Let's create a Maze Rats character!

This week, to add to my series of character creation posts (which started a few weeks ago with a Cairn 2e character), I'll make a Maze Rats character. This book, created by Ben Milton (Questing Beast), is known mostly for its many random tables, usable for NPCs and monster creation, dungeon stocking, worldbuilding and much more, but it's also a game system.
It has some similarities with the Into the Odd family of games, although with some major differences. First of all, it uses 2d6 (or 3d6 keeping the highest 2 if you have advantage) for its saves, instead of 1d20, and instead of rolling under your ability score you aim at beating a set difficulty of 10 (or the enemy's armor in combat) by adding your attribute (which start between 0 and 2 and can't get higher than 4) to what you roll on the 2d6. It also has levels, up to level 7, after which you're encouraged to "retire" your character and start a new one at level 1, but even at level 7 characters are not that much stronger than level one, apart from having 4x the HP.

An important note about my process: I'm using the Italian translation of Maze Rats, so the results of my rolls on the random tables will not match with the ones found in the original version. I'll just translate what I get directly in English.

Let's start by rolling the attributes. Like in Cairn, these are STR, DEX and WIL, but as I mentioned above, they are quite different: we roll or pick one of the possible stat arrays, and that's it. Alternatively you could roll each of them separately (treating the d6 like a d3 and generating a value between 0 and 2), but the book warns the results could be unbalanced in this way, so I'll just roll 1d6: 3, giving me STR 1, DEX 2 and WIL 0. An agile character.

Next is HP, which is set a 4 for level 1, gaining 2 more max - but not current - HP per level. In this game you recover 1 HP with a night if rest, or full HP with 24 hours of rest in a safe place.

Next up we have a choice: either +1 to our attack rolls, one spell slots, or a "path", which would give us advantage in certain situations; basically a proto-skill system. I'll pick the spell slot, as I'm interested in this game's magic system.

Now we roll or pick 6 items for our equipment from a d66 table and allocate them: we have 2 hand slots, 2 belt slots, a "worn" section and we can put in the backpack "as many items as we can reasonably carry".
Let's start rolling: 56, 41, 61, 46, 53, 51. A hacksaw, a hammer, a steel mirror, a 10 foot pole (mandatory), 3 rations and a crowbar. We've got ourselves a thief.
We also start with light armor, a shield - which can be broken to negate an attack - and 2 weapons; to keep the thief theme, I'll choose a dagger and a sling. Base armor in this game is 6, and both light armor and shield give a +1 to it, bringing it to 8: that's the target number enemies will have to hit, and the damage taken will be the difference between their result and my armor.
 
Next we have a few d66 tables to roll on to flesh out the character a bit more:
  • Appearance: 44, Rosy
  • Physical Detail: 44 again, Branding (our thief has been caught in the past, maybe?)
  • Background: 34, Forger (what he used to do before getting caught!)
  • Clothing: 15, Worn out (he's not doing well lately)
  • Personality: 51, Grumpy (plenty of reasons to be, really)
  • Quirk: 35, Extremely Formal (seems at odd with the rest, but that's the fun of it!)
We need a short, memorable name...Slinky, why not, and all that is left is finding out his first spell.
Only the first one, yes, because in this system after using a spell and freeing the slot, the next time you rest you roll for a new one, unless the Referee lets you keep the last one you had or gives you one from another OSR system, but that's up to rulings.

First up, let's roll on the d66 table to determine the formula of the spell: 55, Ethereal Effect + Physical Element. Our Ethereal Effect is 55, Illuminate, and our Physical Element is 12, Armor. So a spell that can make an armor light up, either his to have a light source...or that of a guard he's trying to distract maybe.

At the end of the magic section there's a table for Magic Omens, that could work as an adventure starter maybe, let's try: 44, No stars. I could work with that, I think.

So here we are, with our new character Slinky the Thief, with a past as forger who got caught and branded for it, and the ability to cast spells...intriguing. I don't know yet if I'll play a solo adventure in Maze Rats, but even if I don't, he could be an NPC in another campaign, like I'll probably do with other characters created in this series.

This is all for this week, see you next Sunday for my next post!

May your dice never betray you,
Kirhon

 

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