Exploring Character Generation in the Entropic Game System

Character Generation in EGS

The Entropic Gaming System (EGS) is a new system from Mystic Throne Entertainment.  I feel like it’s time to take a closer look at this generic multi-genre system that is directly competing in the space currently occupied by Cortex, BRP, Savage Worlds and Legend. A walk-through on how the game works, starting with character generation, will help to demonstrate these differences.

For our example, I’m going to assume Aston Kormak, our protagonist, is a Joe Genero of the Fantasy World set. Yep, we’re going to create a classic sword & sorcery adventurer for our example. Aston may pick up some magic if we can work it out as well.

Characters start with a concept (we have a basic one: fantasy adventurer) and a background (such as human, elf, Slavic, alien kree, etc.)  EGS includes a sampling of fantasy, historical and scifi backgrounds to work with. Human is not a background in and of itself, but the default assumption; backgrounds modify that. To keep it simple for now I’m keeping Aston a generic human (the core default).

As a human, Aston starts with a number of dice that he applies to his eight statistics. A character gets a range to divide among his stats: four D6s, two D8s and two D10s. You can drop a D6 to a D4 to boost a D10 to a D12 if you like. In this sense it’s similar to Savage Worlds (and also the Cortex game system).

The eight stats include charisma, dexterity, intelligence, perception, psyche, spirit, strength and vitality. For Aston, we’ll divide his stats as follows:

CHA D6, DEX D6, INT D10, PER D8, PSY D10, SPT D6, STR D8, VIT D6

Next up is Attributes. Attributes are the secondary stats, such as health and combat actions. We have in order:

Combat Action-these define how many actions you take per combat round. Every normal character starts with 3 CAs.

Defense-this is based on dexterity and is used as the target number against attacks. This is a passive score, and you can also burn a CA to take an active defense action. Aston’s Defense is 7.

Health-the hit points of EGS. Aston’s hit points are 14 (based on the maximum of the dice for strength and vitality).

Hero Points-you start with 3, and these are burned for extra die effects when rolling (among other things). Hero Points essentially replace the concept of the wild die from Savage Worlds.

Initiative-this is based on the die maximums for dexterity, perception and acrobatics skill. Without acrobatics Aston has 14 Initiative.

Characters also get a base speed of 30 feet and start with their native language. Aston, being from Fantasy Land, will know “Common.”

Aston’s attibutes are as follows:

CA: 3, Defense 7, Health 14, Hero Pts 3, Init 14, Speed 30, Language: common.

Skills in EGS are point-buy and also die-based. You get 18 points to spend on skills. It costs 1 point to get a skill at D4, another 1 point to boost it to D6 and again to D8, but 2 points to get a D10 and 3 more points to get a D12. So starting with a skill at D12 costs 8 points.

Skills in EGS are of a wider range than Savage Worlds, including 36 base skill choices and a much larger array of skill specializations, and “skill combinations” which are examples of how you would apply the skill+relevant ability score to achieve specific results (i.e. psyche plus husbandry equals animal handling). The skill combinations are demonstrations of how each skill works differently with certain ability scores depending on what you are doing. EGS provides 37 skill combinations, which encompass the majority of typical adventurer interactions that would involve a skill plus ability combination.

Archetypes are also offered as well. These are basically suggested professional builds by category with typical skill choices. You have twelve sample archetypes, such as sorcerer, priest, thief, investigator and so forth.

While the skill system takes the die-system method of Savage Worlds, it is much more robust in terms of options than SW could ever be, and shows some influence from Legend and other skill-focused games.

For Aston’s purposes I’m going to pick Sorcerer since I want to push him into this path to demonstrate how magic works in EGS. Sorcerers get arcana, performing, resist and streetwise as suggested skills. Interesting…

So here’s what I pick for Aston. I’m aiming for an athletic, healthy younger mage:

Awareness D8, Husbandry D4, Melee D6, Performing (scribe) D8, Resist D8, Streetwise D4, Arcana D10

Those 18 points went fast….

Skill Combinations that Aston meets are as follows:

Insight, Parry, Questioning, Willpower.

Next up is Qualities, of which EGS provides 28 examples (but encourages players and GMs to make more). Qualities are similar to the various advantages, disadvantages and perks in GURPS and a bit like Edges in Savage Worlds, but with a key difference: they are all role-play focused “triggers” for gaining additional hero points during play. For example, Acrobatic as a quality lets the character gain a hero point when using acrobatics to perform exceptional stunts with the skill. While an assassin could use it to gain hero points on stealth checks used against a target. A lazy character could gain hero points when engaging in quintessential laziness. 

There's a real edge to picking "negative" qualities over positive qualities, too: you can stockpile the hero points. A character with the assassin quality can gain a hero point for stalking his prey, but he has to use it in the context of that action. A lazy hero however by being lazy gets a hero point he can use later on.

Qualities are kind of cool, actually, especially if you yourself are a low record-keeping GM like I am. One problem I run in to with awarding inspiration in D&D 5E, to use my personal bugaboo, is not keeping track of the chosen ideals and various background traits of seven or eight characters….thereby meaning if my players aren’t on the ball with asking for it, I usually don’t notice until too late that I ought to have awarded it. Here, however, a player using a Quality is calling upon it specifically for effect, and will then wait to see if the GM agrees it deserves a hero point. This sort of “bakes” the reward process into the roleplaying with an easy prompt system. Nice.

Anyway, Aston as a standard human hero gets up to five qualities. I’m picking the following for him:

Enemy-he’s got someone he pissed off in his life. I’m going to say it’s his mother, from whom he is estranged; she’s a sort of Maleficent type and he ran away from her to avoid being sucked into her dark cult to the Old Ones. When the enemy rears its ugly head he could get a hero point. This is his negative quality. 

Geomancer-Aston can apply this when he uses elemental magic in arcane mastery. His aptitude for geomancy is why he fled his mother’s control to avoid becoming a necromancer.

Weird Quality-Aston is talented with magic, and in the next step we’ll discuss his Talent; but for now, he needs to spent one Quality on being weird, essentially.

I’ll devise two of my own for the last two:

Horse Whisperer-Aston gets along well with horses, and has a knack for calming them down, although he’s never learned how to ride well.

Clumsy with the Ladies-Aston has a natural fascination for women and tends to pursue attractive ladies although he has little social prowess due to the years his mother kept him locked away, so he's prone to all sorts of social mishaps. This is his other negative quality.

We’re now ready to take a look at Aston’s talent for magic. When devising a talent, you spend one quality on the “Weird Quality” feature which opens up the talent. Then you need to pick a governing attribute and skill for that talent. For Aston the choice is easy: Intelligence and Arcana are great choices for picking the Sorcerer concept.  Other concepts include the cleric, hierophant, psion, steampunk scientist, shaman, super hero and warlock.

Aston then starts with Weird Points equal to three times the die type for his weird ability (INT), meaning he starts with 30 WPs. Individual talents are based on your skill type: since we’re using Arcana, he starts with half the die type, or 5 talents.

Additional concepts for talents to consider include “manifestation” which is how the power looks/feels by genre (similar in concept to the FX notion in Savage Worlds), as well as a series of manipulation effects that…I’ll be perfectly blunt….are pulled directly from Legend (which is okay! This is an OGL book using the OGL version of the Legend and Renaissance rules to great effect).

So you heard that right: we have the flexible features of the Savage Worlds power system wedded to the extremely customizable manipulation options of the Legend system, which originate in Runequest’s sorcery rules. Nice.

There are 55 talents to choose from in EGS. The list is pretty varied and the wide range makes it more flexible than, say, the modest selection in Savage World’s core rules. It’s also designed with more “types” of weird concepts in mind than the sorcery spell rules in Legend, so this is not merely an OGL-borrowed set of mechanics but its own range of options with a lot of flexibility in the design.

For Aston’s purposes we’re looking at a classic sorcerer, and I’ll pick five useful spell talents for him to get along with:

Abjure (he learned this spell talent to survive without food or water while on the run)

Animate (when your mother is a necromancer you sorta have to learn this)

Burst (his natural elemental talent for creating bursts of fire and ice manifesting)

Elemental Manipulation and Earth (his geomantic talents in full swing)

So we’re almost done with Aston Kormak’s character creation. Equipment is up next. The rules allow for a selection of choices including a suit or armor worth 2 points of protection, an appropriate weapon and a genre-appropriate adventurer’s kit plus $200. For Aston a shortsword (4 Dmg) and leather armor (2 points) seem appropriate. When all is done, Aston looks like this:

Aston Kormak

Background: human male

Archetype: Sorcerer; Weird Concept: Sorcerer

CHA D6, DEX D6, INT D10, PER D8, PSY D10, SPT D6, STR D8, VIT D6

CA: 3, Defense 7, Health 14, Hero Pts 3, Init 14, Speed 30

Language: common

Skills: Awareness D8, Husbandry D4, Melee D6, Performing (scribe) D8, Resist D8, Streetwise D4, Arcana D10

Skill Combinations: Insight, Parry, Questioning, Willpower

Qualities:

Enemy-he’s got someone he pissed off in his life. I’m going to say it’s his mother, from whom he is estranged; she’s a sort of Maleficent type and he ran away from her to avoid being sucked into her dark cult to the Old Ones. When the enemy rears its ugly head he could get a hero point.

Geomancer-Aston can apply this when he uses elemental magic in arcane mastery. His aptitude for geomancy is why he fled his mother’s control to avoid becoming a necromancer.

Weird Quality-Sorcerer Concept

Horse Whisperer-Aston gets along well with horses, and has a knack for calming them down, although he’s never learned how to ride well.

Clumsy with the Ladies-Aston has a natural fascination for women and tends to pursue attractive ladies although he has little social prowess due to the years his mother kept him locked away, so he's prone to all sorts of social mishaps. This is his other negative quality.

Weird Talent: Sorcery; INT based, Arcana; 30 WPs

Spell Talents: Abjure, Animate, Burst, Elemental Manipulation, Earth

Equipment: shortsword (4 dmg), leather armor (2 pts), adventurer’s kit, 200 gold

I’m pretty excited to play this character. In fact….I’m pretty excited to play EGS, or more accurately to run it.

Next time I’ll show off how the combat works a bit.