurers' League behind and just doing whatever the DM wanted to run. This is the period when Aphra got her last name (Kit Marlowe's rough-and-tumble life being closer to the D&D archetype than Aphra Behn's), her extensive collection of wigs (stored on a rack in her bag of holding), and her bibliography, which started as a list of titles illustrated by Playbill covers designed in MS Publisher.

So, anyway, the point of all that was to introduce the character who'll be the subject of the next several posts: Aphra Marlowe, enfant terrible of the Faerun theatrical world. (I used Forgotten Realms material out of convenience; most of the games I've used Aphra in didn't take place in the Realms, but it's a popular kitchen-sink setting and I've played and run a lot of D&D games that used it as a backdrop, so it was easier than making up cities and theaters and local politics out of whole cloth.)

Character Creation Challenge Post-Post Mortem: A Look at the Dataset

I'm not really a data guy, so this is going to be a pretty superficial analysis.

Including the Companion and Grog characters for Ars Magica and the Villain character for Princess of the Universe, I statted out 34 characters for this project. I was consciously trying for variety: not only of rules systems and genres, but also of types (bricks, brains, swashbucklers, faces, sneaks, etc.) and of demographics (species, ages, ethnicities, genders). I think it's fair to say I could have followed through more effectively on diversity.

When I'm actually playing, I'm inclined more toward faces, brains, and swashbucklers than I am to sneaks or bricks, and probably least of all to sharpshooters and petmasters. In addition, these days I prefer to play clear-cut heroes instead of morally ambigious or even villainous characters; I don't know how much of that is a reaction to the times we live in, but I'd guess a fair amount of it, though I wouldn't disregard my age as a factor either. In tabletop RPGs I tend to play cross-gender characters about 40-50% off the time, though as far as I know they've always been cisgender (and generally heterosexual, though I've never been particularly interested in my characters' sexuality so I haven't explored those questions much). And where human ethnicity has been relevant, my characters have usually defaulted to white. (For reference, I'm a cishet, middle-class white guy.)

I went into this project not expecting to play any of the characters I generated, which in theory should have given me some extra leeway to explore character ideas I might not be super comfortable playing in a live group. In practice, it didn't really turn out that way, and though the time pressure built into the project may have played some role in those decisions I doubt it was a significant factor.

So let's break some of this down. Out of 34 characters,

15 were male (and probably cisgender)

13 were female (and also probably cisgender, except one case which was explicitly cisgender)

6 were not gendered: two of these were explicitly nonbinary humans (Psi World, the hero for Princess of the Universe), one kept their gender shrouded in mystery (Ars Magica), one was a member of a nonbinary alien species (Teens in Space), one I left ungendered because I didn't see any reason to give them a gender (the villain for Princess of the Universe) and one was a crayfish, who I suppose probably had a gender, but it was completely irrelevant for the game's and my purposes (Creeks and Crawdads).

31 of 34 characters were human, including characters with super-powers but no explicit non-human ancestry and human brains in non-standard bodies. One of the remaining three was an extraterrestrial in an SF setting (Teens in Space); the other two were animals in animal-based settings (Bunnies & Burrows and Creeks & Crawdads). The absence of fantasy non-humans such as elves or goblins is primarily a result of the games I chose, most of which didn't have nonhuman options, though I certainly bypassed non-human options in the supers systems, Timewatch, Torg, and the one D&D-alike on my list (Warhamster Dungeon Adventure). 

More often than not, the human characters' ethnicities tended to default to white. (I'm including characters whose ethnicity I didn't establish during character creation, since that's how I'm inclined to roll when I'm not thinking about it.)  Most of the exceptions involved contemporary or historical(ish) non-European settings: either built into the game (such as Legends of the Wulin, Coyote and Crow, or Bushido), or posited for a generic rules set (Mini Six and Wushu, both of which I set in contemporary East Asia). Altogether, 11 of the 31 human characters were explicitly or implicitly persons of color (and that doesn't include the one explicitly Jewish character, who is overall coded white):

East Asian: Mini Six, Legends of the Wulin, Wushu, Bushido, OVA

African-American: Hollow Earth Expedition

South Asian: Lancer

Arab: Torg 

Latino/a: ICONS, Spookshow

Explicitly Mixed: Universe

Native American: Coyote & Crow

That lineup smacks of tokenism, and I'd like to do better in future attempts (though also without straying into stereotype or appropriation).

Agewise, characters ranged from teenagers (Hellcats & Hockeysticks, Teens in Space) to late middle age (Hollow Earth Expedition), though the vast majority of them were adults in their prime (i.e., between 20 and 40, or the species equivalent). I really didn't give age a lot of consideration when creating characters (both teenagers were created for games where PCs are expected to be teenagers), and it shows. (I also ignored disability almost entirely, with only one character having a physical or mental disability of any kind.)

As far as character types go, I seem to have achieved a pretty broad spread while still indulging some of my preferences for smart and/or agile heroes. The taxonomy used below is a very rough guide, and some characters will appear in more than one group.

Big Hitters: Big Lu (Legends of the Wulin), Tom Hayward (Clockwork & Chivalry), Harmony (The Well), Gretchen Hastings (Hellcats & Hockeysticks), Boomblasto (Princess of the Universe)

Detectives & Investigators: Taga (Coyote & Crow), Shiro Tanaka (Mini Six), Benjamin da Silva (Colonial Gothic), Veronica Garcia (Spookshow), Dr. Daniels (Timewatch), Brad Milgram (Unknown Armies)  

Faces & Schemers: Rinaldo of Piacenza (Ars Magica), Burrberry (Bunnies & Burrows), Cornelia Vane (Soap), Taga (Coyote & Crow), Shiro Tanaka (Mini Six)

Healers: Dr. Charles Sumner Thornton (HEX), Benjamin da Silva (Colonial Gothic), Dr. Daniels (Timewatch)

Petmasters: Alisha Shah (Lancer) 

Pilots & Drivers: The Falcon (Torg), Alisha Shah (Lancer), Yuka Asagami (OVA) 

Scientists & Gadgeteers: Bio-Battery (ICONS), Haruko Kenyatta (Universe), Veebolitt (Teens in Space), Mechanis (Princess of the Universe), Splitter (Creeks & Crawdads), Dr. Daniels (Timewatch), Brad Milgram (Unknown Armies), Doc Pliable (Capes)

Swashbucklers & Acrobats: The Falcon (Torg), Zara the Cutlass (Barbarians of Lemuria), Sabine the Cat (Jaws of the Six Serpents), Doc Pliable (Capes), Martin Yim Kwok-kwan (Wushu)

Sharpshooters: Gianna (Ars Magica), Tom Hayward (Clockwork and Chivalry)

Wizards: Matsumoto Yaemon (Bushido), Opacus (Ars Magica)

Sneaks: Kelvin the Uncatchable (Warhamster), Jer Landon (Psi World), Veronica Garcia (Spookshow)

There are two characters who, due to the way their game systems work, didn't really fit into my typology: Maria (My Life with Master) and Charles VIII of France (Statecraft). The role that a Minon plays in My Life With Master and that a head of state plays in Statecraft don't easily map on to traditional RPG character categories, though I suppose that if I had to force it I could call Maria a Sneak and Charles a Schemer. 

I've never been much for playing sharpshooter characters, and I didn't think to make the effort to include them, so it doesn't surprise me much to see only a couple of characters who fit that category. Likewise for petmasters; running multiple subordinate characters isn't usually my bag, but I liked the drone thing for Lancer so I went for it. With wizards, I think the main reason there's only two in my list is that a) engaging with magic systems adds time and complexity to character creation, so I tended to bypass it; and b) in most games it tends to require a significant enough investment of resources that your character doesn't have a lot left for other skills (e.g., I wanted to make my Colonial Gothic character a natural philosopher who also did magic, but I felt I couldn't split the difference without making the character medicore at both).  Also, when faced with a sword & sorcery setting I tend to swing hard towards swashbucklers, and that's exactly what I created for Jaws of the Six Serpents and Barbarians of Lemuria. I've never been averse to playing healers, though, so I'm a little surprised to see that I only made three (and that's counting Dr. Daniels' Reality Anchor skill as a healing ability, which I guess it is but he doesn't do physical treatment so maybe he should only get half credit).

So I don't know how to sum all that up, except that just creating a new character for a different and unfamiliar system every day took me far enough out of my comfort zone that I didn't put a lot of effort into pushing on other limits. (Also, I wanted to be respectful when addressing the experiences of groups that I don't belong to, and that requires time and energy that I didn't always have.) It's another argument for using either fewer systems (and so creating groups of characters), more familiar systems, simpler systems, or some combination of the three for next year's go at the challenge.

*********

While I'm here, I'd also like to talk a little about engagement. Most of the traffic to this blog, I'm pretty sure, has come from members of the RPGNet forums (where I've been posting the characters and post links in the Character Creation Challenge thread in the Tabletop Roleplaying forum), from my own gaming groups, and from my wife. I have no idea what has made certain posts more interesting than others, but there are definitely a few that got markedly more views than others. The Soap character from day 7, at 20 views, is currently the highest performer, followed by day 1's Unknown Armies character (17) and day 31's Universe (11, but I gave it some extra plugging). About half of the remaining character posts got as 5 or fewer views, but I think that may exclude all the people who just read whatever was on the front page without clicking to a particular post, so I can't say anything for sure. 

But I'd sure be interested to find out why it seems so many more people wanted to read about my Soap character than anything else.

 

Character Creation Challenge: Post Mortem

 

Image courtesy of TardisCaptain's Blog of Holding

Well, that was certainly a month. 

I got it done, in that I posted 31 characters for 31 games I wasn't particularly familiar with, all within 31 days, and I never fell more than a day behind at any point during the challenge. So, achievement unlocked.

But what did I learn from it? One of my goals was to make a better acquaintance with all of these games I had sitting around in my closet and on my hard drive. How did I do on that count? Not so well, I think. There was a decided If It's Tuesday, This Must Be Belgium quality to my 31-days-31-games plan, racing from system to system without a lot of time to process what I'd just done. In a lot of cases, possibly most of them, I never got much past the character generation rules to get a feel for the game as a whole. (For instance, despite spending what must have been a dozen hours creating a character for Universe, I find that I still have very little idea of how the game is actually played. And although that's the most obvious example, it's far from the only one.)

Not surprisingly, I think the games I learned the most about were those with simpler rules systems: Wushu, Barbarians of Lemuria, Soap, Princess of the Universe. There were also a few games where earlier I'd spent some time really grappling with the rulebook, and doing the challenge helped me understand the game better: Legends of the Wulin, My Life with Master, and Capes are probably the best examples. Coyote and Crow might also fit into this category, but its release was late in 2021 and I hadn't got far into my first reading before I decided to include it in the project, so it's not quite something I picked up anew after laying aside months or years ago.

So which games, if any, am I more excited about now than I was at the beginning of the challenge? Not many, to be honest. The big surprise on that count is Barbarians of Lemuria; despite my reservations about the setting (which are pretty easily remedied, I think), I found the system really appealing--simple, but flexible and with enough moving parts to feel like different characters will play differently. Wushu also rose a little in my estimation, though I wasn't quite as impressed by it; I like both its similarities to and its differences from Risus (a system I've played quite a lot of), and I'm curious to see how it plays at the table (or on the Discord server, these days). (In both cases I was working from free-download versions and have since purchased expanded PDF editions.) On the flip side, I don't think any of the games turned out to be disappointments; then again, I don't think I went into the project with the kind of expectations that were likely to be disappointed. 

There were some games that I approached with an interest in playing that didn't dim after the character-creation experience: Capes, Coyote and Crow, Lancer, Legends of the Wulin, The Well. And then there are the games where I may have been in the right mental space to play them when I bought or downloaded them, but not so much these days, in particular Unknown Armies and My Life with Master, and making a character had little to do with the change in interest. But most of the games I used for this project were just games I had lying around and hadn't done much if anything with yet--stuff that I'd received as gifts (Universe), or as part of a PDF bundle (Colonial Gothic), or that I'd bought used because they were inexpensive and seemed kind of interesting (Soap).

As far as the characters themselves are concerned, well, I suppose it's to be expected that some would stick with me more than others. Time spent on creation was less a factor than whether a particular concept grabbed me (though time spent creating backstory was much more significant than time spent on calculating characteristics or spending character points), and of course characters created later in the month also have a certain advantage in claiming memory space. If I had to pick five favorites, I'd most likely go with these (in no particular order):

Big Lu, amiable lunkhead with a heart as big as his muscles, for Legends of the Wulin. Big Lu wasn't even my original character concept for this game, but he just sort of showed up. And he was perfect--for me, anyhow.*

Zara the Cutlass, farm girl turned dancer turned pirate turned mercenary, for Barbarians of Lemuria. I like the way the career system in BoL provides a quick method for building backstory, and I think I'd have a lot of fun playing this character.

Taga, smartass detective, for Coyote and Crow. I just think this would be a fun character to play in the very cool setting the Coyote and Crow designers gave us.

Cornelia Vane, scheming second-tier heel, for Soap. I don't know that I actually want to play the game, but something about this character just jelled and I'm very pleased with her and the little world I put her in.**

Dr. Daniels, time-traveling brain in a jar, for Timewatch. It's really the "brain in a jar" thing. No other reason, I just really like the idea of playing a brain in a jar.

I think there was a definite cost to undertaking the challenge. Not necessarily a large one, but a cost. I didn't quite let this project take over my life for the month, but I feel as though it came close. It bled into my work time, my family time, my housework time, and my gaming time; and it almost completely ate up my exercise time. I was thinking about it almost constantly--what's tomorrow's game? what sort of character do I want to make? what will I have time for? when will I fit in Ars Magica/Legends of the Wulin/Universe? how should I answer these character background questions? I think that better planning and a more measured approach might have helped me balance the challenge with the rest of my life--but then again, it's entirely possible that it would have sucked up nearly as much of my attention anyhow, as a New Thing with a Built-In Deadline is wont to do. (Certainly I saw Parkinson's Law strike me more than once last month, as games that should have required only an hour or two ballooned into five- or six-hour projects because I felt I had time to research details that I wouldn't have done with more complex systems.)

So, what now? I plan on taking the challenge up again next year, though within a more manageable set of boundaries. Until then, I'll post occasionally but less frequently; I have some other gaming-related stuff floating around that I've hoped to find a home for, and this is as good a place to put it as any. Until then, thanks for reading.

 

*I'm no wuxia expert, but Lu seems kind of simple by the standards of the genre, where AFAICT complex webs of relationships and motivations are more the norm.
**Also, I'm still inordinately tickled by the name "Mason Carpenter."

Character Creation Challenge, Day 31: Universe

 The science fiction RPG Universe was the fourth and last attempt by board-wargame mainstay SPI to crack the RPG market, after the modern-combat Commando, fantasy Dragonquest and ahead-of-its-time Dallas.* The game was pretty well-regarded in 1981, but to my hindsight-wizened eyes it looks more like an elaborate Traveller heartbreaker. In particular Universe features a more complex version of the lifepath character generation system pioneered by Traveller, and we’re going to travel that path in this post.

Part One: Heritage

 

The first batch of steps is called Heritage, and here we determine the characters’ starting characteristics, home planet, early upbringing—everything they’ll carry with them into their post-elementary education and pre-adventuring working life. 

 

We start by rolling to determine the character’s Potentials in four areas: physique, coordination, intellect, and social background. For each I roll a D10 and consult the Character Heritage table, which will give me a Multiplier for that characteristic:

 

Physique: roll 1, multiplier ½ (poor)

Coordination: roll 3, multiplier 1 (below average)

Intellect: roll 9, multiplier 3 (above average)

Social: roll 7, multiplier 3 (above average)

 

I add together these multipliers and consult the table again to determine the number of Study Points I’ll have to pursue various fields of improvement. These are in inverse proportion to the sum of multipliers, so my below-average 6.5 will give me an above-average 5 Study Points for use later in the process.

 

Next, I determine my native Habitat, or the prevailing conditions on the planet where I was born and/or raised. I’ll roll two D10 on the Habitat Table—one for the column, another for the particular entry in that column, but I’ll modify the second roll by adding my Physique multiplier and subtracting my Coordination multiplier, dropping fractions before calculation. So my first roll is 8, and my second is 10, adding 0 for physique and subtracting 1 for Coordination for a result of 9. This provides the cryptic result “4:MN-JU EX-NL/1” According to the legend at the bottom of the table, the 4 represents my base Environ Skill Level, MN is Contour (Mountains), JU is Feature (Jungle), so my home terrain is mountainous and characterized by rain forests. EX indicates extreme gravity (2-2.5G), and NL indicates a Normal temperature range of 25-100 F°. The 1 denotes my starting Urban Skill Level. 

 

Now that I know where my environmental comfort zone is, I need to see how it transfers to other types of environment. There’s a chart that cross-references Contours and Features; I’ll put my base rating of 4 in the box where Mountains meets Jungle. From there, each square out (orthogonally) means a drop of 1 point in rating. In a separate box I enter my Urban Skill Level, and I put an X in the temperature range box corresponding to my native habitat. I also put a 1 in the box corresponding to my normal gravity level (Extreme) and subtract 2 for each level away from that. Now, I can raise that by lowering my environmental skill level (which seems like it might be a good idea, since I’ll be at -5 in near-weightless conditions and extreme gravity is probably fairly rare), but for simplicity’s sake I’m going to play this ball where it lies. 

 

 

The following step determines my starting Social Standing. I roll a D10 and consult the table after adding my Urban Skill Level and twice my Social Background Multiplier, then (for reasons not revealed here) subtracting my initial Home Environ Skill Level. Roll 4, +1 for Urban, +6 for Multiplier, -4 for Home Environ equals 7, which according to the table puts me in the Lower Middle Class. This beginning confers no change in Skill Points, and a starting wealth multiplier of 100 Mils (which is about the price of a flashlight) times 1D10. I roll a 2 and will move into my student years with the equivalent of two flashlights in my bank account. My initial Skill Points will be an unmodified D10 result: 10, fortunately.

 

Part Two: Development

 

The second part of character generation is called Development, and this is where we spend Study Points and initial Skill Points, as well as determining Characteristics from potentials and the training undergone in this section.

 

We start by applying Study Points to determine the shape of our education. There are seven fields of study to choose from: theoretical science, applied science (or engineering), business, the humanities, the mind (aka psionics), the body (physical education, basically), and the military.  It costs one point to enter, and two to receive a concentration in, any field except the mind, which costs double. There is also an eighth field for general skills; all characters receive free entry and cannot take a concentration. I have 5 Study Points to spend, as well as a poor aptitude for physical pursuits and a lower-middle class background, though my choice of fields may help overcome some of those limitations. I should probably take a look at career options before I commit to anything. Applied sciences feature in several of these (and sometimes a concentration is required), theoretical sciences are less common. Business shows up surprisingly often. Two doses of applied science and one each of business and theoretical science should keep a lot of doors open for me, and a course of body should bring my physical qualities up to the minimum for some of the more active careers.

 

Next, I can spend my ten Initial Skill Points to reach entry-level competence in skills that were part of my fields of study (including general), that is, I can buy ten skills off these lists at Level 1 each. I’ll take vehicle tech, suit tech and electro tech off the Applied Science list, EVA and gravity (extreme) off the Body list, programming off the Business list, biology, physics and chemistry off the Theoretical Sciences list, and streetwise off the General list.

 

To complete the Development section, we take our Potential multipliers, combine them with the results of our Fields of Study, and then roll a D100 on a chart to determine nine Characteristics: Strength, Endurance, Dexterity, Agility, Intelligence, Mental Power, Leadership, Empathy, and Aggresion. For each you add the modifiers earned in your field of study (twice if you took a concentration), multiply by the appropriate multipliers, add the result of a D100 roll, and consult the chart to find the score corresponding to your total. Are you ready? Here we go.

 

For Strength I earn a modifier of 8 from my study of phys ed, plus 1 for the general field, multiplied by my factors for Physique (0.5) and Coordination (1). That’s a 4.5, drop the fraction for a 4, plus the die roll of 07 totals 11. That gives me a score of 3, which is near the bottom of the curve.

 

For Endurance I get a 4 from Body and a 1 from General, multiplied by ½ for Physique to get a rounded-down 2. The die roll is 93, however, and that total of 95 corresponds to a respectable score of 7.

 

Dexterity gets bonuses from General (+1), Body (+4) and Applied Science (also +4), and its multipliers are Coordination (1) and Intellect (3). That’s a very nice 27, which can still be brought way down by a poor die roll. But I roll a 59 for a total of 86 and a score of 7.

 

Agility is improved by General (+1) and Body (+4), but its multipliers are Physique (0.5) and Coordination (1), so I’m adding 2 to the die roll again. 34 + 2 = 36, for a score of 5, which is actually the minimum for starting characters, so I probably shouldn’t get too physical.

 

Intelligence gets a +8 boost from Theoretical Science and a +16 from the concentration in Applied Science, plus the ubiquitous +1 for General totals 25. Also, the multiplier is Intellect (3), which means I start with a 75 before I even touch the dice. The roll is 98 (!) for a grand total of 173, which breaks the curve and gives me a 12—the highest possible score.

 

Well, it’s all going to be downhill from there. My Mental Power bonuses come from Theoretical Science (+2) and General (+1), multiplied by Intellect (3) for a modifier of 9. The die roll is 75, for a total of 84, which corresponds to a 7, except Mental power ratings are divided by 2 so that becomes a 3.

 

Leadership is modified by Business (+2) and General (+1), with Intellect (3) and Social Background (3) as its multipliers. 3 x 9 = 27, plus 03 on the D100 comes to 30, and a score of 4.

 

Empathy gets a +4 from Business and the usual +1 from General, and it’s multiplied by Intellect (3). 5 x 3 = 15, plus 62 on the D100 for 77, corresponding to a score of 6.

 

Finally, Aggression is modified only by fields of study, so the multiplier is automatically 1. General experience doesn’t add anything, but study of the Body adds 15 (Humanities and the Mind have negative modifiers, but I didn’t study either of those). Add 15 to a die roll of 64, and that 79 corresponds to a score of 6.

 

 

Part Three: Profession

 

The next segment of character generation involves experience in a Profession. First, we’ve got to see what our training and characteristics qualify us for. Anyone can be a planetary Colonist, but I’ve got enough training and ability to shoot for something that pays better. I can also be a Doctor, an Explorer, a Handyman, a Scientist, a Scout, or a Space Technician. Of those, the best balance of possible benefits seems to come from Scientist, which is kind of where I figured I was going anyhow.

 

So in order to determine what I get out of this career, I need to find out how long I spend doing it. Terms are four years long, and you can try to serve as many as five of them. However, it is possible to be downsized ahead of your intended schedule, and you will also be subject to negative effects of aging if you serve 8 years or more in your profession. (You are presumed to begin working at the age of 20.) I’m planning to spend 16 years in the field, ideally retiring at 36 without any significant loss of capability. I then roll on the Employment Table to determine how long I last before I’m let go; I’m guaranteed at least 12 years of service, but if I roll less than a 9 I’ll be let go after that and spend the last four years unemployed. I roll a 2 and will get 12 years of employment and another 4 on the dole, earning neither further benefits nor further skills.

 

Before I determine the benefits I get out of my 12 years in Big Science, I’ll see what the wear of sixteen years does to my abilities. I roll a D10, add my final Age of 36, and consult the Effects of Age table to see how many points I have to take off my physical characteristics. I roll a 7, which added to 36 makes 43, corresponding to 5 points lost. Lost points must be spread evenly as possible and removed in the order Endurance, Agility, Strength, Dexterity, which means 2 points off Endurance and 1 each off the rest. That’s gonna hurt: Endurance drops from 7 to 5, Agility from 5 to 4, Strength from 3 to 2, and Dexterity from 7 to 6. 

 

Now that we’ve had the bad news, let’s see what I’ve gained for it. First, more Skill Points. Scientist has a skill point modifier of 9, added to my Intelligence of 12 makes 21, plus a d10 roll of 2 equals 23. Checking the Skill Point Table, that means I get 10 skill points to apply to skills listed for the profession or my Fields of Study. My 12 years of experience mean that no skill can be raised above Level 4. The cost is one-for-one, so at least that’s easy to calculate. I’ll spend one level each on Biology, Programming, and Robot Tech;two each on Physics and Planetology; and three on Chemistry to make it my primary field. Some of these I had already bought at entry level with my initial study points; I’ll provide the totals when I do the statblock.

 

Then I find out what material benefits my severance package includes. I roll 1D10 (6), add the number of years actually worked (12), and check that number on the Benefit Table. An 18 gets me to benefit level C, which comprises a cash payment of 500 Mils x my Intelligence rating (6000 Mils, or 6 Trans) and a chemical synthesizer machine of tech level 6 (which I could conceivably use to generate further income). 

 

Now I’ll consider investing in further gear. Not knowing what sort of jobs I’ll be taking on, I’ll look for general-purpose personal equipment that doesn’t cost too much. Prices are supposed to be affected by local conditions, but for purposes of simplicity I’ll assume we’ll do our shopping somewhere that book prices apply. The first thing I realize is that six trans won’t get me very far at all; you can’t even buy a car with it. I’ll buy a basic repair kit for 1 Tran, a Headset Radio for 100 Mils, and save the rest until I find out what I need for my next freelance job.

 

And that gets us everything we need for a stat block except a name. I don’t have a clear visual for this character yet, and gender doesn’t matter for game purposes. In the SF tradition of mixing ethnic markers to imply a post-racial intergalactic society, I’ll call this spacer Haruko Kenyatta. So here’s the summing-up, including as many fields from the official character sheet as I can make myself type out. (I’m not sure why a lot of these things need to be recorded after character generation is complete, but there’s spaces for them.)

 

Name: Haruko Kenyatta

Age: 36

Gender: F

Potentials: Physique ½; Coordination 1; Intellect 3; Social 3

Study Points: 5

Social Standing: Lower Middle (7)

Initial Skill Points: 10

Fields of Study: Applied Science x2; Body 1; Business 1; Theoretical Science 1

Characteristics: Strength 2; Endurance 5; Dexterity 6; Agility 4; Intelligence 12; Mental Power 3; Leadership 4; Empathy 6; Aggression 6

Profession: Scientist (Chemist)

Skill Points: 10

Benefit Level: C

Money: 4 Tran 900 Mil

Possessions: Chemical Synthesizer (L6), Radio Headset, Basic Repair Kit

 

Trained Skills: 

Scientific: Biology L2, Chemistry L4, Physics L3, Planetology L2, Programming L2

Technical: Compu/Robot Tech L1, Electro Tech L1, Suit Tech L1, Vehicle Tech L1

Interpersonal: Streetwise L1

Environmental: Gravity (extreme) L1, Urban L1

 

 

 

 

*The company went heavily into debt and was eaten by TSR in 1982.

Character Creation Challenge, Day 30: My Life with Master

 

My Life with Master is the result of experimenting with a basic structural issue in role-playing games, which is about the role of plot and story. Instead of an open-ended campaign of exploration, or a story arc which is supposed to depend on player choice but often ends up yanked back on course by a gamemaster’s heavy hand, My Life with Master explores the impact of small choices within a predetermined plot arc—in particular, the classic Gothic-horror story of hubris and fall. In order to make this work, players take the roles not of the story’s primary character, but of the minions who serve this master, and who, through the effect of their small kindnesses and acts of resistance, might be able to redeem themselves even as their master tumbles to destruction.

 

So to begin we need a Master, who will be played by the GM. The taxonomy of Masters is not particularly complex, although the designer warns us strenuously that it is a guideline rather than a straitjacket. A Master may be a Beast, motivated and influenced by more physical and primal stimuli and attempting to affect others in the same way; or a Brain, whose primary medium of influence in either direction is conversation and the exchange of ideas. They are further categorized by the way in which they threaten their neighboring community: the Feeder relies upon them for sustenance; the Breeder’s creations threaten them either physically or psychologically (whether that fear is justified or not); the Collector seeks to assemble something very particular, whether it’s a menagerie of special people or the parts to reinvent themselves as someone else; and the Teacher seeks to imprint their twisted worldview upon others.

 

In addition, we must determine more specifically what the Master needs from the Townspeople, as well as what the Master wants from the Outsiders whose approval/support/interest they crave. One of the classic examples is Victor Frankenstein, who wants the respect of the scientific community and needs to rob his neighbors’ graveyards for the experiments he believes will earn that respect (and the result of which will frighten and eventually physically harm said neighbors).

 

According to the rulebook, a well-designed Master has “good grounds for insecurity, a passion to transcend it, and a certain amount of egomania.” That doesn’t sound like too difficult a mark to hit. I like the idea of a musical aspect to the Master’s madness; let’s say he wants to recreate the sound of the angels’ choir by stealing the voices of children and transferring them to some sort of Device that will convert their innocent music to a simulation of the divine. That’s blasphemously ambitious and likely to have gotten him rejected by a relevant group of Outsiders. In the taxonomy that would make him, I think, a Collector; though I am not sure whether his musical obsession makes him more Beast or more Brain. This question matters, because it’s going to color how our Master interacts with his Minions. Let’s try to spin this out further and perhaps telling the story will resolve the question.

 

After decades of obsession with seeking the Voice of the Divine, Charles Emmanuel Phillips has finally built the Ourania Chorodia. The device will vindicate his theories that the choir of Heaven can be recreated by the ingenuity of Man and shame all those stodges who called his obsession mad, even blasphemous—especially the rectors at the University of Leipzig who revoked his degrees and blacklisted him in the musical community. Unfortunately, in order to activate it he needs the voices of children, and once taken those voices (as far as he has been able to determine) do not return. And yet it is worth the cost, for what price could one place on the ability to bring the celestial symphony to Earth?

 

I’m still torn on the Brain/Beast divide. Stealing voices is pretty physical and sensory, and music certainly affects people at a level deeper than conscious thought. Perhaps he fancies himself an intellectual, but his attempts to function at the level of words and ideas are too frequently overridden by his fundamental sensuality—for him music is all about the feels, whatever words he uses to rationalize that visceral response. A Beast who tells himself he’s a Brain.

 

All right, then. We need to assign values to two attributes that are linked to the Master but more properly belong to the setting: Fear and Reason. The former quantifies the strength of the Master’s presence; it empowers him and his minions, and it also works to control those minions. The latter represents the influence of the Town’s residents over the environment. The higher the Fear value is relative to the Reason value, the harder it will be for Minions to develop connections to the townspeople and resist the Master’s control. Charles’ plan is pretty awful, but I don’t want him to be too overbearing; this is our first game, after all. I’ll set Fear at 3 (two points below what the book recommends for truly horrifying Masters) and Reason at 4.

 

Now we can turn our attention to a player character, i.e. a Minion. The Master needs Minions to interact with the Town on his behalf, and since his needs pose some kind of threat to the Town, the Minions embody that threat. But the Minions are human; they need love, and they suffer under the Master’s demands (and his wrath when those demands are not met). A Minion has three statistics in My Life with Master. Self-Loathing measures the degree to which the Minion sees themselves as a monster, willing to commit harm in service to the Master. It empowers the Minion to do violence and hinders making connections with Townspeople. Weariness measures the Minion’s fading inner strength; it makes resisting the Master more difficult, but it also makes the Minion more vulnerable to harm when carrying out the Master’s commands. Most importantly, it does not hinder making connections with Townspeople. The final statistic, Love, measures the strength of the connections the Minion has made with various Townspeople. In a standard game, the player divides three points between Self-Loathing and Weariness, and Love begins at 0. I’m going to start Self-Loathing at 1 and Weariness at 2 for a more sympathetic Minion. All three of these values will change over the course of play.

 

Although a Minion is fundamentally human, they also have qualities that separate them from the rest of humanity. Each minion has a quality that makes them More than Human and another that makes them Less than Human. Both qualities are hedged with closely specified exceptions. The Less than Human quality is a crippling limitation that affects the character in all circumstances except those defined in the exception; the More than Human quality is a surreal and extraordinary ability that is likewise limited by a very specific condition. Given the nature of our Master, it makes sense for both of these qualities to have some kind of relationship to sound, if not specifically music. 

This character is starting to come into focus now: a young woman, an orphan, one of Charles’ first experiments, whom he raised to adulthood out of some sense of responsibility for stealing her voice (and of course because he wanted a Minion). The experiment was not entirely successful: Maria can sing when provided with instrumental accompaniment, though otherwise she is incapable of speech. That’s her Less than Human quality, and Charles absolutely exploits it. Her More than Human quality is that she can whistle beautiful and intricate tunes, loudly enough to fill a room—except in the presence of dogs.

 

The final step before play is to create two Connections among the Townspeople for Maria, people with whom she will seek to build positive relationships represented in the game as Love point. The first is a kindly old man named Janos who plays dance tunes on the recorder at his table outside the café for the children playing nearby. The second is a little girl named Sophie, who reminds Maria of herself as a child (though Sophie is not an orphan).

 

Not much to put in a statblock here, but let’s set out what we have:

 

Maria, Minion of Charles Emmanuel Phillips, inventor of the Ourania Chorodia and thief of children’s voices

Beginning stats:

Self-Loathing: 1

Weariness: 2

Love: 0

 

Less than Human: Is incapable of speech, except when singing to someone else’s accompaniment.

More than Human: Can whistle beautiful and intricate tunes loudly enough to fill a room, except in the presence of dogs.

 

Connections: 

Old Janos is so kind, and he plays such sprightly tunes on his recorder for the children!

Little Sophie reminds me of myself before Master Phillips adopted me, though her life is happier.

 

Fear: 3

Reason: 4