I have lots of games in pdf form, acquired for uncertain and/or forgotten reasons (perhaps I am actually a dragon, and RPG PDFs are what I hoard?). One such game is Victorious.
Victorious is from Troll Lord Games and is a game set in the Victorian Steampunk Age that Never Was. Powered by TLG's SIEGE engine, a system that sounds familiar (perhaps from skim-reading Castles and Crusades), Victorious has its own take on wizardry.
Like most games, PC generation is a multi-step process. The first step is to 'imagine the persona.' Wizard. Done. The rest of the steps include way too many pages of choices - kind of like GURPS, but without points assigned. Unlike GURPS Dungeon Fantasy, they aren't even conveniently grouped into shortened menus, so I am hoping for Archetypes.
There we go, the Magician is on page 27. Thank you TLG!
Attributes:
A: Intelligence, B: Dexterity, C: Wisdom - I'm guessing these are kinda like Prime Requisites.
Skills: History/Legend 1 (Local Mythology), Occult 2, Prime 2 (Dexterity, Wisdom), Profession 1 (Parapsychology)
Supernatural Powers: Attribute 2 (+10 Wisdom)
Packages: Magick 4: Blast 1, Entrap 1, Phantasms 1, Telepathy 1
Shortcomings: Enemy (Black Magicians), Notorious, Watched (Theosophist Society)
Equipment: Incense and burner, Wand, various Crystals, Cloak with hidden pockets, Crystal Ball, plot armor, standard comic book tropes, but in the Victorian Age.
Goals: save the world, again. ensure that the Sun truly never sets on the Empire. keep feeding the monster under her bed.
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As I was working through the PC design, I was immediately taken with two ideas: one, that this is an awful lot of work and page flipping for one PC, especially if one wants a focused PC, and two, that Victorious reads like a superhero game.
Then on page 23, I find this quote: Victorious is a Steampunk Superhero roleplaying game. The Steampunk is great. And I do appreciate the honesty of the game for stating Superhero right in the description (unlike 5e, which still pretends to not be superheroes).
At least the parts about awarding xp are lootable. Maybe other parts, as well, but I cannot be bothered to seek them out.
I need to read the game premise more closely before committing. So I apologize for this entry. These Characters are supposed to be quick and fun, not timesinks involving too much virtual page-flipping. In a world of short sporadic gaming sessions (this should improve for me in about 10 years, when my youngest can drive himself around), spending an entire session trying to roll up a playable PC is waste of time. Victorious is not the only game that takes this route, but it is the game most recently on my mind.
Sometimes people complain on various online fora (notably Facebook), about how players cannot be bothered to 'learn their PC's abilities and spells and skills.' Perhaps it's because there are too many things to learn. Especially when sessions are for 3-4 hours every 6-8 weeks.
The charm of some older game systems is how quickly you can actually be playing the game, instead of playing the subgame of PC creation. Clones and new games that mirror this fast PC generation have realized this. Maybe I need to create some Wizards in those rulesets.
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