Tuesday, October 9, 2012

[ Kinship ] The Arrival of Fred the Nerd

Fred clutched his backpack close to his chest. Riding the subway late Saturday night, after spending the day at the NYC Comicon, he was still feeling the high of the con. It had been a great day. He managed to fill some holes in his comic book collection, got a couple of autographed photos, and picked up a copy of an out of print RPG he had been looking for. The only other person on the subway car was a scruffy looking man, who was asleep.

Then the lights went out, and suddenly Fred knew someone was standing before him.

It became cold, and Fred shivered. Then the lights came back on, and standing before him was a person in black robes. A very tall person. At first Fred thought the person was in costume, and had been at the con. However, Fred suddenly knew that wasn't the case.

The robed figure lowered his head toward the seated Fred. The face was pale, bony to the point of looking almost completely skeletal. Inches from his own face, Fred saw the glowing eyes, and then the face grinned.  As the lips curled back, Fred saw teeth as black as obsidian, and pointed as a sharks.  Ironically it's breath smelled of grass after a Spring rain.

Then in a voice raspy as sandpaper on rusted metal, the figure spoke...

"You are now free..."

Raising an arm, the monstrous figure grasped Fred's shoulder, a cold shock shuddering through out Fred's body. Peace came with the darkness, and the last thing Fred heard was a melodical laugh.

An indeterminate amount of time later, Fred woke up. Looking around he appeared to be in an alley, but it was daytime. Sitting up, he sees graffiti on a brick wall...

Spray painted in red it read: Kinship NO WAY OUT!

Fred the Nerd knew he wasn't in New York City anymore...

Fred the Nerd  ( GURPS 4E NPC )

Fred the Nerd [ 55 Points ] 45 Unspent Points

Age: 19  5'1" 110 lbs.  Skinny [ -5 ]

ST 9 [-10], DX 11 [20], IQ 12 [40], HT 10
HP 9, Will 12, Per 12, FP 10

Basic Lift 16, Damage: Thr 1d-2/Sw 1d-1;
Basic Speed 5, Basic Move 5;
Dodge 7, Parry 8 ( unarmed ), Block -;
DR 0.

Advantages and Perks
Common Sense [ 10 ], Eidetic Memory [ 5 ], Luck [ 15 ]

Disadvantages and Quirks
Combat Paralysis [ -15 ], Collects Comic Books [ -1 ], Collects Action Figures [ -1 ], Curious [ -5 ], Gullibility [ -10 ], Imaginative [ -1 ], Loner [ -5 ],
Minor Addiction/Caffeine [ -1 ], Trekkie [ -1 ] Weirdness Magnet [ -15 ]

Skills
Area Knowledge/New York City - 13 [ 2 ],
Artist/Drawing - 13 [ 8 ],
Biology - 10 [ 1 ], Chemistry - 11 [ 2 ],
Computer Operation/TL8 - 16 [ 8 ],
Games/RPGs - 14 [ 4 ], Hobby Skill/Comic Books - 14 [ 4 ],
Hobby Skill/Science Fiction - 14 [ 4 ],
Writing -12 [ 2 ]

Possessions
Backpack: laptop computer, digital camera, jar of peanut butter, spoon, 3 issues of Uncanny X-Men 101, 102, 103 ( all near mint ), sketch pad, small box of drawing pencils and pens, GURPS Basic Set 3E softcover, bag of dice, cell phone

He's wearing faded jeans, and a Captain America t-shirt.  The con badge is still hanging around his neck.  He has a wallet with about $10, some loose change, keys, and a pack of gum in his pockets.  He's wearing some inexpensive atheltic shoes.

Poor Fred the Nerd is now in Kinship due to the manifestation of his Weirdness Magnet.  He's not a combat orientated character, and it will remain to be seen if he becomes zombie chow or worse.  He does have unspent points ( I decided he was a 100 point character ) so once the Sheriff assigns Fred a weapon he can begin training.  His combat paralysis may very will be his doom however...

Fred the Nerd is the first GURPS 4E character I have made.  It was fun, and not that different than GURPS 3E. I'm a bit rusty so hopefully there are no mistakes.

4 comments:

  1. I dig that we are both doing the GURPS 4e thing. Let me know if you come across anyone else rocking it GURPS style.

    The write-up looks great. I like all the attention to detail with the Quirks and possessions. X-Men 101 in Near Mint? No wonder Fred only has $10 left!

    Good to see you posting again, brother!
    :)

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    Replies
    1. Yeah, I really enjoyed creating Fred the Nerd. In fact to speed character creation I'm working on a spreadsheet in OpenOffice to create GURPS characters with. All the math will be automated, at least most of it, once I learn all the spreadsheet stuff.

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  2. I dig it too and I'm glad you're carrying on, with the blog and with Kinship. As a setting it's a lot of fun, and it clearly has massive scope. Looking at the approach in this post, there could be lots of potential routes in, so people might be able to fit it into existing campaigns, especially if Kinship is more sprawling in time and space than we think. Maybe a series of pdfs or a zine like Christian's, or a pdf zine? Or maybe a proper print-on-demand book?

    Also have you thought about specific crossovers with other worlds, maybe collaborations with guys like Hereticwerks? That could help people find the project and take things in new directions too. We've also started to put together a list of portals - the Ends - which could definitely include this one, and might be more inpsiration for what's possible.

    There's also the possibility of running games through Kinship here, or somewhere else online, if you felt like trying it. G+ is popular and you could even set up a blog just for the game, even look at an open, dip-in, dip-out campaign.

    Here are a couple of examples of dedicated blogs:

    http://www.taoscampaign.blogspot.com/
    http://ancientastronautspbp.blogspot.com/

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