Character Creation
When you apply to a game, most Keepers will tell you what they are looking for in a character; as well as additional necessary world information. Is the game Victorian, 1920s, Weird War II, etc? In play by post games most Keepers want you to develop a background for your character that fits in with the game. That usually happens well before dice are rolled or character sheets are filled out. The background you write is similar to an audition. It gives the Kepper a chance to get a feel for your writing and whether you will fit in their game.
Once the background is finished and submitted you might want to work on that character. Many Keepers will give you a place to make necessary rolls for stats once your character concept is accepted. Don’t roll any dice until the Keeper invites you to! It is rude, presumptuous, and clutters threads.
Dice (and all formatting) are done via bbcode on the site. That means you have to understand just a little bit about how to code things.
Dice are rolled using the following code: <dice>xdxx</dice>
Replace all <>s with []s for the code to work.
The x before the d represents the number of dice you want rolled. The xx following the d represent the type of dice you want rolled: d4, d6, d8, or most importantly for Call of Cthulhu d100.
Let's say you're trying to open a locked door, so you decide to try and pick that lock. That would mean 1d100 for your character. And you need to roll beneath whatever your locksmith skill is, let us say it is 15%.
If you should need to roll attack rolls, you should also roll damage. Usually, you do this all in the same post (where you roleplay out your attack). This keeps the game moving. An attack roll for a .45 would look like this:
<dice>1d100 1d10+2</dice>
OK, dice rolling is fairly easy. Then most Keeperss will tell you how they want the character rolled up or created. The point buy is the most commonly employed system as it alleviates much of the hassle and player griping at unfair rolls.
The character background is not important for this game but just to give you practice write a short one. Keep it simple, a paragraph at most. Remember, in most other games on the site the background is potentially the most important part of your character.
For this game we will use the simplified purchase method to create your first character.
Money: Unlike many roleplaying games Call of Cthulhu is less focused on counting pennies.
Literally.
CoC uses an abstract known as the ‘Credit Rating.’
A character’s Credit Rating indicates their place in society by looking at liquid, solvable, and total assets. Depending on how many of your Occupation Skill points you allocate your investigator is...
- 0 ...Penniless, living on the streets.
- 1-9 ...Poor, possessing the bare minimum; Edgar Allen Poe
- 10-49 ...Average, a reasonable level of comfort; Average Person
- 50-89 ...Wealthy, some degree of luxury; Thomas Edison
- 90-98 ... Rich, great wealth and luxury; JP Morgan
- 99 ... Immense wealth; Rockefeller.
While money will not save you from a Byakhee it does opens doors and greases wheels. Credit Rating can be used in place of APP to gauge first impressions, as money also talks.
Credit Rating is tracked as a skill but doesn’t work exactly the same however a high Credit Rating can be a useful, and so should be paid for with skill points when creating an investigator. Each occupation has a starting range for Credit Rating and can be adjusted with skill points.
Call of Cthulhu does not require money to be carefully tracked; however, it is useful to know limits of your spending power — for example, can the investigator afford to employ a team of archaeologists to excavate an Incan tomb?
Because this is a tutorial game, and everything you need will be provided to you simply set your Credit Rating to average value for your chosen profession.
Feb 23rd, 2021, 12:52 PM
