# Day 08: Lightweight Universal Roleplaying - Llamant Delgados, Shifty Mech-Trader tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/lur > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice So, you remember how yesterday's entry was almost 7,500 words long? We're not doing that today. Instead, we are going the opposite direction in terms of game design—something that literally fits on a bookmark. Weirdly enough, it's not Masterless. You would think it would be right next door to being solo, but no, apparently. ![[Lightweight Universal Roleplaying (cover).png|400]] Today, *[[Lightweight Universal Roleplaying]]*. Don't worry, it's [pay what you want on itch.io right now](https://loreshapergames.itch.io/lightweight-universal-roleplaying). So if you would like to follow along, you can go grab a copy and have it up in front of you while we go through character creation. Hell, go through character creation with me. It'll be fine. You'll enjoy it. Mechanically, you're going to find that it's somewhat reminiscent of *[[Loner]]*. Characters and scenes have tags (in the case of characters, boosts and flaws). You start with 3d6 in a pool and add one for each relevant boost and remove one for each relevant flaw. Then the storyteller sets the difficulty, which is how many successes you need. You generate successes by rolling the dice, and a 4 or higher counts as one success. A 6 counts as two successes. If the success is less than the difficulty, you fail and you can get more scene tags or stress. If it's equal, it works, but you can have some complications. And if you get more successes than the difficulty, it works and the player can request alterations to scene tags. That's pretty much it. Honestly, I've read to you most of the front of the bookmark. Go grab a copy for yourself. I mean it. You'll appreciate it. ### A Little Setup Now with mechanics this lightweight, you'll notice what doesn't come in the box: a setting. It's impossible to create characters without a world for them to inhabit, but we don't need much of a sketch to do it. Sure, you could use your favorite IP or mash up something new. I'm going to bring out one of my old faves, which is gritty far future sci-fi. The galaxy is a mess of feuding kingdoms, republics, and those that prey on both. Mercantile trade requires you to be both a hunter and a killer. Giant robots are the preferred weapon of the competent and the storied. There we go. That's good enough. Let's rock. ## Acts of Creation Character creation is bloody easy. All characters are made up of boosts and flaws and have an XP value. ### Boosts All characters get to choose three talents, two things, and one personality as boosts. This is easy. I believe we're going to go with a sneaky, underhanded, double-dealing merchant of the space lanes who will hold anything for anybody as long as the money's good. Of course, he has his own mech because things are dangerous out there. Also, his own small cargo ship, because of course he does. | Talents | Things | Personality | | ---------------- | ------------------------ | ----------- | | Cunning Haggler | Viperfish (small hauler) | Shifty | | Krav-Meka | Revealing Wind (mech) | | | Zero-G Mechanics | | | What sort of things go into making this guy? Well, he's good at haggling. Sort of a necessary skill to have as a trader. He's also talented with Krav-Meka, which is a close combat skill, which is unusual to say the least. Plus, he has a real talent for zero-g mechanics, which comes in handy if you're in the middle of nowhere and your ship is broken down for the 18th time. Needless to say, he has the small huller Viperfish and a mech called the Revealing Wind. Assume that it has a backpack connection to the front of the Viperfish so that it essentially acts as a huge thruster pack when docked, or the mech is a detachable cockpit. Either way. You wouldn't think that shifty was a useful personality trait, but sometimes you have to be inscrutable. Out there in the space lanes, no one's really quite sure what he could do at any time, and his reputation for being underhanded precedes him in a useful way most of the time. ### Flaws It just wouldn't do if the character didn't have any flaws. But interestingly, I don't think I've seen too many systems that give as many flaws to a character as LUR does. Here, we get two weaknesses: one secret and one personality. I've often been an advocate for characters having a number of flaws because it makes it easier to get yourself into trouble in ways that you are aware of. They act as a flag to the GM/storyteller about what kind of things you want to happen to you. It's cool to see that actually put into practice here. | Weakness | Secret | Personality | | ------------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------- | --------------- | | A Pretty Face | The Flesh-Puppet of a Rogue AI That Lives in the Revealing Wind | Closet Romantic | | Not Much of a Pilot | | | Here's where I turned up the volume all the way to 11 because who's going to stop me, right? Our man has a serious weakness for a pretty face. Not sob stories, but an attractive woman can get under his skin pretty easily. He's also, interestingly enough, not much of a ship pilot. He's not going to be diving at full speed through an asteroid field in the Viperfish, that's for sure. Why is he a sucker for a pretty face? Because he's a closet romantic. Beneath that hard, crusty exterior is an equally hard and crusty interior, but he likes a good story. The real hardcore action here is in his secret that he's not really a human being. He's just the flesh puppet of the mech, the Revealing Wind. That's where the intelligence lives. It's also why he knows an extremely rare mecha combat style, and possibly why he's not much of a pilot, because the mech would be piloting from two removes. That seems like a pretty good setup. I'm going to go with that. ### Name Oh yes, we also need a name, I suppose. **Name:** Llamant Delgados ## Exunt That's it. That's the character created. I suppose you could borrow from *Loner* a bit more and actually accept that all things are characters, then follow up by making the *Viperfish* and the *Revealing Wind* using the character system. I don't see any reason that wouldn't work. The rest of it is just having the play conversation with the storyteller. You get an XP when you voluntarily add a character's flaw to a roll, and you get XP at the end of a session. You can add a new boost for 5 XP. You can blow off your stress by adding a flaw, and the storyteller can invoke one of your flaws for a roll, but decreases your stress in the process. You can also do that instead of taking XP. ![[07 - LUR - Llamant Delgado, ShiftyMech-Trader.webp]] That's the game. You could be playing this thing in under 10 minutes if you went and picked up the bookmark at the beginning of this article. You could be carrying around this bookmark in your favorite book while you're out and about along with some d6s and be ready to play a game at any moment. I like this sort of thing. It cuts down RPGs to the very core of the mechanical requirements and leaves the rest up to you. Go nuts. Be creative. Have a good time. That's what we're all here for. Tomorrow, we simultaneously tread new ground and revisit an old friend. Stay close. It could get dangerous.