Welcome To Uncle Jim's World of Narkness RPG
made by German artisans in under 15 minutes in a hopeless attempt to pick up chicks! made with Notepad and Microsoft FrontPage Editor because I can't HTML for a damn and it shows! no, my name's not Jim. my capitlizations are erratic because it's really late and i need a coffee.

CHARACTER CREATION


0. Attributes
List these three areas in order of how good your character is at them: Mental, Physical, Social. Characters who use alot of magic tend to have Mental first. Fighters tend to have Physical first. Socialites, Pretty yet Vapid Airheads, and Politicians tend to have Social first. Each area has three subareas, which are called Attributes. The Physical Attributes are Strength, Dexterity, and Stamina. The Social Attributes are Charisma, Manipulation, and Appearance. The Mental Attributes are Perception, Intelligence, and Wisdom. Amongst the three Attributes in your first group distribute 10 points, giving each Attribute a rating of 1-5 points. Among the three Attributes of your second group distribute 8 points, giving each Attribute a rating of 1-5 points. Amongst the three Attributes of your third group distribute 6 points, giving each Attribute a rating of 1-5 points. The more points you have in an Attribute, the better it is. A rating of one means that it flat out sucks, a rating of 5 means that it's super neato keen. Strength is a measure of your physical strength, your ability to lift heavy things and hit things really, really hard. Big brutes have high strength ratings usually. Dexterity is a measure of your coordination and your reflexes. Pick pockets and athletes and such tend to have high dexterity ratings. Stamina is a measure of how healthy you are, how much strenuous activity you can endure and how well you can take a hit. Athletes and big brutes tend to have decent ratings of stamina. Charisma is a measure of how generally like-able you are. Politicians and entertainers have decent charisma ratings. Manipulation is a measure of how well you can manipulate people and bend them to your will. Politicians, smooth talkers and bullies have high ratings of manipulation. Appearance is how well groomed, attractive and generally purdy you are. Run way models, sacrificial virgins, and other such have high ratings of Appearance. Perception is a measure of how perceptive you are. Self centered, oblivious and vapid people have low ratings of perception, while the generaly entuitive and... er... perceptive have higher ratings of Perception. Intelligence is a measure of your IQ. A low rating doesn't necessarilly mean that you're a total git, though it could very well mean that, it could just mean that you're a simple thinker. Intelligence measures how complexly you can think things out. Wisdom deals more with instinct, cleverness, quick thinking, witty come backs, an intuitive understanding of how the universe works, etc. Monks and Clerics tend to have highish ratings in wisdom because of reflection and meditation and what have you, whereas total dumb asses, people who have difficulty tying their shoes or just people who have trouble thinking very fast tend to have lowish ratings in Wisdom.

1. Choose a race: Human, Half-Elf, Elf, Mephit, Atog.

Special Racial Crap:
Note: If a race seems really lame or overpowerfull, or one of the derangements seems less debilitating than another, that's not necessarilly true. Assorted Gods, Goddesses, Eldritch Things, Demons, Devils, Yugoloths, and Monsters may take pity on, feel sympathy for, or be especially amused by a specific race or carier of a certain derangement and help them out or conversely they might be enraged by, feel apathy for, or be especially amused by the entrails of a specific race or carier of a certain derangement and beat the tar out of them every chance they get. In the end, it all balances out.

Human- advance levels faster than other races, all around mediocre. Humans are so boring they have innate magical resistence of 50% and they're all insane because of the sheer mundanity of human life and the fact that nobody but a total psychopath would choose to play a human normally. Every human begins play with a derangement. Possible derangements are:
Schizophrenia- you're struggling with an inner paradox or contradiction that can't be resolved. It might cause you to see and hear things, talk to dogs, flip out and murder people, develop bizarre sexual fetishes and taboos, whatever your trip is. Whenever something that involves your contradiction comes up, roll your Wisdom against a difficulty of 7. Failure means you flip out and either destroy it or get as far away from it as possible. To gain an automatic success on the roll you may bite your tounge really hard, tense up alot and try to look the other way, taking an arbitrary amount of damage to be assigned by the GM once a damage system has actually been devised.
Manic-Depressive- you have really bad mood swings. Whenever something really, really stressfull happens you get Manic. After it's done, or if you fail something horribly you get Depressive. When you're Manic, you get a +2 bonus to stamina and -1 penalties to dexterity, wisdom, and manipulation because your mind goes into overdrive and allows you to strenuous things you wouldn't be able to do if you were sane but you also get all jittery and can't think straight. When you get depressive you get +2 manipulation as you grow dark, brooding, and intimidating and -1 penalties to strength, charisma and perception as you stop giving a damn about things and get unpleasant to be around.
Phobia- you're incredibly afraid of something. Whenever you're around it, all difficulties of your rolls are at +2 because the terror leaves you unable to concentrate on things.
Paranoia- You know that They're Out To Get You. You have a permanent +3 bonus to perception, a -1 penalty to charisma and the difficulties of all rolls where They might be Around are increased by 2 due to distraction.
Nymphomania/Satyriasis- the system's repressed you sexual urges beyond all logic and purpose and your mind's snapped like a twig in an act of rebellion against the straight jacket sanity of The Man. you're incredibly horny, constantly. All charisma rolls made when members of the opposite sex or same sex or whatever your bag is with appearance 3 or higher are made at +4 difficulty because of all the leering and suggestive comments, or attempts to stay aloof and not make an ass out of yourself, and all other tasks are made at +1 difficulty due to distraction. You can temporarily negate this by taking an ice cold shower or its equivalent. For some inexplicable reason, this has given you great insight into the inner workings of the universe and thus have a +2 wisdom bonus. When you're around an attractive man/woman it's replaced by a +1 stamina bonus and a +1 strength bonus as your brains fall clean out of your head and you gain the power to juggle pick up trucks while singing opera if he/she asks nicely.
Obsession/Compulsion- you have an obsession or compulsion. An obsession could be over something like dragons (you're a drapedophiliac and have a stash of draconic porn in your knapsack), or shiny objects (they soothe you and help you forget about your horrible childhood and/or low paying dead end job). A compulsion could be something like keeping your hands clean or eating whenever food's available. When you're in the presence of your obsession you suffer a +4 difficulty to all perception rolls because you're to busy staring. When your compulsion is unresolved (your hands are dirty but you can't wash them off, there's lots of food but you can't eat it) you're at +4 difficulty on perception rolls because of inability to focus on anything else but fulfilling your compulsion.

Half-Elf- The Half-Elf is the result of a horny elf trying to mate with anything in sight. Elves have notoriously fertile sperm and eggs. A half-elf can be half-elf and half anything else: sardine, tree, chevy, communist, pie, the color green, there's no limit to what a horny elf might try to knock up or get knocked up by. They have Low Light Vision and get 3 bonus dots and 1 penalty dot to distribute amongst their stats to represent their non-elven side of the family tree's genetic influence. Example: A half sardine half-elf could have -1 appearance because of the stink and general unpleasant appearance of sardines and +3 intelligence because we all know that the slimy little buggers are trying to take over the world and are smarter than they let on. Alternately, you could just distribute 2 bonus dots and no penalty, or you could take a 2 dot penalty and get 4 dots. Anything beyond that is high twinkery so shame on you. This can raise a stat above 5.

Elf- A barbaric and lusty race from the northen ice deserts. Contrary to popular belief, Elves are violent and vicious gits who will just as soon look at their grannies as gut them and make them into sofas. Elves have Low Light vision, begin play with free skill slots devoted to melee and brawling, suffer a -1 penalty to intelligence, and get a +1 bonus to strength and stamina. These bonuses and penalties can lower a score to zero or raise a score to 6.

Mephit- Mean spirited gits from elemental planes, they're made of quasi-elemental or elemental material. Mephits have Low Light vision. The different Mephits are:

Fire- Mischievous and cruel. -1 Wisdom, +2 Manipulation +2 Dexterity
Ice- Aloof and cruel. -1 charisma, +2 Intelligence +2 Manipulation
Lava- Big and dumb. -1 Intelligence, +2 strength +2 stamina
Mist- Spies par excellence. -1 Strength, +2 Dexterity +2 Wisdom
Smoke- Crude and lazy. -1 Perception (they smoke alot of weird things), +2 Wisdom +2 Intelligence (ditto)
Steam- Mephit royalty. -1 Wisdom (inbreeding), +2 Charisma +2 Appearance (pretty figure heads and nothing more)
Bonuses and penalties can raise an Attribute down to 0 or up to 7

Atog- Atogs are creatures that look vaguely like frogs or lizards or horrible things with toothy maws that have odd appetites. They come in 5 flavors. All Atogs have a "pool" where they store the nutrition they derive from their special meals. Every bonus or charge or enchantment an Auratog eats, or every corpse a Necrotog eats, or every hour a Chronatog eats, or every tree a Foratog eats, or every artifact or machine an Atog eats puts points into this pool. They can expend a point from their pool at any time to raise a physical attribute by 1. This effect lasts for 30 minutes to an hour (1d4x10+20 minutes). Atogs have Low Light vision.

Auratog- +2 charisma, -2 manipulation, they can eat the enchantment right off of a piece of enchanted armor or an enchanted weapon, they can eat enchantment of any kind off of people, they can eat the charges of a wand, rod, or stave or what have you and summarily strip it of all it's magicalness. Every charge or plus eaten adds a point, as does every enchantment that's been cast on someone.

Chronatog- +2 intelligence, -2 wisdom, they can eat time. when they do this, they spend and ammount of time frozen equal to the ammount of time they're eating and they can't do anything. Every waking hour spent like this throws a point in their pool.

Necratog- +2 dexterity, -2 appearance, they eat corpses. 4 tiny corpses add one to their pool, 2 small corpses add one to their pool, 1 medium corpse adds one to their pool, a large corpse adds 2 to their pool.

Atog- +2 dexterity, -2 intelligence, they eat machinery and artifacts. For every 5 pounds of junk they eat, they add a point to their pool.

Foratog- +2 strength, -2 dexterity, they eat trees. For every tree a foratog eats, a point is added to its pool.

2. Pick Class
cleric- servant of some deity.
mage- master of arcane forces.
ranger- nature boy. or girl. whatever your trip is.
paladin- either an overacted WARIOR OF HOLY MIGHT! PRAISE GOD! or just a fighter with a glowing sword. must be lawfull good.
chaos-warrior- a warrior who serves one of the infernal demon lords of chaos. you can use chaos magic and your patron demon lord will periodically give you cool shit like powerfull weapons or mutations or maybe he'll be feeling grouchy and beat the tar out of you. that's the price you pay to be to cool. must be chaotic.
monk- master of the martial arts and bare handed combat. must be lawfull.
warrior- big tough bully.
warrior-mage- big tough bully who can also sling spells.
mindcrafter- psionicist. yuri geller. nightcrawler. must be either chaotic greedy or lawfull.
Why are there no rogues? Because any class can be a rogue, they just need decent ledgermain and skullduggery and a reprehensible social outlook.

3. Pick Allignment
Lawfull Good, Lawfull Neutral, Lawfull Evil, Neutral Good, Neutral Neutral, Neutral Evil, Chaotic Good, Chaotic Neutral, Chaotic Evil or Chaotic Greedy.

4. Pick Languages

int 0- you're so dumb you can't even speak a language, or you speak it with a very annoying drawl ala forrest gump.
int 1- no extra languages, you just get common
int 2- one extra language
int 3- 3 extra languages
int 4- 5 extra languages
int 5- 7 extra languages
int 6- 9 extra languages
int 7- 11 extra languages
int 8- 13 extra languages
int 9- you're a munchkin and the great god tokoloko casts a bolt of searing fire down from the sky to kill you. if you survive that, you get 15 extra languages.

Languages:
draconic- the language of dragons, drapedophiliacs and ancient mystickal fruits.
elf- the traditional language of the elves, scrapped whole sale because elves usually don't have enough room in their heads for many languages so the more intellectual elves began a program of teaching newborns common from birth.
orc- the language of the super intelligent orcish race, who live in oppulant palaces deep underground and drink expresso and talk about the current ecconomic climate and the state of global affairs and what not. the language of choice amongst non-deranged intellectuals (the nutcases prefer draconic).
goblin- the language of hobgoblins, goblins, and kobolds, a race of ascending sized anarcho-socialists (hobgoblins are three feet tall, goblins six, and kobolds 9).
erc- the language of the ercs, a secretive race born from the coppulation of orcs and elves. over time enough of them gathered to form and entirely separate, sewer dwelling race. the prefered language of spelunkers, thespians and people who enjoy the smell of raw sewage in the morning. erc poetry is a thing of great beauty.
greater hell beast- the language of the legendary greater hell beast and numerous unpleasant things that crawl around in dungeons.
xaos- the language of many assorted chaotic demons, monsters, chimera, creatures, beasts, boogiemen, restless dead, and tax collecters.
french- a vile tounge that comes from the 17th layer of the Abyss. extremely arrogant demons of all sorts speak it. also used by many thief and assassin guilds.
mannish- a language of little consequence, used primarily by stunt linguists to make a living by tripple conjugating verbs and not choking to death on their own blood in front of awestruck audiences.
terran- the language of the plane of earth.
infernal- the language of devils, demons, yugoloths and other things that are to cool to speak xaos or french and insist on sticking to the actual D&D cosmology.
celestial- the language of assorted heavenly creatures.
aquan- the language of the plane of water.
auran- the language of the plane of air.
ignan- the language of the plane of fire.
deltan- the language of dreaded delta knights, who all live in europe somewhere.

5. Skills

Multiply your intelligence by 3. you get that many skill slots to spend. every slot you devote to one skill gives you a +1 die bonus on rolls using that skill. this is a screwed up pigdin d&d white wolf thing. for example: you want to do stunt riding on a horse. roll a number of 10 sided dice equal to your dexterity + the number of slots in riding. if you had 3 slots in riding and 3 in dexterity, you'd roll 6 dice. then, the number of dice that show a number higher than the number that the DM/GM/ST/Referee/ZM/SM/whatever the hell he/she's called judged to be the difficulty of it on a scale of 1-10 (usually a 6) are counted it. every die that made it counts as a success. the more successes you get, the better the job you did of doing it. really tricky stuff might call for a number of successes higher than one. if you roll a 10, count that success and then roll the die agai n to see if you score yet another success. if you roll a 1, it cancells out one of your successes. if you roll no successes and any ones, you "botch." that means you screwed up really, really bad and something funny and/or terrible's going to happen. if you roll all 10s, then i owe you a coke.
Possible skills are:
riding- the ability to do fancy horse back riding. any jamoke can just ride a horse, but you can do it real purdy like.
archery- you can fiddle around with bows and arrows of all kinds, even crossbows.
melee- you can use weapons.
brawling- you can fight barefisted.
dodging- dodging attacks and running like hell.
occult- knowledge of things Man Was Not Meant to Know.
medicine- first aid through heart transplants.
herbalism- you can use herbs to heal and use herbs for Happy Fun Time Recreation.
ledgermain- picking pockets
skullduggery- picking locks
subterfuge- you can lie pretty good.
streetwise- you know about illegal things going on and how to survive on the streets.
alertness- you're alert. self-explanatory. things don't pass you by very often.
swimming- you can swim.
eating- you can eat. alot. you can eat three times what the normal person could eat in a day and then go three times as long as a normal person with your stamina could go without eating before kicking the bucket. either that or you're just a glutton and you've developed this naturally. worshippers of Porg have this in spades.

6. Figure out your magic. And stuff.
Mages use magic in a bastardized Ars Magica fashion. They get a number of points to blow on magic words equal to their intelligence times 4. Warrior-Mages get a number of points to blow equal to their intelligence times 2. You make magic by combining a verb magic word and a noun magic word to create an effect. You roll your skill in the verb+your skill in the noun against some difficulty determined by the game master. The number of dots you throw in a verb or noun can't exceed 5.

verbs: creo (create), perdo (destroy), rego (move), err... instant knowledgeo! (know, i forgot the Ars Magica term), vicissitudio-o-o! (transform, i forgot the AM term AGAIN)

nouns: mentum (mind), corporum (body), animal (animal), herbem (plant), aquam (water), aurum (air), terrum (earth), ignem (fire), kaplowey (magic, forgot the damn AM term)

So, if you wanted to throw a fireball, roll creo+ignem. To heal a wound, roll creo+corporum. To knock someone unconscious or roll perdo+mentum. If you don't get it, email me. it's late and i'm tired. i want my mommy. sniff.

Chaos-wariors use a different system for their magic, which is just the gifts of demonic patrons.
A mage gains his powerfull ability to freeform shape reality because he's Awakened to the cosmic heartbeat of the universe and can see the invisible threads of causality or something cool like that. hey, i've allready ripped the back bone of the system off of white wolf. they get a list of D&D style spells that they learn when they advance levels based on their intelligence. They learn them from Demonic Tomes of Chaos Magic that they find or are given by their Dark Lords.

Clerics receive their magic as gifts from their deities. It works kind of like the speculative system of divine magic in D&D 3rd ed. Your Cleric will pick 3 domains for your deity. Go to Eric Noah's 3rd ed page to find out more about this whole shabash.There's a link to it at the bottom of the page and my email in case you want to yell at me for how bad this page blows.

Some of the more popular Gods and Goddesses and Godheads and Godthings of the World of Narkness and their domains are:
Eris, goddess of Chaos: Chaos, two others of your choice, she's open minded and quite nice.
Porg, god of sweets: Chaos, Trickery, Good or Evil, he goes both ways.
Malebolge, a very evil and crotchety old bastard: Law, Evil, War (weapon of choice: morning star)
Gith, lord of artifice: Death, Magic, Evil
Xadoi Acoloa, cosmic prostitute and sun goddess: Law, Good, Strength
Mercury, god of magic, thieves, commerce, and other cool stuff: Magic, Trickery, An Elemental domain of your choice. He likes to play around with matter.

Paladins and Rangers work the same way they do in 2nd Ed D&D but tailored slightly to the bizarre freeformish rules because i'm lazy... that is, untill 3rd Ed comes out and.. er.. some great cataclysm will occur... with an appocalypse stone... and vecna will kill a bunch of gods... and... uh.. the planes will get shaken up real good, at which time they'll work like 3rd ed Paladins and Rangers... except different.

If you don't GET it, email me. I'll make something up for you that'll sound better.

7. Stuff
Once you've gotten this far, I'll give you a list of multiple items that would be available to you do to carefull considerations and calculations based on species, class, and alignment, and you will be allowed to start with 5 items from the list. one of them will usually be armor or clothing. you automatically start play with some tattered rags, a burlap sack, a bra and panties, what have you, to wear. nothing to expensive or purdy, though, and nothing that'll soak up damage, unless you enchant the hell out of you rags with enchant armor scrolls and the like. A much prized item of clothing is the illusive I Slew The Greater Hell Beast and All I Got Was This Lousy T-Shirt t-shirt, which one receives after killing the nigh invincible yet completely harmless Greater Hell Beast. It's not a good way to boost your armor class, but it's real purdy.

8. Pick a God, any God, any God at all
Every character starts play with a God they can pray to, sacrifice goats to, etc, except for the Chaos-Warriors who instead get Demonic Patrons who play a much more active role in the Chaos-Warriors life. People tend to adopt whichever deity suits their personality: Dastardly Evil Mages Bent On Global Domination might worship Malebolge, the crotchety old bastard of the gods. People who don't really care about theology or theaology or demonology or oology flock to Eris, who's very open minded and quite nice. People who DO like oology, however, instintively flock to Tokoloko, God of Eggs (who isn't powerfull enough to have any domains or clerics, but he's a spitefull old git and he demands constant, ritualistic bloody sacrifices from his worshippers so they can use the psychic energy of the dying to crack the shell of the cosmic egg and cause all kinds of mischief). Porg's a rather jovial sort of fellow, plenty of people like Porg. If none of the deities allready mentioned fit you, then make one up. If you do whatver it is that might please your specific deity, they may smile on you in a time of dire need. If you piss them off, run like hell. Eris likes her followers to be generally happy and a touch "out there," she dislikes it when they embrace the illusory grapefruit of bitterness and get unnecessarilly depressed or enraged by whatever's happening. Porg likes his followers to eat sweets, lots of them. He dislikes it when they show concern over their weight or the condition of the condition of their teeth. The especially faithfull can occasionally pull miracles out of nowheres in particular, but they're usually heavily focused on whatever interests their deity, which isn't allways a pleasant thing. Work out what your deity likes and what your deity isn't so keen on if you're making your own deity who'll give a furk about you.

9. Is it over yet?
maybe. I'm thinking of changing the alignment option of evil to "greedy," the alignment option of good to "nice," the alignment option of law to "uptight," the alignment option of chaos to "loosey-goosey," and the alignment option of neutral to "hypocrite." So, a Paladin would be Uptight Nice, or UN, and a Chaotic Neutral Chaos-Warrior would suddenly become a "Loosey-Goosey Hypocrite," which sounds better and more Chaotically Neutral than just plain Chaotic Neutral. An Alignment system like that would seem to fit better into the game. "Good," "Evil," "Law," "Chaos," and even "Neutral" sound to confining and carry to many connotations that might stifle roleplaying. "Evil" isn't really all that "evil" when you think it out carefully, it's just enlightened self-interest. "Lawfull Good," when you think it over, is basically communism. And besides all that, actual people, especially those demented humans, can change points of view with little provocation. I envision the allignment system to work like Nature in Vampire: the Masquerade and Mage: The Ascension only different, in that you get a special benefit for fullfilling your allignment, perhaps favors from your deity or something. Maybe i should include Willpower or something like it in the game. My spelling of "alignment" is erratic because i'm Loosey-Goosey Hypocrite.

10. Man, that sucked.
email me: brokenspirometer@godisdead.com
and check out eric noah's page for that stuff about clerical domains... and stuff: http://www.rpgplanet.com/dnd3e/
GO BACK, THE HORROR'S TO GREAT!