# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 15 - Nihilation - Nameless, Forgetter and Learner tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/nihilation > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice There is a wonderful thing about really super light solo RPGs, and that is that they don't take very long to create characters for. Playing the game literally creates the character, in the sense that the experiences that you put together on the fly represent the totality of it. Because while character generation is traditionally one of the "lonely fun" aspects of RPGs, given that they are generally expected to be played with others, the entire process of a solo RPG can be seen through the lens of "lonely fun" and as such doesn't have to compact everything together in one shot or one place. Today's RPG is **[[Nihilation]]**, which has the strangely beautiful subtitle, *"A Post-Doomsday Solo RPG."* Oddly enough, it combines move-based journaling play with what's effectively a hex crawl. It's one of the most elegant ways to mate those two concepts I've had the pleasure to see. ![[Nihilation (cover).jpg|400]] It's going to lead to this being a very, very short entry, and I have to be honest with you. I can't really object. It's that kind of night/day. ![[Nihilation - The World Ended.webp]] Just so you know how this game kicks off, this is the opening. This is all the setting information you really need to know. In fact, the book suggests that you don't read all of it before you start playing, so that you can discover how things play out in the process of play itself. That speaks to me, as does this opening. Everything here is set up. The end of the world has already happened. Now, everything is descending into forgetfulness and the emptiness of the void. Our goal as a character is to find and reach SALVATION. Where is Salvation? *What* is Salvation? We don't know. We don't even know how the world ended. What are the Doom Signs? We don't know yet. The thing I like most about this is that anything could fall out of it. Anything at all. We just don't know. And by not knowing, we have a fertile void waiting to be filled with our own ideas. It's pretty glorious. ## Acts of Creation Down below, the setup tells us what we need to prepare the game: - Two or more d6 - A couple of printouts of the character sheet - A printout of the hex map - A notebook to act as our Domesday Book - A bunch of tokens to represent movable entities (for the hex map) That's it, that's all you need to play. You can probably get by without the character sheet, and if you're fairly decent with freehand hex drawing, you can probably get away without the hex map. I'm not entirely sure how we're going to play that out here, but something will fall out interestingly. ### Approaching the Barrier Our character has three approaches for how they solve problems and overcome obstacles: - *Aggressive* - *Thoughtful* - *Expressive* We roll a d6 for each, and the highest result gets a +2, the next gets a +1, and the lowest stays at 0. If you're getting a little bit of a familiar feeling from this setup, you probably should. > [1, 3, 4] For us, it shakes out like this: - **Expressive:** +2 - **Thoughtful:** +1 - **Aggressive:** 0 Not necessarily what I would have chosen, but that is part of why we roll the dice for these things on occasion. Shake up expectations. Try something new. Having assembled our approaches,… ### Trial by Trait There are some trait tables on the opposite page from the main character generation page which we are going to roll on. You can also just pick some, but we're going to let the dice speak. Again, not my usual inclination, but here we are. Amusingly enough, the tables are a "d36" character trait table. In practice, what it means is that the page is broken into six sections, each of which is broken into six subsections, each of which has six entries. It's quite elegant for getting out some core concepts with a minimum of different dice. I know what you're asking: *How many traits should my character have?* The answer is — what do you think? How many do you need to describe yourself? How few can you get away with? I think we're going to go with the totally random solution for just a few, which means that we need three sets of 3d6. > [4, 2, 6] **Face - Sharp** > [5, 5, 6] **Physique - Tall** > [6, 3, 5] **Hair - Bushy** Our character is tall with sharp features and bushy hair. I imagine him being somewhat lanky, with little round glasses, and a prominent nose. Ichabod Crane, if he had bushy hair. I think this is actually enough for me to go on, despite the fact that no behaviors or mannerisms came up. I have a little bit of a feeling for who he is. That's enough. ![[Nihilation - CCC2025 - Ichabod Nameless.webp]] ### What's in a Name? We are given one last instruction in character generation. (I told you it was short.) **DO NOT NAME THEM.** Your character cannot remember who they were. This is rather important considering the setup. That's all we know. There is no history. There is no backstory. There is no long rambling discussion of how we got here. We don't know. Thus, we must play to find out in the most literal sense. ![[Nihilation - CCC2025 - Nameless, Forgetter and Learner (sheet).webp]] There's the sheet. What do the things on it mean? I couldn't tell you. Why are there numbers along the side? I have no idea. What we have is what we have. We start with a nearly blank slate. If you find this intimidating, journaling games may not be for you. If you look at this and you see a bunch of space waiting to be filled in by things that you do, you might be in the right place. ### The Where, But Not the Why Following that, there's a discussion of the actions you can take and how die rolling works. Effectively, it will remind you a lot of *[[Powered by the Apocalypse|PbtA]]*, and for good reason. Perhaps we will get back to that. For now, we need to put a token representing our character in a region/hex on the edge of the map and draw the Shadow Steppe terrain on that region. As we explore, we'll end up drawing more hexes onto the map. Yes, exploring is an action. As we explore, we can discover hints of the old world and generate *terrain types* alongside *themes*, *events*, and *discoveries*. *Settlements*, *memorials*, *blocked paths*, or *foes* can all pop up. There are a number of different environments, each of which has their own really neat cartographic symbol that you can draw into the hex map. I'm not much of an artist — well, I'm a *bad* artist — so I don't feel compelled to do all of this by hand. You're just going to have to get over it. ![[Nihilation - CCC2025 - Nameless Hexmap.webp]] I did give you fair warning, frankly. ## Exunt That's it. That's character generation. The character's ready to go. You've got a map that's mostly empty and a character sheet that's mostly empty. Almost no idea of what to do or what's going on (though the next couple of pages do share some tidbits about process and intent). Is it high fantasy, low fantasy, science fiction, who knows? All we know is that there are some different terrains and that doomsday came. It's an excellent place to start. ### Entropic Destruction We *do* find out what the numbers are on the character sheet on the next page. Entropy is destroying the memories of the universe and all is fading into oblivion. Certain actions will give us more entropy. Every time entropy increases, we *tear off the section of the character sheet* indicated by our new total entropy. That's why the numbers increase from one at the bottom of the sheet. When you have six entropy, your character fades from thought and remembrance. They no longer exist. If your character *dies*, the map and everything on it remains, but there is an **Entropic Event**. What is that? I have no idea. But if our character were to die, I would turn to page 23 and execute the process there. I imagine it can't be good for the world. ### Memories, Nothing More Than Memories In the process of play, we will make restore actions when we find a memorial by offering keepsakes, trinkets and memorabilia from the Old World. We can have either a strong or a weak memory (thus the memory slots on the character sheet). A strong memory is for your highest approach and a weak one is for your next highest. So for us, a strong memory would be for our Expressive approach and a weak one would be for our Thoughtful approach. There are other bits that go into making memories, but now we know what they are. ### The Doom That Came to Sarnath In order to find Salvation, we have to remember how the world ended. All we can remember right now is that there were signs that foreshadowed doomsday. When we move, we check to see if a **doom sign** appears, and if it does, we roll on the indicated Words of Inspiration Tables and interpret the results. We can delve into it to learn a coordinate. And if we do, doom signs don't appear on that terrain type anymore. Once we have four coordinates, draw lines between them. Where they cross is where Salvation is. We reach that and we go to page 31. Whatever happens there happens, I guess. If the lines don't intersect, whatever the coordinate in the middle is, is where Salvation is. ### Opposing Forces I did mention that there were foes and threats, correct? There are forces which want to hasten the final end, the elimination of all things, the descent of the world into complete oblivion and forgetfulness. They might be people, creatures, anomalies, or even ideas. They bend reality toward entropy. Needless to say, we want to fight against that, and there is a surprisingly involved process of doing so, for all that much of the rest of the game is very freeform and inspirational rather than denotational. The process of opposing foes is perversely mechanistic; I don't hate it. It's an important part of the process of the game, but it's unexpected. --- That's all I've got. That's it. The rest is play and, as you can clearly see, no two people's play is going to be the same. No two people's imaginings of the decay of the world will ever be the same. I suspect no two people's *Salvation* will be the same. It's a hex crawl. It's a journaling game. It's a fiction-forward exploration of a world falling apart into the maw of entropy. Needless to say, *I like it.* If you like it, [you can certainly have your own copy for a mere $5](https://eucatastrophic.itch.io/nihilation), and I encourage you to pick up and start posting your actual play, because *I* want to see the end of the world as you see it. Show me oblivion in a grain of sand. Show me the end of your world in a speck of dust.