Stat It: Five Star Wars From Home

Five Parsecs from Home looks to be the best means to play a sci-fi open world campaign (or rather open galaxy?) as it plays out in an episodic story of a motley crew of space-faring mercs with randomized events that go on between different planets, supplying both a gamist and narrativist effect while giving a simulationist feel once you get your boots on the ground in the battle portions of the game.

However, the game is primarily for skirmishes, which means you will need quite a lot of minis and terrains, as well as a different view of how to move units and attack. Basically, it’s less like playing D&D and more like playing Warhammer. Even with the Freelancers Handbook, it feels rather a little too complex for me to jump right into it…

Luckily for me, though, there’s a spacefaring game that I want to play for a very long time and this would serve as the perfect framework. Fantasy Flight’s Star Wars RPG is well known for its unique dice mechanics and character customization and I’ve been meaning to do a solo game on it for a long time. And, to my good fortune, there’s even a solo oracle that works well with the Genesys system, assuming I would need to ask questions along the way.

Let’s get to work with creating our crew first.

Stat It: Dominion Rules

The newest season of Me, Myself, and Die (or Season 3 if you’re reading this sometime after this is posted) had been a pretty good rollercoaster of mystery as both Trevor and the audience piece together what happened to Edbert that landed him on a deserted island with pirates chasing him. It recently concluded on an amazing note that gave Egbert the closure to his character arc that began all the way back in Season 1 and is a testament to just how high a quality campaign people can make their solo games.

Running the mechanics for the third season is a rather obscure RPG. Whereas Savage Worlds had some popularity and Ironsworn is the quintessential soloist RPG, Dominion Rules is obscure to say the least. Without specifying the RPG, you might end up finding rules to the Deck Building Game Dominion. In fact, googling Roll20 Dominion gets me results for exactly how one were to make assets for said card game.

This essentially means that Roll20 and Foundry don’t have the sheet programmed in. Foundry has improved quite a bit to the point where there’s a few systems that allow you to make your own system, but you still need to figure out how to maneuver the programming, which is doable, though I simply want to create a character for Dominion and not an entire system for it.

While Astral would be able to patch this problem up, it unfortunately died at the end of August, so that brought me back to square one (not that I really enjoyed playing it since I found it to be resource intensive compared to Roll20 or Foundry). This means this will be one of the few times I’ll have to make the sheet by hand, something I will show at the end of the Stat It.

Stat It: Savage Worlds

You know what? Let’s also do a Savage Worlds Stat It too! Now, for the setting, I was thinking it’d be set in the Oldlands, long after humans left it to head to the Ironlands, thus paving the way for new species, namely the non-human, non-standard fantasy races. These result in the Aquarians, Avions, Rakshashans and Saurians being the dominant races.

And our party will consist of four of them, one from each race. Originally, I was gonna make the characters on savaged.us for ease of creation, but importing them over to Foundry proved to be a tad clunky, that and I think I might be able to finely tune the characters better if I went over the process for each of them instead of clicking on stuff and seeing what happens. I’ll still use Savaged for calculating numbers, but this will mostly be done manually. I’ll add, as a house rule, that the group gets one free Background Edge.

Stat It: Ironsworn

I keep hearing nothing but good things about Ironsworn. It seems like the game for soloists to play. I’m not entirely sure why I’ve been sleeping on it for so long, perhaps it’s due to me being busy with other projects or even thinking that, since the game is tailor made for solo play, the need to review it wouldn’t be needed. Part of the reason why I do Solo RPG Voyages is to experiment with playing games meant to be played with other people.

However, after a breakdown by Trever Duvall where he and the creator of Ironsworn not only discuss the game but also stat up Arn Kalapunki for the journey, I figured “what’s the harm in statting up a character?”, and so, here we are.

Having heard of the setting for Ironsworn, it makes me think of John Wick if he was in Winterfell or if he was a Witcher, where the protagonist(s) are characters who have sworn iron vows and must accomplish them, not unlike how assassins in the film series are bound by their word to carry out their contracts. The Winterfell part comes in when you see the setting is a harsh environment where winters are longer and harvests are rougher.

There’s nine regions in the Ironlands, the setting of the RPG, and each one not only has unique features but also a quest starter that you could use as inspiration. I decided to start with the fishing-heavy region that is the Barrier Islands. The quest starter there mentions a spectral maiden who offered the hero safe passage at a heavy cost. Perhaps an iron vow?

Next, there are the Truths. These help set up the background of the Ironlands to give it a unique feel and I like this. It kinda reminds me of how setting up a setting for Spark worked, where you would create three truths based off the setting you (and friends) have made. Each of these truths also have their own quest starters. There’s a ton of them, so I’ll just make a list of the truths I picked for the game.

Stat It: A Maid, a Butler, and a Master

I figured to do one more Stat It before I get back to playing. In this case, it’ll be Maid RPG. I played this before, but that was just a small session in a larger campaign. I want to play an actual game of Maid RPG. And, to my luck, it’s an RPG that comes with its own scenario in its Corebook. Tons, in fact. But, I’m gonna stick to the common “Happy Birthday” scenario.

Like with the Marvel games, I’ll make three characters. A Maid who I created, a butler who will be randomized, and the premade Master, Nejiri, or given where I’m going to set this game, Torsion.

Right, I should explain where I’m going with this. Originally, I wanted to make this a surprise, but… Yeah, I kinda need to give you context. See, while Maid RPG is inspired by Japanese pop culture and thus Japanese names are given, I decided to set this in Spain, right alongside Hot Guys Making Out… See where I’m going with this?

Stat It: Fairy Tail

Funny story. I use Roll20 to help with solo roleplaying, in part due to how the site utilizes character sheets. People make character sheets for a variety of RPGs for other players to use for their campaigns. More often than not, it’s a sure-fire way for me to get introduced to a new RPG.

Why is this funny? Because FATAL had a character sheet for Roll20, but it disappeared when I was trying to do the Stat It for FATAL. Of the sheets I found that started with FA, I found one that caught my interest from the name alone: Fairy Tail. Now, when the title of an RPG is some sort of cute wordplay, like substituting tale with tail (looking at you, Tails of Equestria), it will grab my attention. However, upon looking on the sheet, it’s clearly a D20 sheet with an odd bird-like symbol… So, what gives?

Well, this is a D20 Adaptation of the famous anime/manga known as Fairy Tail. What’s it about? Well, it’s a fantasy anime with a ton of different magic systems so robust and unique, that just one of them can easily become a magic system for its own story. It also contains guilds that go on quests, of which one of them is called Fairy Tail. In a way, this anime is essentially an RPG setting just waiting to be explored in some form of system and what better way to explore it than the father of all RPGs (since grandfather would be OSR), D20.

Back in the 2000’s, D20 was the go-to system to create just about any RPG. You want to make a Star Wars RPG? D20. You want your RPG set in contemporary times but don’t want vampires or werewolves in your story? D20. You want to have a sexy RPG? You can bet your sweet ass D20 got you covered. In fact, it was because of that sexy RPG that the license used to have people make D20 games had to be updated and led to an eventual decline in D20-focused RPGs. Of course, there are exceptions, including the now leading competitor Pathfinder, but for the most part, D20 was a flash in the pan.

So… What’s the tale with Fairy Tail? Well, like with Titan World and Snakes on a Plane, this game is fanmade, using the basis of an already easy to understand system and putting the skin of Fairy Tail on it. However, unlike those two examples, this game has a sadly common outcome: it’s incomplete. Now, looking at the webpage, there’s obviously a lot of pages missing. There’s an older version that, while way more complete, still has some rough patches here and there. Particularly with the Advanced Classes, which are this game’s version of Prestige Classes.

Of the ninety Advanced Classes, only thirteen Advanced Classes have fully statted up class tables. A little under 15% of one section of the book is actually complete. Now, granted, that section is about 7% of the entire book and other than that, the book is pretty much complete, but I felt like this needed a mention. Not that it really matters much, since thirteen Advanced Classes is still a lot. Compare to Pathfinder’s ten Prestige Classes in the Core Rulebook and 3.5’s fifteen Prestige Classes, and Fairy Tail manages to hit a happy medium in spite of how many others are empty.

Again, not that it really matters, as I want to take a look at the Races, since they’re very unique to the Fairy Tail lore. You have two human races, one from each universe (long story short, there’s basically a mirror universe to Fairy Tail’s universe) and the difference between them is that one’s more adept at magic and the other’s more tech-based, bringing to mind the Artificer from 5e.

The real icing on the cake, however, are the three non-human races. You have a Fallen Celestial, children of the stars who have been barred from their realm and must live amongst humans, the Exceed, cat people that were revered as gods in the aforementioned mirror universe, and lastly, Demons. It is these three races in particular that I’m going to delve into, rather than make characters around the prestiges like I did with Testament. It’s even easier that way thanks to two words: Level Adjustment.

Simply put, the races are so overpowered that the only way they would be balanced out is if they were to be viewed as a higher-level character. Allow me to use an example: The Fallen Celestial has four stats that get a +2 and has 1d3 powers that tie them to their star of origin. The only drawback they have is that they have an extra mana pool (this game runs on mana points instead of the Spell Slots system) that doesn’t replenish like normal and, if depleted, results in the character being wiped from existence. But, hey, an extra mana pool! As a result, the best way to balance this race out is to have a Level Adjustment of +5, or better put, the race is seen as a 5^th level character, if all the levels are put into empty classes.

This, however, is a complex and overall weak way to hold back races and later versions like 5E and Pathfinder never went back to the Level Adjustment and instead make each race balanced overall or adding a points system that denotes how strong the race is overall.

For this, Stat It, however, we will definitely play around with this. Because our highest-level character is at 5^th level, that naturally means everyone else will be 5^th. In fact, I’ll start things off with the Fallen Celestial, as they have the Level Adjustment of 5.

Stat It: A Certain RPG…

Alright… Buckle yourselves in… We’re going to be tackling a certain roleplaying game. Oh yes, that roleplaying game. Some of you are probably anticipating what I’m about to unveil on a day commonly associated with tricks and troll moments, so I’m going to cut the crap and give it straight to you.

I’m taking a look at A Certain Roleplaying Game…

…

What? Not all April Fool’s Day pranks have to be long, drawn out skits. Sometimes the best trick is one that doesn’t need to be one.

Stat It: Testament, the Third Impact

I think it’s time we return to the game of Testament. Now, we last left off the story with a rather dark note as an assassin got away scot-free from Egypt. We need to take care of that problem. How?

With some good ol’ Israelites.  Hey, you don’t mess with the Zohan! In particular, I’m going with:

• A Levite Priest prestiging into a Prophet.
• A Paladin prestiging into a Judge.
• And a Psalmist prestiging into a Champion of Israel.

They’ll all be Level 9, eight levels in their first class, one in their prestige. It’s gonna be a challenge, but I’m gonna stat up three of these guys to get Prestiges for them.

Stat It: The Tingleverse

Happy 2020! It’s a new year, a new decade, and a new day! So, let’s kick things off with trying something new!

If this is your first time on this site, word of warning: my preferred roleplaying style is gonzo. As in I like to go off the rails and into absurdity. Normally, this involves taking a game’s setting and turning it on its head, such as turning a LARP about grieving for a dearly departed friend into a full-blown primetime TV supernatural drama or take a cutesy game about Imperial Japanese warships being turned into anime women and have their commander be a black market arms dealer with the aforementioned anime women being his muscle.

However, if an RPG is gonzo in of itself, like an RPG set in a fantasy version of a Wendy’s restaurant where the main villain is Night King Ronald McDonald, then that immediately piques my interests. Such as the case with this game. Just… look at the cover! You have a shirtless dinosaur human cowboy, front and center, while he’s flanked by both Bigfoot and an elf archer, all while there’s tentacles going on… What’s not to like!?

 Welcome to the Tingleverse, an RPG based off some crazy novels that you can buy on Amazon! What’s it about? Well, it’s set in a universe where a variety of species have integrated themselves into society, ranging from the Bigfeet to the Dinosaurs, to even Unicorns and living objects. And thus, T-Rexes buying steaks and baseball playing motorcycles have become the norm for society.

Things are not so pleasant though, as monsters from a dark place known as the void often invade the Tingleverse. Some of these monsters were people just like us who were warped by the Void in an attempt to jump timelines while others are born right from the void itself.

Our story takes place in Billings, Montana of the good ol’ US of A, though altered to account for the Tingleverse, such as the lack of gunpowder or internet. Now, what kind of character shall I become?

Interestingly enough, the game’s system is a loose version of an OSR. It keeps the ability scores the same, but with the names altered. Constitution becomes Fortitude (ironically the name of the Saving Throw that uses Constitution in 3.5) Intelligence and Wisdom become Book/Street Smarts respectively, and Charisma becomes Charm, naturally.

Classes are easy to compare, with Bad Boys being Fighters, Charmers being Bards, Sneaks being Rogues, True Buckaroos being Clerics, and Wizards being… well… wizards. Though, this and the Alignments are where the similarities end. The races are pretty unique in terms of lore and stat distribution, while there’s a feature similar to Feats called Unique Ways that, mechanics wise, are completely different in how Feats go.

Namely, each Unique Way has an advantage and a disadvantage, with a huge stipulation to encourage roleplaying. For example, a character having Abs would help them in their Charm checks, but they need to spend some time doing sit ups to maintain them. Then, there are Cool Moves, which are special abilities that you can pick to customize your class.

Equipment gets a brief mention because not only do you start off with a bag of holding, but the selection of items mashes up an urban setting with a fantasy setting, kinda like Final Fantasy and Earthbound having a baby. The currency? US Dollars. Okay, that made me smile.

This is what I wanted out of an OSR game. A simplistic system that allows for character customization instead of having your character’s abilities and stats be fixed to a table. I really like this and now I want to roll up some characters. Let’s do it!

Stat It: The Feast of Legends

So, I’ve kinda established myself as a gamer who goes to the absurd for his solo games, whether it be playing a simplified D6 system based off Snakes on a Plane, playing a simplistic combat-heavy game just to say my character beat up Hitler, using the common ancestor of all RPGs to play out a rat invasion, or even outright playing the worst RPG ever just to see if it can be solo’d.

Well, I can say that I’ve been out absurded…

There’s an RPG made by Wendy’s. I’m not making this up.

Feast of Legends is its name and I gotta say, it’s absolutely legit. Rather than it being a meme RPG where it just apes the D20 system and gives you a silly setting based off Wendy’s stuff, it instead has its own unique system and while it does base its setting off Wendy’s products, it’s not entirely blatant advertising.

Okay, a bit of a stretch, considering how the entire plot of the campaign in its rulebook is that we have to fight a monster called the Ice Jester. If you know anything about Wendy’s, you know that they pride themselves off having fresh, never frozen patties. And I don’t think I need to say who the Jester represents.

In a way, it’s an official version of that Disney & Nintendo vs. WB & Sony campaign I made years ago, where Mickey was regarded as the Jesus Christ of cartoons and the Looney Tunes were akin to pagan gods.

So, naturally, I want to play a game of this. And so, the first thing I do is Stat It.