Copilot for Character Creation

 What the hell, I decided to see if I could get Microsoft Edge to do the work of creating characters for my different games. Here is my first attempt.

roll-up a mercenaries, spies, and private eyes character who is a Portuguese mercenary working as a bouncer in Lisbon Portugal.

Sure thing! Let's create a character for "Mercenaries, Spies, and Private Eyes" who is a Portuguese mercenary working as a bouncer in Lisbon, Portugal. 

Character: João "The Shield" Silva

Background: João Silva, known as "The Shield" in the underground circles, is a seasoned mercenary with a storied past. Born and raised in Lisbon, João grew up in the rough neighborhoods where he learned to fight and survive. After serving in the Portuguese military, he transitioned into mercenary work, taking on various assignments across Europe and Africa. Now, he works as a bouncer at a popular nightclub in Lisbon, using his skills to keep the peace and protect the establishment.

Attributes:

• Strength (ST): 15

• Intelligence (IQ): 12

• Luck (LK): 10

• Constitution (CON): 14

• Dexterity (DEX): 13

• Charisma (CHR): 11

• Speed (SP): 12

Skills:

• Hand-to-Hand Combat (HTH): 3

• Firearms (Pistol): 2

• Observation: 2

• Streetwise: 3

• Intimidation: 4

• First Aid: 1

• Driving: 1

• Languages: Portuguese (native), English (fluent), Spanish (conversational)

Equipment:

• Weapon: Glock 17 (Pistol)

• Armor: Kevlar Vest

• Gear: Tactical flashlight, handcuffs, first aid kit, radio

Personality: João is tough and no-nonsense, with a strong sense of duty and loyalty. He is fiercely protective of those he cares about and has a soft spot for the underdog. Despite his rough exterior, he is known for his fairness and integrity.

Appearance: João is a tall, muscular man with a rugged appearance. He has short, dark hair, a neatly trimmed beard, and piercing blue eyes. He often wears a black leather jacket and jeans, blending in with the nightclub's clientele while remaining ready for action.

Backstory: João's military career was marked by bravery and skill, earning him several commendations. However, the horrors of war left him disillusioned, leading him to leave the military and seek a new path. His mercenary work took him to conflict zones where he honed his combat skills and developed a network of contacts. Now, as a bouncer, he uses his experience to maintain order and protect the club's patrons from trouble.

I hope you enjoy playing as João "The Shield" Silva in your game! If you need any more details or adjustments, feel free to ask.

SPI's Wellington's Victory Actual Play - with someone else!

 I forget the movie, but the Lead asks the crowd "How many of you have had sex?" After several raise their hands, the Lead clarifies, "Other than with yourselves!" What hands were raised now descend.

I'm reminded of this scene anytime I talk about playing wargames. Ask me if I play, arm shoots straight up with second-hand support and bouncing in my seat up and down. Let the other shoe drop, though, and my hand will meekly come down. Yes, most of my wargaming is a solo enterprise. I was in the Bonnie Brae (now defunct) game store one day buying GMT's The Battle for North Africa and the clerk comes up to me to ask whether I plan on playing the game or was I just a "collector"? Ouch dude, thanks for reminding me I have no friends. I don't want to be a game "collector", but only playing solo games with Vassal (before it was set up the game one afternoon and have it taken down four hours later, un-played, because there is no room for it to stay up) makes my physical copies of some great games just that. A collection. I prefer to be a player of games, not a collector. 

But the amount of time I have been able to play with someone else any of these table-top board wargames tells me if it was not for the collectors I would not, as a player, have an industry to shop. 

And desperately groping for a physical gaming connection did get me to post some solo play online. Which led to a fine gaming enthusiast reaching out to me suggesting a play of SPI's monster wargame Wellington's Victory. 

You could not pick a game I am more willing to play than Wellington's Victory. We agreed to use Tabletop Simulator for the gaming software, and Steam for the gaming platform. I have never used TTS before, but it is a better choice for live face-to-face play than Vassal. This is because the software goes out of its way to simulate leaning over an actual game board, shuffling pieces, and rolling die. 

We are playing RAW, the Historical Scenario, and have played a total of 13 turns. As the French I decided to implement an En Echelon attack, beginning with a historical opening assault on the Chateaux Hougomont. To my surprise, my opponent backed off of this "hardpoint" and has left my divisions of the II Corp free to isolate and surround the farmhouse. 

In the center I push forward two divisions from D'elorn's I Corp and as much artillery as I can muster and begin my attack on La Hay Sant-whatever. Holding this farmhouse in the center and free-reign over Hougomont I should be able to push the Allied forces off the top of the ridge.

Here is a link to a great review of this game by a blogger, really worth the read. Maps & Counters

Marvel FASERIP to DC Heroes MEGS Conversion Calculator

My superhero game of choice is Mayfair's DC Heroes ttrpg, an out-of-print game from the Eighties, specifically the 3rd edition. The game system is commonly known as MEGS, Mayfair Exponential Game System. This choice was made for the simple reason it works best for me the way I like to run a game of supers. And this conclusion was reached after playing with Champions, Prowlers & Paragons, The Hero Instant, V&V, GURPS, Icons, Mutants & Masterminds, Supergame, and some others fairly niche and obscure. So, I feel solid with my choice, and have been running a satisfying game for several years online.

But there is only so much printed adventure material available stat'ed-up for the system. This has made for me to find ways to do conversions of other game systems into MEGS terms. 

The simplest conversion method is to plug in the values I believe the character or gadget, vehicle, etc. should have. This is made easy with MEGS, writing these characters and features up takes no time. But many times, I actually want to see how my players stack up against known superhero properties, and of course, how they stack up against each other. Fortunately, we have both DC and Marvel properties written-up for ttrpg's and this gives us all baseline data to know how players are going to do against She Hulk, Wonder Woman, Black Widow, Captain Marvel, Superman, etc. There is even a conversion guide for Marvel Super Heroes/DC Heroes and back again already written. 

Problem is, I cannot make sense of the conversion guide found at the most excellent Classic Marvel Forever site (for everything related to the MarvelSuper Heroes Roleplaying Game published by TSR from 1984 to the early 1990's), so I have come up with my own. I am not saying the guides prepared by John Stafford are flawed in any way. They appear to be comprehensive and finely grained... but damned if I can see the conversion. And I am not saying I am an expert on the FASERIP system. I've played a few sessions of TSR's game, and I get it just fine, but I run games of MEGS.

Therefore, this conversion calculator is designed to work with the way I like to prep for live play. Quickly! I'm not concerned with the calculator being necessarily backward compatible, either. That is, converting MEGS characters into FASERIP characters. It is designed simply for the purpose of quickly converting FASERIP stats over to MEGS stats. To reduce it even a step more, the conversion calculator is to get at a Marvel character I want to crib for a villain in my current campaign and butter up that NPC biscuit fast!

Marvel Superheroes uses descriptive names for attribute values as opposed to numerical values. Oh, the numerical values are there. Just buried behind a thin patina of (useful) narrative flair. These terms are, from weakest to strongest; Shift 0, Feeble, Poor, Typical, Good, Excellent, Remarkable, Incredible, Amazing, Monstrous, Unearthly, Shift X, Shift Y, Shift Z, Class 1000, Class 3000, and "Beyond". I'm simply converting these named values into AP (Attribute Point) equivalents.

 0 AP = Shift 0

 1 AP = Feeble

 2 AP = Poor

 3 AP = Typical (My baseline assumption)

 4 AP = (10) Good

 5 AP = Excellent

 6 AP = Remarkable

 7 AP = Incredible

 8 AP = Amazing

 9 AP = Monstrous

10 AP = (100) Unearthly

11 AP = Shift X

12 AP = Shift Y

13 AP = Shift Z

14 AP = Class 1000

15 AP = Class 3000

16 AP = Class 5000

17 AP = Beyond

If I were to get cute I would find places to "jump" an AP to more closely the exponential curve of awesomeness which these fictitious numbers represent. For example. 

-5 AP = Shift 0

-1 AP = Feeble

 1 AP = Poor

 3 AP = Typical (My baseline assumption)

 4 AP = Good

 5 AP = Excellent

 6 AP = Remarkable

 7 AP = Incredible

 8 AP = Amazing

 9 AP = Monstrous

10 AP = Unearthly

12 AP = Shift X

14 AP = Shift Y

16 AP = Shift Z

20 AP = Class 1000

25 AP = Class 3000

35 AP = Class 5000

50 AP = Beyond

Now to transpose these "results" into MEGS Attributes and Powers and such. For me it is most important to have a correlation with the MEGS standard attribute matrix, how the attributes are not only valued, but whether they are rooted in Physical, Mental, or Magical class of attribute. If I can't fill up the attribute matrix then I cannot have any conversion. 

FASERIP stands for the list of attributes used by Marvel Superhero characters. These seven attributes are Fighting, Agility, Strength, Endurance, Reason, Intuition, and Psyche. This does leave me two attributes shy of MEGS 9-attribute spread, but it is not unusual for different systems to have a different number of "attributes" for defining a character in game terms. I will work with what I have first.

Fighting = Martial Arts Skill. Yes, this does give any converted Marvel character to have Martial Arts skill in a DC game, but having characters with exceptional fighting skills, no matter how they are defined or acquired, is not a hard proposition to swallow in a superhero game. It does mean I now have to hand-wave three MEGS attributes, not two.

Agility = Dexterity. 

Strength = Strength.

Endurance = Body.

Reason = Intelligence.

Intuition = Influence.

Psyche = Mind.

Nothing too complicated here. The relations are rather organic and reasonable. For an example let us now look at She Hulk, a fantastic Marvel superhero, and write her up as a DC Heroes character!

Her Fighting of Remarkable gives her Martial Arts at 6 AP. Agility of Excellent gives a DEX of 5 AP. Strength of Unearthly offers a power level of 10 AP. The last of the three physical attributes is Body, and Endurance is are obvious corollary. 8 AP for Body. 

But FASERIP does have numbers for these words. I put them in () above so their progression can be easily seen. Should this be considered when making these kinds of conversions? If Good has a standard ranking number of 10, what are the APs for a ranking number of 100, which is Unearthly. Is 10 APs ten-times greater than 4 APs? Enough to matter? 5 APs is twice, 6 APs is three times, 7 APs are four times greater....7x greater. By my scale Unearthly is only 7x greater than Good, not 10x. That is a problem. Let us consider a solution... 

  

Castle Xyntillan and the World of Xoth

 Out of sheer frustration I tapped my brother in Virginia to play Gabor Luxe's fantastic funhouse dungeon Castle Xyntillan. He was under insufferable heat and humidity so was keeping inside. This gave him the time to jump in! This was completely a nostalgia-grab back into the past when we would play B/X with a bunch of first level characters and the Isle of Dread or some such thing. A summer afternoon with the afternoon free to play DnD. Good times.

He "rolled" up 4 first level characters and spent some time briefly in the local township, a crap-hole called... whatever. They approached the castle in daylight and went right for the opening at the west side into the rose and vegetable gardens. There they were accosted by a troop of 8 bandits and their leader, one of the undead Malevelloooo, something. Neither one of us could pronounce the Hungarian script so we just called them Mulleaveys. So nine against four. Not good odds, especially because the bandits were hiding behind the rubble.

But there was nothing for it. He had just spent an hour rolling up characters so it was time to get into the action. It was a two-on-two with the missile weapons. Crossbows against short bows. Not being surprised and winning the initiative, Mike began what was a long string of high numbers, and the bandits rolling a string of low numbers. The bowmen were taken down in the first exchange! Then it was nothing but bloody melee, and even though the bandits continued to roll garbage, three of the PCs were dead and five of the bandits. This left 3 with the leader staying in the rear looking for a handy bow. Renee' the Thief took this opportunity to run back to town. I took an hour break while he rolled up 5 new 1st level characters.

And the other news I have is Book 3 Worlds of Adventure for Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery is up at DriveThru. Or it should be, it is only available in PDF right now. The POD files need to get loaded and approved. But it does close the loop on USR Sword & Sorcery, for me. There is one or two more adventures to write for the game, but for what it is worth the game and myself have rung what we can out of each other and it is time to move on!

What I am working on now is Space Acid, my FGU Space Opera retro-clone, and MEGS the MEGS retro-clone. Two big works with little small dungeons in between to snap me out of a narrow view and redundant ways of thinking. My online games as well as what I am writing.

And so back to Xyntillan, he rolled up 4 fighters and a cleric. With Renee' at the head of the troop, they assaulted the castle again. This time they went through the Great Entrance which lead into the Vestibule. They interacted with the Mulleavey paintings in the hallway and the cleric almost had his head devoured by the hat in the cloakroom. 

They continued to poke around looking for something of value when the triggered the butler to show up. His ghostly form wanted to know why they were breaking down the bricks walling off a door in the Clerk's Office? He had not heard there was any construction scheduled to start today. He insisted they cease at once. Grubb, a Fighter, had collected much of the dried parchment filled with mad scribblings and showed James the Butler the party's "authorization" for work to be done. This satisfied the butler immensely, so when the PCs asked where they could heal up James led them to the Inner Courtyard and pointed out where to enter the Grand Bath. The cleric bathed in the pool hoping to be healed. Instead, they triggered the badness, failed the save, and turned into a pillar of salt. Dead. We are up to 4 corpses now in two hours of play. He hastily left the bath, Grubb did take another stab at the pool and became immune to poison for a week. Returning to the vestibule again and again, my brother reconnoitered the immediate hallways surrounding. When Ben the Fighter walked into the Glittering Cloud and started having his blood sucked out of him he called it quits for the day. 

We will pick up again tomorrow as he returns to town, makes some meager gold, and figure out his next step.

And Book 3 Deluxe USR Sword & Sorcery is out on PDF at Drivethru!