Being PC

[subplotkudzu]

Recently viktor_haagand I were having a discussion about the merits of using rulebook space for the character sheets of the source material's stars. Do such character sheets serve any of value?

 

So I just wanted to give a shout out to a game that got it right. The Buffy the Vampire Slayer RPG's revised core rulebook has character sheets for each of the major characters, from Buffy and Giles down to Dawn and Tara, statted for their first appearance. Each character then has season by season and episode by episode text showing you where they improved and why. (For example, this entry for Willow, episode 2:20 "Go Fish: Willow shows her interest in leading interrogatories. Her Influence skill rises to two.")

 

As a GM this is exactly what I need. If I'm one of those people who wants to run a game set in 1990's Sunnydale or use one of these PCs as a guest star or major NPC (say, a campaign of Willow running a training coven in post-show continuity) then I have the characters prepared to the very moment I want to diverge the timeline. But even if I don't need then for that purpose, this set up also provides me with as detailed an example of character experience and progression as I could ever want - on par with chadu's ZOZ campaign example.

 

There's one other thing that this game does that I have never seen before. The tendency in licensed games (outside of supers settings) is to make the original heroes insanely skilled. It's rare that they produce stats that player designed characters can ever approach. In that light the decision to stat the starting Scoobies Xander and Willow as WORSE than a starting PC is an interesting one. The design team statted what they saw on the screen, which came out close but not exact to the hard and fast mechanics of character creation - all of the season 1 characters come close enough. It certainly gives the GM a tool to use on anyone complaining about how their starting White Hat sucks - you're better than Xander, and he got to save the day all the time.

Comments

[brianrogers.livejournal.com]

Yes, I would love to take a look at it.

I'm not sure where I could find a copy of The Magic Box around here. I was only able to secure the BTVS corebook on a trip into NYC, it's out of print and most of the game stores in my area are very d20 centered. As I'm just running a 1 shot next weekend and I'm booked for other games for the next year the 4 pages on spell construction in the revised core book meet my immediate need.

I did notice a lot of spellcasting in the Boca Del Infeirno writeup, more than I expected to be honest. I suppose with a half demon and a witch in the white hats I should't be surprised, but while it balanced the characters somme it gave the game a different feel than the early seasons of the show. To keep things simple next weekend only one possible PC, the Watcher, will have any spellcasting experience and no levels of sorcery. They might be able to pull off a ritual, but that's as much as I want to deal with in a 1 shot.

[ladegard.livejournal.com]

Well, there's a copy on my black book shelf of RPGs, top shelf, about 8 inches from the left. Want to borrow it?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

If you don't mind PDFs, it's available through http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/ at a discount from the hard copy price.

I eventually worked out the spell research rules in self-defense—because the players for the Watcher, the witch, and the half-demon kept wanting to have their characters cast spells, or research spells, and the published rules gave me no guidance on how to figure out if a spell was available. The only PCs with no magical abilities are the Slayer and the soldier. So this is much more like season three or four than like season one. The rules I made up allow a variety of interesting problems with spell research, which replicate some of the magical catastrophes that Willow has touched off over the years.