Step One: A Sneak Peek

I went to the Museum of Science and Industry on the south side of Chicago today. During the visit, I found myself inspired by the Theodor Seuss Geisel (many of you will know him as Dr. Seuss) exhibit. While there were a number of prints that he kept specifically to be only shown to the public after he died (fascinating man, actually, beyond the art), the thing that really inspired me besides the whimsy of his art and his social conscience, was the reason he used a pen name rather than his own.

According to the exhibit, he had wanted to save it for the "greatest novel" he had intended to one day write. But life and success in his other endeavors resulted in the novel never coming to realization. After reading this, I started thinking about HiBRiD and realized that the very same thing could happen to me. Well, maybe not the success from the authoring standpoint, but from the standpoint of not ever completing that which I intended.

As a result, I decided to start putting the primary text for the character creation rules here for you, my readers, as I progress through the writing process.

So, without further adieu, here are excerpts of Step One of character creation using both the Quick and Custom Methods for the HiBRiD Basic Ara Knochen game...

Step One: Determine Traits

Traits represent your character's appearance. While some traits are required for purposes of game play such as your character's height and weight, all of the other traits of your character are up to you, such as his complexion, eye color, and hair color and style.

The character creation process starts when you sit down at a table with a pencil and a blank character sheet and decide upon your character's age, height in centimeters to the nearest centimeter, and weight in kilograms to the nearest kilogram. After you determine these traits by the method of your choosing, you may complete your character's appearance any way you wish.

Section One: The Quick Method

This method is designed solely to get you a character ready for play in the least amount of time as possible.

Step One: Traits

Your character, as well as any others created using this method may be of any age, but will always weigh seventy kilograms and stand 172 centimeters tall. All of the other miniscule details of your character's appearance that make your character unique but have no effects on game mechanics or rules of play are up to you. What color are your character's eyes, hair, and skin? Does he have any scars? Record all of these details in the appropriate spaces on your character sheet.

Have fun with this step. Once you have dotted your i's and crossed your t's,...get ready to dive in!!!!

Section Two: The Personalized Method

Step One: Traits

Before you begin, it helps to think of how big or little you want your character to be in general descriptive terms (e. g. as big as a football player, as short as a jockey, as little as an Olympic gymnast, et cetera) rather than a number.

Once you have decided on whether your character will be a male or female and have a firm picture in your mind of your character's size, choose one of the Body Archetypes provided in the “A Little Bit More” box*** that is the closest to what you imagined, and copy down the traits listed for that Body Archetype onto your character sheet.

Now, determine your character's age, then complete the details of all your character's other traits in the appropriate spaces on your character sheet.


***The "A Little Bit More boxes appear in the left margin for each step and provide extra information to help the guide the players in making their decision when creating their character, such as relating metric and English units, describing character attributes, explaining the different types of skills or aspects, et cetera.

Advanced and Atmosphere

Today, while I started finalizing the skills for the character templates for the Basic game, I got distracted and found myself writing a blurb about converting the Basic Templates to the Advanced. And while I was writing, I found my musings drifting to the difference between not just Basic and Advanced characters, but Beginning and Experienced players as well.

As the excitement started to brew, I found myself looking back at my last post, and I decided to follow it up with ten actions that HiBRiD player might take that separates him from a standard RPG player.

The first five of these actions are those I would consider not uncommon to a beginning HiBRiD player who "gets" HiBRiD but nonetheless has little experience playing the actual game. The second five of these actions would be analogs to the first five, but more commonly seen in an experienced HiBRiD player

A Beginning HiBRiD Player...

1. ...buys an extra point or two of Ite' with aspect points

2. ...loves tragic heroes and action movies and notices places when Ite' is used by the hero.

3. ...uses his acrobatics and tumbling maneuvers almost every time he is in combat

4. ...uses tumbling skills and various aspects to minimize the effects of falls if not completely negate falling damage.

5. ...tries to attack as many characters as he can in a round without negating his action task rolls with penalties.

A Journeyman HiBRiD Player...

1. ...not only buys one or two points of Ite' with aspect points, but ALWAYS writes a game summary of the last session and brings food or drinks for everyone to consume just to get those two extra floating Ite' points.

2. ...not only loves heroic and action movies, but actively counts the number of points of Ite' used in the movie and comments where he would have used Ite' had he been in a character's place.

3. ...not only uses his character's acrobatics and tumbling skills during every combat or action scene, but refuses to clear any distance spanning ten or more meters in a round without free running or showing off his mad parkour skillz

4. ...jumps his characters off cliffs or out of VTOLs with complete disregard for the consequences of his actions.

5. ...describes his actions and forces the director figure out how many of his described actions he can actually pull off in one action round, regardless of penalties.

HiBRiD on the Silver Screen

I was reading my last post when I realized that to share the Spirit of HiBRiD (until the game is done), it might help readers of this blog who don't know me and have never played the game to have a list of films filled with HiBRiD spirit or characters.

So without further adieu, here are ten movies that exemplify HiBRiD, just to get you started:

1. Big Trouble In Little China

This movie is simply a HiBRiD one-shot from top to bottom. Complete with exemplary action scenes, Ite' use, and the mixture of ancient and modern.

2. The Crow

The police chief and of course the title character are great player characters; the gang is a great set of second-tier baddies; the dialog, mood, and constant interplay between philosophies of meaning vs nihilism.

3. Showdown in Little Tokyo

Kenner, Johnny, and witty banter; all actions scenes are examples of how combat should roll!

4. Aliens 2

All the marines are PCs; Witty banter and smartass cracks between the marines; Ripley is just a weenie NPC specialist. A smart monster that can both outthink and outfight its enemies.

5. Akira

The Colonel and Kaneda are great PCs; Tetsuo is a wicked first-tier Baddy! Great examples of HiBRiD telekinetic abilities; great example of how just a handful of characters that are not even on the "same side" can have huge impacts on the world around them.

6. Sahara

All the characters and supporting characters are exemplary PCs; witty banter and a non-mushy modern love story; Ite' flows like water in this movie! The Yves Massard and General Kazim are great tier-one baddies.

7. Tron: Legacy

The emotional intensity of the last 5 minutes; The redemption of Rinzler/Tron by his own choice; The movement on the grid (characters are always running, flipping, freerunning, and fully committing to every physical athletic move they make; jumps from 20 to 50 meters up are commonplace; highly stylized and ritualized melee combat; great example of every man determining his own destiny.

8. Army of Darkness

Ash is a great high-heroic level PC; Examples of the cinematic aspects

9. Serenity

 All of the characters on board Serenity are great PCs; the mix of genre and cultures into an amalgam free of prejudices against people; the eternal of struggle of the heroes against a rigid society with no place for those of free spirit; a great example of a low Ite' campaign.

10. The Mummy (and The Mummy Returns)

All the characters are exemplary PCs; The mummy is a classic first-tier Baddy with a number of great second-tier baddies; action scenes are standard HiBRiD; a good amount of Ite' flows as well.

Multitudes and Attitude

There are multitudes of games in the world...

There are multitudes of role-playing games that make a subset of those games...

There are multitudes of pen-and-paper-tabletop role-playing games that make up a subset of those role playing games... 

There are multitudes of these pen-and-paper-tabletop role-playing games that use a twenty-sided die to determine action resolution...

And there are multitudes of game-designing hackers trying to independently publish their games in pursuit of  their own ideas of how those games should be played...

HiBRiD, alas, is one of many. It is vanilla, it is simple, it is old school. Its mechanics have been rehashed over and over, system after system, decade after decade. So why pursue it?

Because the simple mechanics are just a framework for HiBRiD's real purpose. To frame the attitude of the heroes as I imagine them, to set up the situations that I imagine make heroes great. To share my view of games and life and heroism and their interaction.