Friday, March 28, 2008

Character Creation in Orky Heresy

You're playing Orks, not humans, so a lot of the cool charts in the beginning of Dark Heresy just won't work. Eventually, I plan to replace them all. For the meantime, here's a playtest version of the bare minimum needed to make it work as a separate all-ork RPG in the Dark Heresy / WH40K RPG...

Except where noted, default to using all written rules for Dark Heresy.

Stage One: Homeworld. For an Ork game, just ignore this step (at least for now).

Stage Two: Generate Characteristics. All characteristics start at 2d10+20.

Stage Three: Career Path. Instead of using the paths of Dark Heresy, this variant uses careers more akin to that from Warhammer Fantasy RolePlay.

Roll up a starting career via a d10 on this chart:
  1. Bad Moons Clanboy
  2. Blood Axe Clanboy
  3. Deathskullz Clanboy
  4. Evil Sunz Clanboy
  5. Goff Clanboy
  6. Snakebitez Clanboy
  7. Yoof
  8. Freebooter
  9. Stormboy
  10. Wild Ork
If you rolled a 7-10, you start without a clan affiliation. Should you ever end up at the "Clanboy" career, or otherwise need to know the clan in your Orky 'eart of 'earts, roll a d6 on that chart.

A kind GM would let the player choose initial career and clan affiliation, but the Ork setting is one of those where random rolls is extra appropriate.

Stage Four: Spend Experience Points, Buy Equipment. Wounds, Fate and Movement all use the charts in Dark Heresy.

Income will be dictated by Career, which will list a die code of Teef. Roll that at the start of the game, and whenever a large swath of time (say, a month?) passes off-camera. Later in the game, when you start a new career, you'll change to rolling the new career's Teef dice. Teef to Thrones conversion rates can be found here, and will empower you to equip your character during the game. You are assumed to begin the game with all the items mentioned in your starting career, and can't purchase anything prior to the start of the first session, because orks barter, bargain, and haggle.

You don't get any experience to start things off. Instead, (like in Warhammer Fantasy) you start with all the skills and talents of your career, but none of the statistic increases.

For starting items, skills, and talents, if anything is listed as "X or Y" pick one (and only one) to start the game with. "X or Y or Z" also means just pick one.

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