December 2021

…Hello? Hello? tap tap tap…Is this thing still on?

It’s been a while.

The reason for re-opening the blog is the January 2022 Character Creation Challenge. I wanted to create characters for it, and thought “I’ve got a blog that’s sitting fallow, let’s put it to use.”

The bulk, if not all, of the characters will be made with the Alternity rules system.

For those of you unfamiliar with Alternity, it’s a science fiction RPG put out by TSR prior to the d20 craze of the 2000’s. It’s primarily skill based and has a unique die mechanic. You roll low on a d20 Control Die, then modify that roll with a Situation Die that steps up or down through the other polyhedrals: d4, d6, d8, d12 and d20.

In many cases I will be taking inspiration from different game systems to showcase the versatility of the Alternity system. I will be using some house rules and I’ll explain those at the intro to each character. The intent is to have character sheet .pdfs for each one attached to the respective blog post.
These will not be “optimized” builds, though they won’t be incompetent. Skills will be chosen for the character to make them interesting and to fit their back story. There are several skills that are good for the game, such as Stamina-endurance, and -resist pain, that are chosen for these characters only if it makes sense for the character’s story so far. In actual play the skill choices would be much more dictated by the flow of the game.

General House Rules:
Skill points for a starting hero are 3 x Int +30. A hero may initially purchase up to 6 broad skills, modified by his Int resistance modifier.
Humans start the game with 2 extra points for their ability scores. This replaces their 5 extra skill points.

My friend, Karla Hartzell, is working through my characters as her own drawing challenge. I will be adding the images to the character posts as she completes them.

Tomorrow I will introduce you to Fitz, the first of 31 characters to bring in the New Year.

Day 1: Fitz