Painting Characters in Broad Strokes (Part 2)

[This article originally appeared in 2010 in Fudgerylog, the blog connected to my defunct Fudgery.net site. (Read Part 1.)]

In Part 1, I suggested a method for creating the supporting cast—whether player characters or non-player characters—in a Fudge game adapted from television shows or movies, but there is another method that has been part of the rules since the 1995 edition, and that is the Alternate Section on Character Creation by Ed Heil. In this method, none of the attributes or skills are listed until a situation arises during play when a player must decide whether to use a trait and allocate the necessary levels from his starting pool of levels or refrain from using the trait. The character begins as little more than a description of one or two sentences and a skill level pool (which may also be traded in the traditional manner for attributes or gifts if so desired). Given the sketchiness with which most characters are initially defined in television and cinema, this would seem to be an ideal method of character creation. Characters in these media often evolve as a show progresses, revealing skills and background details the audience didn’t know they possessed (and which probably didn’t even exist until a particular story required them). In a show such as classic Doctor Who, even Companions rarely seem to begin as more than a couple sentences’ worth of description. For my own purposes, however, a compromise might be more effective.

In my current Whovian project, Classic Doctor Who: The Unofficial Role-Playing Game, I will be presenting multiple character creation options, and this will probably be one of them. Companions may begin with a brief description and 3 free levels to be distributed amongst the following attributes: Strength, Stamina, Coordination, Intellect, Willpower, and Charisma. They may choose 1 gift, with further gifts costing an equal number of faults. They will have a skill level pool of perhaps 30 free skill levels that may be distributed or held in reserve or traded for attributes or gifts (or any combination thereof). This makes adapting characters from the original show especially easy. Instead of inventing abilities for Barbara Wright that she never demonstrated in the show, we can simply assign her some skill levels in Teaching, History, and Negotiation, and the rest will be the hands of the player who role-plays her in the game. Who knows what other abilities she may reveal in the course of an adventure? This could make playing an existing Companion just as interesting as creating one’s own.

[Originally posted in Fudgery.net/fudgerylog on 6 October 2010.]