Char-Gen Orgy '10 - Deadlands: Hell on Earth

Well, let's get this started!

The Game: Deadlands: Hell on Earth
The Publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment
Degree of Familiarity: Moderate; played a game or two, ran the setting once or twice.
Books Used: Just the Hell on Earth Core Rules


Ahh, HoE. Quite possibly one of the contenders for my favorite published setting ever. Now, in fairness, the rules are a bit heavy for my tastes, but not to the point of putting me off my feed -- it manages to, to me, just narrowly miss a fair compromise of realism and playability, and the wonderful, insane, mish-mash setting with its morbid black humor and quirky, gimmicky, and beloved-by-the-bard mechanics of cards and chips tend to make up the difference.

Anyway, like all Classic rules Deadlands characters, we start with the Cards... or in this case, random.org's card shuffler. And.... our 12 card hand:

Deuce of Diamonds (BALLS!), 4 of Diamonds, 5 of Spades, Queen of Hearts, 7 of Hearts, 8 of Hearts, 8 of Clubs, 7 of Diamonds, Deuce of Spades (OH FOR FUCK'S SAKE!) , Red Joker - draw for Coordination and.. Clubs?! (..not the plan, this is not the plan...), Queen of Diamonds, and the 4 of Clubs

So, we're not off to a particularly auspicious start here. Let's see what our Mysterious Past gets us.. normally the Marshal would do this. .but around these parts brainer, I am the law dog. This addressed.. the Seven of Clubs. Blackouts: this Waster has a few gaps in the old personal history and can't remember certain episodes of the past. Normally during play, the character would get the occasional glimpse of what the past.. confounding, confusing glimpses until at last the past caught up -- with a vengeance.

But lacking a campaign, we're just going to use that for all the plot-hookery we can manage, hmm?

So, after all of this is sorted, we're left to chuck two of our choice, and they can't be the Deuces (DAMN IT!) or the Joker (..wimpy little fuck, but it may represent a lot of training to compensate for a natural weakness? There's a hook...) So, this in mind, we'll toss the weakest cards left, the 4 of Clubs and its bigger brother the 8, leaving us with the following scores:

2d4, 2d6, 4d6, 3d10, 3d6, 3d6, 2d6, 4d4, 1d12, 2d10

So, we're dealing with a fairly average individual here, above average in a few places but rather below the curve in a couple others. Still, I'm getting an idea here, more an inspiration...

Playing with this, we're going to put that 1d12 into Knowledge, and get the suck out of the way by putting the 2d4 into Strength; to go with the concept dancing around in the old noggin, we'll put the 4d4 into Vigor -- our Waster is not, not, a very hardy sort. We'll explain that soon. For the meantime, we'll put that 3d10 into Deftness and the 2d10 into Cognition; we'll round out the Physical scores with a 2d6 in both Nimbleness and Quickness, and wrap this puppy up with the remaining two scores of 3d6 going into Mien and Smarts and the 4d6 into Spirit.

And thus...

Deftness 3d10
Quickness 2d6
Nimbleness 2d6
Strength 2d4
Vigor 4d4

Cognition 2d10
Knowledge 1d12
Mien 3d6
Smarts 3d6
Spirit 4d6

That done (finally), we can move on to Secondary Stats: Grit starts at 0, Our Nimbleness die type and thus our Pace is 6, Size is 6, Strain is inapplicable, and our waster's Wind is the sum of Spirit and Vigor, and thus a 10. This brainer had best stay out of fights where possible.

Now then, that stated, let's move onto Aptitudes, the skills, Edges, and Hindrances that are going to build upon the foundation set forth by our Traits above. We get Aptitude Points equal to the sum of our Knowledge, Smarts, and Cognition dice, and thus our pool to spend here is a total of 28 Points. Let's get cracking!

But wait, good Bard, you said you had a concept forming? What is it?

Well, here's the plan, waster: our wanderer was not in the best of shape, but apparently was someone important -- or so waking up in a suddenly de-powered cryogenic sleep tube would suggest, and at this point, she's identified herself as female (the characters tend to do that, with me.. sex and gender coming along as I go to work). So our lass wakes up in the bowels of some wasted ruin, the long sleep having atrophied both muscle and immune system (particularly in the downright hostile environment that the Wasted West has become), and huge swaths of the past missing from her noggin, her brainpan screaming with indecipherable tidbits of knowledge she knows could be of use -- if she could just piece together the clues! And... did she always know how to use a gun this well? Or how to put the best field medics of the Last War to shame?

Yeah, it's cliche, but if any setting is a setting for indulging in cliche and the tropes of the post-apocalyptic genre, it's the Wasted West!

So, with this in mind...

We'll start with the starting points all characters get: Climb 1, Search 1, Sneak 1, Language (English in our case) 2, and Area Knowledge (Local Area) 2. We'll put 2 each into Scrutinize and Search under Cognition-- our gal's no fool. That leaves 24 Points, so moving onto Deftness we'll put 1 into Lockpickin' and3 into Shootin', giving the latter a 'Rifles' concentration. 20 points left, moving on! Knowledge is next, and here we drop 2 into Demolitions, 3 into Medicine, and 2 into Science (Chemistry, here), leaving us at 13 Points. Our girl gets by on raw talent when she has to deal with people in a fashion that doesn't involve patching the holes in them, so we'll skip over Mien and dip into Nimbleness for 2 points of Dodge and an additional point of Sneak, leaving us at an even 10 points. If we get into a showdown we've done something wrong, so we'll pass on Quickness and move onto Smarts, putting 3 points each in Scroungin' and Tinkerin', leaving us at 4 -- Our Lady of the Deep Freeze is not all just theoretical knowledge. Lastly, we'll drop in 2 points of Guts -- if you need to know why, you've never played a Deadlands game before, have yeh brainer? Regardless, that leaves us at 2 Points unspent before Hindrances. BEfore we get there, we'll pause to apply Trait dice to our Aptitudes:

Area Knowledge (Campaign Region) 2d12
Climb 1d6
Demolitions 2d12
Dodge 2d6
Guts 2d6
Language (English) 2d12
Lockpickin' 1d10
Medicine 3d12
Science (Chemistry) 2d12
Scroungin' 3d6
Scrutinize 2d10
Search 3d10
Shootin' (Rifless) 2d10
Sneak 2d6
Tinkerin' 3d6

Whew, there's the hard part out of the way! Now, like the man who inspired me to this madness, I like to play a flawed character, so now -- onto the Hindrances! We can take up to 10 Points here, and we'll start with a Point of Ailin' -- here health's bad as we've established, and exposure to the Wasted West is not going to make it any better, which plays nicely with the Hindrance's tendency to only get worse. We'll also take 3 Points into Cautious: let's be honest here, without a plan, little miss Waster is going to be some abomination's lunch, and she's going to act accordingly! Onward we go, and we'll take another 3 Points from Doubting Thomas; given our origins, the lass has no reason to believe any of the hocus-pocus superstition that all these poor survivors seem to be obsessed with -- the Four Horsemen of the fucking Apocalypse ran roughshod over the world? Right.. - - and as far as she is concerned, there's bound to be a perfectly logical explanation for all of this -- hey, on that note, we'll slap on Tinhorn for 2 Points as well, since no one likes a know-it-all with delusions and a condescending tone, no matter how useful their high-falutin' book-knowledge may be from time to time. So, with Hindrances selected, that gives us a total of 11 points to play around with for Edges. Given our established characterization, we'll snap up Mechanically Inclined for 1 and Keen for 3, take 2 Points of Belongin's to represent the cache the Know-it-All woke up surrounded by, and 2 more Points into Dinero -- no matter where you go in the Wasted West, the services of someone who can fix both people and machinery, so a small amount of regular profit can be expected. We'll take 2 of our 3 remaining Points and put them toward Fleet-Footed to raise our Pace to 8 -- you don't have to be faster than the Abomination, just faster than the rest of your 'posse' -- and with the final Point, we'll boost Dodge a rank.

So, that done, we're left with Equipment; $2,000 from Belongin's and $400 more from Dinero -- let's go loot smart and loot S-Mart....

Survival means not taking a hit, so let's buy ourselves a Wasteland Chic ensemble of an Armored Duster ($500), Boiled Leather Pants and a Shirt to match ($200 total), a Kevlar Vest ($750) and an Infantry Battle Helmet ($500) -- for a total of $1950; we'll round out our Belongin's with 50 rounds of .30-06 ammunition, and dip into our starting funds to buy the Hunting Rifle to go with them for $150. $250 left to us, so we'll continue our previous philosophy with a good pair of pre-War running shoes for +1 pace at $100, and a pair of binoculars for the same; we'll finish with a a Water Purification Kit ($10), some Small Batteries to power it (10 charges for $20), and twenty ounces of Jerky, lest we starve rather ingloriously out in the Wastes.


And.. all we need is a name and we're ready to go... we'll have fun with out plot hooks above and say she doesn;'t rightly know it herself, and since 'Jane Doe' is a bit too plain, we'll let the Wasters name her... she's a doctor and a lunger, and since no one ever accused wasteland survivors of ingenuity...

-------

Jane Holliday

TRAITS
Deftness 3d10
Quickness 2d6
Nimbleness 2d6
Strength 2d4
Vigor 4d4

Cognition 2d10
Knowledge 1d12
Mien 3d6
Smarts 3d6
Spirit 4d6

DERIVED TRAITS
Grit: 0
Pace: 9
Wind: 10

APTITUDES

Area Knowledge (Campaign Region) 2d12

Climb 1d6
Demolitions 2d12
Dodge 3d6
Guts 2d6
Language (English) 2d12
Lockpickin' 1d10
Medicine 3d12
Science (Chemistry) 2d12
Scroungin' 3d6
Scrutinize 2d10
Search 3d10
Shootin' (Rifles) 2d10
Sneak 2d6
Tinkerin' 3d6


EDGES
Belongin's 2
Dinero 2
Fleet-Footed 2
Keen 3
Mechanically Inclined 1

HINDRANCES
Ailin' 1
Cautious 3
Doubting Thomas 3
Tinhorn 2

GEAR
Hunting Rifle with 50 rounds of ammunition (.30-06)
Kevlar Vest
Armored Duster
Boiled Leather Shirt
Boiled Leather Pants
Running Shoes
Binoculars
Water-Purification Kit
Small Batteries (10 charges)

Jerky (20 oz.)

-------

..and there's Week One. Whee.....

...what have I got myself into?

Character Generation Orgy 2010

..there's a title, for you...

But inspired by "Black Hat" Matt MacFarland of White Wolf Publishing's World of Darkness game line (old and new) and other games, and others following his example, the Bard, out of boredom, is going to join in, and endeavour to post a new character each week.

I prepared a rough list of games, though that's forthcoming once I get it in order to my tastes. For the time, it is currently fifty five games long, so.. yeeeah. What can I say, I'm a glutton for punishment, and if I keep this up I'll be doing this into 2011.

So, in the immortal words of Da Boyz... 'ere we go 'ere we go 'ere we go!

The List

WEEK 001 - Jane Holliday [Deadlands: Hell on Earth]
WEEK 002 - Buck Valentine [Changeling: the Dreaming]
WEEK 003 - Reverend John Parson [All Flesh Must Be Eaten]
WEEK 004 - Mr. Big [Shadowrun]
WEEK 005 - Elisabeth Coventry [Orpheus]
WEEK 006 - Morntor [Star Wars (Saga Edition)]
WEEK 007 - Towering Oak [Exalted]
WEEK 008 - Captain Jack Vandal [Big Eyes, Small Mouth]
WEEK 009 - "Black Mary" Corbin [Savage Worlds]
WEEK 010 - (forthcoming) [Little Fears]

You Were Warned

..I told you I'm a flaky bastard at this, right back there in the first post.

Ah well. I'm back now, maybe I won't forget again...

..yeah, likely....

Regards, and be excellent to each other.