# Day 16: Boundless Tides - Renaud, Straightforward Swashbuckler tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/boundless-tides > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] Here at the *Satellite of Hate*, or at least the bottom of the beanstalk that connects the Satellite of Hate proper to our staging area in the American Deep South, it's 32°F in the middle of the day. And by that I mean just short of noon. What I'm saying is it's cold out there. At least in deep space, you don't have to worry about convection taking away all of your therms, but here—it's a different story. But there's writing to be done, and so there's writing we will do. ## Game of Choice Perhaps in repudiation of the temperatures outside, I'm thinking about being on a ship, a big ship, one with rolling decks, in the Caribbean, wind whipping my face, tentacles whipping in the breeze, the scent of booty on the air.[^1] It's a fine day to be a pirate. ![[Boundless Tides (cover).jpg|400]] Let us break out *[[Boundless Tides]]*, brothers, because if there's nothing else that we need in life, it is to take a cutlass in hand, a pistol in the other, the spray on our face,[^2] and look to make ourselves a portion of the take. BT is a GMed RPG which uses pools of d6 for resolution with 5 or 6 being a hit and checks being made by rolling a die for each point in the relevant Attribute plus any Stamina you want to throw onto the roll, with one or more hits being necessary to succeed and some checks requiring more than one hit. In a sense, it is next door to [[Blades in the Dark|FitD]] designs, though differs in a few notable ways. Oh yes, and it is a whole whopping **four pages**. Super lightweight, fits in your backpack, your messenger bag, or your pocket, and you can have pirate action with your buddies wherever and whenever you go. You might be curious. Let's get stuck in. ## Acts of Creation Character creation is really straightforward, which I appreciate. ### Characterization Why is there a separate section for characterization here at the beginning? Stick with me. All will become obvious in time. #### Attributes We've got four attributes here: **Grit** (strong, fast), **Guile** (clever, sly), and **Flair** (bold, charming). We just distribute four points across the three, with a max of three points in any given Attribute. Do I have a character concept yet? Not quite. We're just going to do it on the fly, which is the worst possible way to do it, but here we are. - **Grit:** 1 - **Guile:** 0 - **Flair:** 3 I know that's a really weird layout, and I'll own it. I decided to dump it all to max out my Flair and put the remaining point in Grit. Imagine a swashbuckler without a single bone of underhandedness or subtlety in his body. We're talking 40s and 50s era, black and white, tales of derring-do protagonist-level action here. He gets the ladies, he can take a shot, but he certainly can't tell a lie, and probably isn't even inclined to, despite being a pirate. #### Stamina Everybody starts with six Stamina, which simplifies matters fairly considerably. - **Stamina:** 6 #### Hit Points This one's easy to calculate, too. It is 2 + Grit. - **HP:** 3 #### Background We have a background which gives a general feel of the things that we would be good at or bad at, and what our interest is on the ship. There's essentially a list of ten things here, and we aren't even invited to roll, which is fine. We just get to choose. The obvious choice is Swashbuckler, so that's what we're doing. - **Background:** Swashbuckler #### Role Now we pick our role. This is not a class, but rather our role on the ship. What is it that we do? Again, there's a list of about ten. - **Role:** Raider This guy is here for the booty.[^3] He's not subtle enough to be the captain's mate. Doesn't have the skills to be a chirurgeon. A little too full of himself to be the cook, not smart enough to be the quartermaster. He will be the first one over the rail when the prey is grappled, though. #### Name and Items Here we go. We get to figure out what our name is and grab some things to stick in our inventory. There are some lists of both at the bottom of the page. Let's grab a few things. - **Name:** Renaud - **Items:** - Cutlass - Pistol - Rope and hook That seems appropriate. Renaud has your standard raider loadout here. He first produces his pistol and then produces his rapier. He stands and delivers, and then swings across to the other ship. For those not old enough to get that reference, let me help you out.  *(Look, you do piracy your way, and I'll do it mine. Mine just happens to have a lot more skinny drunk blondes. I don't know what to tell you.)* And that's it for the character. We're done. Fast to get in, fast to get out, fast to play, fast to read. *Boundless Tides* is a great shot for that piracy urge. But we're not quite done, because if we **were** actually creating a character to play *Boundless Tides* with our buddies, we would need something else that's really quite important. ### The Ship This is the part that made me think of the structure of *Forged in the Dark* games in particular. The characters belong to a crew, an organization, a group, which has its own stats and influences the overall experience. Let's do that. #### Attributes Perhaps not surprisingly, same drill, different day, but different attributes. We have **Hull** (tough, steady), **Sails** (swift, agile), **Guns** (deadly). Again, four points, max of three points per attribute. - **Hull**: 1 - **Sails:** 1 - **Guns:** 2 Going a little less extreme with this layout. The ship is certainly well gunned. You can't intend to take someone out unless you can literally take them out. But she's got some wind in her ass and can take a little bit of a hit. Every little bit helps. #### Resilience The equivalent of character Stamina. How much strain you can take and consequence you can avoid. We get to start with 6 Resilience. - **Resillience:** 6 #### HP Just what it says on the tin. Everybody wants to avoid structural damage. We get to start with HP equal to 4 + Hull. - **HP:** 5 #### Origin Another list of goodies to pick from for the origin of our ship. How did we get that? Where did it come from? Is there anything particularly unusual about it? - **Origin:** Merchant Refitted I've always liked a nice Q-ship, a cargo ship that looks like it's just easy prey until it pops open its hidden gunports and turns into a terrifying threat. So let's go with that right here. Lying in wait is a perfectly reasonable predator strategy. #### Reputation What do people think about our ship once they know who we are? What's our reputation? How are they likely to be inclined? Again, another pick from a list. - **Reputation:** Unimportant In a sea of thieves, these guys are nobody. Maybe they're just new. Somebody says the name of the captain or the name of the ship in a bar in Tortuga, and people just look confused and say, "Who?" I imagine fixing this little issue is something the captain would love to do. #### Name and Items We find ourselves back here once again, which is not a bad thing. We figure out the name of our ship, describe its figurehead, sails and colors, and choose three pieces of equipment or cargo to add to the hold. Of course, there's lists to help, but let's take a look. - **Name:** The Roving Eye - **Description:** A very plain figurehead with a geometric octagonal line designed as a covert ramming prow which can be easily replaced. The sails are plain bleached canvas like you would see on an only slightly successful merchant ship. The colors, however, are a pennant-style field of black with a skeletal eye with a bright red center. - **Cargo:** - Gunpowder kegs - Small arms - Gemstones You know what? No one said you couldn't do a little smuggling on the side with your piracy. If you're going to look like a not particularly successful trader, you might as well be ready to pull into port and sell people things they aren't supposed to have under the nose of the local authorities. Everybody wants guns. Taking your pay in gemstones just means everything's easy to put in bags and carry away without anyone being any the wiser. ## Exunt And that truly is that for doing character generation and ship generation. Fast, easy, high speed, low drag. Perfect for getting into the sea and getting your piracy on, as long as you have a GM willing to run it. ![[16 - Boundless Tides - Renaud, Straightforward Swashbuckler.webp]] ![[16 - Boundless Tides - The Roving Eye, Unimportant Smuggler.webp]] You know, I really like the *Boundless* design. Extremely lightweight mechanics, simple character creation, and some nuances in some of the extra rules for things like group checks, setup checks, how it handles consumables, and event pools, which are effectively just die-controlled timers. It's got some style and flair and fits on two pages or even one sheet front and back. In a world where RPGs seem to be putting on weight left and right with 800-page tomes full of expensive art, it's good to remember that we have smaller, lighter weight, more straightforward options that don't require you to know the contents of an entire setting Bible, but instead encourage you to come up with your own course forward. I'm here for it. I like it a lot. Tomorrow, we are going to stick to a nautical reference in the title, but jump to a genre which I don't actually pursue a lot. It's going to be a little bit different genre, though mechanically it's going to be a little bit similar to other things we often talk about. Stay tuned, strap in, and get ready for the next run. [^1]: Take that as you will. [^2]: Take that as you will. [^3]: Take that as you will. He probably already did. Oooooooh!