Document Q, Part 5

Characters In The Story

Document Q continues below. But first, what do characters do in a narrative game?

First of all, you’re not going to design a killer. Whether you are using a roleplaying game such as Cepheus Modern, Cepheus Universal, or any 2D game, your character is not a killer who’s part of some death squad.

There is more to adventuring than just pushing pieces around a randomly-designed board, facing off random obstacles which are little more than index cards stuffed with numbers for you to reduce to zero hit points. Gygax, if he were alive, owes the world an apology for what he did to fantasy.

Your characters are people. You’re there to interact with a world which interacts back with you. Non-player characters respond to you, with affection or with annoyance, or fear or desire - and your decisions can change them.

As designed for 2D games (where you use pairs of ordinary six-sided dice), your characters have six defining characteristics - Strength, Dexterity, Endurance, Intelligence, Education, and Social Acumen (or, more often, Social Standing). These generally tell you how good their raw abilities are: brute muscle, manual and physical dexterity, toughness, smarts, knowledge, and most of all human connection.

A typical character generation process begins where you roll two dice six times, and assign the results to each of the above characteristics. Tradition indicates that you apply each roll’s result in the order above.

Here’s a secret. Sod that.

At best, your random rolls might produce an absolute prodigy, all 12s across the board. At worst - all 2s.

Who needs randomness when you can select your character’s natural talents?

Start by giving each characteristic 6 points, free.

Next, for each characteristic roll 2D as above - and pick the highest number.

Last, choose the characteristics to apply each result to.

Rolling a raw 2D gives you an average of 7 for each characteristic, so why not do that - seven points, minimum, across the board? Your characters can potentially be exceptional, scoring 9 or 10 each time, and a minimum of 7.

Characteristic Modifiers

Higher-than-average characteristics add bonuses to task checks in the game. Characteristics between 7 and 8 offer no bonuses. Characteristics between 8 and 11 add +1. Characteristics of 12 offer +2 bonuses.

For each characteristic of 9 or above, think of a suitable descriptor to highlight how your character stands out as somehow exceptional, if not superlative, as a person.

Examples:-

Strength: Taut musculature, effortless strength, powerfully-built, confident stride.
Dexterity: Lithe, graceful, nimble, agile, dextrous, smooth, flexible, unbearably sexy dancer, moves like a panther.
Endurance: Wiry, solid, shrugging off wounds, tireless, indefatigable, a picture of health.
Intelligence: Keen mind, observant, sensual, smart, problem solver, grace under pressure.
Education: Critical thinker, knowledgeable, encyclopaedic mind, head full of facts, gift for languages.
Social Acumen: Empathic, diplomatic, sense of humour, full dance card, a cool head, never loses their temper, always comes out on top.

Document Q Continues

When you awaken, it’s to cold and silence. The room you emerge into is windowless, with just the bed you’re lying in and a steel framework chair with black leather seat and back.

You realise that you are wearing some sort of jumpsuit. It is an unflattering shade of blue, covering you from neck to toe. You are barefoot, but there is a pair of some sort of slip-on flat shoes the same shade of blue at the foor of the bed. The floor is icy cold, but your new shoes keep your feet warm.

The room smells like a hospital ward. There is sound - the hum of an air conditioning system.

There is no sign of Rex.

You spend several fraught minutes worrying about your canine companion, before it begins to dawn on you that you ought to be worrying about yourself a little, too, given your circumstances.

‘Welcome,’ says a tinny voice from above, ‘to The Facility.’

You see a small wooden box set in the ceiling, with a grille. A very retro-looking PA system. Presumably, the box contains a CCTV camera, staring down at you.

‘We’ve processed your clothes,’ continues the voice, ‘and you will be reunited with some of your personal effects, and of course your clothing, once we let you out of your room … which will be in thirty minutes.’

The PA shuts off with a click. You are left in the silence, wondering what this “Facility” is, where it is, and why they felt the need to bring you to it.

Presently, your stomach growls. It must be hours since you last ate. That hurried cheese and tomato sandwich you ate in the car hadn’t filled you at all.

The door clicks open. The PA snaps back into activity. ‘You may leave the room now,’ says the voice.

You emerge from the chamber into a corridor, with one door at the far end. You hear sounds coming from the far end. Human activity. Conversations, the sound of phones ringing, machinery.

Reaching the end of the corridor, you turn the doorknob. The door is unlocked. It opens outward. You enter the room beyond.

The sparse decor continues in the space you just entered. Form follows function; the room looks like a hospital ward. Doors set in the wall behind you indicate that there may be other corridors, other rooms like the one you had been held in.

Someone emerges from the busy crowd of personnel. Like the others, she is dressed in what look like hospital scrubs, in a fetching shade of green compared to the reds and greys around you.

‘Welcome,’ this person says. ‘Come. Let’s get you fed. Then we’ll talk. There’s … much to discuss.’

Document Q continues in 2 weeks