# Character Creation Challenge 2025: Day 07 - carry: a game about war - Rocky Alongi, Fireteam Leader tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2025 #game/rpg/carry > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2025]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice We are about to commit one of the most diametrically opposed acts of creation that has ever been recorded. Yesterday, [[Character Creation Challenge 2025 - Day 06 - Forgotten Ruin|we went deep into the adventure wargame space]], and character creation actually involved creating nine characters, albeit lightweight, with three of them having slightly more detail and one of them being declared our main character. Today we're going in a very different direction, but in exactly the same narrative style, which is kind of interesting. It's **[[carry|carry: a game about war]]**. ![[carry (cover).jpg|400]] 2006 was a really interesting time for the RPGs. A lot of exciting experimental ideas were getting pushed around, and much of the indie design community was playing with priors trying to figure out what happens if you change some core assumptions about what a typical RPG is and how it works, how it interfaces with the players, what the GM does. Lots of extremely elemental questions. **carry** comes out of that era and is probably the best example of a lot of mechanical subversion coupled with extreme philosophical subversion. There's also a clear note of what would eventually become an overwhelming social pressure in a lot of the indie space toward what is currently thought of as *"woke politics,"* but at least here it was more of a flavor and not the lecture that it would come to be. I maintain that it's perfectly *reasonable* to tell a political story, even at the gaming table, but first you have to have a *good story*. **carry** puts together a good story in the process of actual play, even if the context is extremely curated. It's a game you should have in your collection, even if you are unlikely to play it very often. You should play it at least once. The setting of the game is critical to understanding what's going on. This is 1965 Vietnam, not necessarily the *real* 1965 Vietnam, but a version of the media take on the Vietnam War. The book opens with a list of the things that influenced it: the works that were considered critical during its creation, the philosophy of what there is to play and why it's there. It's not something you see a lot of anymore and I think that's a bit of a loss because understanding these things helps you put yourself in the right place for play. In this case, you can look at three critical fictional sources: - *The Things They Carried* by Tim O'Brien - Oliver Stone's film *Platoon* - Stanley Kubrick's *Full Metal Jacket* From those alone you probably have a pretty good idea of what kind of story we're talking about. ## Acts of Creation When you hear about this process, you are going to immediately start scratching your head. Remember, this is an indie game from 2006. Your expectations are probably misset. Specifically, it is literally a game about *war and how it changes you*, both for the good and for the bad. As such, it literally mechanizes the process of emotional development in a way that you may not have seen before. Everything else about character play is secondary at best. What's front and center is how the character reacts to the things that they have brought to the war with them and what they take away. Technically, it's impossible to play this game by yourself and probably shouldn't even be attempted, including character generation, which is really a group exercise but we'll walk through the steps nonetheless and see what we fall out with on the other side. The randomness and creativity that other people bring to the character creation stage of the game (within the limited context) is very much part of the kickstart that moves the engine. ### Pass the Burden Burdens are very much what they say on the tin. The personal issue, situation, or problem that the soldier (and you are playing a soldier) brings with them to the War > Keep in mind the connotations of the word Burden, something of great weight, but with a reason to be carried, otherwise it would simply be set aside. We are specifically instructed with something set out as a singular subsection. While it's bad typographic design (by the strictest sense), it's perfect for conveying something that needs to be reiterated: > The GM does not make a Burden As a player, you need to write down something that is the nature of the burden you carry. Examples include: - *Girlfriend back home* - *Must prove himself to the squad* - *Hates war but hates cowardice more* - *Loves to kill* You get the idea. These are the core crystal elements of the character that you're going to play within the context of the nightmare to come. Having written it out, you pass the paper to the player on your right, and then they add something related to that original idea. It could be a cause, a symptom, a related issue, or another expression of that first item. If you were handed *"must prove himself to the squad"* you could add *"because you were a failure back home,"* or *"always volunteers for dangerous missions."* The first is a cause, the second is a symptom. Once you've passed it the first time, the paper goes one more step to a third person and they write another entry which is related to the first two. Unfortunately, there's only *me* here. So I'm going to have to at least be a little creative. A terrible state of affairs I know. The really hard part at this point is trying to think of something that isn't a complete and utterly overmined trope. But it's probably *wrong* to avoid that. That's exactly the sort of thing that works as a functional hook for bringing one of these characters together. At a real table, you would have two other people who were looking for twists and manifestations to add to it, which would take it out of the realm of the stereotypical. That's one of the really intriguing insights of **carry** as a game design. I'm going to try and do something a little bit unique despite myself, and we're going with … - *Has no intention of going home ever again.* It fits what we're looking for in that it is simultaneously something that is a weight the person carries into battle every day, but it's something inherent to who he is. We don't know why it is yet, but it is. We'll pass it around the table and back to me for the next bit: - *… to protect his family from his violent urges.* Well that certainly puts an exciting twist on things, doesn't it? What started with something that looks like an act of egregious abandonment immediately got twisted into some kind of personal sacrifice. That's exactly the kind of thing this game is designed to do. Once more around the table and we finally end up with: - *Likes to watch men die in pain.* If ever there was something you probably wanted to protect your family from, because you know it's part of your inherent nature, that would probably qualify. Here's a man who knows what he is and has gone off to a place where what that implies may not be the worst thing in the world. If he's a monster, he's at least gone to a monstrous place to protect those he actually cares about. Once you have the original paper with your Burden on it, you go around the table and everyone reads their set of sentences out loud. You may not have actually *read* the two additions until they are back in front of you. That's your Burden. Now, if you really don't like what you have or it makes the character into someone you don't want to play, you are instructed to cross it off and ask the table to help you replace it. I would say that such things are exactly the kind of play you should look at because if it makes you uncomfortable, odds are good that it will make for good drama as you actively struggle with the truth. It's very rare that you see a game which will set you up in a place where you have a character struggling against who they are, even though that is a prime core of dramatic literature since *ever*. I would hate to give up that opportunity if I were at your table. ### Grunting Aloud Here's where things really go off the rails by traditional judgment. You're effectively complete. The only thing that remains for you to do is to pick your grunt from the list of soldiers in the squad. Yes, there is a static list of soldiers in the squad. Each of those soldiers has a name, a rank, how many months they've been in, some vital stats like their race, height, weight, and physical description, as well as a personality description which is already set, and their beginning profile (we'll talk about the profile here in a moment). Those are not elements up for discussion. You simply pick from the list, possibly informed by your burden and thinking about what would be interesting within the context of the person as presented. But that's it. Character generation done. For example, here's our pick of the litter: > [!quote] **carry**, p 102 > A105. FIRE TEAM BRAVO (CONDORS) > > **Name:** Rocky “Raven” Alongi > > **Rank:** Corporal (Fire Team Bravo Leader) > > **Months In:** 7. Draftee. > > **Vitals:** Italian. 5’10”, 206 lbs. Hazel eyes, shaved head. 28. > > **Description:** Stocky and with a perpetual sneer, he oozes > intimidation. Raven does not talk about his past, but he > had plenty of scars even before arriving in Vietnam. He > has been known to react to insubordination with violence, > but he toes the line with his superiors. > > **Starting Profile:** Brawler Everything here is just about exactly as you think it is, though there are two pieces of information that probably need clarification. **Months In** determines how large your die pool is. You use the dice from your die pool to engage in conflicts. At seven months in, our starting die pool is 2D6, 2D6, 2D10, and 1D12. You also get one D6 that cannot be given away to represent your Burden. After a conflict in a squad or burden scene, each player gives all the dice that they rolled to the other players or the GM in any distribution that they choose, except the Burden die, which they keep. After a conflict in a squad or burden scene, the GM places all the dice they rolled completely out of play; they don't go into anyone's pool after the end of an action scene. The GM and the player that's involved both place all the dice they rolled out of play. Thus, all players who are engaged with one another in character-building scenes can push their dice around between one another. But action scenes drain the number of dice in play on the table quite aggressively. For the GM, this isn't quite as much of a problem. For the players, that brings us down to your Profile. Your **Profile** effectively defines how you approach situations and what kind of approaches are likely to be effective given your current stance. Each profile has two others which it can change to when you are out of dice in your dice pool. Doing so refreshes that pool, but also means that your attitude has changed, and thus things that are likely to be successful are different. You have been transformed by the experience. ![[carry - Profiles.webp]] You're ready. Time to head to 'Nam. ## Exunt Obviously, there's a lot more to this game than I've even scratched the surface of. Play is architected such that there is an endgame to be reached. When does that happen? When all of the characters who are not player characters are dead. There's a reason that they are referred to as Fodder from the beginning of the game. Player characters simply cannot die. Any time they would, one of the Fodder dies instead. The squad is whittled down one by one, piling up emotional damage on emotional damage until things come to a head and characters are compelled to deal with their Burden one way or another. Once that happens, we get to do one of my favorite things in an RPG design: epilogues. I love epilogues. Getting to narrate how things turn out given all of the experiences that you've had up until that point is deeply satisfying to me. Anytime it shows up as a mechanic, I am in. It's particularly well placed here; you can imagine that it's the last shots of the movie, which show, often without dialogue, how things turn out. Sometimes it turns out exactly as you expect. Sometimes there's an ironic twist. Sometimes it's simply a gravestone. Man, I love epilogues. It's a great place to end this article. Tomorrow we continue with *Character Creation Challenge 2025*, and it involves a trifold. Should be interesting.