Character 11 - The Babylon Project

 The Babylon Project: The Roleplaying Game based on Babylon 5: The Warner Bros. Television Series Created by J. Michael Straczynski is, well, the Babylon 5 RPG. I'm just gonna shorten that ridiculously long title to "The Babylon Project" for this character creation challenge entry. Based on my absolute favorite SciFi tv series, the game is an absolute dinosaur produced by Chameleon Eclectic back in 1997 the system absolutely shows its age. Let's get to it then, shall we?

Character Creation

"Creating a character for The Babylon Project is not a difficult process" the book tells us before beginning a 16 page, two column set of instructions on creating a character for The Babylon Project, "but it does take a little time". Well. Thanks for that heads up.

Step 1 - Character Concept and Basic History

The book is set in the year 2259 in the universe of Babylon 5. This is before the Narn-Centauri war and basically any of the events in the series. So all of the "younger races" are open to play (sorry, no Vorlon PCs) and it's probably helpful if you're familiar with the TV show going in. If you aren't, I recommend it! Go on, enjoy the three great seasons, plus the other two, I'll wait!

Right, wasn't that great? Welcome back! So I'll go ahead and decide that I would like to play an ISN (Interstellar News) Investigative Journalist. Being a member of the media in a dynamic setting is always good for finding adventure seeds and I haven't made a media character yet so this seems like a good fit. Oop, wait, "the initial concept always includes the character's race" the book informs me, so I'll need to modify that to Human ISN Investigative Journalist. Which should have been implicit, given that ISN is a human organization, but whatever. HUMAN ISN Investigative Journalist it is.

Glad we got that out of the way! The next step is the archetype, "a short descriptor that conveys a bit about the impression the character makes on others." Babylon Project...that is not what an archetype is. For any definition of the term "archetype". But ok whatever. First I'm gonna pick a name and, based on Babylon 5's naming conventions, I'm gonna pick Barry Pomeroy. Barry Pomeroy is a charismatic, happy-go-lucky, good looking guy in his mid-20s. He can fit comfortably into most groups he encounters and asks questions in a way that lets others know he's truly interested in what they're saying. He usually dresses professionally and greets others with a smile.

Finally a brief character history is recommended. Barry was born on Mars in the mid 2230s. He graduated from Mars University (Go Barsoomers!) with a journalism degree and was quickly hired on by a local network. After an award winning story on the Martian separatist movement, ISN bought out his contract and assigned him a roving reporter beat that takes him everywhere from Earth to Proxima III and back. He was even once granted an interview with the Gaim queen!

Step 2 - Attributes

The Babylon Project has a shocking twelve attributes (or thirteen in the case of telepaths who have the Psionics attribute) that are grouped into three categories:

Cultural Attributes

Charm - A measure of a character's innate likableness

Finesse - The overall rating of a character's ability to manipulate others of their own race

Presence - Force of personality and first impressions

Xenorelation - Like Finesse but for aliens

Mental Attributes

Intelligence - How smart you are

Insight - How quick you can figure out how things work, intuition and common sense

Wits - The ability to think on ones feet

Perception - How well you notice things and your general awareness of your surroundings

Psionics - The rare ability to directly interact with the minds of others

Physical Attributes

Strength - A measure of a character's brute force

Agility - The quickness and flexibility of a character
Endurance - The "lasting power" of a character

Coordination - A character's fine motor skills and hand-eye coordination

These Attributes are ranked on a 1 to 9 scale with 1 being the worst and 9 being the best. Rather than point buy or random generation, the book presents a "Typical Attributes Values" table for each species and tells you to adjust them as you see fit by any amount between -2 and +2 but to keep in mind that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction so if you want your character to have a Strength Attribute that's 2 higher than the average for their species you'll need to lower another attribute by an equal amount. So let's check out Human averages

Charm 6

Finesse 6

Presence 4

Xenorelation 5

Intelligence 5

Insight 5

Wits 4

Perception 4

Strength 4

Agility 5

Endurance 4

Coordination 5

Humans, on average, are very likable and manipulative among their own kind and pretty average in most other regards. That's cool, but we've already established that Barry is a charmer who knows how to talk to other species. So let's raise Charm and Xenorelations by +2 each and Finesse by +1. We can balance that by lowering Strength and Agility by -2 each and Coordination by -1. Barry was raised in the lower gravity of Mars and when he's at home or in other lower gravity worlds he's fine, but compared to someone born on Earth, in a full G environment, he's kinda wimpy. So that leaves us with the following Attributes:

Charm 8

Finesse 7

Presence 4

Xenorelation 7

Intelligence 5

Insight 5

Wits 4

Perception 4

Strength 2

Agility 3

Endurance 4

Coordination 4

Barry is not gonna do great in a physical confrontation, but that's ok. He can probably talk his way out of most of those. After we've recorded our Attributes, we calculate three Derived Values: Toughness (Strength+Endurance-9)/2, Initiative (average Agility and Wits, round down because this is the 1990s game design), and Resolve (average Insight and Intelligence, likewise rounded down). Barry have a Toughness of  -1, Initiative of 3 and Resolve of 5.

Step 3 - Detailed History

The book then goes over, at great length, a long series of questions that I will not be answering here about your characters' history. If I were actually playing this game I would do this part. But I'm not so I won't. But for real, the book devotes four full 8.5" x 11" pages, double column, single space text to these questions. Deep questions like "Where does your character live? Any roommates?" and "What does your character do for a living?" "Is he or she good at it?" Because this is the 1990s, they didn't yet know about the singular they. Or the authors had space to fill. Your guess is as good as mine.

Step 4 - Learned Skills

So looking back over that Detailed History we did, you'll note that we wrote down a number of skills. The book says we should pick the one at which your character most excels and write the name in the space marked "Primary Skill" on the worksheet. At Character creation that skill begins at a 4 (out of a possible max of 5, though you can't start with any skill higher than a 4 at character creation) and has two Specialties to represent the areas within it at which your character is especially good. We should write those down as well.

Let's stop here for a moment and go over some things. At no point thus far has the book given us a list of skills. There is one later in the book, about 20 pages further along, but so far? Nothing. So let's say we were making a character who was a Journalist of some sort. Now, you might think their Primary Skill should be "Journalism" but that doesn't exist in this system. Well, okay then, maybe something to help them talk to others like "Charm" or "Smooth Talk" or "Persuade" or "Literally Any Goddamn Interpersonal Skill". But no, those skills also do not exist. Not that you'd know it at this point in reading. This book is not exceptionally designed is the idea I am trying to get across here. Anyway, back to Barry.

What Primary Skill should Barry have? Well, unlike the book, I'll go ahead and list out in a simple, easy to read format, the list of Skills he can choose from!

Acrobatics

Acting

Acumen

Anthropology

Athletics

Art

Biology

Business

Combat, Armed

Combat, Martial Arts

Combat, Ranged

Combat, Unarmed

Cooking

Dancing

Diplomacy

Driving

Engineering, Aerospace

Engineering, Chemical

Engineering, Civil

Engineering, Electrical

Engineering, Mechanical

Gambling

Geography

Geology

Hiding

History

Instruction

Investigation

Language

Law

Mathematics

Medical, Biotech

Medical, Diagnostic

Medical, EMT

Medical, Pharmaceutical

Medical, Psychiatry

Medical, Surgery

Metalworking

Music

Navigation, Aerospatial

Navigation, Planetary

Philosophy

Physics

Piloting

Religion

Savvy

Sculpture

Shiphandling

Sleight-of-Hand

Software Design

Survival

Tactics, Troop

Tactics, Space Combat

Telepathy

Tracking

Weapons Systems

Writing

It says a LOT about your game when you have 4 combat skills, 5 engineering skills and 6 medical skills but lump all interpersonal skills into "Diplomacy" and "Acumen". Anyway, Barry's Primary Skill is going to be Diplomacy with specialties in Inquiry and Persuasion. Other specialty options that I didn't pick include Dulcification and Ingratiation and I challenge any one of you to give me a difference between those two.

With that out of the way we now choose three more skills as secondary skills, each at rank 3 with 2 specialties. Barry is going to choose Acumen with the specialties Emotion and Veracity, Investigation with the specialties Research and Case Management, and Savvy with the specialties Human Politics and Minbari Worker Caste.

Finally we have twelve points to distribute among any number of tertiary skills we want, ranked 1-3 as we want to spend the points. Each tertiary skill also gets one Specialty. Barry is going to take Writing 3 (Journalism), Philosophy 3 (Ethics), Cooking 2 (Tex-Mars), Combat, Unarmed 2 (Dodge), and Medical, EMT (Human) 2. 

Step 5 - Characteristics

Characteristics are kinda like merits and flaws, sometimes both at once. Your character gets at least three and no more than seven. Again, there's a whole section of them in about 20 pages but no simple list. I'm not going to list them but know that there are the usual things like "Addicted" and "Assets" because even in the future there's people with alcohol problems and people with a ton of cash.

Barry is neither of those things (at least not at character creation, who knows what the future holds for our reporter?) but he will be taking Attractive, Curious and Dedicated as his three Characteristics. This is because he is an attractive guy (he's a reporter on a newsfeed, they don't hire unattractive types) with a desire to hunt down the truth of things and a dedication to bringing that truth to his viewers.

And that's it, really. One The Babylon Project: The Roleplaying Game Based on Babylon 5: The Warner Bros. Television Series Created by J. Michael Straczynski character created. Hope he has fun out there reporting on the Narn-Centauri relations. I have high hopes for those two!