# Character Creation Challenge 2024: Day 24 - Michtim :: Rinaldo Schreckenreiz, Angry Courtier tags: #thoughts/CharacterCreationChallenge/2024 #game/rpg/michtim > [!quote] [[Character Creation Challenge 2024]] > > ![[Character Creation Challenge Image.png]] I am not generally known for a vast affection for cute things. Quite the opposite, in fact. My inclinations tend toward the grim, the grizzly, the horrific, and the truly rebellious. It's my nature. I accept it. Digging through my collection of goodies in order to try and do different game system every day for CCC has me rummaging around further and further down in my digital library, deeper and deeper into the strata. I've noticed an absolute avalanche of really terrible, over-dense layout in books which would otherwise be awesome but now I just can't bring myself to read because the typography is like staring into a fusion reactor, all swirls and knives. It's bad. Poking around down here, it's nice to run into a game with modern layout sensibilities, especially one published in 2012. It looks good. Mechanically it's fascinating because of its assumptions. It knows exactly what it's trying to go for and it does so without hesitation. It's *furry*. Don't judge me. ![[Michtim (cover).jpg]] It's **[[Michtim|Michtim: Fluffy Adventures]]**! Seriously, I told you not to judge me. It's a world inhabited by the *Michtim*, little furry creatures which are fully sapient, have their own culture, technology which somehow swings between steampunk and cybernetics on a regular basis, and which is – of course – fully inclusive and socially progressive. Because of course it is. A rant for another time! What I'm telling you is that it's cute, it's cunning, and it has a surprising amount of depth for a 118 page game, has a nice open layout, readable fonts, color-coded sections, and a friendly presentation. We are going to create a character for it. It probably works out best if you imagine that this is a culture which treats a middling sized forest as an entire national region. Think *Smurfs*. Think *Snorks*. Think Saturday morning cartoons aimed very gently at the kid demographic but not so sappy and sweet that their parents hate watching the show with them. You'll see what I mean here in a moment. ## Chargen **Michtim** uses a character creation architecture which I don't see *nearly* enough and which really helps new players of the game and newcomers to the hobby a lot: the character generation system has increasing ranks of creation complexity. Those ranks actually have an *in-setting* explanation. Just the stage in life you've made it to. - Fauchschule Kid - Apprentice - Hero - Veteran The first is the simplest both in creation and mechanics involved in understanding how to play. Essentially it's just picking a name, a body type, and choosing your *Emotions* – which are the stats/trait system here. Successfully doing something associated with one of the Emotions charges that Emotion up and makes it more likely that you will succeed on things related to that Emotion later and less likely that you will succeed on things which oppose that Emotion. *That* is the core of the system around which everything else exists to support. If you're running an Apprentice level game, it brings in the *Callings* – which are effectively a class/Skillset hybrid which give you a particular special ability. (Don't worry, you can have more Callings later – we'll get there. And there are synergies.) At Hero level, you start getting into the meat of the Michtim social structure by needing to pick a *Haus* and a piece of *Gear*. Finally, at Veteran, you start spending experience points to add on to your Callings, you can get extra Gear, and even unlock your *Ultimate*. Yes, Ultimate. Ultimate hamster death machine. We, being savvy folk but respecting progression, are going to create a Hero level character. But, as presented, we're going to do it by pushing up through the levels. ### Fauchschule Kid **Birth Name:** Ronaldo Nice and solid, that. **Body Type:** small It doesn't matter a whole lot, but Ronaldo is just a little guy. **Emotions:** Here we are at the meat. Short version, Joy is what you use to move, jump, and spot things. Love is what you use to heal and care for other people. Grief allows you to soak damage. Fear lets you hide, sensibly enough, but also do an evasion role in combat. Anger lets you hit things harder. Sort of like types in Pokémon, emotions oppose one another and if you are currently charged in one, it opposes things on the opposite side – but you can still attempt them and shift your emotional charge. ![[Michtim Emotional Grid.jpg]] I may or may not have been playing a lot of **[Palworld](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1623730/Palworld/)** lately so looking at an elemental chart feels a little familiar. Allocating emotion dice is easy. Everything starts with 1 and then you add 7 more for a total of 12 with the caveat that nothing can be higher than 4. Ronaldo is an angry little bugger. I'm not saying he has a Napoleon complex, but you probably don't want to get on his bad side. Though he's really comfortable with having a good time – it's just probably best not to think about what he considers a good time. It is definitely not taking care of others. | Emotion | Dice | | ---- | ---: | | Joy | 3 | | Love | 1 | | Grief | 2 | | Fear | 2 | | Anger | 4 | ### Apprentice Now for the next step! Effectively this is just picking a Calling which gives us a few pieces of info. We also get to pick our Apprentice Name which you can think of as a last name, something that designates who you are and what you do. ![[Michtim Courtier.jpg]] I think that we will not play to type and make Ronaldo into a persuasive, manipulative *bastard*. A *Courtier*. As your first Calling you get all five Ruses and each of them is associated with a given emotion which empowers it and it generates an emotion in the target which opposes it. All that means that Ronaldo is absolutely fucking terrifying – and simultaneously can be pretty irritating. I suspect any dice added to Emotions in the future are going into Fear, just so he can make people cower and beg him to stop. Just because it's a beautiful, gentle, socially progressive game doesn't mean that I can't twist the mechanics to play a character suited to me. And also is terribly fun. **Apprentice Name:** Schreckenreiz It's German! It does not mean "loving caregiver," I assure you. ### Hero Let's finish up the last few bits of Hero. First we have to pick a *Haus*. We've finished apprenticeship and now we need to promise ourselves to one of the cultural organizations that divide our people. Did I mention that all three factions are extremely political? In ways which might not fully align with your character's every desire? There are some elements of a darker world in this game, one which doesn't have the Saturday morning cartoon glossy consistency. The fact that the Michtim make cyberneticly enhanced super soldiers who have deeply suppressed emotions, commanders with deep tactical training, witches who can leave a deadly hex waiting for someone to come along, sorcerers they can make anything they do doable at range, machinists who can craft self-motivating machines out of a box of scraps in a cave in five minutes.. There is some *stuff* going on in this world! Dark, hideous stuff! I think it would be fun to explore that. Anyway… ![[Michtim Haus Grauling.jpg]] There was really only one choice we can make. *Haus Grauling*. Industrialists, capitalists, makers, creators, and theoretically – usurpers? Like I said, there's a lot going on in this setting which wouldn't exactly fit in with Smurf Village. I also put their Virtue and Sin list in because I think it's important to note the implications. Effectively, if you live up to the standards of your Haus, the GM can give you Karma that allows you to add dice to a roll. If you act against the Virtue by committing a sin, listed in escalating order of severity, you can't turn Karma until you atone for that sin. Keep in mind, if you are a member of a Haus, you have an associated Virtue that others will hold you to and which affects you mechanically.. Yes, you could be without a Haus – but that's mostly Michtim in exile. It's not my fault that I have these ideas, right? You're seeing it. You get it. Right, we have one last thing to do! It's time to pick one piece of Gear. **Gear:** *Tactical Gauntlet: Nova* - Set aside d6 to cover an area centered around you for 30cm (1ft) per die. *Restore:* recharge device using high voltage. What's that? A Haus specific gauntlet that just lets me throw an electrical burst all around me? I don't think I'm going to mind that too much. But there we go! Character created, and one with of really interesting set of character abilities and promise of things to come. In the future, spending experience for this character, I would probably take Sorcerer as an additional Calling in order to be able to affect more people at once with my emotion-manipulation. That sounds like a lot of fun. What does it look like? ## Character Sheet ![[Ronaldo Schreckenreiz, Angry Courtier.jpg]] ![[Ronaldo Schreckenreiz, Angry Courtier (sheet).jpg]] The sheet is a lot simpler then the creation process – which actually might not be my favorite thing. I understand not wanting to make it crowded but I feel like there might be more space for some of the things you come up with, in the order that you do based on rank. The areas to stack tokens representing your current emotional charge are nice, mind you. Very useful during actual play. Regardless, it's angry hamster time! ## Exunt And that's us done with today's challenge! I was quite pleased to find this game kicking around toward the bottom of my collection – well, not the bottom, just the bottom of that strata. It's a game with a lot of potential, elegantly presented mechanics, and a setting that has a lot more implications than it seems on the surface. I definitely feel like there is a game in here that is less devoted to being kid friendly but keeps the same emphasis on emotion as the core of characters. The setting definitely has those kinds of aspects just waiting to be mined – and some of them are right on the surface, like the inherent antipathy to industrialization and corporations. Not a vein I would mine, but there it is. Outside of the big obvious mustache twirls, it's a bit difficult to figure out where the sources of antagonism should really be, and for that there really aren't any examples in the text, including the Example Episodes, which just don't seem to hit the target. That's a shame. A couple of strong external threats to go along with the internal threats would not go amiss. If you're interested in picking it up, I definitely suggest doing so from [itch.io](https://grimogre.itch.io/michtim) rather than DriveThruRPG because if you get it from itch you get all of the character/calling/damage cards for free, and that's *not* an insignificant deal. The emotion system in **Michtim** actually reminds me of the drive system in **[[Capes]]**, where you have to build up interactions with things that you care about in order to be able to pull off the big, narrative-shifting actions. That's good grounding and I love to see it. That's it from here, though. I'm starting to worry about the sound of the rats in the walls! I believe I just heard them calling out for a pike square formation. Out!