Before you can join a Ground Zero PBeM, you must create your PC. You begin your career with rudimentary gear and rudimentary knowledge of the world. If you're lucky, you'll gain experience, power, knowledge, and high-tech relics. If you're unluckly, you get blasted to nothingness by torc grenades or have your legs chewed off by a giant ladybug.
(In the Tribal Defenders campaign, your character will be a mutant explorer from an isolated village in the wasteland. PCs from the Ruins of Gary are from an urban milieu. And in the Wastelords campaign, your character comes from a mountain community struggling to survive against raiders.)
These pages assume that you are already familiar with the d20 system rules. If you are new to the game, then check out The Basics first. Character creation is a multi-step process:
- Choose your character's genotype. These include the stock human, near-human, and mutant races.
- Select a background for your character. Depending on the campaign, this can be survivor, frontier, tribal, or feral.
- Determine base attributes. Attributes in Ground Zero are determined a bit differently than in the standard d20 rules. All characters randomly determine their base scores, which can then be adjusted using Build Points (BPs).
- Roll for mutations This is the fun part, where you find out your character's mutant perks and flaws. You can spend BPs to reroll if your character really sucks, but otherwise the selection is random. (Stock humans skip this step.)
- Choose a character class. You can be a enforcer, outlander, scavenger, or thinker. Note that characters from some campaigns start at 2nd or 3rd level, and that mutants have a +1 level adjustment, so they'll have one less class level than other genoytpes.
- Pick your skills & talents. Skills are pretty straightforward. A character's choice of talents depend on his class. (In Ground Zero, the skill system is simplified and feats are replaced by talents.)
- Make your finishing touches. Use any leftover BPs to raise attributes, reroll mutations, or to pick up Karma Points. This is also where you get your starting gear. Each character will receive a couple randomly determined pieces of equipment they have scavenged over time. Give your character a name, maybe write up a short description of him, and you're done!
Click on the the steps above, or just follow the links at the bottom of each page, to create your PC. For examples of characters, check out the Tribal Defenders PCs: Krang-Nar, Martuk, Beeblebrox, and Ran-Nik.
Several steps of the character creation process involve Build Points (BPs). Build Points are meant to counteract some of the randomness of character creation in Ground Zero and give the player some control over their PC. Although attributes and mutations are rolled randomly, BPs can be spent to modify or reroll some of the results. Most NPCs in Ground Zero are built with 10 BPs, but some have more or less. Player characters are well above average, and thus start with 20 BPs (in the Ruins of Gary campaign) or 30 BPs (Tribal Defenders and Wastelords campaigns):
- Mediocre: 0 Build Points. The underpriviliged and forgotten.
- Average: 10 Build Points. The standard inhabitant of the wastes.
- Elite: 20 Build Points. Persons of note, player characters from some campaigns.
- Heroic: 30 Build Points. Many PCs are considered heroic, as are some key NPCs.
Stock humans and near-humans will pump most or all of their BPs into attributes. Mutant characters will spend at least 12 to 18 BPs on mutant perks, get about half that back in mutant flaws, and use the remaining BPs to reroll mutations or raise attributes. Leftover BPs can be converted into Karma Points, but in most cases it's worthwhile to spend as many BPs as possible.
Due to the random element in Ground Zero, it's a bit tricky making characters over the internet. There are a lot of dice rolls involved (for attributes and mutations, specifically) and I want to make sure all rolls are done fairly. You have a few options:
- I can do all the rolling for you. Just send me an e-mail saying how many mutant perks and flaws you want and I'll roll those up for you and e-mail the results (along with attributes). If you want to spend BPs to reroll mutations, let me know and I'll tell you the updated results. Everything else you can decide on your own.
- We can do character creation in person (if you live close enough) or over the telephone. I'll trust you to roll fairly, of course. Chat with me and we'll arrange something.
- Use an online dice roller (such as the Dice Server from Irony Games). Make sure that I'm sent an original copy of the rolls from the dice server. You'll need to do six 3d6 rolls for attributes, X d% rolls for mutant perks, and Y d% rolls for mutant flaws (where X and Y are the number of perks and flaws, respectively, that you want for your character). If you want to reroll mutations, additional rolls will be required. Ensure sure that I'm e-mailed all results and make sure you tell me what the rolls are for.