A SNEAK PEEK: The HiBRiD Player's Spielbook Chapter 2: Step Five of Eight: (Character Skills)

Step Five: Determine Skills and Action Modifiers

In addition to determining your character’s natural abilities, you will also need to determine your character’s learned abilities. Whether juggling vials of acid, flying a helicopter, or fast-talking a guard, skills are used represent all the things your character has learned through study, training, practice, education, and experience. 

The Two Types of Skills: Common and Concept

Your character possesses two types of skills. The first of these types of skills, Common skills, are skills possessed by all characters regardless of the character concept. They encompass very broad categories of tasks and reflect your character’s overall level of ability when performing any tasks that fall within that category while making a living or trying to survive on a day-to-day basis. The second type of skills, Concept skills, are more narrow categories of tasks specifically related to your character’s concept. They represent extra time your character has spent studying a specific topic or performing more specific sorts of tasks than those reflected by a Common skill.

Hujraad’s Hacks: Common Skills versus Concept Skills

To get a good idea of the difference between Common and Concept skill, let’s consider a character concept in which the Role is defined as “a swordsman”. A swordsman would naturally be someone who is particularly good with a sword, however, he might be a soldier who excels in the use of a sword or a socialite who has taken up fencing in his spare time and has gotten rather good. Both characters would have a Concept skill of Swordsmanship indicating a significant amount of time practicing with a blade over and above what they normally spend their time doing living their daily lives. The soldier, however, would tend to be better at the Combat Common skill as he spends most of his time training and fighting, while the Socialite would tend to be better in the Social skill, as he spends most of his time hobnobbing with the rich and famous. 

The Six Common Skills

There are six Common skills defined within the game rules.

The first Common skill, the Academic skill, is used to represent your character's learning through schooling or other formal education. It represents your character’s ability to do math, read and write, speak languages outside your character’s native language, and your character’s general knowledge of the world’s natural phenomena. 

The second Common skill, the Athletic skill, is used to represent the time your character has spent practicing feats of physical prowess such as running, weightlifting, parkour, or gymnastics. 

The third Common skill, the Combat skill, is used to represent your character's experience in combat and covers multiple facets of combat, from the use of firearms and melee weapons, to explosives, tactics, and strategy. 

The fourth Common skill, the Fringe skill, is used to represent your character's experience living outside of the laws of civilization and society or dealing with such individuals. It includes anything from surviving on the wild frontier to eking out a living on the rough urban streets. 

The fifth Common skill, the Social skill, is used to represent your character's experience dealing with people. This includes practice reading and intuiting people’s emotions and motives and using that knowledge to perform such tasks as predicting behaviors, inspiring, motivating, manipulating or commanding others. 

The sixth Common skill, the Technical skill, is used to represent time your character has spent learning to perform tasks based on technology. This includes tasks such as using tools to build, grow, repair, or create things, piloting and operating large craft and vehicles, using computers, painting, and singing. 

The Three Concept Skills

In contrast to the six Common skills, there are no specific Concept skills defined by the game rules. Instead, you are allowed to select any three specific things you think your character would be really good at that are related to his character concept and declare them as your character’s Concept skills. 

To declare a Concept skill, all you need to do is simply name the skill and write it down on your character sheet. You may declare a Concept skill with any name you wish; whether you declare a Concept skill using either a more formal tone such as “Automobile Driving” or in more colorful terms such as “Mad Driving Skills” makes no difference.

When you declare a Concept skill, it must be significantly narrow in scope so as to reflect a small number or types of tasks. A Concept skill that is too broad in scope and enables your character to perform a large number of tasks defeats the purpose of the Concept skill, which is to help reflect those few things your character is not just good at, but actually better at than most others, and makes him unique from other characters.

Hujraad’s Hacks: Significantly Narrow In Scope?

You may wonder what it means that a Concept skill must be significantly “narrow in scope”. As an example, if your character concept says your character is a “fighter”, you may at first wish to select “Fighting” as a Concept skill. But “Fighting” can include almost as many types of tasks as the Combat Common skill, so that would not be allowable as a Concept skill. Similarly, if your character concept has a Role of “Pilot”, you might rightfully think declaring “Piloting Stuff” as a Concept skill is more narrow in scope than either the Technical or Athletic Common skills. But “Piloting Stuff” can still include anything from a boat to a plane to a helicopter , however each of these is vastly different in nature from one another, so “Piloting Stuff” would also not constitute a Concept skill; you would still need to narrow the scope a bit to “Piloting VTOLs (Vertical Takeoff and Landing Vehicles” or “Piloting Fixed-Wing Aircraft”. Ultimately, the Director will let you know if any of the Concept skills you declare are significantly narrow in scope to be allowed, and will help you if you have trouble defining your character’s Concept skills.

The Action Modifier 

Your character’s ability to perform tasks related to a skill is reflected in a single stat known as that skill’s action modifier. The action modifier takes into account both the amount of time your character spends practicing a skill and your character’s natural abilities.

Grade

The amount of time your character has spent learning or practicing a skill is measured in terms of a stat referred to as the skill’s grade. The lowest grade of any skill is 0, which represents a character unskilled or lacking any significant amount of training or practice performing tasks related to a it. Increasing grades in a skill represent more time spent using it.

Hujraad’s Hacks: What Does a Grade Mean?

A grade represents a rough estimate of the amount of time your character has spent doing a particular set of activities, regardless of whether your character was educated formally through some sort of training/schooling program or informally by living life and learning things necessary to survive. Each grade of a skill reflects roughly 1,000 hours of practice using the skill. To put this more descriptively, you can think of a grade of 1 as representing a character who practices the skill occasionally or has only done so for a short amount of time, a grade of 5 representing a character who has become a journeyman or of a professional level of skill, and a grade of 10 representing a character who is a master of that skill.

Related Attribute

For each skill, one attribute, referred to as that skill’s related attribute, is used to indicate the natural ability that most often affects tasks related to that skill. 

For each Common skill, a specific attribute is designated as the related attribute as follows:

Common Skill Related Attributes

• Academic = INTL
• Athletic = STR
• Combat = RFLX
• Fringe = RSIL
• Social = WILL
• Technical = PERC

For each Concept skill, unlike a Common skill, you are required to choose the related attribute for each skill. 

Hujraad’s Hacks: Concept Skill Related Attributes

The rules assume that as characters learn to perform a tasks of a certain type, they also learn how to use their natural abilities to best effect when performing those types of tasks. For example, suppose two characters each have the Concept skill “Sneak Around”. One character might rely on his PERC attribute to notice the darkest shadows and avoid squeaky floorboards while another character might rely on his RFLX attribute to react quickly and move away from a squeaky board or slide into a shadow as its level of darkness changes with the opening or closing of a door.

Completing Step Five

To complete this step and determine your character's skills, you will need to perform three tasks.

Declare Concept Skills and Select Related Attributes

The first thing you will need to do is declare your character’s three Concept skills and decide upon each skill’s related attributes. To do this, look at your character concept and take a minute to think of the three things your character would be really good at doing that fit in with the concept you have written. Next, declare these three things as “Concept skills” by writing them down in the appropriate place on your Character Sheet,

Next, you will need to determine the related attribute for each Concept skill you have declared. To do so, think about what natural abilities would help your character the most when performing tasks related to each skill and find the attribute most closely matching it. If you feel that two or more attributes are related to a Concept skill, then you may choose the higher attribute of the two as the related attribute for that Concept skill and record the attribute and its value on your Character Sheet in the appropriate space next to the name of the Concept skill.

Once you have declared all three Concept skills and selected their related attributes, you will submit them to your Director for her approval to ensure they are within the scope of a Concept skill. 

Assign Grades

Once the Director has approved your character’s Concept skills and their related attributes, you need to assign grades to all of your character’s skills.

You will start by assigning grades to your character’s six Common skills. To do this, look at your character’s History and take a minute to think about what a character with such a background would spend most of his time doing. Next, keeping this in mind, assign one of each of the following grades to each Common skill: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. Remember that a grade of 0 means your character spends the least amount of time doing those types of tasks and a grade of 5 represents the types of things your character does the most often if not every day.

Next, you will assign grades to your character’s three Concept skills, Keeping your character concept in mind, assign one of each of the following grades to each Concept skill: 6, 7, and 8. Remember that the skill with a grade of 8 represents the skill that most strongly reflects your character concept.

Calculate the Action Modifiers

Finally, with the grades and related attributes for your character’s skills determined, you can determine the action modifier for each skill using the following calculation:

Action Modifier = Grade + Related Attribute

As you determine each skill’s action modifier, write its value in the appropriate space on your character sheet.

Step Five Example: Johnny Parkour

Ogun now needs to selecting his character’s skills and calculate their action modifiers. 

Ogun begins by first declaring his character’s Concept skills. Reading his character’s concept, he first decides to reflect the Descriptor “acrobatic” in his Concept skills. Rather than just using the word “Acrobatics” however, he decides to give his character a Concept skill of “Crazy Parkour Skillz” to reflect the sorts of running and jumping actions he envisions his character performing. He next thinks about which attribute would most closely be related to performing tasks associated with Parkour. He decides that his character’s PERC attribute of +1 might help to find handholds or judge distances, his RFLX attribute of +5 might help Johnny time moves or grab objects, and his STR of +4 might help him jump farther distances and move more quickly. The highest of these three attributes is RFLX at +5, so Ogun selects RFLX as the related attribute for this Concept skill and writes “Crazy Parkour Skillz” along with “RFLX” as the related attribute in the appropriate spaces on the character sheet. 

Ogun next decides that nothing else in his character’s concept reflects any specific skills, so he returns to his character’s history for other ideas. As he reads it, the mentioning of searching high and low for the missing fortune teller suggest to him that a “Tracking and Trailing” skill would reflect this. Ogun now needs to choose a the related attribute for this skill. He figures his character’s PERC of +1 might reflect a natural ability to find a trail or signs of passage, his WILL of +2 might be used to reflect his persistence and drive that would help him find clues when others might quit, and his INTL of 0 would be helpful to logically deduce where a person he is tracking might go next or do next. The highest of these three attributes is WILL at +2, so Ogun selects WILL as the related attribute for this Concept skill and writes it next to the Concept skill of “Tracking and Trailing” in the appropriate spaces on the character sheet.

For his third Concept skill, Ogun decides that Johnny’s search for the missing fortune teller has led to his developing a high level of investigation techniques, so he declares his third Concept skill to be “Sleuthing and Investigation”. Looking at his character’s attributes, an INTL of 0, that would represent his character’s ability to piece things together, his PERC of +1 to reflect noticing clues, and WILL of +2 to reflect making creative and intuitive leaps of inductive reasoning, Ogun decides to select WILL as the related attribute for this Concept skill and writes it along with the Concept skill of “Sleuthing and Investigation” on the appropriate spaces in on the Character Sheet, 

With his character’s Concept skills selected and their related attributes assigned, Ogun shows his list to the Director, and she approves it, allowing him to move on to assigning grades to his skills. 

Ogun first assigns grades to his character’s Common skills. He decides that since most of his character’s life has been spent practicing acts of physical prowess such as high-wire walking, flying in the trapeze, lifting weights and so forth, he assigns the highest grade of 5 to his character’s Athletic skill. 

Ogun then thinks a little bit more and decides that the circus life is one of constantly being on the move and living off the land wherever he and his circus family set up their tents, and not really grounded in one place or in one community, so he assigns his grade of 4 to his character’s Fringe skill. 

Next, Ogun figures that his character has had to work with the public when filling in as the ticket booth salesmen, ring announcer, and barker, so he has developed his Social skill to some extent, so he assigns it a grade of 3. Ogun also figures that living in the circus would also require occasionally helping with repairing tents, maintaining wagons, sewing costumes, and driving the wagons, so he assigns a grade of 2 to his character’s Technical skill. 

Finally, looking at his remaining Common skills, Ogun decides that between the Combat and Academic skills, his character has had to learn to read and write and not really spent a significant amount of time in situations where fighting was necessary, so he assigns his Academic skill a grade of 1 and his Combat skill a grade of 0. His resulting skill grades are as follows:

Academic 1 

Athletic 5

Combat 0

Fringe 4 

Social 3

Technical  2

Now, Ogun turns his attention to his Concept skills. Immediately, he assigns “Crazy Parkour Skillz” a grade of 8 because it is so strongly a part of his character concept. Next, looking at his two other skills, Ogun figures since his character spends more of his time on the outskirts of towns, he probably uses his Tracking and Trailing skill more often and for more than just tracking down the fortune teller from his history such as when hunting when in more rural areas and the funds are particularly low. He assigns the grade of 7 to “Tracking and Trailing” skill and a grade of 6 to his “Sleuthing” skill. His resulting skill grades are as follows:

Mad Parkour Skillz 8 

Tracking and Trailing 7

Sleuthing and Investigation 6

Now all that remains is for Ogun to determine the action modifiers for his character’s skills as follows:

Academic Action Modifier

= Grade (1) + INTL (0)

= +1 

Athletic Action Modifier 

= Grade (5) + STR (+4)

= +9

Combat Action Modifier 

= Grade (0) + RFLX (+5) 

= +5

Fringe Action Modifier 

= Grade (4) + RSIL (+3) 

= +7

Social Action Modifier

= Grade (3) + WILL (+2)

= +5

Tech Action Modifier

= Grade (2) + PERC (+1)

= +3

Now Ogun has to determine the Action Modifiers for his character’s Concept skills as follows:

Crazy Parkour Skillz Action Modifier

= Grade (8) + RFLX (+5)

= +13 

Tracking and Trailing Action Modifier 

= Grade (7) + WILL (+2)

= +9

Sleuthing and Investigation Action Modifier 

= Grade (7) + WILL (+2)

= +9

Ogun records all of the action modifiers he has calculated on his character sheet, and is now ready to move on to the next step of the character creation process.

A SNEAK PEEK: The HiBRiD Player's Spielbook, Chapter 2: Step Four of Eight (Character Origin)

Step Four: Select an Origin and Determine Traits

All characters come from somewhere, whether born from a long line of ancestors, grown in a vat, built in a laboratory or assembled in a factory. To reflect the physical features of your character resulting from these beginnings, you will need to select an origin for your character. Your character’s origin determines the limits of your character's natural physical and mental abilities, as well as how your character moves, communicates, and interacts with his environment. The origin you select will describe these abilities in terms of five of origin traits.

Age

This trait determines how old your character is. The character’s age does not affect any game stats in the Default Genre. For more realistic genres, your characters age may increase your number of skills and decrease your character’s physical attributes as your character ages, while in some more supernatural genres, there may be magic or psychic effects that may age your character.

Size

The stats associated with this trait determine your character’s size. There are two stats associated with this trait.

Height

This stat is the number of centimeters tall or long your character is. Your character’s height is used to determine how fast your character moves.

Mass

This stat is the number of kilograms of matter that make up your character. This stat affects how your character interacts with objects and creatures larger or smaller than himself. 

Attributes

This trait reflects your character’s natural capacities in terms of six stats referred to as attributes. Each attribute describes one of the physical or mental capabilities of your character

Strength

This attribute, abbreviated hereafter as STR, represents an estimate of the maximum amount of force your character's muscles can generate, as well as a representation of a character’s musculature. A high STR does not necessarily the size of a character and may indicate that a character either has small but incredibly dense muscles or beefy but less dense muscles.

Resilience

This attribute, abbreviated hereafter as RSIL, represents how well your character's body resists and bounces back from any physical stress or invasion be it shock, poison, disease, fatigue, or any other traumatic insult. Characters with a high RSIL are able to take larger amounts of damage, resist the effects of poisons or starvation, and exert themselves longer than most people. 

Reflexes

This attribute, abbreviated hereafter as RFLX, represents your character's reaction speed, flexibility, balance, and hand-eye coordination. Characters with a high RFLX are light on their feet, quick to react and accurate in combat, and spout lightning-fast witty verbal comebacks with ease.

Intelligence

This attribute, abbreviated hereafter as INTL, represents a character's ability to store and access information, use logic, and solve problems. A character's INTL is also used to improve skills and learn new ones. Characters with a high INTL learn quickly and solve difficult puzzles with ease.

Will

This attribute, abbreviated hereafter as WILL, reflects your character's internal conscious mental resolve and willpower. It reflects a character’s level of intensity when it comes to desire, faith, self-discipline, and creativity. Characters with a high WILL more easily resist mental influence, come up with creative solutions to problems, and are highly capable of making things happen despite facing great resistance. 

Perception

This stat, abbreviated hereafter as PERC, reflects the overall sensitivities of your characters physical senses as well as the character's ability to notice details and out of place things in their local surroundings. While ranges are mostly consistent from all characters of a given origin, overall sensitivities differ from individual and are reflected by this attribute. Characters with a high PERC notice hidden objects more consistently, determine patterns more easily, and sense things more quickly than others.

Hujraad’s Hacks: Charisma and Personality Attributes

Attributes represent a character’s natural physical or physiological capabilities in relation to all characters of the same origin. While many games have stats to reflect a character’s presence, natural likeability, charisma, attractiveness, and so forth, such abilities have no physiological basis behind them, so they are not reflected in a character’s origin. Such abilities of an a more supernatural, legendary, and cinematic nature and are reflected elsewhere (Step Six) in the character creation process.

Form

This trait consists of a set of stats that reflect how tough your character is, how your character moves (and how quickly), the range of your character’s senses, and how much your character can lift. To resolve actions quickly during play, your character’s form is reflected by the following stats.

Move

This stat reflects the number of meters your character is able to move in a round while still maintaining a complete awareness of the environment without difficulty.

Load

This stat reflects the number of kilograms your character is able to carry or manipulate without difficulty.

Range

This stat reflects the number of meters within which your character is able to perceive small details in the local environment without difficulty.

Armor Value

This stat (hereafter abbreviated as ARMV) reflects your character’s ability to resist damage. 

Studliness

This stat (hereafter abbreviated as STUN) reflects your character’s heroic ability to take ungodly amounts of physical and mental punishment as many heroes in legend and action movies often do before being sidelined. Such things as when struck by a bullet, falling from a building, or crashing into another car in one scene but then miraculously being able to run with a slightly soiled shirt or mild limp in the next scene are perfect examples of this stat in action.

Physical Damage Capacity

This stat (hereafter abbreviated as PHYS) represents the amount of real physical damage your character can sustain from such things as sprains, broken bones, ripped open arteries, severed appendages, or internal hemorrhages

Natural Abilities

This trait describes any of the natural abilities specific to your character’s origin that may separate it from other origins. It can include anything from structural differences, such as possessing a tail or claws to unique survival adaptations such as seeing in the dark or being able to make food from sunlight.

Genre-Specific Origin Traits

Since the game can be played across multiple genres, the opportunity exists for characters of all sorts of origins to appear that are specific to each genre. In a classical fantasy genre, for example, elven or dwarven origins may be featured while in a science fiction genre, there may be any number of alien origins. 

If there are any genre-specific origins available for characters, there may be additional origin traits for each origin or some of the above traits may be omitted. Any of these differences will be listed for each origin in the Heroes section of the Genre Description. 

Completing Step Four

To complete this step, you will need to select one of the origins described in the Genre Description and record each of your character’s origin traits on your character sheet.

If an origin trait requires you to select a certain value, any choices you make must fall within the range of values defined for that trait in the Genre Description. Similarly, if an origin trait requires you to calculate any stats, the methods for doing so will also be provided therein. 

The Default Origin: Humans

The Default Genre assumes all characters are of human origin. To make a character of human origin, you will need to determine your character’s origin traits using the following methods.

Age

Humans naturally live to a maximum age of 125 years by default. The adult human age of physical maturity in the game is 18, though the physical onset of adulthood can start as early as 10 years of age. The average lifespan of a human is dependent on the level of technology and type of environment, but typically falls in the range of 50 to 90 years of age. 

You may choose any age for your character within the human range. 

Size

Adult humans reach a maximum height of 272 centimeters, but typically average 170 centimeters in height. The default height assumed for all human characters is 170 centimeters. If you wish to be more specific about your character’s height, you may choose your character's height within the ranges listed above.

Adult humans reach a maximum mass of 650 kg but typically average 70 kilograms in mass. The default mass assumed for all human characteris 70 kilograms. If you wish to be more specific about your character’s mass, you may choose your character's height within the ranges listed above.

Attributes

For humans, the values for each attribute stat range from -5 to +5 with an attribute of 0 representing the average value for a heroic human character. An attribute of -5 represents the normal human minimum and an attribute of +5 represents a human attribute that is among the best of the best among all humans currently alive. 

To determine a human’s six attribute stats, you will assign one of the following six values to each: 0, +1, +2, +3, +4, and +5. 

Form

Humans are bipedal and possess two arms ending in hands with fingers and opposable thumbs. These features enable humans to walk upright, run, climb, and jump, swim, and use tools. 

Move

A human’s Move stat is affected by the height stat and is calculated as follows:

Height in meters (rounding to the nearest meter) x 10.

A human may run up to five times this distance within a span of ten seconds, however the faster the human moves, the more difficult it becomes to pay attention to the surroundings and perform other actions. The Move stat also affects how far a human can jump. All humans can jump two meters upwards and two meters forward from a standing start. When jogging or running, humans can jump further forward based on how fast they are running.

Load

A human’s Load stat is affected by the STR attribute and is calculated as follows:

Load = 10 + STR

All human characters may manipulate or carry up to ten times this mass, however as the mass being carried or manipulated increases, the ability to perform actions with it becomes more difficult. 

Range

A human’s Range stat is affected by the PERC attribute and calculated as follows:

Range = 10 + PERC

All human characters may perceive major details (such as the size or color) of an object any distance up to ten times the Range but perceiving small details at this becomes more difficult as the range increases.

ArmV

By default, all human characters possess an ARMV of 0 and must wear protection of some sort to resist sustaining damage from environmental hazards or weapons. Any such protection will specify what types of hazard or weapon from which it protects its wearer. 

STUN

A human character’s STUN is affected by both the character’s RSIL and the heroic factor of the genre, using the following formula

STUN = (10 + RSIL) x heroic factor

PHYS

A human’s PHYS is affected by the character’s STR and is calculated by the following formula:

PHYS = 10 + STR

Natural Abilities

Senses

Humans have five senses: sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. Within the distance of their Range stat, they can perceive objects without difficulty if they fall within the range of these senses. Objects falling between this distance and up to ten times out from this distance may or may not be perceived and are more difficult to determine details about. Beyond ten times the Range stat, characters can perceive nothing but the barest details about the environment.

Speech

Humans are born with the ability to communicate through language but not the skills to do so. All humans automatically learn to speak or sign one primary native language as they develop.

For characters within the Default Genre, you may select any language commonly spoken (or signed) in the modern world. If your character’s adventures will be taking place within a different genre, the native languages available to your character will be listed in the Genre Description.

The ability to speak a native language is not the same as the ability to read and write in that language; the ability to read and write a language is reflected in a character’s skills and is determined in Step Five of the character creation process.

Step Four Example: Johnny Parkour

Ogun now needs to select an origin and determine all of the game stats related to it. Since the game will take place in the Default Genre, all player characters are of human origin, so the decision of which origin has already been made for him. All that remains is to record his character’s various origin traits.

He begins by first settling on his character’s age stat. He decides his character will be a young adult and decides 21 years old will work just fine. 

Next, because he has no interest in creating a character of any particular size, Ogun simply chooses the average height and mass for a human and writes a height of 170 centimeters as his height stat and a mass of 70 kilograms as his mass on his character sheet.

Ogun next turns his attention toward his character’s attributes. He first decides that since his character concept will be one based on being “acrobatic” the RFLX attribute would be the most important and ranks it at +5. 

He next ranks his character’s STR attribute at +4 since it is also important when performing acrobatic feats. He then ranks his character’s RSIL attribute at +3 to represent the long number of hours his character has spent practicing and perfecting his various acrobatics routines. 

Looking at his character’s remaining attributes, he looks at his character concept again and decides that his character’s desire to share his happiness with others is more important to his character than his intellectual ability or awareness of his surroundings, so he assigns a +2 to his WILL. Finally, deciding that a life of a circus performer doesn’t allow for a lot of time to develop his mind, he assigns a 0 to his INTL, leaving a +1 to assign to his character’s PERC attribute. 

His final attributes are as follows:

STR +4

RFLX +5

RSIL +3

INTL +0

PERC +1

WILL +2

With his character’s attributes ranked, Ogun now calculates his character’s Form stats:

Move  

=170cm (height) = 1.7 meters 

= 1.7 meters (rounded to 2) x 10

= 20 meters

Load 

= 10 + STR 

= 10 + 4 

= 14 kilograms

Range 

= 10 + PERC 

= 10 + 1 

= 11 meters

ARMV = 0 

STUN 

= (10 + RSIL) x Heroic Factor

= (10 + 3) x 5 (From Step 1)

= 13 x 5 

= 65 

PHYS = 10 + STR 

= (10 + 4) 

= 14

Finally, Ogun decides that he will choose English as his character’s native language.

Ogun writes the various traits and stats associated with them on his character sheet in the appropriate spaces and moves on to the next step of the process.

HiBRiD Historic Reference: HiBRiD Psionics in Morrow Project

This entry, The Morrow Project: A New Method for Morrow Project Character Psychic Ability Determination, was from my original web page in 1994. In it, the principles I outlined became the basis for the HiBRiD psionic system that I use to this day.

Please enjoy this little insight into my past as a break from the HiBRiD character creation rules...which I shall again be posting shortly over the next few weeks

Foreword

The Morrow Project is founded on a great gaming premise. While not fond of the system’s numerous charts, tables, and complex combat systems, I know other people do like them, lumps and all. But the incompleteness and brevity of its rules with regards to psychic capabilities of characters are cursory and ill defined. The rules presented here are offered as a substitute for those provided in the Morrow Project game book TM 1-1.

Section 1: Important Attributes for Psychic Abilities

For the most part, the attributes in these rules are the same as listed in TM 1-1, however there are two main differences. 

Reconsidering an Old Attribute: PSI

The first difference, under these guidelines, lies in what the PSI attribute represents. PSI is still considered an inherent Attribute in all characters. It is not only used to represent a character’s potential to possess psychic abilities, but also his ability to defend himself against psychic attacks. 

If your character possesses psychic abilities, the PSI Attribute also represents the total capacity of all of his psychic abilities. If your character possesses 2 or more psychic abilities, you need to divide this PSI between all of his psychic ability Force Values (which will be explained shortly), though you may do so in any way you choose. 

Unlike many of your character’s other attributes, your character’s PSI Attribute cannot be improved.

Adding A New Attribute: Perception (PERC)

One thing of importance lacking in the Morrow Project rules is an attribute representing your character’s Perception (hereafter noted as PERC). Perception represents your character’s physical and mental ability to perceive his surroundings accurately. Perception is the attribute that determines how hard it is to sneak up on your character, his ability to sense poisons or chemicals, and his ability to observe distances when determining such things as ranges for both direct and indirect fire weapons. Perception also determines how far away your character can accurately discern one distant object from another. Your character’s range for visual acuity is designated as 5 meters times your character’s PERC. (Thus, with a PERC of 10, your character can discern between a target and a non-target on a clear day from 50 meters away.) 

Perception is also an important attribute for your character if he possesses psychic abilities, as it helps to determine his initial Control Value (see below) with his these abilities as well as the range over which they may be used. These will be explained in Section 3 more thoroughly. Like his PSI Attribute, your character’s PERC Attribute cannot be improved.

Determining Your Character’s Attributes

Morrow Project is a role-playing game, and you should be able to play the role of a character you enjoy rather than one that has been designated by dice rolls. Rather than randomly rolling for your character’s Attributes, you may simply assign 85 Points among your character’s attributes (INT, STR, PSI, PERC, LUCK, DEX, CON, CHAR). You should still follow the maximum and minimum limits as outlined in the Morrow Project TM 1-1 Rule Book.

Section 2: Creating Your Character

For the most part, the process for making a character is not changed from that described in TM 1-1.Besides the differences in determining Attributes mentioned above, use the following rules for determining your character’s psychic abilities rather than those listed in TM 1-1.

Step 1: Determine if your character possesses psychic abilities

To determine whether or not your character possesses psychic capabilities, add your character’s PSI and Luck Attributes. This determines the percent chance your character possesses a psychic ability. If you roll this number or less on a d%, your character possesses psychic abilities beyond those required to defend himself.

Step 2: Determine the number and type of psychic abilities your character possesses

Once you have determined that your character possesses psychic ability, you need to determine how many and what type of abilities your character possesses. Tables are included here for those of you who like tables and want to determine all character psychic abilities randomly. If you want to, however, and the Project Director agrees, you can just use the first chart to determine the number of abilities your character gets and then move on to Step 3.

Kinetic Abilities-These abilities allow your character to manipulate matter and/or energy on the atomic or quantum level by mere thought.

Mentalic Abilities-These abilities represent the ability to perceive and manipulate the mental processes and infinitely

subtle electrical patterns of any creature with any sort of neuro-biological function. 

Correspondent Abilities-These abilities represent the ability to perceive and manipulate an object’s distinct and absolute position in both time and space. Unlike kinetic abilities, which generate force to move or affect objects or energy through space on a given timeline, correspondent allows your character to literally break down these barriers, and hop from space to space on a given timeline, or between two different timelines in a given space.

Table 1: Ability Type Table

01-25       One Kinetic Ability

26-99       One Mentalic Ability

00            Unique Ability (Roll on Table 2)

Table 2: Uniqueness

01-45       Two Kinetic Abilities

46-90       Two Mentalic Abilities

91-99       One Kinetic and One Mentalic Ability 

00            One Correspondent Ability

Step 3: Determine the specific psychic abilities

Once you have determined how many and what type of abilities your character possesses, you need to determine which specific ability your character possesses. Again, the tables are provided if the Project Director wishes to use them, otherwise, simply choose from the 14 abilities listed below.

Table 3: Correspondence Abilities

01-75       Place 

76-00       Time     

Table 4: Mentalic Abilities

01-25       Emotions

26-50       Thoughts

51-75       Perceptions

76-85       Dreams

86-95       Drives

96-00       Memories

Table 5: Kinetic Abilities

01-30       Telekinesis

31-60       Thermokinesis

61-85       Biokinesis

86-90       Electrokinesis

91-95       Photokinesis

96-00       Sonokinesis

Step 4: Determine each ability’s starting Force Value and Control Value.

Once you have determined which specific psychic abilities your character possesses, you need to determine how powerful your character’s ability is(as measured by a value known as the ability’s Force Value) as well as how much control he can exert when using his abilities (As measured by a value known as the ability’s Control Value.) 

The Force Value

The total amount of force (or the extent to which your character can use a psychic ability) is determined by a number known as that ability’s Force Value. If your character possesses one such ability, then that ability’s Force Value is simply equal to your character’s PSI attribute. Because the PSI attribute represents the total amount of psychic ability your character possesses, if your character possesses more than one ability, then his PSI attribute must be divided between the two abilities, however you are free to do so as you see fit. Once you assign an ability’s Force Value, it remains that way throughout the rest of your character’s life. 

The exact definitions and capacities that the Force Value represents in game terms are described more specifically in Section 3.One common feature to all telekinetic abilities, however, is that each ability’s Force Value represents the amount of damage the ability can directly cause to a living target in a single combat round.

The Control Value

The amount of accuracy and control your character possesses with a psychic ability is called its Control Value. Your character’s initial Control Value is determined by adding his Luck and Perception Attributes. This determines his percent chance of successfully using or controlling the ability, depending on the ability’s description. Your character’s control value is increased just as any other ability in the game.

Section 3:Psychic Ability Descriptions

The Kinetic Abilities

Telekinesis

This ability represents the classic mind over matter telekinesis of literature and legend. It allows your character to perform any number of tasks, anything from throwing a switch on a far wall to flinging things about to creating inertial barriers that cushion blows or stop relatively slow missiles. 

Your character can manipulate a number of kilograms equal to his Force Value without having to make a roll to control the power. If the power is used to manipulate a mass greater than Force Value, or he uses the ability to cause damage to an opponent, he must make a Task Roll to see if he succeeds. Invasive use of this ability does one point of damage to the target for every point of Force Value your character possesses with the telekinetic ability.

Electrokinesis

This ability allows your character to control the flow of electrons through various substances. As a result, any natural phenomenon based on the flow of electrons from one place to another can be initiated and controlled by this ability. Examples of such phenomenon include photosynthesis, magnetism, the rusting of iron, and the generation and flow of electricity. 

When using this ability to rust or magnetize iron, your character can affect a total mass of iron equal to his Force Value. It takes ten minutes to affect this much mass. Rusting occurs evenly throughout the substance being rusted, however a Task Roll can be made to control the point where the rusting occurs. A successful Task Roll indicates that at the end of one Action Round, only the specific spot desired by your character is oxidized. Iron objects only remain magnetized as long as your character maintains his concentration.

Using this ability to generate electricity allow your character is able to generate enough electricity to generate a number of Volts of electricity equal to his Force Value. In order to affect living creatures, a Task Roll is required to target the electrical energy and send enough current through at one time to damage the target. Such an invasive use of this ability does one point of damage for every point of Force Value your character possesses. When used on non-living targets, this ability can be used to short circuit primitive electrical systems or control the functions of more complicated electronics systems. With enough ability, your character may even be able to control a computer's functions or shatter fragile crystals.

Thermokinesis 

This ability allows your character to increase (Pyrokinesis) or decrease (Cryokinesis) the vibrational movement of the molecules within a target to the point where its temperature starts to rise or fall, and will continue to rise or fall for as long he concentrates. Once concentration is terminated, the object’s temperature will take as many rounds to cool down to its normal temperature as it did to heat up.

When used invasively, this ability may be used to either burn one specific area on the target's body or to generate a large amount of heat throughout the creature's body water. Using this ability in either of these ways does a number of points of damage per round equal to your character's Force Value. In non-living targets, this ability’s effectiveness is dependent on the nature of the material being affected. Both of these invasive uses of this ability require a successful Task Roll in order to perform them.

Photokinesis

This ability allows your character to perceive light in all wavelengths from the ultraviolet to the infrared spectrum with not only his eyes but also his entire body as well. Task Rolls are required to sense light within the UV and IR regions.

This ability also allows your character to alter the intensity of light within the range of his Perception. He can make lit areas darker to the point where shadows may actually be created or destroyed as well as areas of intense light. He can move shadows or patches of light (known to some photokineticists as “light shadows”) about in willed shapes if he maintains concentration. Once your character ceases to concentrate, the image disappears.

This ability also allows your character to alter the path or wavelength of light around any object or person within the range determined by your character’s PERC attribute. Any target so cloaked is undetectable by normal senses when immobile, and when mobile, a Critical Success is required on a Task Roll to perceive the target object or person.

Finally, this ability allows your character to manipulate light to such an extent where the wavelength may be made uniform and the intensity powerful enough to create a laser powerful enough to burn holes in steel given enough time and a strong enough light source. This requires a Task Roll to successfully create the laser beam. Such a beam from a strongly illuminated room can burn through 1 mm of metal per round of concentration and cause one point of damage to living creatures for every point of Force value your character possesses. 

Biokinesis

This ability gives your character an intimate knowledge of the relationship between his mind and his body. As a result, he is able to voluntarily control functions of his body that normal people cannot.

The first thing a biokinetic character can do is elevate one or more of his attributes for a short period of time. He may increase an Attribute by one for every point up to the number designated by his biokinetic Force Value. It takes an entire minute of concentration to initiate this ability, however it is unlike other kinetic abilities in that it may be maintained without concentration for 1 round per day for every 10 points of Control Value. The amount of time your character wishes to maintain may be designated before initiating this Attribute elevation or consciously terminated by spending a round concentrating, and may be split up between several uses of the ability. 

A character with this ability is able to heal one point of Sp/Bp on his person for every 10 points of his Control Value per hour of meditation.

This ability also allows your character to attune his body to that of another and actually take on the wounds sustained by that person, leaving the other creature fully healed. Your character may absorb one point of Sp/Bp per round from any animal or human for every point of Control Value he possesses.

Finally, this ability allows your character to regenerate an amputated limb in 25 days minus one day for every point of Force Level he has in the ability.

Sonokinesis                

This ability allows your character to pick up sounds not only with his ears but with his whole body as well. It allows your character to determine the distance and direction of any sound, or to pick up sounds beyond his normal perceptual range (in the super and subsonic frequencies) with a successful Task Roll.

This ability also allows your character to manipulate the intensity of any perceived sound in range, either dampening it or making it louder. He can also sustain a sound at a given loudness as long as he actively concentrates on doing so. Additionally, this ability allows your character to manipulate any perceived sound’s frequency and timbre, to change it into a different sound that he has heard before, with a successful Task Roll.

Finally, this ability allows your character to manipulate the intensity and frequency of a given sound to the point where it is just a loud noise that fluctuates between dissonant cacophonies and resonant piercing tones to disrupt the bonds within matter, thus decreasing the molecular bond integrity for the time the character concentrates upon it. The character may thus permanently change the molecular structure and matrices of the object even after concentration is terminated. The character may affect all objects living and nonliving mildly in the area within a radius determined by the character’s PERC range, or may be targeted on one target with rather severe effects. This invasive use of this ability does one point of damage for every point of Force Value your character possesses.

The Mentalic Abilities

Dreams

This ability allows your character to always sleep restfully even when under the assault of another character. Your character can control or alter his dreams as well as his nightmares. This ability also provides insight into dreams as described to them by other people. Such insights might well tell whether a dream is psychic or mundane in nature, and what types of things are on a person’s mind to the point of a sort of dream psychotherapy, to help other characters to lead more happy and productive lives.

This ability can also used invasively by your character to attempt to actually enter the dream of another and observe the dream as either the cameraman or as if he were actually part of the dream itself. Target characters view the invading character as he is in real life, whether or not the target knows the invader personally. This type of action requires a Task Roll to succeed.

Finally, your character can also use this ability to catalyze, control, or alter any dream he is able to perceive, as well as create, recreate, or destroy dreams of the past. Naturally, using this ability in such a manner is invasive and requires a Task Roll to succeed, unless the target is a willing participant.

Drives

Character drives include the primal motivations that cause a character to seek out gratification of the most basic, fundamental needs. Such drives include but are not limited to lust, hunger, sleep, and thirst.

This ability allows your character to control his own drives when unopposed, and to defend himself more effectively when another tries to control them. It also allows your character to perceive the drives of any living creature in the animal kingdom that are at the forefront of the creature’s mind at that moment without requiring a Task Roll.

A Task Roll is required to use this ability invasively to do such things as catalyze drives already on the verge of manifesting themselves, as well as completely altering drives or replacing one drive for another. 

Emotions

This ability allows your character to have an affect on the emotions of a creature. Emotions include attractions or aversions, awe, fear, self-esteem, deep concern, and anxiety. This ability allows your character to control his own emotions and resist active manipulation of his emotions when an attempt to affect them is made by another. It also allows your character to perceive the emotions of any living creature in the animal kingdom that are at the forefront of the creature’s mind at that moment without requiring a Task Roll.

A Task Roll is required to use this ability invasively. Such uses of this abilityinclude any attempts to catalyze, control, or alter the emotional state of a target creature’s mind to bring about changes in the target’s emotional state.

Memories

This ability allows your character to catalyze or retrieve memories and allows him to resist active manipulation of his memories by another. It also allows your character to perceive the memories another is experiencing.

When used invasively, this abilityallows your character to implant, remove, or alter the memories of others. This can be especially insidious, as the target may not notice such tampering until the memory being manipulated is accessed. This ability can be used to interrupt a character's train of thought. ("...What was I talking about?…") 

Perceptions

This abilityallows your character to tap into the current perceptions of others as well as resist others tapping into and manipulating your character's perceptions. In order to perceive what the target perceives, your character must possess the same perceptual abilities as the target. Thus if the target has a mentalic ability and is reading the emotions of a creature, in order to perceive exactly what the target is perceiving, your character must also possess a similar ability to read the emotions of the creature in a similar manner.

When used invasively, this abilityallows your character to actually manipulate what the target perceives.

Thoughts 

This ability allows your character to use his mentalic ability to perceive the surface thoughts of others. It also allows your character to send his thoughts to another target creature, so long as the character is a freely willing recipient.

As with the any other mentalic ability, a Task Roll is required to use this ability invasively. Such uses include any attempt by your character to send thoughts to an unwilling target creature, to alter, implant or eliminate the thoughts of a target creature, or probe more deeply into the intimate thoughts of a creature (Including such things as secrets and strategies). 

The Correspondent Abilities 

While these Abilities may seem to cause all sorts of potential problems such as paradoxes, time is considered an entity where the future of a single timeline cannot be changed. Since a Time point can have an infinite number of Time lines going through it, it can be seen that what actually happens is that the character merely changes directions at a given Time point, effectively leaving one time line and entering another simultaneously.  Likewise, the Place ability follows the maxim that matter cannot occupy the same space.  Any attempt to teleport that would result in teleporting into an object results in a failed teleport, and losing a number of damage points equal to 100 points minus a number of points equal to your character’s current Control Value.

Place

This ability allows your character to teleport. He can teleport 10 meters for each point  of his Force Value.  A successful ability roll allows your character to successfully teleport.  A failure on the Control Task Roll drains your character of a number of damage points equal to the number of percentage points your character fails his roll by, in addition to not allowing your character to travel through time.

Time

This ability allows your character to travel through time a number of rounds equal to his current Control Value.  Your character can remain in that time period for a number of hours equal to his Force Value.  A failure on the Control Task Roll drains your character of a number of damage points equal to the number of percentage points your character fails his roll by, in addition to not allowing your character to travel through time.

Section 4:Using Psychic Abilities

Range and Perception

Psychic abilities require your character to perceive a target in order to affect it. This is why your character’s initial Control Value is strongly influenced by Perception. But your character’s Perception also has an effect on the range over which many of the abilities can be used.

A restriction on all of the Kinetic Abilities (except Biokinesis) as well as the Mentalic abilities is that they can only be used when your character gains a clear line of sight with a target. A line of sight cannot be gained if a target is outside of your character’s visual range of acuity as determined by his Perception Attribute, or if your character is unable to directly perceive the target in some other manner.(Because Correspondent abilities affect reality directly, different restrictions are placed on the ranges and durations of these abilities.)

Biokinetic abilities may only be used to affect your own character or when your character is touching a target. In such cases where your character is attempting to affect a target, you need to make a Perception check in order to get in tune with the target’s body.

Psychic Combat

Whenever your character attempts to read or affect the mental patterns of target possessing no mentalic abilities, the target will be completely oblivious to the attack. If your character attempts to read or affect the patterns of another character with mentalic abilities, the target will know of the invasion automatically, and the attack is considered an automatic failure until the two mentalically able characters resolve the situation through mentalic combat.

In order to resolve mentalic combat, both characters simply make opposing Task Rolls.  The character that succeeds to a larger degree is the winner, and remains the dominant combatant for a number of rounds equal to the winning character’s Force Value.

Well, that is about it for psychic combat.  Good luck, and may your character’s head not explode…