Wizards ‘n Zombies Part 2

This week’s comic is a continuation of the story begun here in last week’s comic. We are playing Fantasy Flight Games’ ‘End of the World’ RPG series. As I alluded to in last week’s blog post, the USP of this RPG is that the character you play is based on yourself. In fact, it’s more than just ‘based on’. The character you play is yourself.

You can find a complete (and very interesting) article on character creation here – but, briefly; there are three categories: physical, mental, and social. Each of these categories has two different stats: physical, for example, has dexterity and vitality. Working from a limited number of points, you assign values to each of these stats. Then, the group you are playing with votes on whether to adjust these, i.e. they decide that no, you aren’t an Olympic level athlete and reduce your vitality to a reasonable number.

Even more fun is then introducing a unique characteristic in each of the three categories. What this will be is up to you. Short-sighted, grumpy, tire easily, great sense of direction, martial arts.

The only thing that then remains to decide is what gear or equipment all of your characters have. As the game begins with everyone sitting around a table at their current location, your items are easy: what is currently in your pockets?

Of course, this kind of character creation is absolutely not going to be for everyone. Typically, roleplaying is about creating a character from imagination. It’s about playing a role, after all, and this is exactly the opposite of that. It’s an exciting, funny, and fun prospect for me, but I understand it won’t be everyone’s cup of tea.

The system does allow you to just create a character from your imagination if you choose, but if you want to do that, there are probably 100s of other RPGs to better suit your taste. In the coming years, I hope to explore more than a few of those RPGs myself.