Peking Space Opera Blues

Like any other fictional character, a PSOB character has a name, an appearance, a history, friends, enemies, goals, and dreams. All these are created by the character's player and the GM, to describe the player's conception of the character as she exists in the GM's world. Like other RPG characters, she will also have some attributes, primarily numeric in nature, which describe what she can do: how accurately she can fire a blaster, how well she can repair a broken hyperdrive, how fast she can run, how well she can take a punch. In PSOB, there are two sorts of attributes: skills and schticks.

Quick Character Generation

To get started playing right away, a player need only choose whichever one of the following space opera archetypes most clostly fits his conception and assign the last few skill points and choose the last schtick or two to bring the character in line with his conception of this particular smuggler or space marine.

By default, all PSOB characters are human. Players wishing to play a non-human character should refer to the Detailed Character Generation section.

Archetypes

Skills

Skills

Hopefully, these skills will cover most everything characters attempt during the course of a PSOB game. If something that is really not covered by the skills here comes up repeatedly, the GM may wish to create a new skill, but should try to find an existing skill that covers the action first.

Agility

Climbing, swinging from chandeliers, other nonstandard movement

Alertness

Noticing trouble before it notices you

Business

Knowing what things are worth, buying them for less, selling them for more

Charm

Getting people to like you and do you favors

Contacts/______

Friends and acquaintances among a certain sector of society

Deceit

Lying, cheating, bribery, disguise

Detective

Finding clues and knowing what they mean

Fixit

Repairing or sabotaging any mechanical device, jury-rigging equipment

Galaxywise

Knowledge of various planets, species, customs, etc

Gunnery

Using any mounted weapon, including spacecraft weaponry

Guns

Using any hand-held energy or projectile weapon

Info/______

Knowledge of a subject or profession of your choice

Intimidate

Terrifying people into submission,or at least into flight

Leadership

Winning people to your cause and rallying them after the defeat

Martial Arts

Fighting bare-handed, with melee weapons, or with thrown weapons

Pilot

Driving groundcars, flying spacecraft, wearing flight packs

Psionics

Using psionic powers to maximum effect

Sleight of Hand

Picking pockets, switching boxes of money for empty boxes, party tricks

Sneak

Going places without being spotted

Survival

Getting along without restaurants and hotels, and other low-tech skills

Systems

Operating computers, sensors, navcomps, shields, etc

Schticks

Psionics

Psionic Schticks

Telepathy

Mind Control

Mental Illusions

Blindness

Shapeshift

Imaginary Friend

Mean Imaginary Friend

Telekinesis

Invisible Thumbs

Invisible Fingers

Strength of the Mind

Wings of the Mind

The Blade of the Mind

Armor of the Mind

Body Control

Clairvoyance

Psionic Flaws

Advanced Character Generation

Archtype Modification

Point-based Character Generation

By default, all characters have Alertness, Climb, Galaxywise, Guns, Martial Arts, and Sneak at 3. They also have one of Pilot or Survival at 3, depending on how primitive their home planet is, one of Charm, Deceit, or Intimidation at 3, depending on their personality, and Contacts at 3 among whatever sort of person they have contacts among (generally members of the same profession, or possibly species). Alien characters may reduce any of these by 3 to gain one schtick per skill reduced, or may, with the GM's approval, transfer the points among skills.

Figured Attributes

Characters have two attributes that are calculated from their skills but may be modified by schticks:

Initiative

A character's Initiative rating is equal to the highest of her skills. Initiative is used to decide who acts first in combat time.

Dodge

A character's Dodge rating is equal to the highest of her Agility, Alertness, Guns, Martial Arts, or Psionics skills. A character's Dodge rating is the base Difficulty of other characters attacking her.

They also have a few attributes that are modified from the base values only by schticks:

Base Damage

The base from which damage using muscle-powered weapons is calculated is normally 0.

Unarmed Damage

The damage bonus of a bare-handed attack is normally +0 above the Base Damage.

Running Movement

Characters can normally run 20 meters in a combat round (3 seconds), leap 2 meters from a standing start (run/10), or leap 5 meters from a running start (run/4).

Other Movement

Normal characters can swim 5 meters in a combat round, and cannot glide or fly at all.

Alien Characters

Schticks

A schtick is some useful thing that a character is or can do that isn't a skill. Some schticks give bonuses to skills in certain situations, or increase figured attributes; others are completely orthogonal to skills. The names given here should not be taken as overly significant: if a player wants his character to be able to breathe underwater by absorbing oxygen through its skin, he should take the Gills schtick and not worry about the name. If he wants to write it as "Oxygen-permeable Skin" on his character sheet, that's fine. It's what the schtick does that's important, not the special effect.

Many schticks can be taken multiple times, with each additional schtick giving some additional benefit beyond the first. Following the name of each schtick is the number of times it can be taken.

Physical Schticks

These schticks reflect some advantage that the character's body gives her. Many of them are only appropriate for non-human characters, but humans who have been altered or are just exceptional in some way could have one or two physical schticks.