Okay, first real attempt to make a character.

Okay, first real attempt to make a character.

Okay, first real attempt to make a character. Its a character I’ve wanted to play for ages but have yet to find a game where he’d fit in. (also the reason I chose him for the awesome Kickstarter reward)

SInce I’ve never had a chance to play him, working out something meaningful to put under the Impossible section is actually quite difficult. As was picking a Drive book actually. The Origin was pretty easy. Everyone wants the sentient alien superweapon grafted to his arm. I won’t lie, I first came up with the character around the same time that Ben 10 started airing on cartoon network. For the Drive, I wanted something to represent this inexperienced kid being given this awesome cosmic power and responsibility and being unsure how to use it and what to use it for. Or something like that. Something that said “rookie trying to figure out the whole being a superhero thing”. Coincidentally, my favourite Marvel comic of recent years has been Nova which basically is all about addressing that subject.

Codename: Ion Fist

Real Name: Joey McCallister

Affiliation: Independent Hero

Nationality: Australian

Smash: 1

Influence: -1

Maneuver: 2

Protect: 1

Investigate: 0

Origin: What I Carry…

Working Toward: Figure out who I am.

Nemesis: Tel’Var Imperium

Power Summary:  Bearer of an Ion Gauntlet which grants control the wearer control over the base Ionic Energy of the cosmos

SIMPLE

Strike an enemy with an Ion Blast

Fly at supersonic speeds

DIFFICULT

Generate a forcefield to protect a crowd of people

Create constructs out of pure Ionic Energy

BORDERLINE

Fly through space at hyper speed

POSSIBLE

Survive the core of a star for brief periods

IMPOSSIBLE

Create a Construct larger than a tall skyscraper.

LIMITATIONS

The Ion Gauntlet has fused with and effectively replaced his right forearm and alien circuitry snakes all the way up the rest of his up to the side of his neck. It cannot be removed without killing him and the glowing nodules in its surface are very difficult to hide. The artificial sentience within the Gauntlet is not pleased to be bonded with a juvenile member of a technologically deficient species and sometimes takes “corrective measures” to address problems it sees in Joey’s behaviour.

Frequently DIfficult.

BONDS: (Threshold +5)

City X

Law Enforcement 1

Ion Gauntlet 2

(Deliberately left unfinished)

Character Bio:

Fifteen-year-old Joey McCallister is an Australian citizen of aborigine descent.

Joey always liked the outdoors. Raised by his uncle who was ranger at Byfield National Park in Queensland, he often joined him on patrol in the park and nearby state forest. In addition to the education he received at the local school (when he bothered to attend), he learnt how to track animals, hunt and kill small game and how to survive in the wilds. By the time he was ten, he was capable of camping out overnight in the area around Weerriba  (his hometown) on his own. It was on one of these camping trips that Joey’s life would change forever.

On his fifteenth birthday, Joey went camping with a group of friends in the park. Sitting around a campfire, sharing a crate of beer to celebrate, the teenagers were startled by a blinding light that streaked overhead. The light disappeared over a nearby ridge where it stuck the ground with a deafening boom. Concerned that they may have just witnessed a plane crash, Joey grabbed the first aid kit and walkie talkie from his rucksack and hurried towards the crash site while his half-drunk friends where still picking themselves up off the ground.

However, what he found was not a crashed aircraft. At least, not one designed by human hands. It was an escape pod from an Ion Guard patrol ship, an interstellar peacekeeping and law enforcement organisation that upheld peace and justice throughout the known galaxy. Joey, a mere earthling from a planet that had yet to be formally contacted by the Guard, knew none of this; all he cared about was the figure that appeared trapped and injured. He rushed over and skidded to a stop as he saw the three-eyed, blue-skinned alien trapped in the wreckage. However, he only hesitated for a second before pulling the alien from the burning spacecraft.

Joey set him down some distance from the crash site as his friends arrived at the top of the ridge and gasped in astonishment. The alien looked badly injured and he had no idea how to perform first aid on an alien but at least he could try the basics. As he tried to stop the bleeding, his friends cried out and pointed towards the sky. A ship, bristling with weapons, was descending through the clouds. His friends took one look at the ominous-looking warship and ran but Joey stayed where he was.

The alien’s eyes snapped open, he took one look at the approaching ship and grabbed Joey’s arm. Speaking telepathically, the alien told Joey to run; the Tel’var would kill anyone they found at the crash site. But Joey was never one to back down from a fight and he wasn’t just about to run off and leave the alien to its fate. He told the alien so before drawing the hunting knife strapped to his side and turning to face whatever these “Tel’var” would throw at him.

The alien, a member of an interstellar peacekeeping organisation called the Ion Guard, knew that it was dying and that the human’s efforts were ultimately futile but he was impressed by his convictions and courage, however misplaced. Had he been aware that Joey was not as adult member of his species, then he would have probably used his telepathic abilities to force the boy to flee. Instead, he reached out and took hold of Joey’s wrist, saying that he was going to give him a gift to aid him in his fight. Before Joey could respond, the alien had extruded a glowing liquid that flowed from the alien onto Joey’s forearm. The liquid was absorbed into Joey’s skin, changing the colour of the skin around his fist and forearm black. Yellow glowing nodules erupted from skin on the back his hand, up the entire length of his arm, across his shoulder and into the side of his neck, all connected by circuit like patterns down to the nodules on his hand. Joey stumbled back in surprise, scratching at the strength growths on his arm.

Telepathically, the alien calmed his mind and told him that the “gauntlet” would protect him. As the alien did so, Joey noticed that similar growths on the alien’s arm had disappeared. However, before Joey got a chance to question this, a squad of battlesuited Tel’var soldiers beamed down to the crash site, their vicious looking energy weapons charged and ready. They didn’t wait to ask any questions before opening fire on Joey and the alien.

A force field sprang up, generated by the gauntlet, and deflected the energy beams. Seeing this, the soldier’s focused their fire on Joey. With the alien’s guidance, Joey laid down barrage of ion blasts from the gantlet. For several minutes, he fought the enemy soldiers, exchanging energy blasts, telekinetic attacks, even taking to the air at one point. However, there were too many of them. Even after defeating more than a dozen of them, he soon found himself exhausted and surrounded by several Tel’var soldiers. Then a salvo of missiles struck the side of the alien warship and in squadron of jet fighters streaked by. They were interceptors sent by UN Overwatch. The organisation had tracked the alien ships entering the atmosphere.

With the arrival of the UN forces, the Tel’var decided to cut their losses and fled. Joey ran over to the alien but it was too late, it had died sometime during the fight. Shortly after, Overwatch agents arrived to secure the crash site. They found the aborigine boy sitting emotionally and physically drained, surrounded by over a dozen bodies. With the markings on his arm and the glowing nodules, he had obviously been exposed to something.

After being released from Overwatch quarantine, Joey returned to his hometown. However, things didn’t settle down as he had hoped. Over the next few months, he was attacked by mercenaries and metahuman terrorists wanting to get their hands on the alien device. Taking the name Ion Fist, he fought them all off becoming a minor hero in the process.

So, I’m trying to create a character.

So, I’m trying to create a character.

So, I’m trying to create a character. In a way its a mash-up of Ben 10 and Green Lantern, a kid that gains “lantern-type” superpowers from a sentient alien weapon fused to his arm.

SInce I’ve never played this sort of character before, I’m stumped what to put under Impossible. It needs to be something tangible and so far the only thing I’ve come up with is:

“Remove the Ion Gauntlet except upon his Death”

Since basically, the gauntlet has for all intents and purposes replaced his right arm from the elbow down with nodules of alien circuitry snaking as far up as his neck, the kid can’t remove the alien device from his body without basically killing him.

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character.

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character.

Reading through the character gen rules, I decided to try my hand at creating a character. It was supposed to be a character I play in a Firefly game on rpol, a deckrat/cabin boy/mechanic sort of character. Going through the options, he turned out a little differently than I expected.

Name: Kyle Mitchell

Origin/Careers: Galactic Starfaring Industrialist

Archetype: Greasemonkey

Stats: Physique 0, Mettle +1, Expertise +2, Influence -1, Interface +1.

Skills: Tinker, Upgrade, Custom Flyer, Repair

Loadout: EVA Worksuit (Simple C2 Attire, vac Sealed with integrated Engineering Kit), Heavy Duty work overalls (Rugged C1 Attire with many pockets filled with tools and spare parts), Personal Hand Blaster (non-lethal Stun Pistol), Fire Star (Heavily modified C3 Speeder, Agile, Rugged and Sealed)

Rooms: Workshop, Shuttle Bay

Descriptions: Energetic, Grubby, Young

Personality: Strong willed, independently minded, in some ways Kyle is a typical teenager in that he doesn’t like being told to do something, especially if he doesn’t want to do it, and he isn’t shy of letting people know. However, earn his respect, and you’ll get a hard worker. Earning his trust is easy; don’t treat him like a kid. Don’t assume that just because he is young, he is stupid, especially when it comes to machines. Despite this, there are times when he just wants to goof off and be a kid for a bit.

Appearance: Young and fresh faced, no matter how many times he washes or showers, he seems to be perpetually covered in dirt or grease, especially when he’s had to do a major repair or go crawling through maintenance ducts. Kyle keeps his hair short, periodically hacking at it with a knife, so as not to get in his eyes when working. Baggy and hard wearing clothes, patched cargo pants and work boots. He wears a “swat-style” vest with dozens of pockets which contain tools, parts, memory chips and candy bars. Always seen with a pair of oversized headphones.

Background: Kyle Mitchell, fifteen, was born on board the space platform orbiting a newly colonised world of Progeon IV. That platform serviced the many terraforming outposts on the surface and acted as a central space port for all ships and shipments to and from the colony. Kyle’s father owned a workshop at the platforms space docks and specialised in minor repairs to visiting starships and maintaining the fleet of orbital transports that shuttled goods and people to and from the surface. From an early age, Kyle spent a lot of time in and around the workshop and soon learned the business end of hydrospanner.

By the time he was ten, he was competent and skilled enough to work unsupervised on repair jobs for clients. The fact that he was small enough to get in to even the tightest of crawl spaces certainly helped. Sadly, two years ago, Kyle’s father died in an EVA accident leaving young Kyle alone. Although the station authorities threatened to evict Kyle and send him away down to the surface outposts, a group of friendly captain’s who had come to know and trust the boy’s skill convinced them to let him stay and continue working in the workshop that now belonged to him.

The last two years have been hard for Kyle on his own, but he has survived and even been able to put a bit of money away for the future. He might not be the best known mechanic this side of the rim but he hopes his little side project will change all that. Six months ago, in lieu of credits, a transport captain whom Kyle had done some work for gave the boy an old beaten down Hyun Industries Mk4 Survey Scout. Stripped down and rebuilt as an in-system racer, Kyle hopes to proof his worth as an engineer by building the fastest ship in the sector and winning the Spinward Rim Cup.

One thing I’ve picked up in earlier previews is that combat works a bit differently compared to other games.

One thing I’ve picked up in earlier previews is that combat works a bit differently compared to other games.

One thing I’ve picked up in earlier previews is that combat works a bit differently compared to other games.

Instead of rolling blow by blow, it seems that physical conflict between two parties is resolved by a single roll, the result of which determines the outcome of the fight. Have I got that right?

Couldn’t find this information on the kickstarter page (probably rolled a 6 on my Assessment check), how big is this…

Couldn’t find this information on the kickstarter page (probably rolled a 6 on my Assessment check), how big is this…

Couldn’t find this information on the kickstarter page (probably rolled a 6 on my Assessment check), how big is this book going to be?

So after sitting on my shelf for a couple of months (digitally speaking of course but I am considering using Lulu to…

So after sitting on my shelf for a couple of months (digitally speaking of course but I am considering using Lulu to…

So after sitting on my shelf for a couple of months (digitally speaking of course but I am considering using Lulu to print off a cheap spiral bound copy for use at the table) I’m finally getting around to reading it.

Mainly since it looks like we’re going to use it to replace the system in a longish running game. Seriously, we’ve tried three versions of Marvel (Saga, stone-based and Heroic) and none them have sat well with the entire group. Since Dungeon World has proven a success with the group, our GM is hoping that Worlds in Peril will have the secret sauce.

Now comes the difficult task of converting characters over. And this is where I’ve hit a couple of problems. The first is powers. My character is like a junior iron man without the emotional baggage. Basically a teenage super genius with gadgets and a battlesuit. Now, if I’m readying the powers section properly, thinks like gadgets and power armour are considered Advantages and not “powers”. So I’m a little stumped what do put under simple, difficult, etc. Anyone started up an iron man or gadgeteer type character that I can use as a reference.

Secondly, I’m having problems picking an Origin book for a character that became a superhero because he idolises super science heros like Stark and Richards and wants to use his knowledge and skills to help people and half a little fun while doing it, instead of being stuck in some stuffy research lab.

Well that’s a shame.

Well that’s a shame.

Well that’s a shame.

My first MotW game has been canned, even before the first session of play. Big differences between how a couple of players saw the game and how I saw the game. They turned up to the first session with fully formed character concepts, a slasher movie monster and a fairy. While I’m sure that a game with these in could be fun, it wasn’t what I wanted to run. Didn’t want to do it, but I had to cancel the game and tell them someone else will have to run. I couldn’t muster any enthusiasm for what the game was becoming.

Which is a shame as u was really looking forward to run it next week. Guess I’ll just have to keep looking for an online game to get my fix.