Suck happiness you monster!

Its creativedv8tion birthday. And sure its rumored that he once head-butted a dolphin for looking at him funny. And that he sold the Colonel's secret spice recipe to the Russians in '79. But even cetacean beating Commie sympathizers deserve a happy birthday. I guess...

Tales From the Floating Vagabond

This week we go with Avalon Hill's Tales From the Floating Vagabond. The concept is simple enough. Its just the cliche of "and your characters meet at the tavern" and takes it to the next level. The Floating Vagabond is a bar. Somewhere in space and time and stuff. With doors that can randomly open to anywhere with a bar. And so the clientele can be from anywhere and anywhen and be anywhat. Needless to say its meant as a humor game...

To create your bar patron/hero you start with 20 Attribute points to buy your starting stats. It costs 1 pt per up to an Attribute value of 6. Then it costs 2 per. And every Attribute has to have a value of at least 1. For TFtFV there is: Strength, Nimbleness, Aim, Smarts, Cool, Common Sense and Luck. For this character I'll be rebuilding The Great and Powerful Gurgle, Drunken Ex-Evil Wizard. So Str: 1, Nim: 2, Aim: 3, Smarts: 4, Cool: 2, Common Sense: 2, Luck: 6. After that are Oops! Points, essentially Hit Points. To figure out those you add Strength and Luck and divide by 2. So Gurgle has 3. Though I don't see anything about rounding up or down. So actually lets make that 4...

Next you buy your Schtick and Skills. Whats a Schtick you ask? Its like a minor super-power. For example the Roy Rogers Schtick makes you really good with shooting stuff (but not people). The Schwarznegger Effect Schtick lets you ignore damage. The Trenchcoat Schtick gives you a trenchcoat you can pull needed tools out of. And so on. So cherry picking the Schtick you want costs 500 and rolling randomly is 200. I'm going to say that I rolled randomly and it came up Bartender's Choice (the GM in TFtFV is called the Bartender, natch) and he wants to test out a home-brew Schtick. The Rodney Dangerfield Effect. With it you can summon a wild party with free booze and 80s rock anywhere, anytime. Though you can only use it once per adventure. It also has the minor effect that you never pass out, no matter how much you drink...

This leaves 1300 points for Skills. So first we'll buy Cast Spells at Expert for 1200 points. This gives (Smarts 4 x Cast Spells 3) 12 spell points for casting the various spells. And we'll spend the last 100 points to get a level in the Mix Drinks skill...

And lastly is money. For starting funds you pick the highest from your Smarts, Common Sense or Luck, add 4d10 and then multiply by a 100. So Gurgle's highest is Luck at 6, then I roll a 15 total on the 4d10. So thats 6 + 15 = 21 x100 = 2100 Bucks. Though given I see his starting equipment being a stained robe, a staff with a knob on the end and a hip flask of hooch he'll probably have plenty of that left over...