Wednesday, March 26, 2014

My V&V Experience: Character Creation

It occurred to me last night that the fastest way (for me) to learn a new RPG is to make a character and go from there. So, that’s what I did today, during some spare time.

I started off by following the book precisely, and making myself first, then adding powers. This was interesting, and a bit humbling/self-affirming. One of the first steps is to record your actual, real-life weight. Ok, fine. So, I’m a bit overweight. Moving on. You then rank your Strength, Agility, Endurance, Intelligence and Charisma on a scale of 3-18, with 10 being average.

Physically, I’m close to average. I’m probably a bit stronger, and have better reflexes, but I’m just in “OK” shape. I honestly believe I’m pretty smart, and I know I make friends and influence people pretty easily. I tried to be humble and realistic, but when in doubt, I erred on the side of vanity (this is a Super Hero game, after all). Here is what I came up with:

Strength: 12
Agility: 12
Endurance: 10
Intelligence: 15
Charisma: 15

From there a lot of things get calculated out. Oddly enough, you actually have to calculate them with formulae (I used an actual calculator), instead of looking things up on a table. I would imagine that, somewhere in the last 32 years since this game was published, someone did tables for reference. I might have to look for them, just because. Anyways, I came up with the following:

Hit Points: 10
Accuracy: 0
Damage Mod: +1
Base HtH Damage: 1d6
Healing Rate: 1.25
Carrying Capacity: 308
Detect Hidden: 12
Detect Danger: 16
Power: 47

And basically, that’s me without any powers. Which brings me to the next step: Powers.

You’re supposed to roll 1d6+2 to determine your number of powers. I rolled a three, giving me five powers. Initially, I decided to go with the standard method, and rolled a d100 in each category (there are five, and you’re expected to pick more than one). However, I came up with such a random set that it was laughable. So, I erased those, and started over. This time, I decided that, if I were actually playing this game, I would have a theme in mind, so I chose to roll all of my powers from the basic Powers table. Here’s what I got.

Natural Weapon
Disintegration Ray
Heightened Attack
Regeneration

Normally you roll a Weakness, and delete one power. You then have the option to delete the Weakness in exchange for deleting a second power. So, I forwent rolling my fifth power and my Weakness, and then deleted Disintegration Ray.

So, basically, I just became Wolverine, without the Adamantium skeleton or heightened senses.

I decided against making my Natural Weapons claws, and chose instead to use that to represent my toughened fists (which, I kind of actually have, due to years of on-and-off-again martial arts/boxing practice). This also accounts for my Heightened Attack, making Regeneration my only real superpower. Not sure how I ended up with that, and I think I will keep it that way. Adds to my mystery.

After a few other details are added (including my obligatory character portrait), and factoring in the changes for the Powers, that’s it. Tom Doolan, aka Haymaker, is done and ready to play.

Over all, I found the process relatively quick and painless (aside from a couple of the calculations). Still not sold on the whole “me with powers” idea. But, that’s easy enough to work around, considering that the stats have the same range as D&D stats, so 3d6 would get me comparable numbers. Admittedly, I kind of got lucky with the powers, but even the book says that, as an option, the GM can allow the player to just choose which powers to take, within reason. And I can’t imagine any GM not allowing this combination.

Next up: Combat

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