We’re heading to the stars for Character #9 (number nine, number nine) in the #CharacterCreationChallenge. And, by stars, I means Stars Without Number by Kevin Crawford.

Chance Collins grew up on Iora and was identified as having psychic powers early – the most dangerous sort: telepathy. He was forced into school to control his condition. What he didn’t learn was to control his temper. Having had one too many run ins with others at the school, he fled – well-trained, but unsanctioned.

Chance had to take to a wandering life.

Hiding his abilities, defending himself in the rough alleys of Iora City, and scrounging for handouts, he eventually caught a ride to Panomo Space Station. From there, either as a hired hand or a stowaway, he has bounced from station to station, planet to planet, and system to system; never quite finding what he’s looking for.

Somewhere out there, there’s got to be something to manage his anger without losing himself.

Isn’t there?

Stars Without Number (SWN)

Set in the distant future, SWN brings us the life of the freebooter – roaming the stars, facing alien populations, or even dealing with the local corruption brought about by human weakness.

Like all the Without Number properties, SWN has a pretty simple approach to character generation, though, like many RPGs, you need to spend time with the rules before you can make optimized choices.

In the spirit of exploration, like any true freebooter, I went with Crawford’s excellent random table generation process.

The dice were mostly favorable when creating stats. I did end up with a very low Charisma and I could have brought it up to a 14 using the rules provided but… I don’t know… I felt he needed a serious flaw to offset my pretty good rolls. Besides, it started giving me a picture of who this guy is – not well liked for some reason.

The universe agreed because a random roll for background gave me Vagabond. Of course someone that no one likes would find himself on the move quite frequently!

“Wait til you get to know me,” he says.

Looking at the stats, like my CWN character, this guy’s physically tough and pretty smart. I decided a restricted psychic/warrior Adventurer seemed to make sense and, with some worlds disfavoring psychics, adds to the reason why he has a bad way with people.

For psychic ability, doubling down on the outcast feel, I went with telepathy. Having someone who can read your mind just creeps people out. And using it on other people (without government authorization) is a serious crime.

Yeah, we’ve got a good handle on this guy now just by working through the chargen process.

It’s the slow build of stats, background, class, skills, and foci that I find works well for me and SWN delivers. Just like the other books, there’s a free version that covers everything you need for a fun campaign, and a paid version with some interesting options (i.e., alien, VI, and True AI Player Characters).