My Experience:Spycraft’s first edition was one of the first d20/OGL games to really break the D&D mold. Tracker7 and I went to the Rusty Scabbard in Lexington for no particular reason. He picked up a copy and we went over to Backyard Burgers on Waller Ave to grab lunch. By the time we’d finished, I’d decided to buy a copy, too. I went on to run my Defense Research Agency campaign (source material previously posted under the Spycraft tag), then joined the design team for almost all of the first edition’s run, as well as Stargate SG-1‘s licensed releases. Tracker7 subsequently ran a cops game under the second edition rules, and I was heavily into the Living Spycraft organized play space whenever I could get out to Archon.
Isak Eriksen (code name Svallin), Watcher on the Baltic
Game:7th Sea (Alderac Entertainment Group, 2000 [second printing])
My Experience: I’ve run this one for a couple of one-shots, played in a couple of convention games, and was a regular in Tracker7’s campaign back in the early 2000s. It remains one of my go-to settings for ahistorical Renaissance swashbuckling, intrigue, and general.
Game:The Star Wars Roleplaying Game (Second Edition, Revised and Expanded) (West End Games, 1996)
My Experience: Back in the early 2000s, I was fortunate enough to play in the last year or so of Tracker7’s decade-long Far Orbit campaign. I’ve also played and run the FFG edition of the game a time or two.
Anastasia “Convor” Glaux, Reconnaissance Starfighter Pilot
Game:Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles & Other Strangeness (Palladium Books, 1985)
My Experience: This was the first true RPG I played, back around 1986ish (I may be shaving hairs with this versus Toon, but the precise details have been memory-holed).
There I was, minding my own business, when a random Redditor on /r/rpg/ made me aware of the Character Creation Challenge. The TL;DR is that it’s a gamer take on the “New Year, New You” bullshit, wherein one creates and posts a new player character for every day of January.
Those of you who’ve known me for a while can probably see where this is going.
While I have maintained that level of output for a single system before (typically prepping pre-gens for convention LARPs), I think that for my first time out of the gate with this challenge, I’m going for a little more variance. Here are my self-imposed rules, which I reserve the right to violate at any time:
I’ll only create characters for games which I’ve run, played (play-by-post counts), playtested during development, or contributed to. Generally speaking, I’ll try to match editions, and will give preference to earlier editions, but I may need to bend this if I can’t otherwise comply with the next rule.
I must own a physical copy of the core rulebook.
I will use only material from the core book.
No recycling characters I’ve played (though I may recycle pre-gens I’ve written for other people if they sufficiently amuse me).
I’ll build each character according to rules as written. If random elements are mandatory, I’ll roll those out as written. If random elements are optional, I’ll use them to the greatest extent that makes sense.
Each day will feature a new game (except for one short series of deliberately-planned violations at the end of the month).
Luis Hernandez grew up in New Hampshire in the shadow of Mount Washington. Being able to see the peak with the reputed worst weather in the country spurred what would become a lifelong interest in meteorology. After completing his undergraduate studies at CU Boulder, he spent a couple of years working for the National Weather Service, but desk-bound work was eating his soul. When a co-worker mentioned that the Air Force had its own meteorologists, Luis skipped lunch to visit the local recruiter’s office. A line on a list of job options leaped out at him: “Special Operations Weather Technician.” It sounded pretty badass…
Hernandez was one of the few AFSOC personnel still operating in the European theatre by mid-2000. When Task Force Cobalt was being assembled, someone with stars on his collar decided the team might be able to use a shooter with some geek credentials. When things came apart in the days after the raid on Lodz, Hernandez found himself in a HMMWV with Cat Mitchell and two other survivors…
Strength C: Stamina D
Agility B: Mobility C (Paratrooper), Ranged Combat C (Rifleman)
Intelligence A: Recon C, Survival B (Meteorologist), Tech D (Communications)
Before the war, Henry was a saxophonist in the U.S. Army Band, in it for the G.I. Bill benefits. No one was more surprised than he when he was deployed to perform his original MOS as a signals intelligence voice intercept linguist. He spent most of the war in a SIGINT truck behind the lines, trying to pluck Soviet transmissions out of the air.
Bell was captured after the Battle of Kalisz when 5th ID’s headquarters was overrun. He spent several weeks as a Soviet POW before seizing a chance to escape, which was when he encountered the team. Since then, he’s been filling in on a variety of support tasks for Ellis. He’s currently assigned as the driver for Comms, the team’s BTR-70K, though he’s both more adept and happier as a linguist and radio operator.
Strength C
Agility C: Driving D, Ranged Combat D
Intelligence A: Recon C, Survival D, Tech C
Empathy B: Persuasion B (Linguist, Musician)
Key Gear: radio; an AKM he’d rather not have to use
Languages: Russian (native), Korean (fluent), Polish (fluent), German (pidgin)
Shit, man, I just wanted to get out of South Miami and get money for college. How was I supposed to know the Army was gonna have a war?
Alison Ortiz is a short, well-muscled Latina with intense eyes and a prominent burn scar on her left cheek. Cuban-born, she came to Florida with her family as part of the 1980 Mariel boatlift. As a teenager in South Miami, she split her time between the emerging street-racing culture and her parents’ Key Biscayne dive shop.
Alison enlisted in the Army at 18 to earn G.I. Bill benefits. Originally trained in supply and logistics, she took the opportunity to cross over to infantry duty when the Army opened up combat careers to women in late 1996. She figured that if she was going to get sent to war anyway, her chances of survival would be better around actual soldiers than in the middle of a collection of clerks and jerks. In retrospect, it may not have been the best idea, but it’s gotten her this far.
Alison was formerly a squad automatic riflewoman in 3-143 Infantry, one of the component units of the U.S. 5th Infantry Division. She was captured after the Battle of Kalisz when her vehicle was struck by artillery fire and spent several weeks as a Soviet POW before the team liberated her. Currently, her usual assignment is driver for the expedition team’s 10-ton truck, Industrial Light and Mayhem.
Strength B: Heavy Weapons B, Stamina C (Load Carrier)
Agility B: Driving C (Racer), Mobility C (Diver), Ranged Combat D
Intelligence B: Survival D
Empathy C
Key Gear: RPK-74; M9
Languages: Cuban Spanish (native), English (fluent but accented), Polish (pidgin)
I just got back from CharCon, an excellent little pocket gaming convention in Charleston, WV. I’ll probably post a more thorough con review later, but the post that’s been stuck in my head for the last couple of days is a con GMing tactic that I encountered on Friday night.
Friday night’s Fallout session, like all good convention games, used pre-generated player characters. What made these different was the GM’s insertion of a Mad Libs-style fill-in-your-own-characterization block in the lower left corner of the sheet:
It’s ridiculously simple, but it made a noticeable difference around the table in terms of player investment in the PCs they’d just received.
Apocalypse World and its Powered by the Apocalypse derivatives all have something similar in their playbooks, of course, but it’s a pre-defined list of choices – and I’d never made the connection between that concept and the need to provide some sort of player input on con one-shot pre-gens. I’ll definitely be stealing this for future demo games I run.
Continuing our string of character introductions, we move on to Player B’s PCs, Alexei and Pettimore. Pettimore is an original PC (and the only one who was ported from a previous iteration of this campaign – with some unsettling story implications. Alexei is a later addition.
Alexei Brandt
East German civilian
Ponikla Team
Before the war, Alexei Brandt was a teenage metalhead, yearning for the freedom that his bootleg Western albums spoke of. He made a living doing odd jobs, anything from farming to radio repair (and he may or may not have been involved in pirate radio). As things broke down, Alexei became a drifter, trying to stay one step ahead of the war as he traded and worked and salvaged for food and shelter.
Alexei linked up with the team more or less by accident, as he was a bystander in the Battle of Radom. Minka recognized him from their prewar acquaintanceship and recruited him (which didn’t take much convincing). When the team split, Alexei elected to remain in Ponikla for the chance of a stable life, putting his hands to work on the village’s infrastructure.
Appearance: Alexei is an ’80’s metalhead in his late teens.
Buddy: Minka
Moral Code: You don’t have to be a bad guy to be metal.
Big Dream: Don’t get shot. Make money. Get girls.
Strength C: Close Combat D, Stamina C
Agility B: Driving D (Biker), Ranged Combat D
Intelligence B: Survival D (Jerry Rig [homebrew]), Tech C (Electrician)
Empathy B: Persuasion B (Storyteller [homebrew], Trader)
Other Key Equipment: Walkman and collection of bootleg punk albums and mixtapes, denim vest, bicycle with cargo trailer full of assorted salvage and trade goods
Album List: Black Sabbath – Paranoid; Jerry Lee Lewis – Live at the Star Club, Hamburg; Twisted Sister – Stay Hungry; Motorhead – Ace of Spades; Dio – Holy Diver; Panzerfaust der Wahrheit (Bazooka of Truth) – LAUF UM DEIN LEBEN, ER HAT EINE PANZERFAUST!
John Lee Pettimore
Staff Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps – MOS 8541 (Scout Sniper)
Expedition Team
Pettimore hails from the mountains of eastern Kentucky. Born in coal-mining country, he saw the Corps as an escape from his home county’s endless cycle of poverty and outside exploitation. For a man who grew up hunting to put food on the table, scout/sniper school was a natural progression.
At some point during the war, Pettimore found himself in the orbit of an intelligence operative who called himself Broadstreet. Broadstreet’s small team bounced around the northwestern Poland area of operations, handling a variety of specialized tasks. When the U.S. Army’s 5th Infantry Division moved out for the summer 2000 offensive, Broadstreet’s team was attached to it.
As the 5th ID died at Kalisz, Broadstreet, Pettimore, and their associates were behind enemy lines, extracting a U.S. State Department physician from Soviet custody. With no friendly forces to rejoin, the team fled south into a darkening world. His subsequent experiences, recounted in a conversation with Ellis and supported by the Broadstreet Dossier, are not entirely synchronized with the surrounding world’s understanding of linear time…
Appearance: Preeetty much Chris Kyle, but lankier.
Buddy: Arkadi
Moral Code: Never leave a man behind. Everybody goes home. God gave you the strength to ensure that.
Big Dream: Home.
Strength C: Close Combat C, Stamina D
Agility B: Mobility D, Ranged Combat B (Sniper)
Intelligence B: Recon C (Scout), Survival C (Hunter)
Empathy B: Persuasion D
Coolness Under Fire: C
Permanent Rads: 5
Armament: Thoughts and Prayers (SVD with the occasional uncanny ability of its own), hunting bow, M45 MEU(SOC)
Other Key Equipment: Bible, prayerbook, bear claw necklace
