![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fiat_knoxFollowing on from my old skool Traveller chargen example, I'm going to create a character for the World of Darkness game. Specifically, the police supplement Tales from the 13th Precinct.
Warning. Excruciatingly long post, hidden behind cuts.
The Game: The World of Darkness
The Publisher: White Wolf
Degree of Familiarity: Oh, you know, squeeing fanboy who can quote rules and page references in the core rulebook, chapter and verse
Books Required: The World of Darkness Rulebook, Tales from the 13th Precinct, plus optionally World of Darkness: Asylum and my own World of Darkness: Dogs of War.
First of all, I want to create a very specific character concept. I want to create a Special Victims Detective. I can at least start with a name: Detective Harry Miles.
13th Precinct has some very specific minimum requirements for Detectives in general, and SVU Detectives in particular, and these include a minimum of 3 Intelligence, 3 Wits, a smattering of Skills, and for SVU certain specific Skills and minimum Willpower.
I can tell by looking at the basic WoD chargen rules that I'm going to need to draw upon the option given for Seasoned characters right off the bat if I'm even going to come close to qualifying for SVU. I'd therefore peg Harry's current age as, oh, late thirties. He's definitely no spring chicken in cop years.
I'll come back to this in a minute. First, though, basic chargen. Starting with Attributes, I have 5/4/3 dots to play with. All Attributes, of course, come with a free dot to begin with, and I'm not going to raise any of Harry's Attributes to 5. It just costs too much at chargen.
Now, we really need to prioritise Mental here to get the minimum Intelligence and Wits of 3 apiece - so the 5 points go into Mental in a 2/2/1 split, yielding Intelligence 3, Wits 3 and Resolve 2. Bummer. I'm going to have to work on that Resolve to build up Willpower afterwards. At least Harry's got the nous to make ordinary Detective though.
The 4 dot split goes into Social, yielding Presence 2, Manipulation 2 and Composure 3. Harry will only need to buff up on one Attribute later to get the minimum required Willpower Trait - and that'll be his Resolve.
The 3 dot split goes into Physical, of course, and Harry just gives each Attribute 1 dot.
It's his smarts, his quick thinking and his cool that mark Harry as good Detective material, and on these Attributes' merits alone this guy would now make a good rank and file Detective. But I did say I was going to make him a SVU Detective, so I'm going to need those Seasoned character XP for that. Later.
One thought. The rules stipulate priorisation of dots between Mental, Physical and Social Attributes. If they allowed prioritisation between Power, Finesse and Resistance instead there wouldn't be this problem.
Now. Skills. I'm allowed an 11/7/4 split between the three categories, and I get to choose the categories. Now Detective requires a minimum spread of Mental Skills, and SVU require also a minimum of Medicine 1 and Empathy 3.
I prioritise Social as Primary, Mental as Secondary and Physical Skills as Tertiary.
I can start with the Physical right away, giving Harry a spread between Athletics, Brawl, Firearms and Weaponry. Athletics, because he was always a bit of an outdoorsman, jumping and climbing when he was out hunting with his Dad. (I'll get a dot in Survival later). Those four Skills get 1 dot each.
The minimum Mental Skills requirements are: Academics 1, Investigation 3, Politics 1. That gives me two dots to spend on further Skills. I so want Computer ... but I choose a dot in Medicine and a dot in Occult instead.
Finally, I totally splurge on Social Skills. I need a minimum of Empathy 3, but I also need Intimidation, Persuade and Streetwise. I put a dot in Animal Ken, three dots in Empathy and Streetwise and two dots each in Intimidation and Persuade.
I now round off my Skills with Specialities. I go for Forensics for Investigation, Counselling for Empathy and Negotiation for Persuade.
Advantages next. Defense is 2. Initiative is 5. Health is 7. Speed is 9. Willpower is a dismal 5; not good enough yet.
For his Morality, I just leave it at 7. Harry's seen some bizarre shit, but so far it hasn't started to wear him down. His Virtue, I'd love to make Justice - but I'm going to give him Hope instead, and Pride as his Vice. Harry's SVU role is to give hope to the victims of the hateful crimes he has to put a stop to. And he's become quite proud of the department.
Merits next. As a Sworn Officer, Harry is going to get the two dot Merit for free. He can spend up to seven dots on Merits - and I'm not going to take any of them to 5 dots, for the same reason why I didn't give him any 5 dot Attributes or Skills.
I quite like Harry having Contacts and Allies. I give him two dots in each of these, and give him Street and Medical for Contacts, and Police and Media for Allies.
Harry hears a lot of talk from his favourite chair in the snug at the back of O'Malley's, and his brother and a couple of friends of his working the local hospitals tell him informally if people come in with certain injuries. Battered kids and women, especially. He can also phone around the other departments for backup if a case goes south, and he's got the Amber Alert hotline on speed dial, as well as a few other string pullers at the local TV and radio stations.
For the rest, I'm going to crack open these other two books, Asylum and Dogs of War. Harry's going to get Emotional Detachment, Tolerance for Biology and the one dot version of Trained Observer. When that baby was fished out of the storm drain down on Laker and Fifth, Harry was the only one to keep his lunch down enough to spot the hairs clinging to the body that allowed him to get a DNA match on CODIS and track down the perp. He got his steel nerves from those years he spent hiking in the mountains, hunting and gutting edible critters for food with his Dad, back when he was a boy.
So, then, we're almost done here. Like I said, I wasn't happy with that Resolve of 2. It needs 15 XP to get it up to the minimum Resolve 3 I need to buff up his Willpower to the minimum of 6. That means I'm going to exercise the option of making Harry a Seasoned character, and giving him 35 extra XP to play with. Now he's got a good enough Resolve and Willpower.
Of course, this being the World of Darkness there is a price to pay for these XP, and so I cut myself and bleed exactly one pint of my own blood into a bucket for one point of lethal damage.
With the remaining 20 XP, I buy a couple of extras. I buy Survival 1, the Specialty of Exorcisms and Abjurations for Occult, and the Merits Resources (••), Police Tactics - Compliance Hold (•) and Bureaucratic Navigator (••).
And so my dots are assigned.
Summary:
Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3; Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2; Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3.
Academics 1, Investigation 3 (Forensics), Medicine 1, Occult 1 (Exorcisms and Abjurations), Politics 1.
Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Firearms 1, Survival 1, Weaponry 1.
Animal Ken 1, Empathy 3 (Counselling), Intimidation 2, Persuade 2 (Negotiation), Streetwise 3.
Defense 2, Initiative 5, Health 7, Speed 9, Willpower 6.
Virtue: Hope. Vice: Pride. Morality: 7.
Merits: Allies •• (Police, Media), Bureaucratic Navigator (••), Contacts •• (Medical, Street), Emotional Detachment (•), Police Tactics - Compliance Hold (•), Resources ••, Tolerance for Biology (•), Trained Observer (•).
Harry Miles' Dad is Detective Walter Miles, a hero cop who got cut down in a hail of gunfire when Harry was just 17. His mother Dorothy had passed away when Harry was young. Stroke.
The city's police force turned out for the funeral. It was really beautiful. As the eldest family member, his elder sister Terri having long gone - she had been 13, Harry 7 - Harry had to accept the folded flag with the little badge on it from the Chief of Detectives. The rest of the time, he had to suck it in and keep it together for the sake of his younger brother Hank, a fact that made his old Uncle Joe very proud.
Joe had been a cop. Walter had been a cop. Three generations of Mileses had gone into the Force. Nobody was surprised when Harry signed up for the Academy. Nobody was surprised when young Henry became a Doctor either - Hank's girlfriend said that Henry had the hands of a surgeon.
Miles kind of drifted through the Academy. He weathered the harsh conditions the instructors imposed on him in particular; he could see how the other cadets had been in awe of him, being the son of hero cop Wally Miles and all, and the Academy did not want to be seen to show favouritism. The truth was, at this stage he just didn't care. Everyone he knew and loved was drifting away from him, and frankly he was only a cop because of family tradition and the expectations of all Wally's old friends who wanted to see a Walter Miles Mark 2 in Harry.
And then the Satanic Panic gripped the city. The streets emptied. Lynch mobs roamed the streets. Respectable paediatricians were hounded out of their homes by illiterate mobs. The Reverend Armitrage made a woefully misguided televised speech citing Leviticus and denouncing the "evils of homosexuality" as the root cause of the panic. Gay bashings tripled that week.
Then the call came down from City Hall. Special Victims needed more warm bodies to hit the streets and get to grips with this thing, before it all blew up in their faces. It was, after all, an election year. And fresh faced out of his Detective exam, still clutching his freshly minted, shiny gold shield, HarryMiles was drafted into the department and assigned a partner, Detective Wendy Breville, a tough-talking, no-nonsense veteran of the streets with some five years' seniority on Harry.
Harry's first bust was the arrest of Reverend Armitrage, on a charge of possessing kiddy porn. His next case was to put a stop to the Satanic Panic, which he did when he found that the "Satanic graffiti" scrawled at the site of one of the Panic's infamous "child abductions" had been drawn there ten months previously, and had no connection whatsoever with the truth of the case, which had involved a child being abducted by a deadbeat ex-husband who, instead of paying the alimony and child welfare as ordered by the court, had roped in two of his buddies and rented a black van so he could grab his kid and skip town.
At the sight of the kid being reunited with his mother, Harry felt a surge of something he'd never felt before. Looking at his partner and the Ell Tee on return to the Precinct, the senior officers glanced at each other and smiled, knowing that Harry Miles had indeed found his true calling.
And there's my effort.
Warning. Excruciatingly long post, hidden behind cuts.
The Game: The World of Darkness
The Publisher: White Wolf
Degree of Familiarity: Oh, you know, squeeing fanboy who can quote rules and page references in the core rulebook, chapter and verse
Books Required: The World of Darkness Rulebook, Tales from the 13th Precinct, plus optionally World of Darkness: Asylum and my own World of Darkness: Dogs of War.
First of all, I want to create a very specific character concept. I want to create a Special Victims Detective. I can at least start with a name: Detective Harry Miles.
13th Precinct has some very specific minimum requirements for Detectives in general, and SVU Detectives in particular, and these include a minimum of 3 Intelligence, 3 Wits, a smattering of Skills, and for SVU certain specific Skills and minimum Willpower.
I can tell by looking at the basic WoD chargen rules that I'm going to need to draw upon the option given for Seasoned characters right off the bat if I'm even going to come close to qualifying for SVU. I'd therefore peg Harry's current age as, oh, late thirties. He's definitely no spring chicken in cop years.
I'll come back to this in a minute. First, though, basic chargen. Starting with Attributes, I have 5/4/3 dots to play with. All Attributes, of course, come with a free dot to begin with, and I'm not going to raise any of Harry's Attributes to 5. It just costs too much at chargen.
Now, we really need to prioritise Mental here to get the minimum Intelligence and Wits of 3 apiece - so the 5 points go into Mental in a 2/2/1 split, yielding Intelligence 3, Wits 3 and Resolve 2. Bummer. I'm going to have to work on that Resolve to build up Willpower afterwards. At least Harry's got the nous to make ordinary Detective though.
The 4 dot split goes into Social, yielding Presence 2, Manipulation 2 and Composure 3. Harry will only need to buff up on one Attribute later to get the minimum required Willpower Trait - and that'll be his Resolve.
The 3 dot split goes into Physical, of course, and Harry just gives each Attribute 1 dot.
It's his smarts, his quick thinking and his cool that mark Harry as good Detective material, and on these Attributes' merits alone this guy would now make a good rank and file Detective. But I did say I was going to make him a SVU Detective, so I'm going to need those Seasoned character XP for that. Later.
One thought. The rules stipulate priorisation of dots between Mental, Physical and Social Attributes. If they allowed prioritisation between Power, Finesse and Resistance instead there wouldn't be this problem.
Now. Skills. I'm allowed an 11/7/4 split between the three categories, and I get to choose the categories. Now Detective requires a minimum spread of Mental Skills, and SVU require also a minimum of Medicine 1 and Empathy 3.
I prioritise Social as Primary, Mental as Secondary and Physical Skills as Tertiary.
I can start with the Physical right away, giving Harry a spread between Athletics, Brawl, Firearms and Weaponry. Athletics, because he was always a bit of an outdoorsman, jumping and climbing when he was out hunting with his Dad. (I'll get a dot in Survival later). Those four Skills get 1 dot each.
The minimum Mental Skills requirements are: Academics 1, Investigation 3, Politics 1. That gives me two dots to spend on further Skills. I so want Computer ... but I choose a dot in Medicine and a dot in Occult instead.
Finally, I totally splurge on Social Skills. I need a minimum of Empathy 3, but I also need Intimidation, Persuade and Streetwise. I put a dot in Animal Ken, three dots in Empathy and Streetwise and two dots each in Intimidation and Persuade.
I now round off my Skills with Specialities. I go for Forensics for Investigation, Counselling for Empathy and Negotiation for Persuade.
Advantages next. Defense is 2. Initiative is 5. Health is 7. Speed is 9. Willpower is a dismal 5; not good enough yet.
For his Morality, I just leave it at 7. Harry's seen some bizarre shit, but so far it hasn't started to wear him down. His Virtue, I'd love to make Justice - but I'm going to give him Hope instead, and Pride as his Vice. Harry's SVU role is to give hope to the victims of the hateful crimes he has to put a stop to. And he's become quite proud of the department.
Merits next. As a Sworn Officer, Harry is going to get the two dot Merit for free. He can spend up to seven dots on Merits - and I'm not going to take any of them to 5 dots, for the same reason why I didn't give him any 5 dot Attributes or Skills.
I quite like Harry having Contacts and Allies. I give him two dots in each of these, and give him Street and Medical for Contacts, and Police and Media for Allies.
Harry hears a lot of talk from his favourite chair in the snug at the back of O'Malley's, and his brother and a couple of friends of his working the local hospitals tell him informally if people come in with certain injuries. Battered kids and women, especially. He can also phone around the other departments for backup if a case goes south, and he's got the Amber Alert hotline on speed dial, as well as a few other string pullers at the local TV and radio stations.
For the rest, I'm going to crack open these other two books, Asylum and Dogs of War. Harry's going to get Emotional Detachment, Tolerance for Biology and the one dot version of Trained Observer. When that baby was fished out of the storm drain down on Laker and Fifth, Harry was the only one to keep his lunch down enough to spot the hairs clinging to the body that allowed him to get a DNA match on CODIS and track down the perp. He got his steel nerves from those years he spent hiking in the mountains, hunting and gutting edible critters for food with his Dad, back when he was a boy.
So, then, we're almost done here. Like I said, I wasn't happy with that Resolve of 2. It needs 15 XP to get it up to the minimum Resolve 3 I need to buff up his Willpower to the minimum of 6. That means I'm going to exercise the option of making Harry a Seasoned character, and giving him 35 extra XP to play with. Now he's got a good enough Resolve and Willpower.
Of course, this being the World of Darkness there is a price to pay for these XP, and so I cut myself and bleed exactly one pint of my own blood into a bucket for one point of lethal damage.
With the remaining 20 XP, I buy a couple of extras. I buy Survival 1, the Specialty of Exorcisms and Abjurations for Occult, and the Merits Resources (••), Police Tactics - Compliance Hold (•) and Bureaucratic Navigator (••).
And so my dots are assigned.
Summary:
Intelligence 3, Wits 3, Resolve 3; Strength 2, Dexterity 2, Stamina 2; Presence 2, Manipulation 2, Composure 3.
Academics 1, Investigation 3 (Forensics), Medicine 1, Occult 1 (Exorcisms and Abjurations), Politics 1.
Athletics 1, Brawl 1, Firearms 1, Survival 1, Weaponry 1.
Animal Ken 1, Empathy 3 (Counselling), Intimidation 2, Persuade 2 (Negotiation), Streetwise 3.
Defense 2, Initiative 5, Health 7, Speed 9, Willpower 6.
Virtue: Hope. Vice: Pride. Morality: 7.
Merits: Allies •• (Police, Media), Bureaucratic Navigator (••), Contacts •• (Medical, Street), Emotional Detachment (•), Police Tactics - Compliance Hold (•), Resources ••, Tolerance for Biology (•), Trained Observer (•).
Harry Miles' Dad is Detective Walter Miles, a hero cop who got cut down in a hail of gunfire when Harry was just 17. His mother Dorothy had passed away when Harry was young. Stroke.
The city's police force turned out for the funeral. It was really beautiful. As the eldest family member, his elder sister Terri having long gone - she had been 13, Harry 7 - Harry had to accept the folded flag with the little badge on it from the Chief of Detectives. The rest of the time, he had to suck it in and keep it together for the sake of his younger brother Hank, a fact that made his old Uncle Joe very proud.
Joe had been a cop. Walter had been a cop. Three generations of Mileses had gone into the Force. Nobody was surprised when Harry signed up for the Academy. Nobody was surprised when young Henry became a Doctor either - Hank's girlfriend said that Henry had the hands of a surgeon.
Miles kind of drifted through the Academy. He weathered the harsh conditions the instructors imposed on him in particular; he could see how the other cadets had been in awe of him, being the son of hero cop Wally Miles and all, and the Academy did not want to be seen to show favouritism. The truth was, at this stage he just didn't care. Everyone he knew and loved was drifting away from him, and frankly he was only a cop because of family tradition and the expectations of all Wally's old friends who wanted to see a Walter Miles Mark 2 in Harry.
And then the Satanic Panic gripped the city. The streets emptied. Lynch mobs roamed the streets. Respectable paediatricians were hounded out of their homes by illiterate mobs. The Reverend Armitrage made a woefully misguided televised speech citing Leviticus and denouncing the "evils of homosexuality" as the root cause of the panic. Gay bashings tripled that week.
Then the call came down from City Hall. Special Victims needed more warm bodies to hit the streets and get to grips with this thing, before it all blew up in their faces. It was, after all, an election year. And fresh faced out of his Detective exam, still clutching his freshly minted, shiny gold shield, HarryMiles was drafted into the department and assigned a partner, Detective Wendy Breville, a tough-talking, no-nonsense veteran of the streets with some five years' seniority on Harry.
Harry's first bust was the arrest of Reverend Armitrage, on a charge of possessing kiddy porn. His next case was to put a stop to the Satanic Panic, which he did when he found that the "Satanic graffiti" scrawled at the site of one of the Panic's infamous "child abductions" had been drawn there ten months previously, and had no connection whatsoever with the truth of the case, which had involved a child being abducted by a deadbeat ex-husband who, instead of paying the alimony and child welfare as ordered by the court, had roped in two of his buddies and rented a black van so he could grab his kid and skip town.
At the sight of the kid being reunited with his mother, Harry felt a surge of something he'd never felt before. Looking at his partner and the Ell Tee on return to the Precinct, the senior officers glanced at each other and smiled, knowing that Harry Miles had indeed found his true calling.
And there's my effort.
