Well, since I got the ‘Low Life’ roleplaying book, I had a character idea in mind… Last night I went through the character creation process to flesh him out! He’s not for any upcoming game, but I kinda like my idea anyway and I wanted to get it out of my system, so here goes…

  Oh and by the way, anyone who submits a drawing based on the character described in this post will have it shown in my blog along with a link to their own blog! The character will be a Croach, a humanoid cockroach. For those of you who wonder what that would look like, here’s a picture of a member of that species from the Low Life book!:

His Story: Born color-blind, he always wondered about these ‘colors’ everyone kept talking about… One day, a fast-talking merchant (actually a con-artist) sold him a liquid that would supposedly cure his eyes of his birth defect and allow him to see colors!

  Unfortunately, it was a hoax. As soon as the poor croach got back to his place and put some drops in his right eye, the liquid melted it! With his wound barely tended to, he furiously sought out the so-called merchant and miracle worker, only to find he had left town! At first the croach was just going to ask for his money back, but after the merchant fled despite his ‘satisfaction guaranteed or you get your money back’ claim… Our now one-eyed croach decided this wouldn’t do! He would find this merchant, beat him up and get his money back! (And give a poor review of his products if anyone asked!)

  And so our brave croach left home in a quest for justice… To give that liar a well-deserved smackdown and take his 10 clams back! [Clams are the monetary system in ‘Low Life’]

  To cover his disfiguring wound, he did his best with what he had at hand, painting a wooden ball to kinda sorta look like an eye and then using a short metallic spring to hold it near the eye socket, since he couldn’t get the wooden ball to fit there by itself. This causes the fake eye to wobble around every time he moves, or even spring up and down from his eye socket if he’s riding, running, fighting or doing anything else that requires fast and furious movement.

  He’s now been tracking that merchant for over a year, picking up some useful skills over time, taking side-jobs as an adventurer to keep the clams coming during his righteous quest!

Appearance: A young adult croach in his prime but with a missing eye, replaced by a spring with a fake wooden eye attached to it at the end. He wears an old brown fedora hat and a brown leather jacket with four sleeves, padded for protection around the torso. The jacket was made from different patches of brown leather so it gives it an inconsistent look, but the quality of it is not that bad, really. (I mean it, look in his equipment! It says ‘decent clothing’!)

STATS

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(For those who are familiar with it, this game uses the Savage Worlds system)

Name: (To be decided later)

Race:Croach

Attributes: Agility 1d8, Smarts 1d6, Spirit 1d6, Strength 1d6, Vigor 1d6

Skills: Fighting 1d8, Guts 1d12, Riding 1d4, Survival 1d4, Throwing 1d4, Tracking 1d4

Charisma: -1 (Due to his missing eye, if he covered it properly his Charisma would go up to +0)

Pace: 6”

Parry: 7 (Not counting the use of one or both of his shields)

Toughness: 6 (This includes a natural +1 to Toughness from a racial Edge)

Edges: Antennae, Crunchy Shell, Multiple Limbs, Gullet of Steel, Multidextrous

Hindrances: One Eye (Major. [This is the version from the main Savage Worlds book, not the Minor version from ‘Low Life’]), Vengeful (Minor), Color Blind (Minor)

Equipment: Throwing Axe (Str+1d6, Weight 2, Range 3/6/12), Decent Clothing, Crappy Shield (Two of them. +1 to Parry each, Weight 8 each.), Crappy Armor (+1, Torso only, Weight 5), Shortsword (Str+1d6, Weight 4), Waterskin (Worn in Backpack, Weight 1), Spring with poorly painted wooden ball made to look like an eye (Worn in empty eye socket).  124 Clams.

  Earlier I posted that there were no ‘Low Life: Rise of the Lowly’ supplements in the works, and it turns out I was wrong! Doing a search for the Low Life RPG, I discovered this!!!

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1359565526/low-life-the-whole-hole-a-gadabouts-guide-to-mutha?ref=live

  I really hope this project gets made! I can’t even imagine what new madness Andy Hopp will come up with next!

  As mentioned in a previous post, I bought myself the ‘Angel Roleplaying Game’ and will start a game set in the Buffyverse soon.

  I remembered that one of the guys playing in my D&D campaign had two brothers who had wanted to join the game but I said no because we didn’t have enough room for more players. (We’re already seven including myself and my gaming table is not big enough to fit one more person! I dread to imagine how it would go down with nine people!)

  I already knew one girl who was interested in joining my Buffyverse game, so I needed to find at least one more person to get things started. The logical first step was to check with the player who had brothers interested in roleplaying… I started by asking him if he liked the Buffy and Angel shows. He told me he watched Buffy, but not Angel. Okay, good start, he was familiar with the universe. When I mentioned the game to him, he said he watched the show mostly for the cute girls in it and that he thought it was too ‘teenage girl’-like for guys to play in it. I explained that this universe wasn’t only for teenage girls, that it contained cool characters like Giles and Spike and that the Angel spin-off was a very manly show! Plus the game would be a modern fantasy game about kicking monster butts and saving the world! It doesn’t get cooler than that!

  It didn’t convince him. I asked about his brothers and one of them who was with him said that he’d play D&D, but not a Buffy game. Fine. I then asked the two girls who already play in my D&D game and since one happens to be a huge fan of the Buffyverse too, she said yes. I had two confirmed players! And both have a friend each who might be interested, who happen to also be girls.

  So this is the story of how I might find myself GMing an all-female cast (player characters are named ‘cast’ in the Angel and Buffy RPGs) in my next tabletop RPG game!

  I do find it slightly ironic that after trying to explain to another guy that the Buffyverse wasn’t just for girls, none of my players will be male. I don’t really care, but I can see the humor in that…

  Today I passed by the hobby store just to browse and found they were having special prices on lots of older products. Basically they were trying to make room in their inventory by getting rid of used books and older RPGs that they’ve been keeping for years.

  I found two great RPG books that cost me 13$… COMBINED!!! :D

  One is the ‘Angel Role-Playing Game’. The book is new and only cost me 10$!

  I’m actually going to GM a Buffyverse game with this (on top of my current D&D campaign).

  The game will follow the current events of the Buffyverse as seen in the Dark Horse comics, for better or worse. This means a few things…

- Magic is gone. If any of the players wanted to play a witch or a warlock, they can’t right now. (This is a bit bad, since it limits choices and magic has always been an important part of the Buffy t.v show since Season 1!)

- Because magic is gone, newly turned vampires are actually mindless beasts. Xander starts calling them ‘zompires’. (This is neither good or bad for the game in my opinion since the traditional Buffyverse vampires are still around, they just can’t make new ones since their victims will turn into zompires.)

- As per the ending of Season 7, there can be as many Slayers in the story as the plot needs. (Very good for the game, especially if one or more of the players want to play a Slayer!)

  I might actually start posting about that game once it starts.

  As for the other RPG I bought…

 ’Silver Age Sentinels’… for 3$!!! Sure it’s a used copy, but it’s in VERY good condition! :D

  I already had the rules for the Tri-Stat system that this game uses because you can get the PDF for free here at the DriveThru RPG web site!

  Still, I intended to print it someday because unless you own one of those electronic tablets (which I don’t), having a rulebook in PDF format is not that useful. Now that I found this book, I won’t have to! It has everything needed to do a super-hero game. And it cost me less than it would have to go print the PDF somewhere! I couldn’t be happier, especially considering that the game is currently out-of-print!

  Doing a super-hero game is something I really want to try someday, but of course between my current D&D campaign and the Buffyverse one I want to start, the supers will have to wait!

  As a side-note, the Tri-Stat system started off with ‘Big Eyes Small Mouth’, a generic ‘anime’ role-playing game. When it comes to cinematic rules for over-the-top action that are easy to learn and use, the Tri-Stat system has a very good rep.It’s currently owned by White Wolf, the company behind the World of Darkness and they are not doing anything with it, which is a shame.

  So those are my purchases. I’m a very happy camper right now to say the least! :D