(Slowly) Creating a Character Part 1

This is the character sheet for Trail of Cthulhu. Don't strain your eyes just yet. I'll be focusing on different parts of the character sheet. Mostly because I haven't figure it all out yet. If you do wish to get a better view of it, just download a copy from Pelgrane Press. Then you could play along with me.

I wish I remember my HTML coding, because then I'd just hyperlink to the sheet. C'est la vie.

http://www.pelgranepress.com/trail/files/twosheet.pdf





And here's the starting point.


Investigator Name: Easy enough. I'm still not sure how I ended up with that moniker.

Drive: Your Drive is the reason you do things. It's the "why" you decide to venture down an dark alleyway (Curiostiy) or the "why" you won't stop hunting the man in black (Revenge). For Detective Almonds, I decided his Drive was Duty. Not to justice. His duty is to please that booty.

When you follow your Drive, you can regain Stability points. If you don't follow it, you can lose stability points.

The Keeper: The mysterious blonde in the rain-beaten trench coat leaned over your desk and slowly loosened your tie. "I've got a proposition for you," she purred, "in the next room."

PC: I let her lead me by the tie into the next room. It's my duty to please that booty and by God that booty will be pleased!

The Keeper: Well ok, you're following your drive, so you regain 2 Stability points as you follow her.

Not following your Drive could lose you half of your Stability points! But that's if your Keeper is a jerk. I'll get into that later.

It's worth mentioning that the duty to please that booty is not a good drive to have. You never know when that booty will be attached to an inter-dimensional creature whose very design burns your synapses and drive you to insanity, leaving you a catatonic husk that is eventually impregnated with inter-dimensional spider eggs.


Occupation: It's your job. Different jobs come with different skills. The point cost to buy job-related skills is lower than ones not job-related. FYI, a Police Detective gets to choose from Athletics, Cop Talk, Driving, Evidence Collection, Firearms, Interrogation, Law, Assess Honesty, and Sense Trouble. Those skills come at a lower cost than say Art History or Accounting.

Occupational Benefits: These are special abilities that go along with your job. As a Police Detective, I can use Cop Talk to get access to crime labs, morgues, and other police related hi-jinx.

Description: In a short sentence or very tiny print, describe your character. I had the hardest time with this part.

Build Points: Build Points are what's used to buy your skills. The amount of points a character gets depends on the number of PCs in the game. If I'm in a game with one other PC, I'd get 16 points. Three players total would net each of us 14 points. For simplicity's sake, we'll just say that I have 16 points.

So here we have it. A starting point for an investigator. Next time I'll be buying me some abilities!