I am going to try to devote at least an hour a day to the site from now on, which should hopefully mean I get a post up at least every other day.

Hitting on my frequent topics, I have picked up a few new RPGs recently, which I should have characters up for soon. As well, I have completed some video games which I will be able to review as well.

Biggest though, is a new RPG project for D&D 4e. I will be doing a fairly large conversion project based on the Nippon Ichi Disgaea series. I’m in the process of finalizing races at the moment, which should be up Monday or Tuesday. When completed I will have a write up of setting information, a bunch of races and classes (new and modified), and quite a few monster write ups. So look forward to more from me soon!

One Piece – One of my favorite settings. What’s great about this setting is primarily the versatility and a clear goal: get to the end of the most dangerous sea on earth and get the treasure while competing with other superpowered pirates and the world government. Can range from wacky to serious and gives players a ton of options and a clear goal, but the real fun is in the journey. Lots of pre-existing ideas and settings you can toss or keep as well. Would be good in any anime based system (BESM/OVA) or even a superhero system like Mutants & Masterminds.

Soul Eater – I think there is a profound lack of school settings of games, something I think more DMs should experiment with since they allow a wide cast of characters and characters who have great opportunities for progression and development. Soul Eater takes place at a school lead by the Grim Reaper himself, half the students wield weapons the other half literally become weapons, who have the goal of becoming a Deathscythe, or a weapon of the Grim Reaper themselves. Mix in animal based witchcraft, cooky supernaturals, a lot of teamwork and an insane god on the verge of being reborn and you have a pretty cool setting with an interesting concept. I can’t really think of any specific setting to complement such an odd playstyle, but I recommend you actually try something new and let players control multiple character (them and their weapon(s) or even them and some else’s weapons.)

Naruto – Another setting I really like for sheer diversity, can compliment a wide range of special abilities, although not really like the standard Ninjas of myth it makes for an interesting setting that can compliment everything from superpowered schoolkids to mission based assassination. Dump a lot of interesting martial arts, action, special elemental abilities and supersized mythological creatures into a big melting pot and you have the setting. Once again, a diverse system that allows custom abilities is probably best.

Bleach – Take Exalted, dump it into the modern world and disassociate exalted from humanity entirely. In Bleach the souls of the dead frequently become lost in the human world and need to be sent to beyond by Deathgods/Shinigami. Those who don’t become corrupted or become consumed, turning into demonic undead who continue a vicious cycle. Mix in superpowered swordplay, some questionable moral ambiguity, a world for the dead, the living and the corrupt as well as some very interesting humans and you have a setting with some veryinteresting options in a wide variety of enivornments and enemies. Once again, good with any anime/supers game.

Bastard!! – Take a high fantasy game, dump it in post apocalyptic world that was blasted back to the middle ages. Add in swords and sorcery, epic magic, heavy metal references and you’ve got Bastard!!. Start the PCs out at extremely high levels and have them save the world from being blown even further back in time by a giant sentient machine of destruction and those who would have the world be destroyed again. No big moral quandaries, just being awesome and over the top. I’d recommend you not use something like D&D, I would actually recommend something extremely rules light and freeform for this type of game.

In conclusion the best thing about all of these settings is that you already have the groundwork laid out for you but you still have a lot of customization you can add yourself.

As per previously requested, today on the Character Creation chopping block is Scion. Scion’s first book, Hero, came out in 2007, and thus far has seen a grand total of five books released; unfortunately, I would be surprised to see another release at this point, so the game is pretty much at end of life. I really like the theme, it’s basically a modernization of classical storytelling, you take the roll of a Scion, or literally a child of a god and embark on epic quests, eventually becoming a god yourself. The game is divided up among the three primary books: hero, Demigod and God; each with an emphasis on that level of play.

Like most White Wolf game lines, it has great background stuff, but in my opinion suffers from poor mechanical execution, but nothing a few minor house rules can’t solve. After all, no one is perfect. In general, I would consider Scion to be Exalted lite as far as System goes, suffering some of the pitfalls of it’s fore barer but not all of them.

To start with, the character I will be making will be at the base level as usual; while I can’t throw battleships or anything, everyone has to start somewhere! Also per the norm, I’ll be sticking with the base book only to simplify things to the base level.

Step One: Calling

Calling could really be paired down to concept but it includes much more than that. In general, Scions should be exceptional, and while I would like to make “animu nerd” guy, I should probably think of something a bit more fitting. After a bit of thinking I come up with “eccentric entrepreneur”, thinking maybe the nerd turned some of his desires into a business that profited off people with similar desires. Think Batman, but instead of having his parents killed he just spent too much time in has basement watching explicit animation.

Next up is the really big one, divine parent. This one determines not only which pantheon I fall under but a lot of my abilities and whatnot. In general, while it’s funny to think of a contradicting character, the system punished that pretty heavily, so you’re much better off following a similar path as your parent. The core book covers Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Aztec, Japanese, and Voodoo pantheons as well as a large list of deities. My first inclination is Japanese, but I actually decide to go with Greek since they have a penchant for being eccentric historically. I have a hard time pinning the character to a specific deity, but I decide to go strangely with Hades, greedy but smart with darkness bubbling beneath the surface. I could have gone with one of several others just in this pantheon alone, but I think this should work out just fine and be interesting to roleplay. At this point I should also note the gods favored abilities and associated powers, which we will get to more of later:

Associated Powers: Epic Charisma, Epic Manipulation, Arete, Darkness, Death, Earth
Abilities: Academics, Command, Occult, Presence, Stealth, Thrown

Last in this step is nature, which tells me something about personality as well as what recharges my willpower reserves which allows me to do particularly good at rolling occasionally. As with parents I see a lot of attractive options: architect, autocrat, competitor, cynic, gambler, libertine, survivor and visionary. I narrow it down to visionary and libertine, and go with the latter after a bit of thinking since it focuses more on pleasures, something I wanted to get across with the character.

Step Two: Attributes

Attributes follow the standard White Wolf attribute system, I choose a primary, secondary and tertiary category and get a certain number of points to put in each. After all is said and done my attributes look like this:

Primary (Social): Charisma 4, Manipulation 4, Appearance 2
Secondary (Mental): Perception 2, Intelligence 4, Wits 3
Tertiary (Physical): Strength 2, Dexterity 3, Stamina 2

I diverge a bit from Hades here, I just don’t imagine this character being physically attractive at all, his only decent physical trait being good hand-eye coordination. He is smart and knows how to talk his way out of a pickle or into an anime license though!

Step Three: Abilities

First I note down my parents (and thus mine) favored abilities, and out of my thirty points I get for abilities I must spend one in each of these skills, putting me down to 24 off the bat. My skill layout is as follows, and just like Exalted I can’t put more than three into any skill at this point.

(F)Academics 3
(F)Command 3
(F)Occult 2
(F)Presence 3
(F)Stealth 1
(F)Thrown 1
Art 2 (Cell Shading)
Awareness 3
Control 2
Empathy 3
Integrity 3
Melee 2
Politics 2

Diverging a bit from Hades again, I don’t picture this guy using range weapons (particular thrown) or being stealthy, otherwise I like the favored skills.

Step Four: Advantages

Basically advantages encompasses all the cool stuff I can do thanks to my divine heritage. It basically is divided into two categories: birthrights AKA divine gifts and epic attributes, knacks, and boons. Last on the block is Virtues which are my character’s convictions.

For Birthrights I get 5 points to choose from, once again limited to three or below. The main one that falls into this category is a relic, or a special power that lets me channel my divine heritage. These are basically mandatory at the Hero level for using your special abilities but become less important the more powerful you get. As well as letting you use special abilities, they have other effects from being weapons to letting you have other cool abilities. There are some specific options in the book ranging from a satchel of dragon’s teeth to the Golden Fleece itself, but I really don’t like any of the options so I come up with my own for three dots, an ancient tome filled with the souls of famous ancient artists Hades entrusted to him to protect and also to use as a grim reminder. For my last points I spend 2 on followers and choose to get 5 zombie followers. I’m not sure if Hades would frown on that or not; but really, frame by frame editing of anime to remove anything related to the original country of origin is literally a soul sucking job no living thing would want to do.

Next up are epic attributes, knacks and boons. Epic attributes basically just mean I kick butt at one attribute, and each time I take a level in an epic attribute I get a knack which lets me get basically an associated special ability. Boons on the other hand are just special abilities with a variety of effects. For both of these fields I get a grand total of 10 points, mostly traded in on a 1:1 basis. I’m not restricted to my parent’s stuff at all at this point, but it would help in the long run if I picked things on the same track as theirs due to decreased costs. For both I’m limited to one each for the time being unless I choose to spend Bonus Points to increase my legend score by 1, I’ll get to the details of this later, but I choose to do that so I’m not so restricted in what I take now. I take the following:
Epic Charisma 1 (Charmer)
Epic Manipulation 1 (Overt Order)
Epic Intelligence 1 (Fast Learner)
Epic Wits 1 (Social Chameleon)
Chaos 1+2: Eye of the Storm, Hornet’s Nest
Darkness 2: Shadow Mask
Arete 1

Well, diverging a bit more, the character is a bit eccentric, quite the opposite of papa, so I throw in some chaos here, hoping he can make the most out of chaotic situations using his smooth tongue.

Last, before I forget is Virtues, straightforward and simple.

Expression 2
Intellect 3
Valor 1
Vengeance 3

Smart guy, but don’t get on his bad side.

Step Five: Finishing Touches

Just wrapping things up at this point.

Willpower: two highest virtues or 6. Allows me to resist mental assault, get automatic successes and can be used for certain abilities.

Legend: I bumped it up to three (more on that soon), although it normally starts at just two. Basically like Essence in Exalted.

Legend Points: These are used for a variety of divine things, but it’s simply my legend squared or 9.

Health Levels: Once again, following the Exalted bandwagon here. I have one -0 health level, two -1 health levels, two -2 health levels, one -4 health level, and finally, one incapacitated health level. Basically as I reach a “health level” I take a certain penalty to my actions called a wound modifier.

Bonus Points: Last on the list is bonus points, although I always wonder why they put this last considering the importance. Basically I have 15 points to spend to increase a variety of things. I basically cut this by half though to increase legend to 3 (costs 7), limiting my options significantly. I spend 4 to increase Manipulation to 5, 3 on Followers to increase it to 4 (yay, more zombies), and I have one more point which I’ll put into something completely new: Guide. It’s always nice to have a little guidance in difficult times.

That’s really it, all you really have to do from here is fill out a background and you’re done. I think Scion is a great game, and I really hope White Wolf puts out some more products or another revision of it, but it could use a bit of errata in the meantime!

Inspired by the recent Star Trek movie and a renewed interest in the franchise, I became interested in finding a system to run a Star Trek game. Unfortunately, just like the series, there is no current RPG. On the upside, you can pick up the defunct Decipher version very cheap at WholeSaleGaming, $35 for the full lot, a great deal, which is what I’ll be using today. It’s a great movie based system, far from perfect, and in need of a bit of errata, but it’s great for a Star Trek game that isn’t overly complex.

The original books character creation is a bit… undeveloped, so I’ll be using the steps I found on a great fansite.

The character I’ll be making will be the short lived character Tasha Yar from the Next Generation, a security officer from a failed colony the regressed into depravity, although I doubt I’ll be able to match her 100% at character creation.

1. Species. Well, I have a wide range of choices, each with a variety of different attribute modifiers, but I’ve already made my choice: Human. They get a permanent courage bonus, skill bonuses, and a bonus to a reaction. All stuff we’ll get to later. On the downside, no attribute/stat bonuses.

2. Choose Characters Profession. Once again, a wide variety of choices lay before me, most notably is Starfleet Officer, which contains all the typical Star Trek sub/elite professions. So I pick Starfleet Officer and Security Officer for my profession. This will determine mostly how my character advances, and actually doesn’t effect a lot at creation itself.

3. Choose Characters first Tier ability. All the professions have tiered bonuses and abilities they confer on the character, normally characters only receive one, but being a Starfleet Officer grants me one automatically called Duty, which is basically my job, but I get a second one as well from my Career path. I pick Subdue, which gives me a bonus to stunning or restraining in unarmed combat.

4. Generate Attributes. The game uses six (or sometimes seven) attributes that fall into the typical fields: Strength, Intellect, Agility, Vitality, Presence, and Perception. You can generate them via point buy like system or generate randomly, I’ll do the latter route as usual and I come up with the following stats and assign them as such: 6 8

Strength – 8 (+1)
Intellect – 6 (0)
Agility – 11 (+2)
Vitality – 8 (+1)
Presence – 8 (+1)
Perception – 9 (+1)

Overall, pretty good stats. Next to each stat I have also listed the modifier, which is used in the next part as well as determining total skill bonuses.

5. Determine Reactions. Reactions are basically your character’s defense against attacks, whether they be physical, mental, or psychological. They are broken down into Quickness, Savvy, Stamina and Willpower and your bonus is based off your attribute modifiers.

Quickness +4
Savvy +1
Stamina +1
Willpower +1

Also, I added +2 to quickness due to humans being able to pick a reaction to be exceptionally good at.

6. Determine Defense Score. Simply put, 7 plus my agility modifier or 9.

7. Record your character’s Species special abilities, including any bonus Edges. Not much here, our race is pretty basic.

8. Determine your character’s initial Species skills. First I generate the skills that are intrinsic to where I grew up, language, homeworld, etc. I get my intelligence x 3 (or 18) in points that can be traded in on a 1:1 basis, to a maximum of six like every skill before modifiers. I use it to get the following skills:

Language: Federation Standard – 6
World: Turkana IV – 4
History: Turkana IV – 4
Politics: Turkana IV – 4

9. Choose a Personal Development Package. This represents the skills she learned in skill or on the street. There are many different packages to choose from, and I can even make my own, but a couple do stand out: Colony/Frontier Upbringing and Orphan. After a bit of deciding, I choose the later as the life on the street theme seems more appropriate for the character.

When choosing a package it’s divided into three segments: One skill I get a +2 in, three skills I get a +1 in, and last is an edge. I can take an edge now, but I won’t get to take an edge in the next step unless I take a flaw then. The skills I pick give me the following benefits:
Streetwise +2
Unarmed Combat: Brawling +1
Survival +1
Influence +1

For now, I’ll pass on selecting an edge.

10. Choose a Professional Development Package. We’ve covered your childhood and birth, last is how you have developed in the workforce. I obviously want to choose something appropriate for my career so I have the option between Basic Security Officer, Investigator and Tactical Officer. Investigator doesn’t seem appropriate and Tactical Officer is more about actual ship security protocols and programs, so Basic Security Officer seems to be the best choice. Unlike the Personal Development Package, you get a wide range of skills automatically, as well as 5 professional skills you can add a +1 to. Last, but not least, is an edge.

Automatic:
Athletics (Climb) +2
Energy Weapons +3
First Aid +1
Inquire (Interrogate) +2
Investigate (Search) +2
Repair +1
System Operation (Security Systems) +2
Tactics +1
Unarmed Combat Skill: Aikido +2

Hand Picked
Computer Use +2
Observe +2
Tactics +1

As you notice, in my hand picked skills I added two to two different skills instead of diversifying, as well, I’ve put more points into skills I already have points in. For edge I picked Promotion, making me gain a rank in the military, Liutenant Junior Grade, one rank below the actual character. At least I’m not a red shirt!

I should note that I also have some skill points thanks to being human, which I would assign to Unarmed Combat Skill: Aikido and Stealth.

13. Calculate Health. Every character has a health rating equal to his vitality attribute plus his strength modifier, or in Tasha’s case: 9

14. Calculate character’s Courage. Every player character begins the game with a pool of 3 courage, but my character is human and a bit more courage so instead I have a pool of 4.

15. Calculate character’s Renown. All characters start the game with renown 0, bah!

That’s it! All you have to do now is fill out character details, background and add modifiers to skills!

Well, it’s been awhile, but it’s finally time to get back on track. Today’s CCC (or Create a Character Challenge) is for Maid The Role Playing Game. Yea, yea, seems odd, but bare with me for a moment, the game is actually quite fun. Obviously the game is very anime inspired by the cover/theme and doesn’t take itself real seriously. Honestly the game was originally a Japanese title that was translated, but don’t let that deter you too much, the translation is very well done. The game is pretty simple and easy to learn and character creation is quick and fun, and in general it makes for a system that is great for not-so-serious one shot games. So if you enjoy RPGs that are a bit silly and rules-lite, this is a great choice.

Anyways, the game is pretty simple; the characters play maids and they serve the master (the GM incarnate basically). Serve the master well, and you get favor points, do poorly and lose them (eventually getting fired). The game can range from the mundane to the fantastic, fantasy to sci-fi and everywhere in between. The master could be Satan, a 95 year old pervert and/or the pilot of an intergalactic space vessel. The game takes place in a ‘mansion’ although like everything else, it doesn’t have to be just a large house. You could theoretically run a Maid: The RPG game set in about any other RPG setting as well (Master is throne bound Emperor of Mankind!) Anyways, the Maids themselves aren’t exactly your run of the mill maids either… And that’s exactly what I’ll be making today.

The game doesn’t let you have re-rolls, but I’m going to stick with my first rolls just to see what kind of insanity I can get.

1. Attributes – The game devices the primary stats into Athletics, Affection, Skill, Cunning, Luck and Will. They are all pretty obvious except maybe Affection which is more if a general social ability of getting people to like you. To determine my stats I simply roll 2D6 (the primary dice mechanic) for each one and divine by three (rounding down) and I get the following:
-Athletics: 2
-Affection: 2
-Skill: 4
-Cunning: 2
-Luck: 0
-Will: 3

Well, max skill should prove exceptionally handy to start with, but that luck is pretty bad at the lowest score possible… Otherwise, fairly average.

2. Maid Type – Next I roll maid type, I get two of them (one each for each 1d6), these provide some character descriptors and some stat modifiers. I roll and get Sexy and Boyish… Yea, by the way, all the maids are female (typically, although there are butler rules, but they aren’t as fun). The modifiers add up to Cunning +1, Will -1, Athletics +1 and Skill -1 which brings my stats to:
-Athletics: 3
-Affection: 2
-Skill: 3
-Cunning: 3
-Luck: 0
-Will: 2

Anyways, quite the weird combination so far…

3. Maid Colors – Now I roll  to determine my maid’s uniform colors. Additionally, I can also use it to determine hair and eye colors, and I will!
-Uniform: Sky Blue
-Hair: Orange
-Eyes: Grey

Interesting…

4. Special Qualities – Okay, here is where it gets really fun, special qualities. Typically, you roll twice (which I will be doing), but the GM may allow more or less rolls on the charts. You simply roll a D66 (one d6 being the tens, the other being the ones) and consult the relevant charts in the book. In general, I’m not much of a fan of a cluster of tables, but these are simple and easy and are mostly to round out your characters flavor.

#1: Delinquent (consult related table) -> Sunglasses. All the time. Even at night. Yea, I’m that guy… er, girl.

#2: Angel/Devil. I’ve been charged with judging good or evil, the full details are really up to me.

Well, not quite the undead alcoholic I’ve rolled up before or the fabled succubus redneck, but you can see how things can get quite ridiculous especially if your GM allows more. For fun, let’s make the character an angel who thinks they are intimidating because they wear sunglasses… or something. There are some more serious special qualities in the game as well, some of which may make some people uncomfortable. Just remember to take the game with a grain of salt.

5. Etcetera – Next I roll for my Maid Roots, Stress Explosion and (optionally) Weapon. Maid Roots is basically why I’m at the mansion and/or working for the master. Stress Explosion is what the character does when her stress level (the form of damage in the game) exceeds her Spirit rating (which we will get to shortly).
-Maid Roots: Admirer of Maids
-Stress Explosion: Shopping
-Maid Weapon: Kung-Fu Weapon (for fun let’s say Nunchucks)

6. Maid Power – Next I roll for my Maid Power, which is a special power my character possesses. I get to roll once, but if your stats are deficient enough you can roll twice. The power table you roll on depends on your highest attribute, but I possess Athletics, Skill and Cunning at an equal level, so I get to choose. I pick Skill since it was at four before modifiers, making it the highest. To my facepalm, I roll and get Lock Picking, I can enter any room whenever I want (no roll or anything).

7. Favor and Spirit – These are derived attributes to start with. Favor is some of an experience system but also can be raised and lowered depending on the Master (and/or GM). You need it to stay employed. Spirit is basically a damage threshold. Favor is affection times two, or 4 for me; while spirit is Will times ten, or 20 for me. Not bad considering it’s possible to get 0 if your stats are bad enough.

8. Name and Age – Last but not least is name and age. Unfortunately, there is no chart for these, so just make something up. I’ll say she is 1,543 years old and named Gabrielle. That a bit too cliche? She’s an angel after all!

So, that probably took me longer to write than it will take you to make your own character for this game. Obviously, you can see how it can get pretty silly considering I just rolled up a sexy, boyish, maid-wannabe, nunchuck wielding angel who loves to wear sunglasses.

You can get the game from Indie Press Revolution (the PDF is a whopping $8!) here. It’s well worth the purchase just for the fun of rolling up characters.

Today’s game is another Greg Stolze game, this time it’s Unknown Armies. Unlike Reign, UA uses a roll under system for resolution. Like Reign however, the game is very freeform. I have a hard time pinning down the game to an archetype of what kind of game it is, modern Occult is the best description I can come up with. The game can be funny, serious or silly; about magic or conspiracies or killer robots or bad chicken nuggets. I also thoroughly enjoy the way magic is used in the game; nothing like a mage who gets power from getting stoned or being drunk and having historically relevant drinking apparatus’.

The game has a few supplements, although I don’t believe any more are in production, regardless, they are all quality stuff. To be honest, I don’t even know if the book is in print anymore, but it shouldn’t be too difficult to find.

The game has three levels of play; this game will take place on the most basic level, street. Anyways, these character creation things I do are generally pretty light on the back story. But because so much of the character generation system is relevant to background I’m going to throw in a bit of back story right now.

The characters name is Elie Anderson, a college drop out with a big drug problem who is intensely paranoid of the government and into conspiracy theories and all that jazz. Truthfully, this character is modeled after an actual friend of mine.

The first step is to determine your character obsession; people in this kind of game are frequently going to have some personality quirks. Elie’s obsession is self indulgence, whether it be drugs or just agreeing with himself about his own crazy theories.

Next are your characters passions, which are a role-playing tool and a game tool that can help you in certain situations. You have three passions, one for Fear, Rage, and Nobility. They should be fairly obvious, what scares you, what angers you, and what prompts you to do good.

Elie is obviously afraid of the government, so I give his character: (Isolation) Government Officials. Each fear is related to one of five things; in this case I picked Isolation since he obviously doesn’t want anything to do with them. Rage is a bit of a tougher one, Elie is a pretty laid back guy, but I pick an example from the book: Stuck-Up ***holes. For the noble passion I pick One For All, also an example from the book; he’s loyal to his friends against the fat cats with probes.

Next is your personality, this can be something you pick, or one from the group (of which there are different types), I pick the zodiac Gemini as a personality archetype.

Next is the more mechanical stuff, your stats. They are rated 1-100, higher being better obviously. The game only has four stats: Body, Speed, Mind and Soul. I have 220 points to spend between the four, 30-70 being the average range. I don’t imagine that years of drug abuse have helped him physically, but he is fairly popular at the parties and raves and a pretty sharp if a bit paranoid. After all, if you knew, wouldn’t you be scared?

I distribute the points as follows:
Body 45
Speed 45
Mind 60
Soul 70

After that I pick a descriptive term for each stat. Body – Runny Nose, Speed – Butter Fingers, Mind – Recites bits from government documentation, Soul – Life of the party.

Next are skills, unlike pretty much every game I’ve played, there is no skill list. You make up the skills; they shouldn’t be incredibly broad and can be descriptive about your character at the same time. You get a number of points equal to the relevant stat plus a few bonus points to put anywhere. There are some free skills everyone gets as well.

So first, I have my free skills at the following:
Body: General Athletics 15%, Struggle 15%
Speed: Dodge 15%, Driving 15%, Initiative 22%
Mind: General Education 15%, Notice 15%, Conceal 15%
Soul: Charm 15%, Lying 15%

After a bit of work and spending, my skills come up as follows:
Body: General Athletics 20%, Struggle 25%, Enduring the Drugs 30%
Speed: Dodge 20%, Driving 20%, Initiative 22%, Running from the Man 25%, Firearms 15%
Mind: General Education 25%, Notice 25%, Conceal 40%, Law 15%
Soul: Charm 40%, Lying 40%, Getting a Fix 30%

That’s basically it for the basic level of play, flesh out some traumatic occult event in the characters life and discuss with the GM about whatever equipment you may have.

Well, obviously, I’m not really sticking to the alphabetical order anymore. I’m just skipping to whatever game tickles my fancy at the moment. So today’s character creation challenge walkthrough post…. thing is for Reign. Reign is an indie RPG by one of my favorite authors, Greg Stolze. His main other work I enjoyed was Unknown Armies, and he has worked on several other games I enjoy and a few more that I would like to try, but have yet to get a chance to.

One of my favorite parts of Reign is how it is continually supported is ransom.  Greg writes a supplement and then ransoms it to the public; once he gets the ransom amount he gives the supplement away on his website (for free). At the time of this post, 10 small supplements have been released and the first ‘real’ supplement is also available to download (for free), which is a codification of these smaller ones. So if you enjoy the game, be sure to support it if you want more content from Greg.

Otherwise, the game is a low fantasy medieval type game which uses the ORE system. ORE stands for One Roll Engine, in which all actions are done in… well, one roll. Basically you throw some D10s and look for matches, high numbers and more matches being better. It takes a bit of getting used to, but it is surprisingly flexible and makes things a snap. The game has a nice, fleshed out setting as well and can be focused on groups, organizations or individuals.

To demonstrate the ORE system and Reign, I’m going to be using the random character generation method (as I usually do if available) which will be resolved with just one roll.

To start, I automatically have 2 points in each stat: Body, Coordination, Sense, Knowledge, Command, and Charm. In addition you have a master dice in your characters language. A master dice is basically a sure-fire way to get a match (which is a measure of success in the system), but you only get them if you’re very skilled at the skill obviously.

That’s the basic setup, now I roll 11d10. The dice come up: 1, 1, 3, 4, 4, 6, 6, 6, 7, 9, 10. In the game formatting you start with the number of matching dice (called the width) and then the number that is matching (the height). So, I reformat the results as follows: 2×1, 3, 2×4, 3×6, 7, 9, 10. So I have three sets of matching dice and a few dice left over, appropriately called ‘waste die.’ Sometimes these are just ignored, other times not; in this case, the waste dice are used to determined life events, but lets focus on the matches first.

Each match at character creation correlates to a profession; the height determines the profession and the width determines how far your character is/was in the profession. 2×1 means Lowly Beggar, 2×4 means Miserly Merchant, and 3×6 means Veteran Warrior. I apparently am not very well off. Regardless, each profession and how far the character got in said profession give the character new stuff. Added all together, I gain the following: +1 SENSE, +1 CHARM, +1 BODY, +2 Plead, +1 Run, +1 Sight, +3 Dodge, +2 Haggle, +2 Possession (a form of transport), +1 Wealth, +2 Fight, +3 Parry, +2 Weapon (choice). The character looks quick on his feet and actually seems pretty well rounded and roguish.

Now I look at my waste dice: 3, 7, 9 and 10. Basically for this I consult one of three charts for each number, each with a different theme. I picked the following events in order: Someone Got Spurned, Unlikely Education, Gnostic/Mystic/Religious Experience, Served the Decadent Rich. I basically picked these all for even more variety in this characters eclectic life. Added up, these benefits provide: +1 CHARM, +5 in a student skill, +2 Eerie, +2 Lore, +1 Sorcery, +1 Fascinate, +2 Graces, +1 Plead, +1 Lie.

After that, you simply add up all your skills and stat points and you’re mostly done. Equipment is done in a more abstract method, based on your training with skills and any advantages that might grant you some starting cash. Use the events in your characters life to come up with a good back story and you should be ready to go. Quick and easy, just like ORE.