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…

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

Step Three: Provide the Character History 

The third step of the character creation process is to create a brief account of your character’s life experiences starting from birth to the time prior to the beginning of the game, referred to as your character’s history. You are free to make your character’s history any length you wish. Whether a multi-page narrative, a simple list, or any size in between, to be considered complete for purposes of the game, your character’s history must contain three elements. 

· The first element, a significant person, must be at least one person that has affected your character’s life in a deeply emotional way, either positively or negatively. If your character has a family, a clan, or some other group of people that means a lot to him, you can list significant members individually or, alternatively, name the whole group. Further, you are not limited in scope to just to people. If your character has an emotional bond with an animal, a spirit, or a creature, you may list one or more of these as well. Examples of such people might include friends, enemies, family members, allies, mentors, lovers, rivals, adversaries, and teachers. 

· The second element, a significant event, must be at least one thing that happened in the past that led your character to learn the skills he has learned, forged his personality, or somehow shaped the way he now lives his life. Was there an event that recently changed your character’s life or changed if forever in the past? Was your character’s village razed? Did a window of opportunity open the first time your character discovered he was “different’ from everyone else? Was there an alien invasion that drove your character to learn survival skills? Did the loss of a significant person in your character’s life drive your character to seek out the skills and tools to investigate the loss...or avenge it? 

· The third element, a motivation, must be something for which your character would be willing to die and that motivates your character to take the great life or death risks required by a hero. Was it the result of significant event you just listed? Is it just for money or the Spirit of Adventure? Denial of mortality or aging? Raw power? What values or causes are important to your character? What or whom does your character love or hate? If your character has no motivations or has faced no adversity, what makes him a hero? 

The character history serves two purposes. The first is to make your character someone you and the other players can relate to, rather than just a set of numbers and abilities. The second is to enable the Director to give your character a purpose for joining in the adventure and working with the other characters to accomplish heroic deeds.

Completing Step Three

To complete this step, you will need to list at least one example of each of the three required elements, followed by a brief descriptive phrase to clarify to the Director how the element fits in with your character’s concept and relates to your character. For example, if you list a specific person, you will need to describe the emotional connection your character shares with that person.

Step Three Example: Johnny Parkour 

Ogun now needs to complete his character’s history. Because he is in a hurry to get playing, he chooses to focus on just defining the bare minimum requirements so he can jump right into the action. He looks to his character’s concept and asks a few questions to help him complete this step. 

Looking at the descriptor, acrobatic, he wonders where his character would learn acrobatic skills. He decides that his character’s parents were circus performers who recognized his talents early and trained him in the arts of the high-wire and trapeze. He next looks at the role of “provoker” and wonders, “Why would anyone go out of their way to consistently provoke people into taking action?” He decides that living with his tightly-knit circus “family” gave him the support and confidence to embrace the joy of discovery that came from just trying things and making things happen, and that his character wants to share this feeling with those around him. This gives Ogun a good idea of where he wants to go with his character’s history, so he now turns his attention to listing the three history elements. 

Ogun notices right away that meeting the first requirement, a significant person, will be very easy, and he can also describe where his character learned his acrobatic skills. He lists the following on his character sheet: 

His trapeze-artist mother and high-wire walking father, and the entire circus family that loves him and raised him from when he was a baby.

Moving onto the next element, Ogun sees that his character’s skills and outlook clearly result from his background of living in the circus, however, this background doesn’t really suggest a single life-defining event. Asking himself, “If the circus life was so great, why would my character leave it to take on a dangerous adventure?”, Ogun decides that maybe someone from his circus “family” has disappeared and that will be the significant event that drove his character into the unlikely role of a hero. Rather than making his character’s history tragic and brooding, however, he chooses to make it mysterious and interesting, so he decides that it should be the kindly fortune teller who would entertain him for hours with exciting stories of mystic unexplained places and creatures of questionable existence around the world. He writes down the following as his significant event: 

The mysterious disappearance of the fortune teller from his circus family 

Considering both the significant people and the significant event, Ogun quickly realizes that a motivation is already built into the event he has listed and writes the following down on his character sheet: 

Searching for the missing fortune teller to make his family complete again. 

He writes these down on his character sheet and asks his Director what she thinks. She looks at the event and, realizing she can tie the missing fortune teller in with the story outline she has already prepared for the adventure, decides that it fits in perfectly with the game she has planned. She approves of the completed history, and Ogun moves on to the next step.

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

Step Two: Determine a Character Concept

The second step in the character creation process is to determine a concept for your character. A concept is a statement designed to guide you in selecting your character’s abilities as you proceed through the rest of the character creation process  that takes the following form:

A

DESCRIPTOR

ROLE

who

MOTIVATION

As you can see, there are three elements within the concept.

The first element, the descriptor, will be a single word that describes your character in some general way. When choosing the descriptor for your character, try to use a word that will describe your character’s appearance, a unique ability, or a personality trait. Examples of words include attractive, telekinetic, lazy, ripped, neurotic, cursed, boisterous, obnoxious, happy, or tragic.

The second element, the role, should reflect your character’s profession or else the main activity your character spends most of his time doing. Examples of roles include a swordsman, a drifter, a regular guy, a student, a soldier, a skateboarder, a slacker, a cop, a pipefitter, or a United Nations Ranger.

The third element, the motivation, is a string of words that reflects the primary motivation that gives your character’s life meaning and direction. It specifies a cause, desire, or ability that drives your character to take the great life or death risks required by a hero. Examples include:

• Wants to put the wrong things right.
• Seeks to get richer than Midas.
• Refuses to stop fighting until either he or his enemy falls.
• Is cursed by a past that haunts him to this day.
• Uses his special abilities to make the world a better place.

Once complete, your character’s concept will tie your character in with the game world, give you and the other players a general idea of what abilities and attitudes to expect from your character, and act as a guide to help you make decisions you as you proceed through the remaining steps of the character creation process.

Completing Step Two

To complete this step, you need to create your character’s concept by writing a statement that contains a descriptor, a role, and a motivation in the aforementioned format.

Hujraad’s Hacks: Figuring Out Your Character Concept

The first few times you try to make a character, you may feel a bit overwhelmed by the seemingly endless possibilities. To help overcome this feeling of “Where do I even begin?”, here are a few ideas to get you started:

• You could base your character on a word, an extraordinarily good or bad trait or a combination of such traits, such as a blind man with phenomenal marksmanship.
• You could model your character on one from a book, play, movie, opera, mythology, fable, story, computer game, work of art, or epic poem. This is often a great place to start for beginners.
• You could base your character on fictional or real characters, or even yourself as you are, as you used to be, as you would like to be, or as you would hate to be. You could also base the character on other people in your life, either ridiculing them or exalting them by bringing forth what you perceive to be their outstanding traits.

Step Two Example: Johnny Parkour

Ogun now moves on to creating his character’s concept. Turning his attention to the first element, the descriptor, Ogun decides that he would like to recreate a character he liked in a book he recently read. He decides that the thing that he liked most about the character was that the character was constantly diving into every action scene with a complete lack of regard for danger, depending on his fancy acrobatics skill to get out of sticky situations. Considering both the words “reckless” and “acrobatic”, he settles on the word “acrobatic” and writes it down in the appropriate space on his character sheet.

Moving on to the next element, defining a role for his character, Ogun remembers how the character he wishes to recreate was constantly provoking others into inadvertently performing heroic actions. He likes this idea and decides to define his character’s role as a “provoker”, writing it down in the appropriate space on his character sheet

Realizing that being an “provoker” could quickly get on the other player’s nerves and cause disruption of the game, Ogun decides to use his character’s motivation element to explain how his character’s role will be helpful to the other players rather than cause problems. After thinking a bit, he finally puts puts down the following phrase as his character’s motivation:

“Finds inspiration in acting selflessly so that he and those he cares about can accomplish their goals”.

Taken together, the three elements of descriptor, role, and a motivation come together to form the following concept:

“An acrobatic provoker who finds inspiration in acting selflessly so that he and those he cares about can accomplish their goals”

Ogun shows his character’s concept to his Director Sarah, who smiles and approves it. Ogun is now free to move on to the next step of the process.

A SNEAK PEEK: The HiBRiD Player's Spielbook, Chapter 2: Step One of Eight (Genre Description)

Step One: Obtain and Read the Genre Description

The HiBRiD^TM game rules may be used in almost any game setting. As a result, before you can create a character, you first need to know something about the setting in which the game  will take place.

To make this easier, the game takes a page from the movie industry and classifies each setting as being of a specific genre.  The genre is used to identify a collection of specific elements that people can expect to encounter when they watch a movie or play a game that falls within that genre. A movie or game that falls within a classic science-fiction genre, for example, would be expected to feature advanced technologies, time travel, space travel, or alien. Similarly,  a movie or game setting that falls within the classic fantasy genre will often feature magic, fantastic beasts and humanoid races such as elves, orcs, and dwarves.

To enable you to create a character that fits within the genre of the game your Director will be running, you will be provided with a document known as a genre description that will summarize many of the common elements you can expect to encounter in the game world. The genre description wilI be composed of two parts. The first part, entitled “World” will describe the environment and common themes and conflicts. The second part, entitled “Heroes”, will hold all the information you will need so that you can create a character that it fits in with the genre of the game.

The World Section

The World section will contain a number of sections describing the game world. Within this section, you will find descriptions of the environment, the native wildlife, technology, supernatural phenomenon, and politics.

The Heroes Section

The Heroes section will provide following the information that you need to create your character.

The Character Sheet

As you go through the process of creating your character, you will need to write down all of the details regarding your character’s background, abilities, possessions, and condition so that you can easily reference them while you are playing. The Heroes section of the genre description will contain a preformatted form referred to as a character sheet to help you collect and organize this information.

Heroic Stats

In addition to a character sheet, the Heroes section of the genre description will also contain two numbers known as your character’s heroic stats.

The first of these heroic stats will be a number ranging in value from 0 to 10 referred to as the heroic factor of the genre. The heroic factor is used to reflect the level of heroism you can expect to encounter while playing the game. A genre with a heroic factor of 0 reflects a realistic game where characters have no supernatural abilities and the possibility of character death is very real. A genre with a heroic factor of 10, on the other hand,  reflects a highly epic genre where characters sport world-changing supernatural abilities and regularly laugh at death.

The second heroic stat, referred to as the aspect point pool, will  be a number ranging in value from 0 to 100. This number is used to reflect the level of supernatural and cinematic abilities you can expect your character to possess. A genre granting characters an aspect point pool of 10 points reflects a one in which characters will possess but one or two abilities of moderate to low power while a genre granting characters an aspect point pool of 100 will reflect one in which characters will possess more than a few abilities or a few abilities with considerable power.

In-Genre Abilities

Your character’s natural and learned abilities are closely tied to the genre of the game; some may be very unique to a genre and absolutely necessary while others may be unavailable. In a classic western genre, for example, no characters will possess computer hacking skills, but many characters will have skill in riding on horseback. Similarly, if you will be playing a character in a supernatural thriller genre, there may be abilities that enable your character to perform supernatural such as telekinesis or telepathy.

Abilities that fit in with the genre of the game are referred to as in-genre abilities, while those that do not fit in with the genre of the game are referred to as out-of-genre abilities. To ensure you select abilities that are in-genre, the genre description will list and describe the abilities you may select for your character.

Genre Description: The Default Genre

By default, if no genre description is used, the game assumes a modern real-world genre and is referred to as The Default Genre for the game. Conflicts associated with this genre are rooted in real world problems or in situations that could reasonably be expected to occur in our own world..

If the Director wishes to run a  game in which there are any significant differences from our own world (for example, the existence of supernatural phenomenon, the game takes place on another planet, etcetera), the Director will provide you with a separate genre description document.

World

In the Default  Genre, the environment is the same as our own planet Earth, there are no supernatural phenomenon, and technology is equivalent to the current day level at the time of play.

Heroes

The character sheet for the Default Genre is provided in Appendix One of this book.

There are no specific heroic stats used for the Default Genre. Instead, the Director will designate the heroic factor and the number of points in the aspect point pool, so that you can move forward with creating your character.

In-genre abilities within the Default Genre are anything that might exist in our own world. Out-of-genre abilities include any based on futuristic science or supernatural phenomenon. 

Completing Step One

To complete this step, you will need to obtain a copy of the genre description for the game you will be playing, read it through completely, and clarify any questions you might have with the Director.

Next, you will need to grab a pencil and a copy of the character sheet provided in the genre description, and record the heroic factor and the aspect point pool in the appropriate spaces provided.

Step One Example: Johnny Parkour

Ogun, a player new to the game system, has decided he wants to recreate an acrobatic character from a book he recently read. His Director, Sarah, hands him a photocopy of the character sheet in Appendix One and informs him that she will be setting the game in the Default Genre for the game system.

She next, in accordance with the Default Genre, lets him know that the heroic factor for the genre will be 5 and that all characters will have 50 points in their aspect point pool.

Ogun pulls out his favorite 0.9 mm mechanical pencil, and proceeds to write down the heroic factor of 5 and aspect point pool of 50 in the appropriate spaces on the character sheet.

Because he is already familiar with the modern day world, no other details are needed, so he moves on to the next step of creating his character.

A SNEAK PEEK: The HiBRiD Player's Spielbook, Chapter 2: Foreword

Over the next few weeks, I shall be putting the second chapter of the Player Spielbook (pronounced SHPEEL' book) section by section when I get a chance. Once complete, anyone will be able to create characters for any action-based genre in a modern setting using these default HiBRID rules.

Our current home game, And At Twilight, The Aspens Come, of course, will also use a number of Genre Specific rules, but for those wanting to create their own vanilla games, have fun playtesting with these.

I will start it off today, with the Foreword.

Enjoy!

HiBRiD Status Update: Pronouns

So I am doing the final prose review and thought I would share this snippet regarding pronouns from the Foreword.

Pronouns

It goes without saying that the players and Directors of any roleplaying game may be male or female, as may characters in heroic stories. Traditionally, however, the male pronouns (“he”, ”his”, and “him”) have been used to refer to any person regardless of sex. While both culture and the English language have changed, they have done so at different rates, creating a significant debate with this traditional use of the male pronoun in  writing.

Since this book is written in the second person (talking directly to you, the player), the matter of which pronoun to use when referring to the player presents no real issue. When referencing the Director and player characters, however, choosing a pronoun presents a unique challenge.

In the spirit of innovation, I have chosen to use the different pronoun sets based on the role that the person being referred to plays in the game rather than the traditional use. Male pronouns (“he” , his”, “him”) are used to refer to player characters while female pronouns (“she”, hers”, “her”) are used to refer to the Director. Examples will feature a female Director named Sarah and male player characters to maintain clarity with this approach, however the players will occasionally alternate between males and females as a nod to various players who have inspired me over the years.

HiBRiD Status Update: First Readthrough complete

All:

As you may or may not know, the second rough draft of the character creation rules is complete and is now going through a series of readability edits. Involved in the process will be a 10-, 12-, and 14 year old, and my good friend, Flippy, creator of the Tiny Horsies RPG, whom I had the pleasure of meeting after I had reviewed his fantastic game on this blog several years ago.

The HiBRiD character creation prose are complete and have finished their first read through at the 10-year old reading level. In general, the reader found the rules easy to follow, found a few places where clarity needed to be added, and requested a few more examples to understand the step where the player chooses a character Origin.

In the process of fixing the manuscript, I was able to eliminate another 2 pages of cruft from the rules and streamline the prose a bit.

I have finished my revisions and moved on to the next reading level: 12 years old. If anyone else is interested in doing a readability audit, please let me know!

Until then, keep playing games and spending Ite'!