I’m kicking off Week 2 of the #CharacterCreationChallenge with a string of characters from the RPGs by Kevin Crawford. Today’s entry is from Cities Without Number (CWN) with its Cyberpunk world.

Faust was former military, having worked for one of the few nation-sponsored armies. Recruited for his intellectual prowess, he was nevertheless forced into more physical duties. Not exactly the strongest guy, he was forced to undergo chemical enhancements that, while successful at building his strength, totally nuked his immune system.

He eventually left the force, winding his way through odd jobs and seedy flop houses. When he saved a stranger in the streets during an unexpected bit of violence, he was pulled into the life of an operator.

His life is rough, and doesn’t match what he had hoped for when he first joined the military. While he holds a grudge against his former CO for putting him through ChemTek, he holds a bigger grudge against the mega corp that forced its way into his homeland, necessitating the entire thing.

He will get his revenge on them.

Cities Without Number

I admit that Cyberpunk isn’t my first choice for settings. When the first Blade Runner came out I was pretty meh about it. I have made an effort to better familiarize myself with some of the iconic works in the genre, and I think it could be fun for some short campaigns.

And that’s what the Without Numbers games do best – sandbox games that allow you to pick a mission/goal and go after it. With a strong likelihood of death or serious injury.

For character creation, at least for this exercise, I found the process reasonable simple. There’s a short chapter that covers all the steps and I found it easy to move through the book to find what I needed.

As with many of my other builds so far, I am letting the random tables be my guiding light. Rolling 3d6, in order, is so old school, but my dice served me well. With the Without Numbers properties, after rolling your stats, you can choose to upgrade one of them to a 14. I had a very low WIS, initially, and was really tempted to keep it but, as my character started developing in my head, I realized he’d be better served with the increase.

I also used the 3-roll rule to roll 1 Growth and 2 Skill options, with my Growth boosting my already respectable Strength. That’s what led me to his chemical enhancement. His good mental stats seemed core to he was – the Strength was an add-on.

Now, I won’t pretend my character is in any way optimized, but I am completely cool with that. I’d much rather design a concept and see how it plays in-world than try to create a super character.

This is probably a “me” thing (ok, it’s definitely a “me” thing), but I didn’t have any luck finding an example of the provided character sheet already filled out. Some RPGs give you a sample character or some pregens, and there was none that I could find for this. What I could find from various creators used their own custom sheets.

I only mentions this because, on the provided sheet, there are boxes that I am not exactly sure what to put there. It’s my sheet for my use, so I can certainly put what I want where I want but, if someone designed it in a certain way, I assume there’s a reason for things being where they are.

As I said, that’s a me thing. I’m funny like that.

Grab the free version of the rules to check them out. Or, support the creator and get some access to advanced character goodies with the inexpensive deluxe book.

I’m a big fan of Crawford’s work, having backed a couple of his Kickstarters and look forward to what else comes down the pike from him.