Character Creation Challenge 7: MÖRK BORG

After the stress of vintage D&D, I wanted something a bit simpler. So off to Scvmbirther for a MÖRK BORG character....

Name: Merkari

Class: Occult Herbmaster

HP:2/2

Omens:1 (d2)

You are Merkari

Raised in calm isolation in the Sarkash dark.

Born of the mushroom, raised in the glade, watched by the eye of the moon in a silverblack pool.

Shrewd and Nihilistic. Lost three toes, limps. Obsessively collects small sharp stones.

Occult Herbmaster

Portable Laboratory

You carry a portable laboratory and continually search for frequently expended ingredients. Daily you have the materials to create two randomly determined decoctions and can brew a total of d4 doses. If unused they lose vitality after 24 hours.

List of Decoctions

1. Red Poison Toughness DR12 or -d10 HP.
2. Ezumiel's Vapor Pass a DR14 test or severe hallucinations for d4 hours.
3. Southern Frog Stew Vomit for d4 hours, pass a DR14 test or you can do nothing else.
4. Elixir Vitalis Heals d6 HP and stops infection. Can be habit-forming.
5. Spider-Owl Soup See in darkness, climb on walls for 30 minutes.
6. Fernor’s Philtre Translucent oil, must be dabbed right into the eye. Heals infection and gives +2 on Presence tests for d4 hours.
7. Hyphos’ Enervating Snuff Berserk! Two attacks per round but defend with DR14. Lasts one fight. Must be snorted, causes sneezing.
8. Black Poison Toughness DR14 or -d6 HP and blinded for one hour.

Abilities

• Strength+1
• Agility-1
• Presence±0
• Toughness±0

Equipment

• Waterskin and 1 day's worth of food
• Staff d4 damage
• Leather armor -d2 damage, tier 1
• Sackcloth bag, and 12 small sharp stones
• Rope, 30 feet
• Shield (-1 HP damage or have the shield break to ignore one attack)
• 106 silver

No interesting animals on this one, sadly. I have fond memories of Captain Beaky the Wonder Hawk and he wasn't even part of my character's equipment. But this one's pretty well equipped and the random decoctions look fun. Let's have a go. Dice say we're getting Ezumiel's Vapor and Black Poison. Merkari is ready to mess people up.

 

I think I could have a lot of fun with Merkari and their collection of sharp rocks. I used my new sharp dice to roll those decoctions, so I find them pretty relatable.

Character Creation Challenge 6: Liminal Horror

Liminal Horror is a game of modern cosmic horror, and is nothing to do with the Liminal RPG. Let's roll some dice.

Alex Carter

Background: Garbage Collector

STR 10

DEX 12

CTRL 10

5 HP

Gear: Smartphone, cut resistant gloves (+1 Armor), hi-vis vest, reach extender, safety glasses, $600

Aesthetic: Grunge minimalist

First encounter with the unknown: You read something not meant for mortal minds.

Ideology: Morality is black and white.

Appearance: small, with an elongated face and blunt speech patterns.

Personality: cautious, but vengeful, and disowned by her family.

Significant person: her cousin Mike, the one family member who still talks to her.

Contact: Mike's husband, a software engineer.

Looks like Alex had a pretty rough life up until this point, what with her parents throwing her out, and given that this is a horror game, it's probably about to get even worse. I wonder what that strange book she rescued from the garbage truck was?

Character Creation Challenge 5: Basic D&D

I picked up an old D&D set in an antique shop back in 2001 or so. I think it's what people called Moldvay, since his name is in it. I used the d6 that came in the box to roll the stats.

Name: Opal Proudfoot

STR 13 - +1 to hit, damage and opening doors
INT 12  - Reads and writes native languages
WIS 13 - +1 on magic saving throws
DEX 16 - +2 on "to hit" rolls, -2 bonus on AC, +1 initiative
CON 11 - No adjustment to hit points
CHA 9 - No adjustment to reactions, 4 max retainers, 7 retainer morale

(lowered INT to improve DEX, +10% XP for having 13+ in both STR and DEX)

Class: Halfling

Hit points: 6

Special abilities:
+1 bonus with missile weapons
-2 AC when attacked by creatures larger than man sized.
+1 initiative
10% chance of being detected when hiding in woods or underbrush
1/3 chance they will not be seen in normal light if the character finds cover and remains quiet and still

Saving throws:
Death ray or poison: 10
Magic wands: 11
Paralysis or Turn to Stone: 12
Dragon Breath: 13
Rods, Staves or Spells: 14

Alignment: Neutral

Money: 0gp

Equipment:
Chain mail armour
Shortbow
Quiver with 20 arrows
Short sword
Backpack
Flask of oil
Lantern
Iron rations

No, I'm not going to work all the armour class wossnames. You can't make me. Do your own maths, nerds.

Character Creation Challenge 4: Matrons of Mystery

I'm going to do my own character for my own game because why not?

Personal Details

Name: Rosemary Braithwaite
Village: Lyme Bay
Personal Style: Hippy/Bohemian
Hobby: Rabbit Keeping
Past Career: Hotel Manager
Past Relationship: Husband George, deceased, hotel chef
Children/family: None.
Contacts: Lizzie at the farm shop that sells rabbit food.

Investigation Styles

Physical +0
Logical +1
Intuitive -1
Gregarious +2

Rosemary had a happy marriage to her husband George, working together at a south coast hotel. When George died she moved to Lyme Bay to retire. She has no children, but has instead devoted herself to rabbit keeping. Her favourite is a brown Flemish Giant called Pierre, who she often takes for walks on a lead. She's struck up a close friendship with Lizzie at the farm shop, after using her management skills to help her make the case for getting a pay rise at work. Lizzie knows all the local farmers and has inside info on all animal related matters. She also thinks Pierre is absolutely adorable.

Character Creation Challenge 3: Don't Rest Your Head

Don't Rest Your Head is a game about insomniacs who have failed to sleep for so long that they have become Awake. They can see reality. And reality can see them. Yes, it's a horror game.

Jenny Walsh

What's Been Keeping You Awake?

The cold. My parents threw me out in the middle of winter and I've got nowhere to go. It's so cold that I'm afraid if I fall asleep I'll freeze to death. So I haven't slept.

What Just Happened To You?

I saw something in the snow, and it wasn't human. I was sitting on a park bench, resting for a minute, and saw it go up to the next bench. There was someone sitting there, and it sort of wrapped itself around them, and then they were gone. That's when I started running.

What's On The Surface?

Average height, short blonde hair which I haven't been able to brush recently, hidden under a bobble hat, wrapped up in a ton of layers with a big coat on top. I tend to try to make myself look small and inconspicuous.

What Lies Beneath?

Rage. It's like I've spent my entire life bottling up rage, but being too afraid to let it out.

What's Your Path?

 I need to figure out who I really am, now I'm outside of the box my parents tried to force me into.

Choose Responses

Fight 2, Flight 1

Determine Talents

Exhaustion talent: breaking things. When I let out the rage, nothing stands in my way.

Madness talent: shrinking. I can make myself so small that I can fit through any space and go unnoticed anywhere.

Character Creation Challenge 2: Monster of the Week

I play Monster of the Week on Tuesdays at the moment, so let's have one of those.

Sandra Bellows

Playbook: The Spooky

Look: Woman, burning eyes, nerdy clothing.

Charm +2
Cool +0
Sharp -1
Tough -1
Weird +2

Moves

Premonitions: At the start of each mystery, roll +Weird. On a 10+, you get a detailed vision of something bad that is yet to happen. You take +1 forward to prevent it coming true, and mark experience if you stop it. On a 7-9+ you get clouded images of something bad that is yet to happen: mark experience if you stop it. On a miss, you get a vision of something bad happening to you and the Keeper holds 3, to be spent one-for-one as penalties to rolls you make.

The Sight: You can see the invisible, especially spirits and magical influences. You may communicate with (maybe even make deals with) the spirits you see, and they give you more opportunities to spot clues when you investigate a mystery.

The Big Whammy: You can use your powers to kick some ass: roll +Weird instead of +Tough. The attack has 2-harm close obvious ignore-armour. On a miss, you’ll get a magical backlash.

Gear

Shotgun (3-harm close messy)
Big knife (1-harm hand)

The Dark Side

Hallucinations
Pain
Paranoia

Personal

Archaeology's not supposed to be a dangerous profession, despite what happens in certain movies that I'm sure I don't have to name, and for most of my career, my life has been free of giant boulders, Nazis, and suchlike. Most of it.

The dig site was the remains of an old manor house. It had burned down some time in the 16th Century, but the foundations got uncovered during road building, so in we went. There was a whole sub basement still pretty much intact. Incredible stuff! The funny thing is, I don't actually remember what it was I saw in there. I just remember the trip to hospital after they pulled me out of there. I'm not sure I want to remember.

So now I can see things that are invisible, which would be great if I couldn't also see things that just plain aren't there. I can see glimpses of the future, which has given me raging paranoia. And I can hurt people with magic, although there seems to be one of those cosmic balance things going on any time I do.

I've got a whole new profession now. Monster hunting.

Character Creation Challenge 1: CY_BORG

The goal of the Character Creation Challenge is to create 31 new characters in the month of January. I don't know if I'll actually do them all (not least because I'm away at ConTingency for several days in the middle of it) but I'm going to pull random books off my shelf and create characters when I have time.

So I'm kicking it off with CY_BORG, where character creation means going to PUNKMAKER and seeing what I get:

YOU ARE DUZI

@math_duzi_571655

A gutterscum Burned Hacker; holomorphed face, fiddles with jewelry, and geeking out over explosives. You desire change. On a deep dive of the Cyber Cosmos, you’ve found a terrible truth: Nanobacteria is seeping into the Net. What does that even mean? Who’s covering it up?

You have a 39,000¤ debt to a death cult run by a board member from a powerful corp.

 

Strength ±0

Agility -3

Presence ±0

Toughness ±0

Knowledge +2

HP 6/6

Glitches 2 (d2)

 

BURNED HACKER

You were one of the sharpest deckers in Cy. No one could use tech or warp the world with an App like you could. You don’t know what went wrong. You messed up. Maybe you were tricked; maybe you got sloppy.You glimpsed a terrible truth, and now you’re burnt. No collective, no fallback, nothing.

MerzApp
Assaults every sense with noise. Test Toughness DR16 or be blind, deaf and unable to act for d3 rounds.

 

GEAR

• 100¤
• Custom cyberdeck covered in glue, with 6 slots
• Coupon for 10% off 4 doses of your favourite drug
• Crowbar, d4 damage
• Small but jailbroken Robo-K9 (5 HP, bite d4, only obeys you)
• Monosword, d8 damage
• StyleGuard, -d2 damage (Looks just like clothes!)

APPS

• MerzApp
  Assaults every sense with noise. Test Toughness DR16 or be blind, deaf and unable to act for d3 rounds.
• CTechAttak
  d3 nearby cybered targets lose a total of 4d10 HP.

That bit about discovering nanobacteria seeping into the net sounds like the reason Duzi got burned. Somewhat ironically, the debt to the death cult is probably something to do with Duzi still being alive. They've fallen foul of some very dangerous people, which required a complete change of identity. The death cult are very good at making people disappear, and people don't tend to ask a lot of questions afterwards, which is just what Duzi needed. Of course they now live in fear of missing a payment. Nobody wants to have their life repossessed.