I’m taking a different approach to this year’s character creation challenge. When I first read about the challenge I did a quick count of the games on my shelves, thinking I wouldn’t have enough to fill 31 days. Turns out I had underestimated by a factor of two: I’ve got no fewer than 74 games sitting up there. So rather than a character for each game I play or have played, I’m running with a character for 31 games I’ve only read.

First up: Legendary Lives, second edition (1993). Truth be told I pulled this game first mostly because it was the unplayed one farthest left on the top shelf. It wasn’t until I started reading again that I realized it’s the perfect game for a character creation challenge, because the first 125 pages are all chargen. All of ’em. If you like options – lots & lots of options – & random tables – lots & lots of tables – you’ll love Legendary Lives.

This is one of a pair of games by Kathleen & Joe Williams that appeared at about the same time, both using the same character creation & task resolution systems. Like a number of other games of the era, Legendary Lives (LL) uses a resolution chart. This one’s called the Action Results Table (ART). The vertical axis is numerical values from 1 to 25; the horizontal is eight adjectives ranging from Catastrophic to Awesome. Unlike most other games, however, this one is entirely player-facing, which is to say that the players are the only ones who ever roll. Do you want to identify an herb? Cross-reference your Plants skill score with the adjective that describes how difficult the task is. Is a giant lizard attacking you? Cross-reference its Passable bite with your Defense skill number to get the roll you need to avoid being bitten.

We start by selecting a race for the character. Race in LL is a peculiar catchall of ancestry & literal specie, with 26 choices including Feral (you were raised by wild animals), Hob (a small ogre), Entomolian (beetle person), Sidhe, Viking, Elf, Nomad (Bedouin with the serial numbers filed off), & Forester (a fantasy Appalachian backwoodsman whose sample name list includes Joe Bob, Buttercup & Judd & no I’m not making that up). There’s also a table for randomly selecting a race, so let’s run with that. Rolling a 55 makes us a Goblin.

What you would usually see referred to as attributes are called skills in LL. Each race has a base value for each skill, to which you add the result of a d6 roll. Each race also has a single special ability, plus yet another chart that determines the character’s height, weight & background. Age is determined by applying a race-dependent modifier to (Intelligence + Knowledge).

Name: Bitegristle
Race: Goblin

Agility:11
Alertness: 13
Charm: 5
Cunning: 18
Dexterity: 15
Fate: 15
Intelligence: 10
Knowledge: 13
Mechanical: 11
Nature: 6
Stamina: 7
Strength: 9

Base Defense: 9

Specialties: Lie, Filch, Forgery, Search

Age: 22 years

Night Vision: Yes

Racial Ability: Darkness
Uses/Day: 3
Effects: Goblins can conjure a shadowy darkness in the local area that lasts for (Passable vs Cunning) x 2 minutes. During this time, all light sources inside the area are reduced to dull spots of red that give off no illumination, and light sources outside the area have no effect on the darkness. The goblin gets +1 column if creating a smaller area of darkness, say a sphere with a radius of five feet (such a sphere can be created anywhere within the local area).

Normally, the shadowy darkness is equivalent to a moonlit night, so it can be penetrated by night vision and even those with normal vision are not completely blinded by its darkness. By taking a -1 column penalty on his casting roll, a goblin can create complete darkness which is as black as pitch. Light sources inside the darkness are totally obliterated for the duration of the darkness, and only the goblin who created the darkness can see within it.

Height: Very Short
Weight: Average
Background: Bandit ($110, Free 7, Specialties: Sword, Ride)

What would be skills in other games are called Specialties in LL. It’s a bit like being trained/untrained in a skill in an F20 game: if you have a Specialty you get to use the full value of its base skill when making a roll on the ART, otherwise you get half the base skill rounded down. The exception to that rule is magical specialties, which can’t be attempted untrained.

Now we select a type, the LL equivalent of a class. Once again we’re spoiled for choice, as there are 23 non-magic-using types & 15 magic-using types. Each requires at least two attributes – sorry, skills – of 11+, but thanks to the base values for each race you’ll always have at least a couple of choices open to you. Magic-using types also require a Fate of 13+. Our goblin friend, for instance, meets the requirements for a good half-dozen mundane types (Archer, Rogue, Sage, Spy, & others) as well as Psychic, Sorcerer & Spiritualist. Who in their right mind could say no to a goblin spiritualist? Not me, anyway.

Side note, at this point for a Spiritualist we’re supposed to create the skeleton of yet another character who’s the PC’s ghostly guide (à la Amy Allan & her spirit guides) but this has already gone on a while, we’ve got much (much) farther to go yet, & there are only 31 days in this month. So let’s take the spirit guide as read & push on.

Choice of type brings a raft of additional specialties as well as determining the character’s Devotion, a measure of their religious faith.

Specialities: Arcane Lore, Intuition, Sincerity, Theology, Divination, Summon, Enchant, Air Mastery
Devotion: 7
Miracles/Day: 2

Religion plays a major part in the game, so we roll on yes, another table to determine which deity in the goblin pantheon our character most reveres. A 2 means Bitegristle’s patron is King Gower, a deified goblin hero. A Devotion of 7 means Bitegristle is still at the level of Postulant. Everyone has a past history with their religion, which means a roll on the Religious Lifeline table.

41: Parents are of a radically different faith

Which means what, exactly? Who changed religions? Are they estranged from one another because of the change? Is this recent or ancient history? That’s all up to us.

We’re all the way to chapter five of the rulebook now. We’ve also hit the percentile table motherlode: everything from your hair color to personality traits, then five rolls on the Lifeline table to determine your back story. Ice that wrist for a few minutes & then it’s back to rolling.

Eye Color: Dark brown
Hair Color: Light brown
Hair Style: Shaved
Values: Magic
Idolizes: a war hero
Treasures: a weapon
Key Feature: Strong accent
Personality Traits: Grim, Gullible

The Lifeline tells us that Bitegristle:

• Just got back together with a LOVER;
• … who dated the goblin’s sibling;
• Has a FRIEND with common interests;
• … & an ENEMY who tried to kill them;
• Is associated with a military group.

Naturally there are random Lover, Friend, & Enemy subtables (among many, many others connected to lifeline events). These tell us that the Lover in the first instance was someone Bitegristle argued with constantly, they have a happy relationship with the second Lover, the Friend is a slave, & the Enemy is someone who stole from them.

We’re almost finished now. If any of the type specialties had duplicated a racial specialty, the duplicate would count as a “free specialty”, allowing us to choose anything that looked interesting regardless of what race or type it’s usually associated with. Bitegristle doesn’t have any free specialties, so it’s on to equipment.

Our hero isn’t flush with cash – only 110 bronze pieces, referred to in the rules with a $ for simplicity – so let’s spend $20 on a common tunic & sandals, $20 for a short sword (weapons are grouped by specialty & Sword is our only combat-related one!), $6 for a mess kit & water skin, $25 for a lantern & oil, & $30 for a studded skullcap. (Body parts each have their own defense value & the head is the most vulnerable; what with our friend’s lackluster base defense a good brain bucket is in order.) That’s $101 spent, leaving 10 bronze for expenses.

Finished! So what do we know about Bitegristle the goblin?

• Born into a family of condottiere, they learned the trade of brigandage at their parents’ knees
• worshiping the military legacy of ancient goblin war heroes
• & cherishing weapons that have spilled the blood of generations of victims
• until they started to hear the voice of a ghostly companion who made them realize they had the ability not just to communicate with the dead but to call on spirits to animate objects, tell the future, cause winds & even bring other living beings from remote locations
• which they immediately took at face value because, being grim & gullible, Bitegristle was ready to believe the gloomy promptings of a being claiming to be a spirit advisor without question. Good thing they were telling the truth! (They were, right? I mean … it couldn’t just be something else claiming to be a ghost, right?)
• Bitegristle’s embrace of fantasy theosophy caused a rift with the rest of the family; now somewhat estranged, Bitegristle has set out to find a new path in life, one involving a mix of armed robbery & mediumship.
• Good luck with that.

The authors have made the rules for Legendary Lives available for free here: http://www.hauntedattic.org/legendarylives.html. You can also find its sister game Lost Souls (imagine a comedy version of Wraith & you won’t be far off) on the same site: http://www.hauntedattic.org/lostsouls.html. You can see a completed character sheet version of Bitegristle here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-Im3NcTYRpiR275zF47vRnvNRRmU1RVr/view?usp=sharing.