Document Q, Part 3
Designing Characters
Document Q is a modern-era scenario and story. I said that Cepheus Modern aka Cepheus Light would be the system chosen for the setting.
Which left me wondering what system I would choose for the characters.
Enter Principia Canonica from Lightspress Principia.
Let’s recap. Your character has been brought up short on a deserted road in the Northwest of England, in the middle of the night. It’s starting to rain. The rain sprays across the windscreens as you look down the barrel of a gun pointed right at your head just outside the driver’s side windscreen.
The unpleasant-looking weapon is leaving you in no doubt as to what they want you to do.
You and the vehicle are searched. A flash drive is recovered, and shown to you.
‘Do you know how much trouble you are in?’ says the gruff male voice behind the gun. The lights shining in your face are too bright for you to see him as anything more than a silhouette. An armed silhouette.
You begin character generation, not with a race and class, but with a character concept. Dogged journalist; thorough scientist; determined student; inventive engineer; you choose what your character is, which partly determines how they are likely to react when situations arise that the character must respond to.
Principia Canonica characters are designed with five Traits. These are Archetype, Identity, Strength, Weakness, and Drive. Each Trait is rated between 1 and 5. These are the number of dice, traditional d6, that you’ll need to roll when the story reaches a turning point.
Here’s where things get fun. The turning points occur when a character makes a decision or declares that they are going to be using a skill, a Talent, interacting with one of their Connections, or doing something in any form to advance the story somehow.
Success and failure determine who gets to control the changes in the story - but whatever happens, the story changes course whenever a player character makes a choice.
You are taken to one of the vehicles blocking the road. A figure steps out into the beam of the headlights.
‘Hello there,’ says the figure, her voice sultry. ‘I’m afraid we have very little time for introductions right now. You and your pet will come with me. You will give the keys to your car to Corporal Benton - the soldier who persuaded you to come out of your car. Alan will commandeer your vehicle and bring it to our base. You are coming with me.’
You hear a vehicle door opening.
‘I would prefer you to be conscious, with your hands unbound,’ says the voice. ‘We will have to give you a briefing en route.’
You may be asking any number of questions - who is speaking, where you are being taken, what right they have to do this - but they are all dismissed with “All in good time.”
As you are entering the vehicle, surprised to find that it is spacious and comfortable within, you hear another male voice in the front of the vehicle pipe up with a note of tension in their speech.
‘Professor, we’d better hurry. We’ve got incoming. Three signatures, bearing South.’ There’s a pause. ‘Ten kilometres. They are in attack formation.’