Character Creation Example

Steps: 1. 2. 3.

Adam is making a few characters for a game he’s about to run. The players want to start with an ensemble cast of characters and then winnow them down to the “main cast” during the first adventure sequence. Adam’s plan is to slowly initiate them into Firewall — and we all know how well the gamemaster’s plan goes — so the characters don’t need to start out aligned to Firewall.

Adam’s taking notes in a spreadsheet so he jots down 1 Flex the standard that every character gets in Step 1.

He then rolls d10 on Random Aptitude Template with a result of 6: Survivor. This character has a strong base with Somatics and Willpower but will be weaker with Intuition and Savvy.

Next is Random Language and Adam rolls a d100: 52 for Korean as his native language. This means the character most likely comes from a Korean cultural background.

Steps: 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.

His first d100 roll on Random Background Path is 1 for Colonist, and so he jumps to Colonist and rolls d100 with a result of 81 — a Spacer. This character grew up on or worked on spaceships at a young age. Spacers roll a d10 for Morph and Adam hits a 5 for a Splicer.

So far we know that this character is Korean and was a spacer before the Fall. Let’s fill in some more of those background details with Youth Event table where a d100 roll of 45 says that this character “grew up in a melting-pot, polyglot culture” and gives them the Hyper Linguistics (Level 0) trait. It makes sense that some spacer crews would be multicultural, so this is a good fit.

With that jotted down, Adam determines the character’s starting age on the Age table: in their 40s, on a roll of 56 Another d10 roll of 4 makes them 44. Since the game takes place 10 years after the Fall, and the Fall itself was a 2-year process, they were roughly 32–34 when the Fall occurred.

Moving on to the Pre-Fall Life Event table, Adam rolls d100 and gains a free specialization for training hard. He’ll figure this out later after all of the character’s skills are sorted. He’s beginning to think this character might be a bit of a goody two-shoes, which is a step down from being a goody eight-suckers.

Then it’s time for the Fall itself. A roll of 32 on the Fall Event table means that this character stashed their original splicer morph on Earth and farcasted off planet. Since this character was an off-world spacer, Adam likes the idea that they returned to Earth to help out but got trapped there. Adam hits up the Random Morph Table to find out what kind of morph they acquired next: d100 hits 39 for Biomorph and a d100 on the Biomorph table resleeves this character into a Bruiser, post-fall. There’s probably a story there in how they ended up with a bruiser morph but Adam will save those details for later.

Steps: 9. 10. 11.

This bruiser is now looking for work, so two consecutive d10 rolls (8,1) on the Random Career Path table turns them into an Investigator. Adam jumps to the Investigator table and rolls a 98, which would make the character a Journalist. Not quite the Sturdy Gumshoe that Adam had started to picture, but still a cool idea, and there are a lot of ways to get a journalist-type character into the thick of things. Adam writes down the skills, rep, and motivation.

We’re getting close to knowing the most important things, and Random Interest will help solidify that. It’s a pair of d10 rolls again: 8, 3 — Pilot. That ties in nicely with the spacer background from back in Step 1. Adam makes notes of the additional skills and rep.

Moving on to a d100 roll for Faction, and the niceness continues with a roll of 69, aligning this character with a Scum faction. It makes sense that a spacer would fall in with the scum post-Fall. Adam notes the Know skill, rep, and motivations.

Steps: 12. 13. 14.

The Post-Fall Event is a d100 roll of 47, and this one feels a little surprising for this character: “You have difficulty coming to grips with regular resleeving. Gain the Identity Crisis trait”. The scum are normally very into resleeving, but that doesn’t work for everybody. This event also requires rolling for a new morph. Adam says goodbye to the Bruiser, rolls again on the Random Morph tables, and this time gets a Sylph.

Moving to Step 13: Campaign Events Adam decides to roll on the Crime Event table — even though this campaign is going to veer towards Firewall, it feels more likely that this scum journalist has had some criminal run-ins. A d100 roll on that table comes up 71: “For a while at least, you go full Robin Hood with your crime, taking from the rich and giving to the poor. +10 @-rep.” So it sounds like this journalist may have sometimes gotten their hands dirty. The rep bonus gets jotted down.

And the final random event, Story Event, is an 81 on the d100 table: “You lose yourself in the hedonism of a scum warm for several months.” This is a near-perfect event to help get this character into a campaign!

Step: 15 [Skills]

Step 15 starts with combining skills and aptitudes. Listing together all of the skills, Adam sees that only three skills were picked up twice: Hardware: Aerospace, Know: Flight Crew Ops, and Pilot: Space. Adam combines them for a total of Hardware: Aerospace 70, Know: Flight Crew Ops 100, and Pilot: Space 70. Skills max out at 80 during character creation, so Adam knows he’ll need to adjust that Know skill, but he’ll do that after all of these skills and aptitudes are combined.

Now Adam adds all of the linked aptitudes to each of the skills. He remembers that Fray and Perceive get their base aptitudes added twice. Fray is REF (15) x 2 for a total of 30, and Perceive is INT (10) x 2 for 20, which Adam combines with the 20 that was part of the Journalist career path for a total of 40 in Perceive. The skill list for this character now looks like this:

Step 15 Skill List — Beginning

Fray	0 + (REF 15 x 2) = 30
Free Fall	40 + REF 15 = 55
Hardware: Aerospace	70 + COG 15 = 85 ▲
Infosec	20 + COG 15 = 35
Interface	30 + COG 15 = 45
Kinesics	40 + SAV 10 = 50
Know: Current Events	30 + COG 15 = 45
Know: Flight Crew Ops	100 + COG 15 = 115 ▲
Know: Journalism	60 + COG 15 = 75
Know: Scum Interests	20 + COG 15 = 35
Know: Spacers	30 + COG 15 = 45
Know: Spaceships	20 + COG 15 = 35
Perceive	20 + (INT 10 x 2) = 40
Pilot: Air	30 + REF 15 = 45
Pilot: Ground	20 + REF 15 = 35
Pilot: Space	70 + REF 15 = 85 ▲
Provoke	20 + SAV 10 = 30
Research	60 + INT 10 = 70
Survival (Navigate)	30 (40) + INT 10 = 40 (50)

Step: 15 [Skills cont.]

Now, a few of these totals exceed 80. Adam reduces both Hardware: Aerospace and Pilot: Space to 80 and takes the extra 10 points and sinks it into Melee skill — he wants this character to be able to defend themselves. With its linked aptitude of SOM 20, this character starts with Melee 30.

He also reduces Know: Flight Crew Ops to 80, but those extra 35 points can only be assigned to another Know skill. He decides to leave this Know skill blank for now; it can be filled in during gameplay as the character is developed further. Adam could change some of these scores around, if he felt the character was unbalanced or lacking. But he thinks this is a decent start. The final skill list is at right.

Step 15 Skill List — Final

Fray 30, Free Fall 55, Hardware: Aerospace 80, Infosec 35, Interface 45, Kinesics 50, Know: Current Events 45, Know: Flight Crew Ops 80, Know: Journalism 75, Know: Scum Interests 35, Know: Spacers 45, Know: Spaceships 35, Melee 30, Perceive 40, Pilot: Air 45, Pilot: Ground 35, Pilot: Space 80, Provoke 30, Research 70, Survival (Navigate) 40 (50)

Step: 15 [Rep Scores]

He then moves on to combining rep scores. Only one rep score (g-rep) was acquired twice; the 10 and 20 are added together for g-rep 30. The others stays as they were acquired.

Step 15 Rep Scores — Final

@-rep 30, c-rep 40, f-rep 20, g-rep 30

Step: 15 [Derived Stats]

He also calculates the derived stats as follows:

Initiative	(REF 15 + INT 10) ÷ 5 = 5
Lucidity	WIL 20 x 2 = 40
Trauma Threshold	LUC 40 ÷ 5 = 8
Insanity Rating	LUC 40 x 2 = 80

Then calculates the aptitude checks, which equal aptitudes x 3:

COG Check	COG 45 x 3 = 45		SAV Check	SAV 10 x 3 = 30
INT Check	INT 30 x 3 = 30		SOM Check	SOM 20 x 3 = 60
REF Check	REF 45 x 3 = 45		WIL Check	WIL 20 x 3 = 60

He also notes that the character gets a +10 to INT Checks to grasp the intent of languages he doesn’t speak due to the Hyper Linguistics trait they picked up.

This character will start in a sylph morph, since that’s the last one they acquired on the life path.

Adam chooses the Criminal gear pack to go with the Investigator gear pack from his career path. Though he plans to incorporate the characters into Firewall, he feels the Criminal pack is a better fit for this character.

Finally, there’s Motivations. Adam selects the following three from all that were rolled:

+Self-Reliance, +Thrill-Seeking, +Uncover Secrets.

Step 15 Derived Stats — Final

Initiative 5, Lucidity 40, Trauma Threshold 8, Insanity Rating 80

Step 15 Aptitude Checks — Final

COG 45, INT 30, REF 45, SAV 30, SOM 60, WIL 60

Step: 15 [Final Summary]

The character is almost all set to go! Adam has left a few things in limbo for the player to decide over the course of the first few game sessions:

• Unassigned Know Skill of 35 + aptitude
• One skill specialization (from Step 7)
• One language (from Step 4)

Looking it over, this character is a spacer turned scum journalist, good at piloting, fixing ships, and research. They returned to Earth during the Fall, but egocast away, leaving their old splicer behind. They were sleeved in an intimidating bouncer, but had trouble acclimating to its size (thanks to that Identity Crisis trait), and so now roll in a sylph morph.

They recently went on a months-long bender within the scum swarm, for reasons not yet fleshed out. There are some open questions about their criminal activities that can be developed during gameplay. Overall, it’s a solid launching point with lots of potential!

With everything written down in his spreadsheet, Adam moves to filling out a PDF, which he’ll send out to all the players along with the other prospective characters before the first game session.