"Sleeping in the Dark, Dreaming of the Stars" or Session 4

Rules of the Post-Human Game, Part 2: Character Creation

Art: “Surgery” by Journeyman

What Has Come Before

Session 3: Rules of the Post-Human RPG, Part 1 — All about doing things

Session 2: Rules of the Post-Human World — World creation, the cosmic ordinary, not cosmic horror

Session 1: Thinking about (and Planning) the Post-Human RPG — Trying to figure out what I want from a game

Session 0: An Introduction of Myself, Journey, and the Post-Human World

WRITING TO DISCOVER

This is a warning, dear reader, that I am writing to discover. This is somewhere between brainstorming and a rough draft, and I am not editing myself too much. Some parts will be almost as bare as an outline. Other parts will have ideas of greater interest to me than to you. I need to discover in order to get to the rough draft, and I need to do it for an audience to keep me going.

I promise that if you stick with me, you’ll many of these ideas again, fleshed out, resculpted, and with each iteration, increasingly intended more for your consumption than mine. And I will repeat that process until the book is done, and then it becomes a product for your eyes.

Character Creation

Concept

Your character concept is tied into the setting and scenario you’ll be playing in. Sometimes character concept comes first, sometimes the setting and scenario come first, and, often, there is give and take.

Against Niche Protection

Even though in many ways this game is a traditional RPG with a GM, player-characters, some prep on the part of the GM is required, and so on, one way in which this game differs from trad RPGs is that I’ve made it easy for characters to be successful at the most common RPG obstacles. This is done through the Universal Traits below, especially Danger and Contacts. Danger assumes that PCs can charm, lie, fight, drive recklessly, and so on. Contacts gives PCs ways to get access to information that they don’t have themselves.

I’m not the only designer to do this. Games as different as Amber Diceless Roleplay and GURPS make it possible to create PCs that can handle the standard obstacles a campaign¹.

Most games, in an effort to protect the “niche” of each character class (such as in D&D, but the concept exists even in games that are technically classless), ensure that no PC is able to handle the standard obstacles of a campaign on their own, and depending on the game, PCs might have several areas of deficiency.

This niche protection has never been fun for me. I prefer broadly competent characters as a player and a GM.

Creating a unique character is a matter of concept, not niche protection.

Balance

Balance matters in two parts of character creation.

The first is that if you want, you can create weaknesses and strengths for your character by spending points on “Universal Traits” in an unbalanced way (see below). Nothing wrong with that, but you have to keep in mind that if you reduce your Wealth to 1, for example, your character is going to have money problems that other PCs don’t. If you’re cool with that, no problem.

The second part where it matters is in the creation of powers. Your power or powers come from the interaction of Chaos with your character. There is always some kind of downside. Think like a writer creating a character, and treasure the downside. It gives your character flavor. It can help the GM introduce new plot elements. And the stronger your power, the greater the downside, if only to keep harmony in your group.

Traits

Anything can be a trait — wealth, innate ability, talent, training, allies, powers, etc…

Some traits are Universal to PCs.

Characters have Universal Traits that they all share, and Particular Traits that are specific to them.

The average score for a trait is 2.

Your character starts with 14 Trait Points in most campaigns. These are split between Universal Traits and Particular Traits as you like.

If you put 0 or 1 points into a Universal Trait, you’ve created a weakness for yourself. 0 in Contacts, for example, means that you are shunned or no one wants to help you. This isn’t bad, necessarily. It can be interesting. Why do you have that weakness?

Similarly, if you put 3 or 4 points into a Universal Trait, you’ve created a strength. Why is your Danger 4? Have you lived a brutal life in which you test yourself against everyone, and you often win, and when you don’t, you don’t mind taking a beating? How did you come to be this way? Or this another explanation for your high Danger score?

Particular Traits, on the other hand, can be good even at 1. Someone with Surgeon at 1, for example, would likely be a new surgeon, or someone who only performs minor operations, but that’s a lot better than not having the Trait at all. Someone who has the Power of Ignore Gravity at 1 might be able to walk on air or even run on it, and though birds are faster then they are (and never mind planes), being able to Ignore Gravity helps you overcome a lot of obstacles.

Universal Traits

Universal traits are only universal for player-characters. Some game-moderator characters (GMCs) won’t have them.

Danger — This is your ability to do dramatic, dangerous things, to fight, run, climb, leap, lie, charm, intimidate, cheat, steal, sneak, bust or even pick a lock, drive a car recklessly, shoot a gun, and so on. Danger is dependent on the campaign, so a group of mercenaries exploring an ancient temple of Chaos would be more “Dangerous” and thus capable than a group of high school students trying to expose a corrupt principal, but the mercs would be up against greater dangers than the students.

Wealth — This measures your wealth in the community. Money at level 4 means that you can buy almost anything in your community, but if you want big money, oligarch money, billionaire money, money as a superpower basically, you have to spend a Specific Trait on that (see below). Wealth includes a place to live, means of transportation, and, in general, ways to participate in society at a basic level.

Allies — This measures the people you can count on for help in a campaign. Allies are friends, family, or even just people who owe you a debt. You can call upon two allies, once each per campaign², and they will help you for a scene or two, and by help, I mean they’ll put their lives and reputations on the line for you. You’ll owe them after that, and if an ally gets killed or seriously hurt or screwed over helping you, your Allies score goes down by 1.

Contacts — These are the people who are in the know who will tell you stuff, whether it’s gossip, industrial secrets, secret lore, and so on. Some people in your life are “Contacts” if you ask for some information and “Allies” if you ask them to put themselves at risk for you. You can use Contacts once per game session per point in this trait. When you use a Contact, your request is rated on a scale of 1 to 4. If you make a request is higher than your Contacts score, you’ll have to do the contact a favor, give them money, do some investigative work of your own, or otherwise put yourself out. Similarly, if you want to use your Contacts more often than your Contacts score would allow, you have to do the contact a favor, give them money, do some investigative work of your own, or otherwise put yourself out.

Particular Traits

“Normal” Particular Traits

There are two types of Particular Traits. One is anything not covered by Universal Traits that you could have in the real world. If you want a helicopter for instance, take it as a Particular Trait. Similarly, do you want a butler or a comic book shop or the ability to speak a foreign language or obscene wealth or wilderness survival skills.

Some Particular Traits are, well, particular versions of Universal Traits. For example, if a PC is lost in the woods, the Danger Trait can definitely be used to help them get out and survive in the woods.

Similarly, Obscene Wealth as a Particular Trait is basically an extension of Wealth as a Universal Trait.

The reasons to take such a Particular Trait are that Particular Traits always beat Universal Traits. The PC with the Wilderness Survival Trait at 1 will survive better in the woods, will track with greater ease, and so on, than another character who has a higher Danger score but a lower Wilderness Survival score (or none at all).

The Particular always beats the Universal.

Another reason is that if you choose a Particular Trait, it becomes part of your character. You can’t lose it permanently except through neglect or your betrayal of your Trait.

Particular Traits also include particular contacts with them. Unlike the Contacts Trait which could apply to any piece of knowledge, the contacts from a Particular Trait must be related to that trait. Appropriate contacts for the Wilderness Survival Trait might be other guides, veterinarians (especially those that deal with wild animals), park rangers, etc…

Finally, if you choose a Particular Trait, it must become important to the game. You should work with your GM on this. [And I’ll write more advice on this later, but it’s doable, even for oddball traits, I promise!]

Powers as Particular Traits

The second type of Particular Trait is powers. These are things that we do not have access to in real life.

You can make anything up that you like as long as your power comes with a corresponding weakness that is related to the power. For instance, when you look into the Astral Plane, you become blind in the real world. Or looking into the Astral Plane gives you a terrible headache, reducing your Danger Trait by 1 for the next hour.

The more effective the power, the more points you should put into it, and the greater the weakness should be. This should be worked out with your GM.

Your GM may disallow certain powers, but I prefer to deal with “game-breaking” powers through weaknesses. For instance, suppose a telepath interprets everything from the point of view of the person who’s mind they are reading. Or suppose it’s obvious to the person who’s mind is being read that the telepath is doing it. Or suppose that the telepath has to share as much as they gain when they look into someone else’s mind. You get the idea.

The only power I would disallow is a power that creates more powers. This is like wishing for infinite wishes from a genie.

It is possible to explain your powers through a framework. For instance, you can explain that your study of occult lore allows you to cast certain spells, which are your powers. That’s fine. But you can’t say since I’m a wizard, my patron grants me new spells whenever I ask. Or since I’m technomancer, I can create new devices that do miraculous things whenever I want.

Next Post — The Rules of the Post Human Game (Part 3) — Campaign Creation

1. Amber PCs are essentially demigods. There’s a lot of handwaving — of course, your demigod knows how to hack a computer since she spent a a couple of decades in a cyberpunk world learning the ins-and-outs of that skill. GURPS does it by giving your (often) very human character lots of build points and making it cheap to buy lots of skills with those points at a competent level while still having a specialty or two at very high levels.

2. I’ve got define “campaign” or come up with some other word. I’ll get to it…