The blue screen hung in space in front of him, utterly failing to respond to his outrage.

Welcome to Hackmaster Character Creation

Tap to continue

Eventually, he reached out with the wireframe outline his hand had turned into and tapped the button. The blue screen was replaced by two more.

Step-by-Step Character Creation Procedure

Roll ability scores Choose a race Determine character priors and particulars Earn BPs with quirks and flaws Assign final ability scores Select a class Select a package (optional) Finish background Calculate starting Honor Purchase beginning skills, talents, and proficiencies Cash in remaining BPs Choose an alignment Roll hit points Name your character Purchase starting equipment

The first screen was sparse on details, but vaguely helpful. The second was just a single button.

Tap to roll ability scores

Reluctantly, he tapped. The screen changed instantly, filling up with ability scores.

Str: 17/18

Dex: 12/51

Con: 14/31

Int: 9/26

Wis: 11/09

Cha: 10/17

Com: 8/100

Hon:

Fame:

“The heck? Why does every score have a percentile too?”

A third screen appeared, with a list of races. There was a wide selection, including Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Gnomeling, Half-elf, Halfing, Half-orc, Half-ogre, Human, and Pixie Fairy. The Pixie Fairy option was grayed out, suggesting it was an invalid choice. All the others seemed valid.

He tapped them one at a time, reading each description carefully, looking at the requirements for each, all the while getting more engrossed in the details until he’d nearly forgotten his strange situation. Each had some minimum attributes needed to select the race, except human of course, but curiously, his rolls were enough to qualify for any race, if just barely in some cases. He even checked the Pixie Fairy race and learned the only problem was that his strength was actually too high to be one. He could voluntarily drop his strength and gain a few build points if he really wanted. Admittedly, it was interesting. They made good mages. But why waste a high score like a 17 by burning it off? After reducing it to the minimum of 14, he’d still have to apply a -6 modifier and that would make it an 8. And after all that he still had low Int. So, no.

Two races stood out to him. Gnome titans and Half-ogres both got a +2 bonus to strength. Gnome titans got a +1 Int, -1 Wis, and -1 Com as well. Wait, 50% penalty on XP? 50% penalty on hit points as well?? And what was a 20 point kicker?

“Oh, huh. Everyone starts with 20 extra hit points. That’s…” He pondered. “Probably good. Except for Pixie Fairies who only get 10.”

Half-ogres got +2 Str and +2 Con but then -1 Wis, -2 Int, -3 Cha, and -5 Com! Oh hey, double hit dice at first level. Much better than a 50% penalty. He started checking out the available classes for a half-ogre. Thief and assassin were right out. Large characters are meant to be fighters. Cleric was out too, wisdom just wasn't great. That left fighter, barbarian, berserker, and knight errant.

Ok, hang on. Barbarian and berserker? Oh, how curious. D&D had always made the barbarian a raging berserker, but this game had separated the two concepts. Very nice. Except, berserker was a bit disturbing. Hackpangs if he wasn’t in a serious battle every day? Maybe not. Ok, fighter… eh. Totally standard. Boring. Knight Errant? Needs Cha 17, Com 15… yikes. Sounds impossible with the attribute penalties.

He poked at step 5 on the procedure screen. Aha! You could spend build points to raise attributes. But he would need 10 points of Charisma and 11 points of Comeliness. That was 84 build points. Oh, and he was short on Wisdom too.

He checked out the barbarian. Not bad. Str 15, Dex 14, Con 15, he was only two points short for Dex, that wasn’t much to make up. Wait, why did it want Wis of 17? Oh, oh! Wis <17. It wanted a Wisdom of 16 or lower! How odd. Okay, so maybe.

“Hold the phone. Double Dex bonus to AC with light armor? Double Con bonus to hit points for every hit die? But I would already get double hit dice at first if I was a half-ogre. That can’t be right.”

He checked and rechecked, but it was correct. After that, he decided he’d done enough looking and picked half-ogre. It defaulted to male, which was fine with him.

Name:

Race: Half-Ogre

Class:

Level: 1

Next Level:

Sex: Male

Alignment:

E.P.: 0

Str: 19/18

Dex: 12/51

Con: 16/31

Int: 7/26

Wis: 10/09

Cha: 7/17

Com: 3/100

Hon:

Fame:

The main character screen expanded and updated, and a new one popped up. [BP: 8]

Step 3 was Priors and particulars. Age randomly maxed out at 21. Handedness was ambidextrous, luckily. That always came in handy. Pun intended. Height of 7’9”, weight of 409 pounds. He idly tried to convert that to metric in his head, but couldn’t quite remember the conversions.

Social class was MUC, middle upper class. Oh, but not exactly. Among half-ogres it was, but among other races, he’d be seen as MMC, middle middle class. Didn’t seem important at first, until he noticed the +5 bonus to Honor. That sounded good.

Family was next. A legitimate birth. Bit of a relief, he would have hated to discover he was a product of… well, no need to think about it. Parents both living, parents both loving (+5 BP for each), [BP: 18], great family honor (also +5 Honor), and he was the fourth of five siblings.

The information transferred to his character sheet, and the screen changed again. This time it asked how many flaws he wished to roll for, any number from zero to nine.

What was life without a few risks? He chose six, thinking it would give him a fair number of build points without risking nine flaws.

A notice popped up, reminding him that he could spend a build point to reroll any result as he went along. However, the build points from the flaws would not be added until he was finished. He glanced at the 18 points accrued so far and shrugged. Should be plenty.

The first roll sent him to the Major Quirks (Personality) table. He accepted and instantly regretted it. That table only had Multiple Personality Disorder, Truthful, or roll twice on other tables. He rolled and accepted two rolls on the Minor Quirks (Personality) table. The first came up Jerk. Fine. The second was a roll again and once more on the Major Quirks (Mental) table. He got Loud Boor this time. The mental table came up roll again, again! Once more here, and once more on the Minor Quirk (Personality) table again. He rolled once more, getting Hackfrenzy on the mental table, and Obnoxious on the personality table.

This was a bit worrisome. He’d already picked up four quirks, and that was just the first roll of six.

The next roll was much easier. Fighter Quirks came up and turned into Armor Snobbery. Then Fighter Quirks came up again. He used a re-roll to avoid Combat Arrogance and got Armor Prejudice instead. With a good Dex, he could easily go without armor, so he took it. Amusingly, the armor it randomly selected was Elven Chainmail. Who would ever make that in half-ogre size?

Six quirks and only half the rolls finished. He used three more rerolls to avoid the flaw tables entirely. Those looked devastating to fighters. He ended up on the Major Quirk (Personality) again. At this point, he was ready to swear the random rolling system wasn’t properly random, as he got another double roll on the same Minor Quirk (Personality) table. Now he was Self-absorbed and Socially awkward. Two more rerolls ended him on the Fighter Quirk table, this time with Weapon Prejudice. That would have been another re-roll immediately until he discovered that this time it was actually his choice of weapon. He accepted the quirk, and the system let him delay the selection until later.

Nine quirks. He took his final roll, obtaining yet another Minor Quirk (Personality) result, and had to use a final re-roll to avoid Gullible, getting Values privacy instead. Clearly, something was hinky in random-land here. Yes, he’d used re-rolls to avoid physical flaws, but he had six quirks from the same table, each one of which reduced Charisma by a point.

But, it might have been worth it. [BP: 95]

The next step was to finalize ability scores. He spent a fairly long time agonizing over that. He finally decided to spend twenty points on Str, going from 19 to 24. Forty points went into Dex, going from a 12 to 22. The double bonus to AC was just too tempting. He spent fifteen on Con, going from 16/31 to 20/06, just enough to get the regeneration ability at the bare minimum. And finally, he spent twenty points on Cha, building it back from 1 to 6. That was needful to avoid some of the most severe Cha penalties to both Comeliness and Honor. [BP: 0]

Str: 24/18

Dex: 22/51

Con: 20/06

Int: 7/26

Wis: 10/09

Cha: 6/17

Com: 3/100

Hon: (+10)

Fame:

At last, it was time to select a class.

He made the official selection of Barbarian, and immediately got a new window with a list of packages. But none looked appealing, and it was clearly marked as optional, so he simply closed that and moved on. The window updated with a handful of barbarian skills as well. [BP: 7]

Name:

Race: Half-Ogre

Class: Barbarian

Level: 1

Next Level: 6001 E.P.

Sex: Male

Alignment:

E.P.: 0

Special: Climb cliff & trees 92%, Hide in nature 30%, Surprise 5in10, Surprised 1in10, Back Protection 5%, Leaping and Springing, Detect Illusion 5%, Detect Magic 25%

There was a roll for money, then a quickly displayed calculation for Honor, which started at 19. Interestingly, that added build points. [BP: 13]

Next came skills, talents, and proficiencies. Proficiencies were not free, annoyingly. He spent four build points to gain WP 2H Sword, WP Quickdraw 2H Sword, WP Advanced Two-Weapon Fighting, and WP Lucerne Hammer. As a large character, he could use his weapon in one hand. With ambidexterity, he could use two weapons. And, critically, the advanced proficiency allowed him to use two weapons of equal size when normally they needed to be different sizes (excepting handaxes and daggers).

At this point, he filled in the missing choice for Weapon Prejudice with 2H Sword.

Then a selection of basic skills: Weapon Maintenance, Looting (basic) 19%, Haggle 12%, Dirty Fighting 18%, Eye Gouge 29%, Pimp Slap 29%, and Cricket-in-the-pea-pod 53% reduced his build points to nothing. [BP: 0]

With no build points left, step 10 was skipped entirely. Step 11 was choosing an alignment. While it listed descriptions of every choice, he already knew he wanted Chaotic Neutral.

A table showing his saving throws briefly displayed then vanished at a touch.

Tap to roll hit points

He took a deep breath and tapped the button. The box shrank into a small one that displayed a [23], an amazing roll for 2d12, then it rapidly expanded into a new box that showed a number of other stats.

HP: 63 (½ vs. crushing)

Move: 16”

Reaction: +7

ToP: 31

FF: 10

Fatigue Check: 15

He did a quick calc. 20 point kicker, plus 23, plus 5 point Con bonus doubled once for being a barbarian and doubled again for two hit dice made 63, sure enough.

Name:

And then, finally, it was time for a name. From somewhere in the depths of his head, he drew forth a name that he wasn’t sure how it had come to him.

Name: Duromar

Race: Half-Ogre

Class: Barbarian

Level: 1

Next Level: 6001 E.P.

Sex: Male

Alignment: CN

E.P.(+5%): 0

Then came equipment purchasing. The money went painfully fast. Two two-handed blades took out 100gp right from the top. A backpack, some iron rations, and of course fifty feet of rope took out most of the rest.

With that, one final screen popped up.

Finalize character

He pushed the button, and then the world came into focus around him. Duromar, because that’s who he was now, found himself standing on a dusty street in front of a tavern. For reasons he wouldn’t understand for another seven months, the tavern was rather quiet that night.

----

Monz’tera 1

Sitting in a bar, waiting for an adventure hook to drop in your lap is just about the worst cliche there is for a fantasy RPG. But the thing is, it works. Players know where to go to relax, waste a little coin, brag about previous adventures, and maybe find a new one.

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