I forgot to actually post this yesterday. Oops.
My kickstarter arrived recently for this game, so I made a character and see what it looks like. Also, I had a buddy (John Wick) participate, as he is still waiting on his copy to arrive. Feel free to watch that video and watch the process.
My character is James “Jimmy” Bachman, who met his best buddy Oscar Turner )john’s character) in college.
The Character
James and Oscar lived within a mile of each other and never met until College. They met in orientation, where they happened to be in line together. They both decided to go into the CIA; Oscar went into intelligence and James gravitated to Sniper. From there they were inseparable until James dropped out to head into the military – one of his other colleague thought it would be a good idea.
After a term of that, he decided he missed his buddy and went back to the Agency to work with Oscar again. A few years after that, War broke out and the BTO (Bachman-Turner Overdrive) did their best to survive. They had the skills, but they were in war torn Europe now, with nothing but their backpacks, a few firearms and bicycles. Oscar felt they could make it home somehow, and Oscar was the only one James could trust.
So here they are on bicycles or on foot, working their way back to the USA. They had no idea what they would find their, but that wasn’t going to stop them. They were going Home.
The Experience
I really like this creation system overall. It has some issues, but it was a fun process and I created a neat character from the life path system they provide.
The one negative is the indexing. They reference a few things that they had not yet shown you how to handle and no page reference to do there. The life path process assumes you already know how to make skill rolls, but it is not explained how until after character creation in the book.
Also, they have everyone roll for War breaking out and aging separately, and it created quite a disparity in age when war broke out. So, we just started about halfway through rolling one die for them and applying the result to both of us. It seemed to work well for us. Small flaws, and not enough to make me dislike the process, but they existed.
I do like that they made sure every character has Range Combat skill regardless of your life path. It is the first required skill you take when you enter the military – which every character does before its over – so you won’t be unable to shoot a gun when the time comes. In this game, that is important.
It was a lot more fun with someone else — which is a common theme in character creation — so if you want to play it, I recommend you make characters as a group. It takes a little longer, as you might need to wait for someone to make some choices on skills and where their career is going to go.