Mirikon
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Freezing Shadows, Chapter 2
🕑 Added 2024-11-05 22:28:30 +0000 UTC
Chapter 2: Crunch
I couldn’t carry my character from the Beta over to the live game, but I’d had plenty of experience making characters with Shadowmen’s system during that time, especially since it took me a few characters to understand that running in like a Big Damn Hero ended up getting you very dead, very quickly. The system Shadowmen ran on basically decided that they weren’t going to let you do the typical MMORPG thing where you can run around murdering your way across the land. Nope, they straight up told you that high velocity lead was bad for your health, so you should avoid that shit at all costs, or you’d be going back to character creation.
Welcome to the Character Creation room. This is where you will create the character that you will immerse yourself in while playing Shadowmen. To streamline your initial experience, we offer both guided and unguided modes. Guided character creation is the default, and will use the answers to several questions to create a character that fills one of several archetypes. The resulting character is likely to be effective at their given role, even if they are a little generic. Unguided character creation leaves all the choices up to you, but if you choose poorly, the only way to change those choices is to start again, from the beginning.
Do you wish to turn off Guided Character Creation?
Yes / No
Hmm. So, they took one of my suggestions to heart? I’d left feedback during the beta that just throwing people into the full character creator experience was going to overwhelm most new players. Bad enough on the visual side of things, where you could literally craft your dream avatar, but it was too easy for newbies to get lost in the weeds on the mechanical side, and that would just hurt player retention. Apparently, they decided that the guided creation mode was the answer to that issue.
I turned it off, all the same, since I was very familiar with the character creator by this point. More importantly, I already knew what I was going to be doing for this character. The world of Shadowmen was this weird fusion of Cyberpunk and Fantasy, where the three pillars of the game were Magic, Matrix, and Meat. Meat was obviously your character, and all the augmentations you could slap in their body before it broke apart. The Matrix was basically the internet dialed up to 11, where you could literally dive in and explore like it was another world. And Magic? Well, there were elves and dragons, so you knew there had to be magic!
Starting off, I picked a character name, and a ‘street’ name. Mirikon Mollen was the character name, since I’d used it in some other games before. For my street name, I picked Iceblade, since I was going for a Combat Mage archetype that focused on blades and ice magic, amongst other things.
There was a difference between ‘race’ and ‘metatype’ in the game. Race was still color of your skin and all that idiocy, same as in the real world. Metatype was whether your ears were pointy and shit. The game was in a cyberpunk world, so there were definitely people that got discriminatory about those things. Fortunately, punching them in the teeth when they started spewing shit was more acceptable in game than it was in real life.
The unguided character creator had a bunch of tabs you went through, popping back and forth as you needed until you were satisfied. I put down 30 BP to grab the Elf metatype. They came with a few stat changes from baseline human, and got the ability to see in dim light just as well as a human could in daylight. When you’re needing to move around in shadows, that was pretty handy.
Popped over to Qualities, which came in two forms, positive and negative. Positive qualities gave you some boosts to your character, while Negative qualities gave you challenges. You paid BP for taking positive qualities and got BP for the negative ones, but couldn’t have more than 35 BP worth of either at character creation.
Not all qualities were the same. Some gave you cute little bonuses, like letting you resist fear effects a bit better, while others were seriously powerful. Some also scaled, like the Addiction negative quality, which got progressively nastier the further along you went. Still, they did help make your character feel more ‘alive’.
Turning my attention back to the character creator, I started with the Positive qualities. Picked up Magician for 15 BP, which let me cast spells, summon spirits, and stuff like that. Mentor Spirit was an additional 5 BP, but it gave some bonuses that most people didn’t think about until they learned more. And two ranks of the Martial Arts quality for 10 BP, so I could buy some maneuvers to flesh out my fighting style.
Flipped over to the Magic tab that just opened up, and smiled when I saw that one of the available options for my ‘Tradition’ was the one I’d designed during the Beta. Traditions basically said what type of mage you were, and what kind of spirits you could summon. It also determined what stats you used to resist the draining effect of using magic. I happily picked up the Swordmage tradition, and grabbed the Shark mentor spirit, for its lovely +2 to Combat spells and summoning Spirits of Water. Yeah, it also gave me a chance of going berserk if someone dealt damage to me, but it was worth it.
For negative qualities, I started with a -10 BP Geas or restriction on my magic, where my magic was restricted if I didn’t have a blade to hand. I could still use it, but I’d be weaker without holding a blade. Then, I picked up a minor Addiction to Alcohol for -5 BP, and Sensitive System for -15 BP. That doubled my Essence loss from getting cyberware, but I was a mage, so any augmentations wrecked my magic, anyways. Finished off with the SINner quality, which meant that I had a legitimate System Identification Number from one of the governmental entities out there, filling out the final -5 BP of Negative qualities.
Flip back to the ‘Basics’ tab, start buying up attributes. Attributes and Active Skills were the hardest thing to level up after character creation, because of how the upgrade system worked, so I wanted to spend most of my points in those areas. In character creation, Attributes were a flat 10 BP cost per point above your racial minimums, except for hitting your racial maximum, which cost 25 BP. For my Swordmage tradition, the key stats were Charisma (CHA) and Willpower (WIL), but I also needed Body (BOD), Strength (STR), Agility (AGI), and Reaction (REA) to be effective, and not just a glass cannon. And I couldn’t overlook Intellect (INT) or Logic (LOG), either, since they were important to a lot of skills.
As an Elf, my racial max on CHA was 8, so I put mine to 7. That’d help me with my magic, but it was also the key to most social skills, which helped in talking your way out of (or into) trouble. WIL to 4, REA to 4, everything else to 3. Humans topped out at 6 on all basic attributes, so that meant I was extremely charismatic, and average or better on everything else. Cost a whopping 190 BP, though.
On top of those basic attributes, there was also Edge, and being a Magician unlocked the Magic attribute. Edge was basically ‘luck’, and you could spend it to try and get out of a sticky situation, or to make impossible things merely implausible. I’d played around with it in the Beta, and didn’t really trust it much, so I left it at the racial minimum of 1. Magic, though, I bumped to 5, just below the racial max. Another 40 BP spent.
Quick flip to the Martial Arts tab. I picked Carromeleg as my martial art. It was an in-game creation of one of the elven beta-testers, so was a ‘traditional elven martial art’, which focused on looking completely loose until the flurry of motion in a sudden attack. Two ranks of the Martial Arts quality let me pick two advantages, and four maneuvers. The advantages were free, but the maneuvers cost BP.
For the advantages, I picked a +1 for Interception attacks, which was basically attacking someone trying to get out of melee with you, or trying to run past you, and a +1 to defend against Charge attacks, which was someone charging at you to try and smack you. For maneuvers, I picked Iaijutsu, which let me quick-draw melee weapons, Off-Hand Training (Blades), which let me use a blade in my off-hand without penalty, Sweep, which let me do damage if I swept someone off their feet, and Two Weapon Style, which let me go Full Defense with an off-hand weapon while still attacking with my main weapon. Another 8 BP well spent.
Now for Active skills. They came in ranks from 1 to 6, and cost 4 BP per rank, and 2 BP would let you buy a specialization in that skill granting you a +2 bonus with that specialization. You could purchase whole skill groups at 10 BP per rank, as well, but that was only useful if you saw yourself using three or more skills out of the group with any regularity, and you couldn’t specialize in any of those skills. At character creation, you could only get a Skill Group to rank 4, and had to pick between getting one Rank 6 skill, or two Rank 5s, and all your other skills would be 4 or lower. This was why the Prime Runner bonus didn’t make me too much more powerful than other characters. I could get a wider range of skills, yeah, but they weren’t going to be more powerful.
For my two Rank 5s, I picked Blades and Spellcasting, and took a specialization in both, going with Swords for the Blades Skill, and Combat spells for Spellcasting. Con (with a specialization in Seduction) at 4, Pistols (Semi-automatic specialization) and Summoning (Spirit of Water specialization) at 3. Two ranks of the Athletics skill group (which included things like Climbing, Running, Swimming, and the like), and then a bunch of rank 2s and 1s, with some specializations here and there. Another hefty 166 BP gone.
Back to Magic, because I needed spells. With a Spellcasting of 5, I could get up to 10 spells, at 3 BP a pop. I paid the full 30 BP, and got a good selection of all the spell types except Detection. Most of those weren’t worth it, for my build. Ended up with three Combat spells, dealing different types of damage, two Health spells (one to Heal, and the other to Increase Reflexes in combat), two Illusion spells that basically overwhelmed targets with pleasure so they couldn’t focus on killing you, and three Manipulation spells, including one that created a deflection field to protect me from bullets, one that created a sheet of slippery ice that could cause people and vehicles to crash, and another of my creations from the beta, Permafrost. Basically, it turned a living creature into an ice sculpture, permanently, but it was hard to use on the really tough foes, and would stick out a lot if used carelessly.
Back to the Knowledge and Language skills tab. Everyone got some free skill points in this area, equal to your (INT + LOG) x3, plus a Native language that you got for free. So, I got 18 free points, and I picked Sperethiel the ‘traditional’ Elven language as my Native tongue. Like Active skills, Knowledge and Language skills had ratings from 1 to 6. I kept it simple and grabbed straight 3s for English, Japanese, Knowledge (Gangs), Red Knight Police Procedures, Nightclubs, and Ola Serin, my intended ‘homeland’.
Still had 41 BP to play with, but Weapons, Armor, Comms, Contacts, and Lifestyles all needed attention. First, the big spenders, a Focus or two. Foci were magical gear that boosted your abilities, but you needed to not only buy them with NuCred, but pay BP (or Karma, in game) to bind them before you could use them. Grabbed a Katana, turned it into a Weapon Focus to give me extra attack dice, and so I could use it on spirits, which were immune to normal weapons. Also picked up a Sustaining Focus for Health spells, so I could keep that Increase Reflexes spell up without suffering the -2 penalty to basically everything you normally dealt with when sustaining a spell.
Next, a vehicle. The Suzuki Mirage was a fast as hell bike in the ‘crotch rocket’ style. I gave it some Run-Flat Tires, so spike strips and blowouts wouldn’t be as painful, and added some other fun things like Motorcycle Gyro Stabilization to help me not crash, Spoof Chips to change the vehicle ID, Morphing License Plate and Chameleon Coating to allow me to make the bike look different and maybe throw off pursuit, and a Vehicle Tag Eraser, so any pesky RFID tags someone planted on my ride would get zapped, instead of leading people to my door.
Grabbed 12 BP worth of contacts, which I’d get to define more later. Bunch more weapons (which I happily customized to give me more bonuses, like putting the Personalized Grip mod on everything, which gave a +1 to melee weapons, and reduced recoil of firearms by 1), armor to keep my insides on the inside, and a bunch of gear like glasses which linked up with the smartlink in my guns, a pair of commlinks (one regular, and the other a burner I could toss if needed), a decent condo attached to a fake name with a fake SIN, and a crappy bolthole under a different fake name for if the shit hit the fan. Had a little bit of NuCred left over, but under a certain level it added to your starting money in game, so I left it.
Shadow Record
Name
Mirikon Mollen
Alias
Iceblade
Metatype
Elf
Archetype
Combat Mage
Karma / Karma Spent
0 / 0
NuCred
16000
Street Cred
0
Notoriety
0
Public Awareness
0
BP Costs
Attributes
230
Metatype
30
Active Skills
166
Extra Knowledge Skills
0
Positive Qualities
30
Negative Qualities
-35
Martial Arts
8
Gear
24
Social
12
Magical Resources
35
BP Allowed
500
BP Used
500
One last look over everything, to make sure I was satisfied, and I locked that in. Now that all the ‘crunchy’ bits were done, I could move to the ‘fluff’ and flesh out my backstory, and my looks. After all, if I was going to be living this life for a year or more, I didn’t want to hate what I saw in the mirror.
Comments
Demian Buckle
Thank you for the Chapter.
LarrytheEmu
Well, let's dig out the old Checklist: - Main Stat min 5, check - Use Metatyp bonus, check - Edge min 2, nope (that is a gamble, with a low luck stat no less) - Athletics min 1, check - mundane backup weapon, check - min 1 nonlethal weapon, maybe? - min 2 Sins, check - min 1x License for magic or weapons, nope - min 1 loyal Fixer, maybe later + given the geas, a (surgically) hidden blade, maybe? In total 5-8/10 not bad.
Robert Gardner
TFTC
Iron Akela
For sure!! It’s not the easiest chargen process
Stuart Grosse
Doing it without posting page after page of full character sheets was difficult.
Iron Akela
Felt weird seeing a process I’ve done a million times written out like that :o)
Casey
Seriously enjoying this so far. Could definitely use more.
