# Day 17: Bay of Villains - William Albacastle, Corporate Necromancer tags: #articles/CharacterCreationChallenge/2026 #game/rpg/bay-of-villains > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2026]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] ## Game of Choice You'll notice that there is no title page here, as there usually is, because this game is still in beta pre-release. To the point, it doesn't actually have a cover. I briefly tinkered with putting together a cover for it myself, but frankly, that seemed like way too much work once I got started. Me, lazy? You better believe it. What are we looking at here? Specifically, it's a genre I don't normally touch on: superheroes. I've never been a big superheroes fan. By and large, it just doesn't tickle my pickle, even though you would think the usual complicated interacting systems would please that factory-building part of my brain, and it does, but not enough to put up with most of the mechanical systems that back the genre. I love *[[Champions]]*, but it's the world's greatest tabletop RPG programming language—not really a game. Today, however, we're going to create a character in a system that might touch me in a different place. It's based on *[[Blades in the Dark|Forged in the Dark]]*, which automatically gives you some extra points in my world, and it is definitely kitchen sink superheroes. It's *[[Bay of Villains]]*. For those of a certain age reading this, you will understand what I'm saying. If you ever played the MMORPG *[City of Heroes/City of Villains](http://cityofheroes.ca/)*, then you are going to feel right at home in the setting that *Bay of Villains* puts out. In fact, you probably feel right at home with the crazy mashup of heroic and villainous concepts the game has. If you were looking for a tabletop experience which was aimed squarely at pulling that off, here's what you want. The SanFran Bay Area has turned into the Bay Megacity, a place with all the amenities from super-science technology to wizards to aliens invading. There's four major districts of the city: Long Oak, which is the relatively normal part, protected by the greatest super-science university on Earth. The Petal Sprawl, which is your hardcore cyberpunk dystopia ruled by violent corporations and a happiness-obsessed AI (*[[Paranoia]]*, I'm looking at you). There's Nighttower,[^1] which is your necromantic fantasy city where the sun's been blotted out and monsters roam the streets. And then there's Little Atlantis, which apparently finally sunk into the sea and is full of Atlantean refugees. Look, you know what's going on here. It is kitchen sink superheroics at its finest in terms of setting design. ## Acts of Creation You know what the exterior looks like, so let's find out what the character creation system is from the inside. Time to get stuck in. Up front, the game tells us that we are creating villains, not heroes. We are people who are fighting back against the crappy, sorry state of affairs where things have gone to absolute shit, using any means at our disposal to fulfill our desires. > The resigned populace know these criminals as villains. Well, you've already got me on board. I'm your huckleberry. There's a further bit of up-selling a little further on: > Bring up a few touchstones to get your players excited to play! *“It’s kinda like [[Shadowrun]], but you play as the supervillains from Invincible.”* This is a game about enterprising street-level Villains building their own super-team, taking what they want in a city full of wacky bullshit. If that doesn't appeal to some of them, that's perfectly fine! This might not be the right game for them. If you are looking for a way to pitch a game to people who might not be into it, setting it out like that is both crazy and wonderful, and I'm here for it. Know the media and the games your target audience is likely to know, and speak to those. Also there's a suggested theme song.  ### Choose Your Character #### Pick a Playbook Much like other *Forged in the Dark* games, the first thing we do is pick a playbook, which provides a general framework for what our character does, how he does it, and the ways he can generally grow, plus a few hooks for actually generating XP for that growth. We've got eight to choose from, and I have to admit I'm really tempted by several of them. But we have an implicit theme around here, and when we do things, it has to be in a certain way. - **Playbook:** Rogue Mage - **Source:** Magic You know what's coming. I know what's coming. There's no point in trying to stop it. We're just going to go with it. #### Roots & Background I quite like that figuring out where you're from is right up here in the front of character creation, or it's also nice that your Roots don't have to be where you grew up in the city, but just where you know the most people or where you feel the most at home. And that opens the door to providing another callback, which is hilarious. - **Roots:** Petal Sprawl If there's one thing a megacorporation knows, it's how to take advantage of a situation. Have a neighborhood full of magic and horrors next door? Not a problem. They need jobs too. There's nothing wrong with being a corporate necromancer. - **Background:** Lone Wolf There aren't a lot of necromancers who would be interested in taking a corporate job that involves spending time at a desk and writing reports. Sometimes you just have to go your own way. Look, it's not my fault. I couldn't help myself. #### Iconic Ability Every playbook has an iconic ability which is core to what they do and which no other playbook can ever have. So let's check out ours. - **WIZARDRY:** You can push yourself to roll your INVOKE rating while performing a different action. Say which spell, hidden knowledge, or minor magical item you bring to bear. You gain +1d to any roll involving a Ritual. That's pretty handy. It means that we can essentially boost anything we do with a little magic. I can see a disturbing number of uses for that just in casual operation around the city. Now, public use of magic does tend to bring Heat down on the group, but what's a little more Heat between friends, right? #### Special Ability Kicking off, we get to choose a special ability. Now we could just take the first special ability on the list because we're not creative or visionary, but we're probably not going to do that. We can also take an ability from another playbook with Grafted Power, which could be kind of fun. Let me flip around through here and see what looks tasty. - **CALLED FROM THE OTHER SIDE:** You have summoned a being from beyond, called a Familiar. It is an expert cohort that can come in one of three forms: a Fighting Beast, a Hunting Hound, or a Spying Imp. You can INVOKE instead of COMMAND to lead your Familiar in a group action. If you take this ability again, your Familiar can become Scale 1 at will, and you can take 3 stress to turn them Scale 2 for the rest of the score or scene. You know, you just can't do without the summoning and the binding, so we will take the first dot of Called From the Other Side. In this case, we're going to take a zombie, so it's a fighting beast, I suppose. And we should definitely prioritize getting this boosted up to two dots as soon as possible, because then we go from a single Z to a small group, and that's way more fun. We can also improve our familiar with the same mechanics as any other cohort for the crew, so it's going to get spicy over time. #### Action Ratings All right, so we start with a few dots in action ratings to begin with: 1 in COMMAND, 2 in INVOKE, 1 in STUDY. All of which makes sense from the perspective of a rogue mage. We now get to grab four more points and can assign them effectively wherever we like, except that no action can begin with a rating higher than two during creation. If you're having trouble deciding on one, it suggests that you can pick one from your roots and another you gained from your background. | Insight Actions | Dots | | --------------- | :--- | | DOCTOR | + | | STUDY | + | | SURVEY | + | | Prowess Actions | Dots | | --------------- | :--- | | SKULK | + | | Resolve Actions | Dots | | --------------- | :--- | | COMMAND | ++ | | INVOKE | ++ | I decided to boost up COMMAND given our focus in getting other things to do stuff for us. Take a dot in DOCTOR just to represent our knowledge of anatomy. SKULK seemed like an obvious choice when dealing with the Cyberpunk Metropolis. Hiding in dark alleys is particularly useful when you're making literal back alley deals. SURVEY just seemed like it would round out the lot. That leaves us with a 3 **Insight**, 1 **Prowess**, and 2 **Resolve**. Those attributes are what we use to resist things which may be unpleasant or affect us in a negative way. Same as you would see in *Blades in the Dark*. #### Close Friend & Rival As usual, with the playbook, there is a list of characters who you can either have a positive or negative relationship with. That's not to say you can't have relationships with other characters, just that these are the ones that show up on multiple playbooks, which means that there are going to be multiple entanglements across players. Really quite fun stuff. I'm not going to stick too much thought into this because overthinking it tends to overcook it. - **Close Friend:** Toni, your ex - **Rival:** Wolfe, a collector Going with the playing-against-type option here, because how many characters in fiction have a good relationship with their exes? Trying something new is always the best play. What does Wolfe collect? I have no idea. Probably the heads of necromancers. #### Vice Everybody needs a way to build off all that accumulated stress, and I mean that mechanically in the downtime phase. We need to figure out what it is that we're into to blow off steam and who's providing it to us. - **Vice:** Weird, Obligation Luna Bloodmoon in Petal Sprawl sells the right ritual components to work the sorceries which let us maintain our occult connection to the world beyond the veil. I like the idea that we have an actual ritual obligation to maintain our magical connection to the necromantic world. Let things go too long, let things build up too much stress, and everything ends poorly. It's helpful that our component seller lives in the cyberpunk part of town. Clearly, we're not the only mages kicking around out there. #### Drives, Villain Name, Secret Identity & Look We are getting into the polishing up stage of character creation here. Drives are exactly what it sounds like: the motivation that keeps you out there doing whatever shenanigans you're into. They aren't particularly fixed and can change from session to session if that's the way you want it. The rest is about as obvious as you can make it. Let's find out what's in there. - **Drive:** Claw up the corporate hierarchy - **Villain Name:** Mr. Johnson - **Secret Identity:** William Albacastle[^2] - **Look:** Man, Professional, Fine 3-Piece Suit I kind of love the idea of the character being currently employed as a low-level Mr. Johnson in a cyberpunk setting, and he deliberately uses that name for the reference. He shows up to meetings wearing a really nice tailored three-piece suit. No obvious indication of sorcerous effect, except maybe a couple of undead grunts who are wearing full tactical gear to conceal what they are. What does he do in his off time? Believe me, when you work for the corporation, you don't have any off time. If you think you have off time, you're probably still working for the company's interests and just don't know it. ### Assemble the Crew Just as in *Blades in the Dark,* here we are going to be putting together the crew that binds our villains into a single organization, or club, or team, or whatever it is we're doing. I actually kind of like the idea of a group of villains who explicitly work for the same megacorporation in different aspects as appropriate to their abilities. Very much the inverse of the usual *Cyberpunk*/*Shadowrun* setup. Totally doable in this context. #### Crew Type What is it that we are put together to do? We have several choices, but I like this one the most. - **Crew Type:** "Heroes" Villains with badges. Lay down the law, for better or worse. Corporate enforcers, the guys they send out to do the dirty work, and it doesn't matter how dirty. This is a lot of fun as a concept. - **Tier:** 1 - **Hold:** Weak - **Rep:** 0 #### Initial Reputation and Lair How are we seen by the other factions in the city? Well, let's look at the list and give it some consideration. - **Reputation:** Creepy - **Lair:** A nondescript corporate office in Petal Town There are plenty of corporate operatives hanging out in Bay megacity. But very few of them are made up of such a diversity of folks from around the Bay. Usually you have a team of mercs or something a little more mundane. This is insanity. They operate out of a truly nondescript, unsigned corporate office with a couple of secretaries to deal with front-end business, communications, and keeping up the front. Everyone has their own cubicle. Yes, cubicle. #### Hunting Grounds and Favored Operation We need to pick a district in which to put our usual area of operation. Of course, to do that, I have to find the map it's referring to so I can figure out what faction claims the area, so we can figure out what our relationship is with them. - **Patrol Zone:** Petal Sprawl Aroma Corp controls the area Pay them 2 CASH for **+1 status** We'll send a few bits of our take to the company that owns the company that owns the company that owns the company that owns the company that we work for. That just seems like a good idea. We also get an additional **downtime activity** to prep for a score in the Petal Sprawl. - **Favored Operation** - **Bust:** Disrupt an operation and collect evidence. Clearly, this is a special operations team out to get in the way of other factions and keep them out of corporate business. Of course, if some of their ill-gotten goods and funds happen to fall into our pockets along the way, who's going to mind? #### Special Ability Just like with our character, we get to pick a special ability off the playbook for our crew. - **LICENSED TO THRILL:** All heroes have some authority, but you’ve acquired even flashier permissions. You do not take extra HEAT when Alien, Magic, or Shift powers are openly used during a score. Some things insist upon themselves. With corporate backing, we can go out into public and sling all sorts of action. This probably just leans into the creepy vibe we give other factions and organizations. #### Crew Upgrades All right. By default, we start with a gang cohort of Riders, which is kind of interesting. I'll get back to that in a minute. We also have our characters' summoned familiar, our pet zombie. We have two pre-selected upgrades as well as two more that we can choose. | Upgrades | Dots | | -------- | ---: | | Vehicles | + | | Quarters | + | | Secure | + | | Workshop | + | We get to start with some cars and bikes and a garage to put them in, as well as quarters, which are undoubtedly small apartments above the office front itself. The small perks of corporate life. The site is also secured from intrusion and has a small workshop for research and development. Of course, we have to pay for the two extra ones with a couple of impacts. So we are going to suggest that OVERSIGHT were instrumental in getting us the equipment for that workshop, which means that we get **+1 status** with them. UNO, however, wasn't thrilled with "volunteering" staff engineers to upgrade our security; **-1 status** there. ##### Cohort We might as well go ahead and figure out who and what our cohort is. - **Riders:** Pilots, getaway drivers, and scrappers. *Drive. Collect things. Fix stuff. Bring their own rides even without the Vehicles upgrade. Gather info by combing the area.* - **Power Source:** Training - **Quality:** 1 - **Scale:** 1 - **Edges** - **Swift:** The cohort moves, accomplishes tasks, and reacts to danger quickly. - **Loyal:** The cohort can’t be bribed or turned against you. - **Flaws** - **Principled:** The cohort has an irritating ethic or value that it won’t betray. - **Savage:** The cohort is excessively violent and cruel. - **Zed** - **Expertise:** Fighting Beast - **Power Source:** Magic - **Quality:** 2 - **Scale:** 0 - **Edges** - **Loyal:** The cohort can’t be bribed or turned against you. - **Flaws** - **Attached:** The cohort only respects a single PC Villain and must be coerced to take orders from anyone else. (Albacastle) The pet zombie was actually relatively straightforward. It is required to have the Attached flaw, which meant we could just go ahead and take an Edge for free, making it unable to be bribed or swayed, in part because it's not cognizant of its own status enough to have a self. This was relatively obvious. Easy. That we have our own gang of writers out there to rock and roll on our behalf is interesting. What does that look like? That's actually really simple. They are the classic men in black, whether it be driving blacked-out SUVs or black motorcycles with faceless black helmets. They're out there riding flank and point, doing our dirty work. They're quick off the jump, mindlessly loyal, and known for being absolutely, without question, ruthless to a point. They are, however, also ridiculously loyal to the corporation and resistant to going off the reservation in support of more personal goals, which is going to be a pain in the ass once in a while. #### Favorite Contact Let's figure out who off the list is going to be tight with us. - **Contact** - **June,** an O.V.E.R.S.I.G.H.T. admin. Perhaps a bureaucrat with a soft spot for your rag-tag crew? Let's be honest, this kind of works out with what's going on with us. No wonder they decided to give us a hand getting the base set up. They also happen to be a paramilitary organization dedicated to crime fighting with an extreme turn toward paranoia. But they like us! No one said they had good judgment. June was probably part of that, but I'm going to say that she made that decision based more on our potential ability to blackmail her than good grace. I'm not even sure we know what we could blackmail her about; the threat alone was sufficient. But she appreciates our forbearance, and we don't hate her, so it all works out. Of course, now we have to figure out what other two factions are involved here, because she's our contact. - **Status Change** - **The Cops,** +2 - **Guild of Malicious Premeditation**, -2 You know, I think I'm just going to go for full-out irony here. The cops, who are largely corrupt but doing the best they can in a bad situation, absolutely love us because OVERSIGHT is in strong support of them. On the other hand, the Guild of Malicious Premeditation, which are basically a group of powerful supervillains, really doesn't like OVERSIGHT and, by extension, us. This is great because as a group of out-of-control corporate enforcers who have the support of local government and the biggest corporation on the planet, it makes sense that other villains wouldn't like us terribly much. We would love to put them out of business because competition sucks. #### Crew Finale That's pretty much it for crew creation except for answering some questions. **Who brought your crew together?** No one in the crew itself. It was assembled by a shadowy power in the corporate hierarchy somewhere deep under Aroma Corp. **Were you recruited or did you seek the crew out yourself? Why?** Mr. Johnson was recruited. Well, more like assigned. **Who's closest with your favorite contact? Did you bring them on board?** One of the other members of the crew. Mr. Johnson is not well known for making that kind of contact. Making contacts, absolutely. More for the telling than the asking. **Do you have a goal that the crew might help you accomplish, or are you just in it to get rich?** It's not even about the getting rich. It's about moving up the corporate hierarchy, gaining more personal power, and leveraging that into greater personal satisfaction with accomplishment. Money's nice, but it's not necessarily the same pleasure as straight-up raw power. ## Exunt And that's it! We have made it all the way through, which is kind of an accomplishment because it ends up being a little more crunch than you might expect, especially when you take into account putting together the crew. Normally, of course, you'd be doing that with all the other players who want to play and working off each other, which makes that a lot more exciting than doing it yourself. ![[17 - Bay of Villains - William Albacastle, Corporate Necromancer.webp]] ![[17 - Bay of Villains - Disallied Security.webp]] There we go. Superheroes, which is not a genre I typically dabble in. Do I like *Bay of Villains*? Absolutely. I think it would be a lot of fun with the right group. It's got a surprising amount of crunch for a lot of superhero games, both in the crunchier-than-expected and less-crunchy, particularly when it comes to powers. The group as a whole is the focus rather than the individual character, and that's a nice change. Is it my favorite superhero game? No, I think that *[[Capes]]* is always going to be my hands-down favorite. But this one is fun. It's good. It's not done cooking yet, and I can see a lot of potential coming down the pipe. There is a lot of setting information which I didn't even really go into, except by touching on a couple of factions that we had interactions with. It's simultaneously sarcastic and funny, and I foresee some ability to play it seriously as well. If this is the sort of thing you like, you already know that you want to have it, and you're halfway out the door to get it, which is great because you can have it for free. Tomorrow, I think we're going to wander back over into wargame territory. Make sure that you're wearing good shoes, is all I can tell you, because you're about to go feet first. I'll see you then. Stay frosty. [^1]: I did not decide on that name. It's hard to even type, man. [^2]: If you know, you know.