This section is for the Octas/cyber variant of the Octas game. The character creation process is quite similar for all genre variants, the main differences being that some of the names of things get changed to thematically suitable terms.
NOTICE: this is work-in-progress. I am pretty happy with it, but it still needs to go through the play-testing wringer, so things might still need adjusting.
Octas/cyber, like most Table-Top RPGs, involves role-playing a character. This character has a number of attributes that differentiate them from other characters, just like real-life people.
As a role-play-oriented game, Octas/cyber tends to focus on giving the player a lot of choice in what sort of character they generate, but it is important to remember that interesting characters tend to be flawed. It is those flaws that add variety to the game and make it more than a kill-opponent-collect-money grind! Over-powered and faultless characters tend to get boring (and annoying) rather quickly.
Octas/cyber characters generally start out as relatively 'normal' people, with starting scores that are somewhat low. This allows a lot of room for improvement of your character as game-play progresses, which is important for a skills-based TTRPG system.
More experienced players may, by group consensus, start their characters in a more 'skilled' (and hence more powerful) state. Their own game-play experience is expected to be enough for them to work out a suitable balance for their own story-telling needs. Just remember that while powerful characters can be a lot of fun in their own right, building up relatively powerless ones can often be more rewarding.
It is recommended that you read (or at least skim) through the entire character-creation process described below once before you set pencil to paper as some things mentioned later may effect things that you choose earlier (though nothing critical, and you are using a pencil for a reason!)
And, yes, use a soft carbon pencil: B4 or softer is recommended (the higher the number after the 'B', the softer it is), and a soft eraser. Many of the things you write down will need to be updated as the game progresses and your character grows. .... Some of the boxes for recording information are larger than you may think you need. This is because that information is going to be getting erased and re-written a lot, so you are being given extra room to move about in before your character sheet's paper starts to wear through and you have to transfer your stats to a fresh sheet!
Octas is designed for play with two 8-sided dice (numbered 0-7) and the rules were originally intended to be played in numeric base-8. This isn't for everyone (anyone?) so all tables and rules are written with numbers in both base-8 and base-10.
Where it might be ambiguous, base-8 numbers are proceeded by a lower-case 'o' for 'octal' and base-10 by a lower-case 'd' for 'decimal'.
The dice, however are in octal. To convert D77 rolls to base-10, multiply the high dice by eight and add the low dice (yep, it's that easy!). This will give you a result in the range of 0-63d.
On to generating your character.... You will need a copy of the main character sheet, two 8-sided dice, and the above-mentioned B4-or-softer pencil.
Your character's handle is the name by which they are generally known. It may be a normal name, but usually will be some kind of 'net-lingo' one.
You can change your character's handle at any time, but it should be role-played as if your character is doing so within the game's world. There will likely be some lag in the update spreading through the surrounding society you interact with: people you rarely interact with may not know your new handle yet, and there may be a good long trail of paperwork using the old handle still in use by various authorities. You can have multiple names/handles, if your character-story warrants it.
Your character's height is measured in a unit called lengths. A length is 335.6mm, or around 13 inches. It is close enough to 1 foot or ⅓ of a meter, that you can think of it as either for the purposes of game-play. Height is normally defined down to ⅛ of a length, a distance that is 42mm or close enough to 1½ inches.
Normal height is 5 lengths, plus 1D eighths, so if you roll a single dice and get a result of 3, then your height is 5⅜ lengths (1.8m or 5ft 11in). With group consent, a player may choose a shorter stature for their character, in which case choose 3 or 4 lengths as your major number, and again roll the fractional part for exact height. Same for an unusually tall character with a height rolled on top of 6 lengths.
In Octas, being unusually short, or tall, isn't considered a 'disadvantage' in terms of game-mechanics, as the pros and cons largely even out. Any differences are left to role-play.
Height normally does not change during game-play, so only one smaller box is provided for recording this value.
This is measured in a unit called blocks. One block is about 3kg, or around 6 pounds. Like the length unit of height, blocks are expressed to a precision of eighths, though in-game the fractional part is seldom, if ever, used.
Your character's Body weight (recorded in the smaller box) is their weight when they are not carrying anything. Characters default to being reasonably fit, and so tend to follow a fairly healthy weight-to-height ratio. By group consent you may certainly deviate from this, within a credible range, to match your character idea.
When your character is carrying anything of substantial weight, such as heavy equipment, the weight of everything they are carrying is added to their body weight and recorded in the larger Carried weight box, which - unlike body weight - is expected to change somewhat frequently during game-play. To avoid bogging down the game in trivial details, Octas doesn't track the weight of things weighing less than 1 block, but you should be sensible regarding carrying unreasonable numbers of 'light' things.
To calculate a regular character's body weight, multiply the major (non-fraction) number of their height by 30o (24d) and add a 1D roll for a slight random variation. This means that for a regular character, the weight will be 1D+30o (1D+24d).
⅛ of a block is close enough to ⅓kg, or 12 ounces, just so you know, though as mentioned, this won't generally come up in game-play - the rules try to stick to whole numbers.
For an irregular character, you should negotiate deviance from the norm with the playing group. Anything that can be reasonably justified should be allowed, but the reasoning must continue to be applied throughout the character's existence. Such reasoning should be recorded in the character's backstory notes.
Your character's age isn't particularly important unless you are younger than 20o (16d) or older than 100o (64d). An age in the 20s is a pretty good place to start your character unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise.
See the section on Children and The Elderly in the Extended Rules document if your character is going to be younger than 20o (16d) or older than 100o (64d), as it does have some effect on the character statistics, either immediately or further down the line... if your character lasts that long!
Additional things such as gender, family, appearance and such are not part of the game mechanics, but entirely role-play, so are left to be recorded separately as part of your character's backstory (more on backstory below).
The section of the character sheet with the human-form outline tracks the physical attributes of their body. There are two co-joined boxes for each major body region, a smaller one referred to as the 'Base' and the larger one as the 'Current' score. The base score for every body part starts at 7, and the current score is also initially seven. Write 7's in all the boxes.
If your character is wounded in any body part, the current score is initially effected and will go down. Current scores are relatively easy to recover, requiring only rest and/or medical aid. If a current score reaches zero, however, all subsequent damage comes off the base score. Damage to the base score is permanent, so protect your base scores as best you can!
When fully-restored, a current score reverts to its associated base score, not back to seven, if the base score is lower. This represents the effects of permanent disability. While avoiding disability is optimal, such permanent damage can also be overcome via the addition of equipment or mods (including outright replacement, in the case of limbs!), so even sustained damage can be worked around... for a price.
These define your character's most general attributes. They provide a layer of separation between the character and the player, making it easier to play a character who is fundamentally different to yourself.
There are four primary characteristics:
Focus and Intelligence scores ore recorded in the mental box of the character sheet, top-middle. You start with seven points in each base
Next, you have thirty two points to distribute amongst the five Primary Statistics slots: Decide how you want to allocate these amongst Focus, Intelligence, Core, L-Dex, and R-Dex. Core is part of the Chest score and L/R-dex are part of the L/R arms on the body map. Add the points you have allocated to each of the base scores for these slots.
It is recommended that you first treat the Dexterity score as a single statistic, then decide how to divvy the points up between the Left and Right hands as a separate decision.
If you don't wish to decide for yourself how to divy up the 32 points, you can alternatively do the following:
For Focus, Intelligence and Core additions, roll D+4 (one dice, add four) for each.
For L-Dex and R-Dex additions, roll two dice and allocate one to each hand, the higher to your preferred hand.
And if you wish to randomise which hand is preferred, roll one dice and 0 is left-handed, while any other number is right-handed.
When playing, keep your character's attributes in mind. For example, even though you (the player) might be a quite intelligent person who can see the answer to a problem immediately, is your character intelligent enough? Conversely, your character may be intelligent enough to solve a problem that you can't work out (in which case you may just be told the solution by the Administrator). The game-mechanics hook into your character's various statistics to make this somewhat automatic... and so that hours-long arguments over what a particular character can or cannot do are - hopefully - avoided!
Those familiar with other TTRPGs will notice that Octas is quite light on primary characteristics, with only four, when dozens are possible. Intelligence could, for example, be reasonably split into multiple sub-attributes such as knowledge, wisdom, and creativity, as these attributes are very different and not necessarily linked.
The four primary stats were chosen for their game-mechanics utility over any other factor, and the finer parts are left to a combination of specific skills (below) or role-play.
So if you want to play a character who is very knowledgeable, but rather lacking in common-sense, it won't show up in the mechanics, but you should definitely role-play to it at every opportunity, and select their specific skills and detriments to match this.
No, we haven't forgotten about those scary-looking Equipment/Mods slots in the middle of the sheet. We'll get to them in good time!
In addition to the general base-stats above, characters also have (and can develop more through game-play) skills. These are domain-specific and are added to the appropriate general score when in use. Note that skills can also be negative, indicating a weakness in that skill area.
During game-play, certain dice-roll results will allow you to improve your skills or to begin developing extra ones. There are also mechanisms to purchase additional skill points between games with in-game currency. This is framed as purchasing formal training in a skill (or sometimes therapy in the case of reducing particular weaknesses).
A starting character will have 4 skills by default. They may 'purchase' up to 4 more skills at the cost of also taking on the same number of weaknesses.
Be wary of deliberately selecting weaknesses in an area you feel you are unlikely to be actually-impacted, in order to gain more of other skills that you expect to benefit from often. An experienced Administrator will just find creative ways to apply your weaknesses far more often than you might have expected! .... Conversely, choosing weaknesses with the intention of regularly playing to them can add a lot of interest to your character and fun to the game (consider Indiana Jones, and his issues with snakes). Well played imperfections make characters interesting, for both the one playing them, and for everyone else at the table.
For each starting skill you roll +D+2, so roll two dice and choose the higher result (+D) and add 2, for a result of 2 to 11o (9d) with a probability skew favouring higher results.
Note that once the character enters game-play, additional skills are developed one point at a time, from zero, without dice rolls: your initial skill rolls are to get your character started with more than a blank-slate to work with.
For any weakness chosen, you likewise role 2D-20o (2D-16d), for a result from -20o to -2 (-16d to -2), with a probability skew favouring values in the middle of this range. Negative as this is a penalty in this field of ability.
Record a weakness in your skill list just like a skill, but with a negative number in the 'Ability' box.
Note that weaknesses are significantly more difficult to remove than their equivalent skill is to acquire from a zero state. If a weakness is eliminated, however, developing a skill in the same area attracts no penalty.
You may double-up on starting skills (and weaknesses!), so you may use two (or more) starting rolls up on a single skill/weakness to build it higher/lower. This is generally not a good idea, however, as it tends to over-specialise your character, so probably avoid this unless you have a well-thought-out reason for doing so!
Multiple skills (and weaknesses!) can be stacked together, so you add them when using them in this way.
For example, you may have a skill with projectile-weapons, and a more specialised skill for hand-guns. When using a gun, you add your projectile-weapons skill value to your hand-gun skill value. When using any other type of projectile-weapon, you only use the projectile-weapons skill bonus alone, of course.
Why would you not put all your skill development into the more broadly-useful projectile-weapons skill in the above example? Because as a skill develops, it becomes increasingly difficult to develop it further and quickly adding skill to a different, but logically-stackable skill with a lower score can be a more effective use of skill-development rolls (more on skill development rolls coming up below).
To avoid the situation were players are tempted to stack excessive numbers of skills, the number of skills (and skill-equivalents such as Weaknesses, Favourites, and Dislikes) that can be stacked in a single roll is limited to four. So choose your stacks wisely!
A favourite is a bonus to a specifically named object/situation. To extend the above weapons example, you might have a favourite hand-gun. This bonus can stack directly on the projectile-weapons bonus, or on top of the projectile-weapons and hand-guns bonuses, for a 3-level stack. In this case, the idea is that you are good with hand-guns in general, but you are particularly accustomed to the balance of your favourite one, so can wield it especially well. If your 'favourite' gun is lost, destroyed or sold, the points allocated to this are permanently lost: you cannot transfer them to a new 'favourite' but must instead build up a new favourite from zero.
Favourites are the least versatile 'skill'. You do not start your character with any favourites defined, but may be given opportunities to add them as you play the game. The Administrator may also arbitrarily allocate favourite points to a particular weapon (or other equipment) if you are using it particularly often or well, especially as a reward for good role-play.
Favorites most often apply to equipment, so there is space in equipment lists for recording favourite values. For instances where a favourite is not a possession (for example: favourite musical style for playing on an instrument), you can store this kind of favourite in the skills list.
You may also have dislikes, (for example, your character has a weakness that they are afraid of cats in general, but also has an extra fear of the particular cat, named Mittens, that lives two doors down the street!) Unlike favourites, you may specify dislikes for a new character, but you will not receive any benefits for doing so (they are useful for character-flavour only). You may be allocated additional dislikes during game-play if the situation calls for it (for example, one day your character has a particularly bad encounter with Mittens).
Dislikes are recorded as per favourites, with a negative score either against a disliked possession or in the skills list.
New characters generally begin with even their starting-skills at quite low values, so there is plenty of room for improvement as you play. For an idea of what a skill level means, the following table can be used as a guide:
| Value (octal) | Value (decimal) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| below -10 | below -8 | Unbelievably incompetent |
| -10 to -5 | -8 to -5 | Complete klutz |
| -4 to -1 | -4 to -1 | Accident-prone |
| 0 | 0 | No notable ability |
| 1 | 1 | Picked up a few simple tricks |
| 2 to 3 | 2 to 3 | Knows how little they actually know |
| 4 to 5 | 4 to 5 | Barely capable |
| 6 to 7 | 6 to 7 | Novice |
| 10 to 17 | 8 to 15 | Competent |
| 20 to 39 | 16 to 31 | Expert |
| 40 or more | 32 or more | Master |
The above scores apply to stacked scores too, so you can be, for example, a novice with projectile weapons in general, competent with hand-guns in particular, and an expert with your favourite gun, if the stacked scores add up that way. Most of the time, the higher levels of mastery would only be reached via such stacking of skills and favourites, as the in-game mechanic only accounts for individual scores up to 17o (15d) points (though you can slowly push them higher with exceptional luck on your learning-rolls).
The below list is to give a general idea. More may be added by the Administrator, or by player consensus, as your game-story evolves.
There are a few additional ways to use up a starting skill that don't get recorded as actual 'skills' because their results affect other parts of the character sheet directly.
There are no strict rules on how skill bonuses are applied and to what. To use a skill, you should identify an action your character is about to perform where that skill is likely to be relevant, then inform the Administrator of your wish to use that skill, and why you feel it should impact your success. The Administrator will then decide whether to factor the skill into the chances of action-success.
Tracking skills and notifying the Administrator of their potential use is the responsibility of the player. It is also good manners to keep an eye out for where any weaknesses may interfere with what your character is doing and role-play to them. The best way to neutralise a weakness is to role-play around (or through) it, and a good Administrator will try to find ways to reward you for doing this.
Also, when you play a weakness as part of a skill-check or combat session, the dice rolls may offer you a chance to reduce it by one point, so there is a game-mechanics benefit for keeping your character's weaknesses in play.
In combat, normally the Skill and Favourite scores for your weapon and armour are applied. If you can justify it, you may request additional bonuses to be applied as well. It is the Administrator's call if this is accepted, but any reasonable request should be.
Don't be silly with this - constant haggling over what bonuses should apply when, will bog down the game and bore everyone to tears. It is recommended to reserve more esoteric uses for exceptional situations where you really need it.
As mentioned, up to 4 weaknesses may be taken at character-creation time, and can be used to then select an additional skill for each. Most of the above skills can also be made into weaknesses simply by allocating them a negative value, indicating your character is particularly bad at that skill. The dice result for a weakness is unrelated to the skill it allowed you to add, so if you rolled a -2 for the weakness and a 7 for the skill, that is perfectly valid - lucky you! Likewise if you rolled a -17 for a weakness and only got a +2 for the skill that it bought, too bad! It is the taking of the weakness that gives you the right to another skill, not how detrimental vs beneficial each turns out to be.
When taking weaknesses to get more skills, be wary of careless mix-maxing! This is when you deliberately weaken your character in specific extreme ways in order to justify giving them extreme strengths in other areas. It isn't in itself a bad thing, but if done poorly it can break your character. Be a bit conservative to begin with, and let experience be your guide as you become more familiar with how the game works. Done well, min-max characters can be challenging and fun.
Another source of weaknesses that do not have a corresponding skill are strong phobias. We are not talking about a general aversion here: this is a panic-inducing, unable-to-move / involuntary-running-away / passing-out / throwing-up phobic reaction! An actual detriment to your character, which will seriously inconvenience them and they will have to work hard to overcome.
For example, nobody likes the idea of sickness, either being ill themselves or being around dirty places potentially harbouring infectious disease, but if you have a phobia against illness, that phobia score will be an actual negative impact on your combat effectiveness any time you are working anywhere with even a hint of sickness about it. But more than that, you should also role-play a strong aversion to entering hospitals and other places where disease might be perceived (rightly or wrongly) to be present.
DevNote: I'm not at all happy with this example (it worked a lot better with the un-dead in the fantasy genre!) I need a better one.
And finally, some explicit non-skill weaknesses that don't need to be explicitly recorded in the 'skills' section as they effect elsewhere on the character sheet.
Languages are a special type of skill. They work more-or-less in the same way as skills, but instead of the stacking mechanism, they are divided into three sub-skills: Spoken, Written, and Signed.
As with general skills, language skills can be increased through regular interaction with the language (in the appropriate form) or by purchasing formal study if it is available.
Written language skill can be entirely independent of Spoken skill in value: you can be illiterate while very good with spoken words, and also you can learn to read and write a language even if you have no idea how it sounds, or you are physically incapable of making its sounds.
Signing skills are likewise independent of both spoken and written skills. They are also not limited to those with an inability to hear or speak - signing can also be useful for silent communication in a pre-combat situation, or even distance-communication or in a noisy environment. Signing also gives an ability at lip-reading in the same language, at half of the signing ability score, in optimal conditions.
Octas/Cyber is set on a roughly-contemporary Earth, so has the expected 21st-century human languages for this locale. In the Pacific-Rim region that is the primary setting, the main languages are: English, Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish. You may encounter other languages in the region, particularly around South-East Asia and the Central Pacific, but most people on the Rim also speak at least one of the main four, and English is very common amongst the more educated (Salaried, Artists and Elites). Most Basics and Illegals are monolingual to their own region, though in both these groups there are exceptions.
This is your character's birth language, and is likely related to the region they are starting in, though it doesn't have to be. It is probably the language you are reading this document in!
Starting native language spoken fluency is equal to the character's Base-Intelligence score plus +D.
Starting native language written fluency is the character's Base-Intelligence score plus 1D.
Starting native language signing skill is normally zero. You may re-allocate up to 20o (16d) points from your character's other starting-scores for the same language to the signing score.
You may also allocate a starting-skill roll to add an additional 1D+2 points to any single sub-skill for a language on top of the above default scores.
You may start with additional languages to your native one by allocating one of your start skills. For this you get the full suite of Spoken/Written/Signed abilities (assuming the language in question has each form).
Any two of the sub-language skills (Spoken, Written, Signed) are rolled on 2D+2 each. The remaining sub-language skill may take up to 16 points from either or both of the other two.
Even if your non-native language score exceeds your native language score, it will still have an accent, unless it is of high enough proficiency to be 'Eloquent' (see below).
Private language: You may also use a starting skill to specify a private language exclusive for your character group (potentially useful for private communications in public places). Obviously, the other members of your group will have to do the same for this to be useful! Such a language can never be more expressive than 20o (16d) points in any form.
A private language may also be useful even at a low score. For example, a signed-only language with a score of only 1 is sufficient to convey simple signals such as 'stop', 'follow', 'silent', 'danger', 'attack' within a group of people sneaking about.
This is a very common computer language (named for the ubiquitous Dæmon Virtual Machine on which it runs). If you wish your character to engage in 'hacking' activities, a skill in the Dæmonic language is essential. It's written form is commonly used, although the spoken and even signed forms are valid for certain types of input device. It has a ceiling of 16 points maximum on each sub-skill.
A weakness (negative score) for the Dæmonic language may result in a character who thinks they are some sort of hot-shot programmer but their attempts will often end in disaster. .... Might be fun!
The following table gives a general idea of what a language level means.
| Score (octal) | Score (decimal) | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| negative | negative | Worse than no ability. Will probably insult someone, or worse! |
| 0 | 0 | No ability |
| 1 | 1 | Knows a few words |
| 2-3 | 2-3 | Can barely understand or be understood |
| 4-7 | 4-7 | Can get by for day-to-day stuff |
| 10-13 | 8-11 | General competence |
| 14-17 | 12-15 | Educated |
| 20+ | 16+ | Eloquent, including accent-free for non-native languages |
A negative language score is valid (if unusual). This ties into the game's mechanics, but in-story can be interpreted as the character being so bad at a language that they actively butcher it to the point of expressing the opposite of what they mean during attempted use!
For Dæmonic only, a negative language score can count as a weakness for the purposes of earning an extra starting skill, but only if at least two sub-skills are Rolled 2D-20o (2D-16d), so -2 or lower. The third sub-skill may be zero, none may be positive. Other languages, or individual sub-skill scores may start negative for role-play purposes but will earn no extra starting skills.
The game rules don't explicitly differentiate speaking/listening or reading/writing skill, but if you wish for your character to have a distinct difference between these, you can make it part of your character's backstory and role-play it.
If a player is using a skill (including a language) particularly often, even if not as part of skill check rolls, the Administrator can grant them extra points for that skill/language arbitrarily. They are recommended to do this sparingly, however.
This is for recording how much money your character has on their person. For simplicity, Octas/cyber assumes a single universal currency, the Coyn (yes, with a y), is in use globally, however advanced games should feel free to use multiple regional currencies if this suits their narrative.
Characters, by default, start with 100o (64d) Coyns. This can be used to purchase some starting equipment, weapons, armour and mods. Legal citizens will also receive 100o Coyns of Basic Income per week, however all of this is generally used up for day-to-day expenses such as food, so can generally be ignored.
Coyns are an electronic exchange medium carried on a card-device, so any amount may be carried. There is also a physical version used for off-grid transactions but it is, while legal, primarily used by criminals and is looked on with suspicion by regular people.
Any other possessions you don't want to cart about but also don't want to get rid of can be stored off the character sheet, indicating they have been left at home or in a storage locker or such. Though you will have to actually find the in-game opportunity to travel to wherever you are storing your stuff, or pay a trusted courier to deliver or retrieve it for you.
If you wish to use multiple currencies in your game, the default exchange rate with one Coyn is:
| (Major regional currencies below in bold) | Octal | Decimal |
|---|---|---|
| Central America / Peru / Philippines / Pacific Islands: |
1 | 1 |
| Australasian Dollar (Aus, NZ, PNG): $A | 2 | 2 |
| Indonesian Rupiah: Rp | 10 | 8 |
| Vietnamese Dồng: Đ | 10 | 8 |
| Korean Won: ₩ | 1 | 1 |
| Japanese Yen: ¥N (Nihon 日本) | 100 | 64 |
| Chinese Yuán: ¥Z (Zhōngguó 中國) | 10 | 8 |
| North American Dollar (USA, Canada, Mexico) $N | 1 | 1 |
| Colombian / Ecuadoran / Chilean Pesos : ₱Co/₱Ec/₱Ch | 40 | 32 |
Note: Euros, British Pounds, and other currencies may also be around, but are outside of the Pacific Rim that I am currently focusing the game on. Administrators wishing to explore further afield should feel free to add whatever is appropriate to their game needs. In the world of Octas/cyber, many smaller economies have adopted the Coyn as a common currency.
Anything your character is generally carrying about that isn't in a mod slot is recorded here. The box on the main character sheet is a bit small, so this is just what the character is carrying on them at the time. Alternatively, you might like to record possessions carried on a separate sheet, if you constantly cart about a lot. A possessions-only extra sheet is also provided, with slots for up to 80 items, use more than one if your character is a hoarder. And consider seeking help for them!
Extra character sheet for possessions: [SVG] [PDF]
Ignore the currency field 'pieces': this sheet is generic to multiple game variations, some of which use this.
It is tempting to use the back of your main character sheet for extra possessions or general notes, but remember that eventually your sheet will wear out from all the writing-erasing-rewriting on the front, and everything on it will need to be copied over to a fresh sheet.
Items that are 1 block (6kg/3lb) of weight or heavier should have this weight recorded with them and added to the Carried Weight stat of the character.
A range of example general equipment is provided in the Equipment Manual . Any reasonable additional items can be negotiated with the Administrator.
The main character sheet's possessions list also includes spaces to store base, WAC (wear/ammo/charge) and favourite stats for items being stored there, these boxes are primarily intended for use when storing weapons and armour, however there is no reason the same systems cannot be applied to any item.
So your 16 lengths of rope might have a wear value that depreciates each time it is used (or just when it is used in a high-wear manner), and you may even make your rope a 'favourite' giving you a bonus when doing rope-related things with it, like tying knots that won't slip.
This is entirely optional and is only even suggested as it is a simple and logical extension of the WAC system and not really a new rule requiring extra effort to learn, and the boxes are already on the character sheet. Do be aware that this may not be the most useful way to apply skill-bonus rolls, and also that doing it to excess may bog down game-play in more number-wrangling than many players will enjoy. However, used sparsely and appropriately, it may add an extra bit of value to game-play.
Characters are assumed to posses basic casual clothing (shirt, pants/skirt, shoes/boots) and do not have to explicitly purchase these items at the start. They may be expected to purchase replacement or additional clothing as the game progresses, however.
The center of the character sheet is devoted to 'mods', which are body modifications, or 'equipment' is more conventionally worn on the body or held. This includes weapons and armour, but can also have other roles.
The strips for recording this information is largely an extended version of the character stat-blocks.
Starting on the left with a base value which represents the equipment's maximum condition, ammunition capacity or power charge. Which of these three varies with various kinds of equipment and - in the interests of simplicity - there is some overlap. For example permanently damaging a gun will lower its ammunition capacity, which is not at all how reality works, but is preferable to having to track separate equipment statistics for condition and capacity. It's a game, so sometimes such compromises are made in the interests of keeping it playable!
The large box is WAC, for Weapons/Ammunition/Charge, and is the current value of the relevant item for this piece equipment. In the top brain-mods section, it is only Charge, as this is the only one that really makes sense for equipment actually stored inside the skull!
The next mid-sized box right of WAC, is the effect box. This is for recording the effect of the equipment or mod, for quick look-up. It will, again, vary wildly depending on the equipment or mod, including things such as:
The long space is for writing what the equipment is, so you can look it up in the manual if extra details beyond what is recorded on the sheet are needed. You may also store a personal name for any equipment you have given one to (you psycho!)
The Fav box is for storing any favourite-bonus score associated with the mod or equipment.
And the Weight box is for any significant weight of it. A reminder that Octas does not usually track anything weighing less than one block (3kg/6lb), in the interests of not bogging down the game, but players are expected to be sensible about not carrying excessive amounts of 'light' things. The weight of all significant mods, equipment and possessions should be added together, along with the character's body weight to the character's Total Weight in the top-left.
Most of the Equipment/Mods slots are connected by lines to the body part to which they are held/worn/attached/implanted. The arms are allocated two slots to hold items associated with both arms and hands. The Head has one physical slot, and four internal slots (in the grey box encapsulating mental attributes). There are two extra Equipment/Mod slots at the bottom which may be used for any extra physical mods, including doubling-up on above body-location installs, where this makes reasonable sense.
TBA
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There isn't a place for backstory on the character sheet: it should be recorded on a separate page. Or in a notebook, if you intend to go into that much detail.
If you do, that is great, but don't expect everyone else to want to read your novel! (And I say that as someone who's own character backstories have been known to accidentally blow out into actual novels!!)
Your character's backstory is free-form and entirely your choice. You can optionally negotiate common elements with other players in your group, if you want some shared backstory. You should either write your backstory to fit your starting characteristics and skills, or match your starting characteristics and skills to your already-planned backstory.
Tip: Include some details in your backstory that your game Administrator may be able to weave into the game-story: People you knew in the past that may re-enter your life; things you have done before that may have unexpected consequences - good or bad - in the future; family/clan heirlooms that may turn out to have forgotten-significance. You don't have to specify the significance of such things yourself (though you might do so), but can just leave them as place-holders that you or your Administrator may hang some significance on at a later time as the game-story progresses.
Your backstory notes are also a good place to provide non-game-mechanic details about your character such as their appearance (draw a picture, or write as text), taste in clothes or food, attitudes and prejudices, and so forth. Such details may be useful for the role-play elements of the game.
You may also wish to use your backstory as the starting point to generally record your character's ongoing life as they progress through the game, so feel free to append notes about each adventure your character has as you play, ideally as told from the character's own perspective. These can also be useful for referring back to during a game: that particularly useful street seller you met last time you were in this part of the city might be worth finding again, a task that will be far easier to do if you wrote down their name, and possibly even the address where they might be found.
And if you save your Administrator the trouble of digging through their own notes from months ago for the same information, well, that has to be worth something, surely: In-game, being able to greet the street-seller you haven't seen for several months by name could well put them in a good mood, price-wise!
The appendix The World of Octas/cyber contains information on the main social classes and a number of example factions or clans that can be used directly or as inspiration for your own. Feel free to use these as part of your backstory and associated role-play, of course.
Whenever you roll a DD for a combat-roll or a skill-check, keep an eye out for a zero on the high dice. If the skill-check was a success and the higher digit of the roll was also a zero then the roll was so successful that it was also a learning experience!
DevNote: I need to play-test this. If skills-progression is tediously slow, I might make it a zero on any dice: even if the check fails (so you can still learn from failures). Or if it is only a little slow, I could just remove the 'must succeed too' criteria.
When this happens, the player may choose any one of the skill/favourite/language bonus scores used in that skill-check roll to try to improve.
Next, the player rolls 2D. If the result is equal or higher than the existing skill/fav/lang score chosen, that score gets one point added to it. This point becomes immediately available (so the very next time the skill/fav/lang is used).
As such, skill-scores can even improve in the middle of combat: Now that's an immediate reward!
This means that lower skill/fav/lang scores are relatively easy to improve but improvement will progressively become more difficult, encouraging the spreading of improvement around amongst skills and favourites a bit. The player may have to decide if it is worth taking a chance trying to further improve an already high skill, or to have a better chance on a less-generally-useful, but lower-scored one.
There is undoubtedly a mathematically optimal solution to this, but as it is a role-playing game it is probably useful to let the story-needs of your character drive such decisions.
If the skill-check was 0-0 (double zero) you do not have to roll for the point. You did so well it is yours automatically! (which is also one - slow - way to get skill points already as high as the dice can take them, to go even higher). Since you don't have to roll against a score, you will also know you have this automatic point before you choose what to apply it to - it just has to be something you used in the skill check roll.
Also, players may be allowed to buy additional skill/language (explicitly not favourite) point rolls in the form of 'training'. This will most often occur in the time between games. There is no upper limit on how many rolls can be purchased, if you have the Coyns, but the training time will have to be factored in. Before you start a new game, determine with the Administrator how much time has passed since the last game ended, and how much training (or therapy - see Reducing Weaknesses below) your character had time for. The following table can be used as a guide, though exceptions might be made where the game-story or common-sense apply:
| Item | Coyns (octal) | Coyns (decimal) | Time | Info. |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 Skill Roll | 10 000 | 4096 | 7 days | Training by an expert/master in the field |
| Equipment | variable | Any materials or equipment needed for training | ||
You can normally only train for, at most, 2 things at a time, and both types of training need to be available within an hour's travel of each other.
At the end of training, the player gets to roll 2D against the trained skill to see if they improved significantly. As with in-game-earned improvements, further success becomes harder to achieve as skill-level improves.
DevNote: Costs will have to be play-tested against character incomes and a reasonable rate of training-related improvement. This is not intended to be the primary form of skills improvement, so it should be expensive, but still attainable!
Note that "Any materials or equipment needed for training" does not include practice dummies, training swords or any such things a professional trainer is likely to have on hand for student use, and which the character will not keep after training is finished. For non-professional trainers, the character may, however, supply these or come to some other arrangement with the trainer. Consumable items used in training are generally expected to be paid for by the character, however.
As usual for TTRPGs (and life in general), exceptions can be made. For example, if an employer for a job is explicitly requesting characters get some sort of training in preparation for a particular mission, they might cover some or all of the bill, and possibly even reasonable extra expenses. They may do this as an act of good will, or to improve the chances of a mission-success that will ultimately benefit them even more than the cost, or they might agree to pay costs up-front but deduct it from the eventual payment for a successful mission.
Also, don't forget to increase your character's age to account for time spent between adventures (whether training or not), if appropriate.
You may also be allowed to partake in some types of training in the middle of an adventure if the Administrator permits it. For example:
Players can train other players. They can only train up to their own skill level -4. A player (or NPC - Non-Player Character, run by the Administrator) with a skill/spec level below 4 will actually mis-train someone and drop the trainee's score down one point! What financial arrangements a player character makes is up to the player, but the 7-day time factor per skill-improvement-roll trained is still present.
If training is happening during a mission without explicit time set aside, you are restricted to only training for one thing at a time, as you have a bunch of other stuff to do as well.
Favourite improvement is explicitly excluded from the concept of training. However players can create or improve a favourite score outside of skill-check rolls by making decorative customisations to their equipment. This may cost Coyns or time, but the exact amount is going to be too variable to leave up to a formula or table, so the Administrator is going to have to wing-it! Generally the more (Coyns, time, or player-creativity) put into favouring a piece of equipment, the more bonus points should be granted by the Administrator.
So gold-plating your katana is definitely worth quite a few favourite points, though it will likely need to be re-plated fairly often if you actually use it, or the favourite effect will fade as it gets scrappy-looking! Doing something fancy with the hilt may be a less striking, but better-wearing, approach.
Favourites are the least versatile bonus, and also the only type that is prone to loss (if the favoured item is lost, broken-beyond-repair or sold, its favourite points are gone with it), so Administrators can be a bit generous here and are encouraged to especially reward interesting ideas that tie into strong character backstory or in-game role-play.
If your rocket-propelled-grenade-launcher has daisies painted all over it, both the player and the Administrator should definitely be looking for opportunities to make a thing of that in the game-story. Favourites are not just for bonus points!
This type of customisation should be documented in the character backstory notes, for reference. You may even wish to make a special page for it in order to document any ongoing story relating to the item itself - it is one of your character's favourite possessions, after all!
You may add a new skill or language to your character sheet at any time. Unlike starting skills, these begin at zero. Even though the value is zero, it is still important to specify the score as part of your bonuses for a skill-check or combat roll, so that if the check-roll earns you a skill improvement roll, you may then choose the new skill as the recipient of that roll. Also, because of the way the improvement roll works, a skill with a score of 0 is guaranteed to get that first bonus point! - the important thing is that you must have actually tried to use the skill in the just-successful action in order to improve it.
The player can also arbitrarily add new weaknesses to their character, though you would generally only do this for ongoing-story reasons. Unlike at character-creation time, they don't gain you any extra skill points or other benefits. The Administrator may also allocate your character new weaknesses in response to extreme events in the story, though they should try not to be excessively harsh with this.
The Administrator is welcome to offer some sort of compensation to sweeten the deal if they really really want the Player to accept a new weakness, such as some valuable or powerful artefact; a big payment of Coyns; a new skill of equivalent benefit, especially if gaining the new skill can be in-story linked to dealing with the new weakness; or even a significantly stronger new skill learned as part of recovering from the weakness if a deferred reward is preferable.
Or, if the administrator has a particularly interesting weakness in mind, the player might just agree that the new weakness will make their character more fun to play and that is all the reward they need! In the end it is all just about having fun... and the friends you make along the way, of course!
In the above-mentioned high-dice-zero skill-bonus, if any of the scores used in the combat or skill-check roll were Weaknesses, the player may choose to apply the skill-improvement roll to reducing one of their Weakness or Dislike scores instead. Roll against the chosen score (with the negative sign removed) and if the roll is lower, reduce the negative score by 1 (towards zero). As with Skills, for a 0-0 roll, you may reduce a Weakness score without a roll as long as it was part of the skill-check roll.
The idea here is that your astounding success, even with your weakness in play, has helped your character on the way to overcoming that weakness.
Since weaknesses are often a part of adding interest to a character, you may not want to mess around with them too much. Unless overcoming one or more of them is part of your intended character story-arc, in which case you will want to play your weaknesses a lot in your skill-check rolls, in order to increase the chances of wearing away at them.
You may also reduce weaknesses by purchasing therapy, which follows the same rules as purchasing training. The story-telling function of weaknesses in Octas makes this option rather undesirable for most role-players, but it is included for both completeness and for situations where the player feels it appropriate to their character's story-arc (or you may have just played-out the interest in a particular weakness).
Octas is a very story-focused TTRPG and goes a bit easy on the characters in terms of fatality. It is supposed to not be easy to die by accident, though dying by wilful risk-taking is very much a thing! The balanced aimed for is to let the players choose the risk level (and associated reward) they are most comfortable with.
Characters can still die, however, as without any risk, the excitement of the game becomes noticeably lacklustre! There are a number of ways to deal with your character's death, some of which are addressed further below.
During game-play, various things will temporarily effect some of your scores. For example physical damage will reduce the Current scores on damaged body parts until you have time to heal-up, mental fatigue can impact your Current-Focus score, and some types of attack may even effect your Current-Intelligence score. If your Current points in any area drop to 0, you don't instantly die, but then the points start to be removed from the associated Base-scores instead! Unlike Current points-loss which can be recovered quite easily through rest and medical care, damage to your Base-scores are permanent. It is best to avoid this, but it does allow a buffer before death, but with a very harsh penalty, all the same.
Don't completely despair, though. As your character skills-up, the skills bonuses start to become more significant than the characteristics anyway, so you can compensate for any permanent losses by focusing on appropriate compensatory skills. The main problem with having lower Base-scores is it gives you less Current-scores to buffer you from attack. Though good armour can help compensate for this too, provided your strength hasn't been so badly depleted that your carrying capacity is too wiped out to use it! At which point your character should probably cut their losses and retire!
If any of your Base-scores for Head, Chest, Abdomen, Focus or Intelligence drops below zero, your character is truly dead.
Base scores for limbs dropping below zero won't kill you, but will knock you out of play until you get a week in hospital for what is left of the limb to be amputated and replaced with a prosthetic Mod. This also applies to existing prosthetic limbs that are damaged down to Base-0, as they will have to be surgically replaced.
It is actually not too simple to get down to zero in base-score, because as soon as you have any Current body or mental score zeroed, you are unconscious, or as good as. You can still take damage if attacked, and so you can still be further damaged and ultimately killed, but being unconscious removes you from the main action and hence main risk. The biggest risk when unconscious is opportunistic attack from opponents who don't have any better targets, or if everyone else in your group also dies or falls unconscious, the enemy will have free reign to kill off anyone left, if they are so inclined.
Most animals will only kill an unconscious person if they actually intend to eat them, and intelligent beings might feel that taking them captive is more useful (or even just humane). Running off before authorities show up may also be higher on the surviving group's agenda, too, so don't assume killing everyone left is going to be the norm.
Unconscious characters do, however, still get an attack round. This is because even when unconscious, they are present, and while the chances of that resulting in anything useful are very small (usually requiring a DD dice roll of 77), it can happen.
Successful attacks from unconscious characters can be considered the results of circumstantial things such as the character deliriously activating a Mod, a finger twitching on the trigger of a weapon that happens to be pointing in the right direction, or even a foe tripping over their unconscious body in the heat of battle! An unconscious character does not generally get any choice over the type of the attack or the target, and in the event of a success, the Administrator will roll or select something suitable for the situation.
Look for role-play opportunities everywhere, even in death.
If you are playing a "one-shot" game where your character was created specifically for the game session and isn't intended to be used after, you won't have any real attachment, so just re-roll a new character (for one-shots, it is common for the Administrator to have spare pre-rolled characters ready to go, as this type of game session is all about speed).
Even if it is a long-established character, you may be happy to let them go and start over to try something different. Again re-roll your character. If your game-group has a lot of skilled characters, you may not want to start a new character right at the bottom, but may instead adjust your scores and skills to be in the general area where everyone else is.
On the other hand, you may choose to start from the bottom and become the character-group's apprentice: the level-less nature of Octas character development makes mixed-ability character groups a little easier to manage than in some other TTRPGs: a low-skill character will be less capable and at higher risk hanging around with much more skilled characters, but they won't be insta-dead!
Careful selection of travel/combat-order and knowing when to hold back and let the 'experts' deal with something should get such a character through until they skill-up a bit. The more skilled group members might even let them have-at the easier challenges, choosing to skip combat rounds themselves unless things get unexpectedly dire, to give more on-the-job-training opportunities to the noobie!
If, like me, you enjoy creating new characters almost as much as you enjoy playing them, then you probably already have a few more ready to go and the hard part will be deciding which one to play next!
If you loved your character, consider laminating or framing their character sheet and hanging it on the wall, or making a little shrine to lost characters in the corner of your playing-room. Your characters, and you, deserve it!
Your recently-deceased character just happens to have a sibling or cousin who is quite like them!
While it can be used as a weak excuse to revive a dead beloved-character, it can also be seen as a way to fill a specific your-character-shaped gap now present in the group.
If you are not attached to your specific character but to a character with a particular set of skills (that make life a nightmare for people like...), this is easier to justify as it is certainly credible that the surviving characters would seek out a replacement with a similar skill-set, to re-complete their team. Or an apprentice with the beginnings of such a skill set.
Probably don't make your new character a clone though (this isn't Paranoia!). For best results, have some notable differences, ideally ones you can surprise the other players with if they start treating your new character too much like their predecessor (something your new character would be well within their rights to resent, so role-play that too!). Weaknesses are a very obvious and easy place to start such character differentiation - try new and completely different ones!
Paranoia is a TTRPG that turns the traditional cooperative-play of these games on its head and is structured such that every player is constantly on the lookout for opportunities to discretely backstab the others, while trying to avoid the same fate. Coupled with a general theme of Kafkaesque incompetence, you tend to die so frequently - and often hilariously - that everyone gets 5 extra lives, in the form of delivered-to-your-point-of-death clones.
If you really really really ...really... can't bare to part with your character, put them aside. Treat them as dead for the purposes of this game, but keep them for one day if you join a different playing group. Your character still lives on in a parallel time-stream, and you will one day play them again, just not in this universe.
So... you have a character. And, hopefully, so do a few friends. Everyone other than the Administrator needs one!
It's now time to throw your poor unsuspecting character into an adventure!
How? On to the Playing a Game guide we go. Onward ho!