Here Be Dragons – Part IV – Creating A Character

Creating A Character

I mentioned in my first post that I wanted to create a character called Rock Hammer and now is as good a time as any, so…

It’s also a good opportunity to run through the character creation process detailed in part I and pick from the Abilities listed in part II and the Perks in part III.

Oh and here is a quick character sheet I knocked up as a Google Doc and then saved as a PDF.

Name and Appearance

First things first, I already have a name in mind (Rock Hammer) and a bit of an idea for the type of character he is going to be. That will help me decide what he should be good at right from the start. Rock is going to be an archaeologist in a similar vein to Indiana Jones. He’ll be uncovering ancient artefacts and getting into scrapes with bad guys and rivals. He’ll also be a bit of a rogue.

Characteristics

This is quite possibly the easiest bit of the character creation process, as all characters start with 0 in each of the Characteristics. I’ll just note down 0 in the boxes next to Body, Mind and Spirit.

Abilities

Next up are Abilities. These are going to be really important and should reflect the starting capabilities of the character. Given what I said about him being an archaeologist and his penchant for getting into a spot of bother, he’ll have some points in Academics, Close Combat and Ranged Combat for sure.

First let’s look at the points available. He will have one Ability with 5 points, another with 4 and a third with 3 points. Lastly he’ll have another three Abilities each with 1 point.

I am inclined to think that archaeology and academics is really his primary focus, so that should get 5 points and looking at the other Advanced Abilities it seems obvious that Languages should feature quite high as well, as he’ll be travelling lots and deciphering ancient manuscripts in strange languages. Therefore Languages gets 4 points.

I played around with the points a little bit for the last four Abilities, but eventually settled for Ranged Combat 3 and a point each in Athletics, Awareness and Driving. I didn’t put anything into Close Combat, but as it’s a Basic Ability he can pick that up pretty quickly. The same goes for any of the other Basic Abilities. As long as they are used in a session there is a chance that Rock will get better at them.

Perks

I get to choose a single Perk for Rock to start the game with and it must be from the ones listed for the Abilities he has points in. As Academics is his strongest Ability it makes sense that he should have a Perk for that and as Archaeology is his thing, that’ll be the Perk. That means he will automatically add +2 to any Academics roll involving archaeology and once he has increased his Mind above 0, if he does something particularly cool the GM might add that on too. I can see that coming in useful to avoid hidden traps in old temples or for finding hidden treasure.

Health

This is another easy one to sort for a new character. As Health is 10 plus the sum of their Characteristics, all starting characters will start with 10 Health.

Belongings

Last, but not least, I need to give him some starting equipment. The game is deliberately vague about what a character should start the game with. My recommendation is to go with what makes sense and the GM can and should veto anything that is plain silly. In Rock’s case, he’ll have the clothes he is wearing, a travel case and a revolver. Oh, he’ll have a passport as well.