# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 25 - Warpland - Raleigh the Debased, Necromantic Snakeman tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/warpland > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice I enjoy getting to revisit games that I've talked about in other contexts during the Character Creation Challenge. Sometimes those returns are years upon years later and sometimes those returns are mere months. This one is going to be more the latter. Near the end of last year, we were going through yet another of the omnipresent cycles of people discovering that Wizards of the Coast/Hasbro are absolute terrors when it comes to respecting any IP they currently own, and, as happens every three to six months, people started talking about other games that they could play rather than **Dungeons and Dragons**. This happens to fall directly into my wheelhouse and my pleasure because I am all for getting people out of the only RPG that half the hobby has ever played and onto better games. To that end, I ended up writing [[Recommended Fantasy RPGs For the Discerning Escapist of Wizards|an entire article about D&D alternatives]], and today's game ended up being part of that recommended list. ![[Warpland (cover).jpg|400]] Let me hand things over to several-months-ago me for a moment: ![[Recommended Fantasy RPGs For the Discerning Escapist of Wizards#^05e319]] I stand by every last thing I wrote about **[[Warpland]]** here and across that entire article. If you're interested in my usual fairly detailed rundown of what a game is, what its setup is, and what it's all about — go read that section linked in the quote and then come right back here. I absolutely mean that you are probably not high enough to play **Warpland**. It is a truly psychotronic experience within the fantasy paradigm, and frankly, I would love to play in a game. But like many others, I don't think I would enjoy *running* it. Well, that's not true; I would *absolutely* enjoy running it, but I'm not sure anyone would enjoy playing it with me because I love the psychedelia and throwing an entire basket of crazy snakes on the table within the context of the game setting is something I would do. Plus, I don't GM anymore. ## Acts of Creation Let me slip in one of the pages from this book just to show off a little bit of the art and to give you an idea of where we're going. There are only six steps to creating a character and none of them are particularly onerous The first thing that you're going to note about this page is that it is not either 6x9 or 8.5x11. That is correct; it is a very strange square coffee table style book, and I find it quite fetching. Almost all of the art in here is in a very stark black and white style except for a number of character pieces by and large which are in this woodcut style. There is a definite pattern to the choice of art and how grounded things are ![[Warpland - Create a Character.webp]] ### Nomenklatura Not surprisingly, we start off with picking a name and describing our character's appearance while putting together a concept. We don't have any randomization tables for this, so it's all going to have to be digging in part of my brain. Given the general hostile nature of this world and how much obscurantism is part of the basic society, I think we're going to start off with a mutant who has given in to the call of the Void and become a warlock. Mutants are, of course, hideously mutated, so they're already on the social outs, and warlocks are emissaries of the dark powers, cultists, and evil sorcerers. You know, just to mix things up a bit. We actually have to roll randomly later for our Gifts from the Warp, defining what kind of hideous mutation we have. So we'll just go with the description of our pre-mutated state: a short, stocky man who used to be a blacksmith before the mutants of the Legion overran his village, killed, murdered, and raped most everyone — in that order — sparing only those who completely debased themselves before them. At that moment, we became Raleigh the Debased. ### Flawed Vision Next up is generating a *personality flaw*, which we have an entire list of to choose from or we can simply make up our own. As a set of examples, consider: *addicted, cruel, greedy, kleptomaniac, masochist, repulsive, trickster.* I think we're going to pick something that is not on the list: **violent**. Effectively, the personality flaws provide something for the GM to compel you with when the situation comes along. Of course, they can also give you a willpower point if you are actively interpreting your flaw in play. If by some mischance you were to expend all of your willpower, in the next scene you must play your flaw to the fullest. How could this possibly go wrong? ### Qualifying Attributions This part always seemed a little strange to me because of the built-in offset. Now we have to distribute eight points among our four attributes, all of which start at five. The four attributes are *Agility, Might, Wits,* and *Lore*. Willpower ends up being a calculated attribute. We'll get back to that. | Agilty | Might | Wits | Lore | | :----: | :---: | :--: | :--: | | 6 | 7 | 7 | 8 | I figured if we're going to be a warlock, we might as well go hard in the paint on it. But I didn't want to skimp on anything else, because **Warpland** is a cruel setting. If you pass up too hard an opportunity, things end very poorly for you very quickly. The attributes are exactly what you think they are, so there's no need to belabor that point here. However, we do need to calculate Willpower, which is equal to half our Lore attribute rounded down. That gives us a **Willpower of 4**, which doesn't suck. ### Unskilled Labor You have no idea how happy it makes me that we only have to distribute one **Skill** for each point greater than 5 in Lore. That's not one skill point; that is, we receive one Skill for each point over five in our Lore attribute. All we have to do is pick three Skills, and we are done with the assignment. We also have to figure out what equipment we own according to our chosen skills and concepts, but that's easy. - **Professional: Blacksmith** - **Warlock** Blacksmith should be obvious given our character setup. We take Warlock because that's the whole point of being a warlock. It's a hard life being a demon worshipper. On top of our skill, we also have a single point of Taint and we receive one Void Gift for every number greater than 5 in Lore. - **Animate Undead** - **Speak with the Dead** - **Drain Life** You know what? Given the choice, it's hard for me not to play a necromancer. I admit it. I have a problem. In this case, Raleigh the Debased has the ability to animate a number of dead bodies equal to the value of their highest roll die on the Lore check. He has to cut himself in order to do this, which does one point of damage, but having a bunch of shambling zombies at your beck and call certainly never hurts. Likewise, sometimes you just want to talk to the dead rather than drag them back to their physical bodies to serve you. So he can do that too. Sure, you need a dried human tongue to cast the spell, but who doesn't have a few dried human tongues lying around? Finally, we picked up Drain Life which does exactly what it says on the tin, does damage to someone else and heals you. All you need is a coiled copper string. There are a couple of other Void Gifts I would have really enjoyed picking up, but this should do for the moment. We will help compensate for our lack of physical capability with corpses. This seems like a perfectly reasonable approach. Oh yes, and Warlock counts for *two* skills. That's why we only have two listed above. While we're looking at the book, I should probably figure out what demon Raleigh offers his worship to. We have a lovely choice of four here. We are going with **Uyoroth the Devourer**, which is a mass of flesh-eating worms which writhes and squirms and is also rumored to be the cause of all pestilences, including the Rot. The Legion worships him, which makes this debasement complete. Closing out this step, we pick some equipment and in this case it makes sense to have a pretty all enveloping cloak with a suitably ominous hood because we don't know exactly what our mutations are going to be yet, a well-worn yet perfectly reasonable knife just as any traveler should have with him a set of blacksmith's tools wrapped very carefully in oil cloth to keep them dry, some rats on a skewer because everyone needs some rations to keep them going. (No, I'm not kidding, rat skewers are on the equipment list. It's surprisingly complete.) That should be enough. Just the clothes on his back, a ritual dagger, and a set of tools. ### Backgrounding the Warp It's time to roll randomly on the *Background Table*, and because we're a Mutant, we will also go to the *Gifts from the Warp*. **Background: You are blamed for burning a Temple of the Light.** Yeah, we probably did that. > [6, 3, 5] No 1s or 2s, so no Mutant Flaws, thank the Void. We *did* roll a 6, so we get a Complete Mutation. Goody! But a complete mutation forces a Mutant Flaw after all. At least I get to choose it. > [6] **Reptilian:** *All Reptilian Characters gain scaly skin that grants them a natural armor of 1 and makes them resistant to heat. Choose two: Webbed Hands, Tail, Bite Attack, Poison Saliva, Wings, Flexible Body, Slow Regeneration.* - **Slow Regeneration** - **Flexible Body** - **Carnivore** Well check that out, worshipping the powers of the Void have made us entirely reptilian. This isn't *necessarily* terrible. We can go about cloaked and wrapped in bandages so that people don't notice, right? That gives us a nice thick scaly hide, the ability to slowly regenerate (and by that I mean heal at twice the rate of a normal human being and grow back any limbs), plus it seems like a good idea to pick up the ability to fit through any hole the size of our head. Sure it means that our gait looks a little strange as our arms dangle and sway as we walk, but we also get reduced damage from falls. Somehow in this borderline sword and sandals post-apocalyptic nightmare fantasy of psychedelia, I've ended up playing a necromantic snake man who worships demons. You know what? It could be worse. Does it surprise anyone that this guy is blamed for burning a Temple of the Light? Anyone? Bueller? Anybody? No, he absolutely did it. ### Cash Monies 1d6 x 10 copper pieces. > [1] Yeah, that figures. ![[Warpland - CCC2025 - Raleigh the Debased, Necromantic Snakeman.webp]] ## Exunt That actually turned out all right. I'm particularly fond of the way the character sheet looks, as it is pleasantly close to how the character sheet examples in the text look. Not bad. If you're into games which like to straddle the line between modern mechanical design and things inspired by traditional fantasy games, simultaneously being one of the most psychedelic and possibly weirdly creative fantasy settings I'm aware of, you want to pick up **[[Warpland]]**. If the process of going through character creation here seems like something you would enjoy doing informed by that kind of setting, you definitely want to pick up **Warpland**. The setting is unforgiving and the mechanics are surprisingly lightweight. The back of the book contains random generation tables for each of the major cities and things that you're likely to run into both within them and along the way. There are rules for advanced weapons left from the previous age and for the absolute abominations that you can run into in the wasteland *and* the activities you can get up to — and it does all of that without over-constraining you within a given narrative that it wants you to pursue. It reminds me in some essential way of **[[On Mighty Thews]]**. Both of them touch on that sword and sandals feel, and both leave immense space in their settings, such as they are for you to poke around and explore. This is one of the times I'm actually going to suggest that you go out and pick up *the actual hardback* because the book itself is gorgeous and it feels good in the hand. It's the kind of text that really wants to be on the table in front of you. I promise, if I were sitting at a convention table with seats set up and character sheets laid out, ready to be filled, and this book was lying in the middle of the table, it wouldn't take long for random passerby in the game room to wander over and sit down just to see what was up. That good. Tomorrow is another day, as they say. Luckily so, because it means that we get to pick up another rarely seen game. I hope you like monsters, or rather, I hope you hate them.