Category Archives: Building a Concept

This edition of Building a Concept is going to be a slight variation from the norm: instead of going through the thought process normally attributed to character creation we will shake things up a bit by trying something new by following the design ideas behind the creation of an adventure. This is going to be a multi-part feature, with the expectation that it should run across at least two or three segments. If you are someone thinking about getting into the Mana Punk gaming system but are as of yet unsure as to the creation process of an adventure to go with the system, feel free to follow along as we wade through the brainstorming process that we call adventure creation. Continue reading→

On this edition of Building a Concept we are going to investigate the idea of the Mechanical Menace. We want to construct a character bristling with mechanical tricks, hidden weapons, and clockwork tools galore. Setting only starting budget and imagination as the maximum boundaries for this character, let’s dive in and see what primary rules we want to guide our creation process:

• Do we want our Mechanical Menace to be reliant on external/normal weapons, or will they exclusively make use of internal weapons for their combat edge?
• How big of a role do we want our menace’s archetype to play in regards to their over all functionality in a party of adventurers?
• Most importantly, do we want to sacrifice all extras and excessive skills to free up the maximum amount of Build Points for starting resources, or do we play it budget-conservative in order to retain some of our extra starting skills? Continue reading→

On this edition of Building a Concept we will be addressing the idea of transforming the Alchemy skill from a commonly thought defense and support tool into an offensive weapon to be feared. This process will result in a character we enjoy referring to as the Alchemist Grenadier, a character capable of not only dishing out area effect damage and debuffs upon the enemy yet still able to act as battlefield support or healer in a pinch. To start character creation off we want to ask ourselves some key questions, using these questions and the answers we give as a guide through the entire building process for this Alchemist Grenadier.

• Do we want the character to blend in to society at large, or stick out like the bomb-toting terrorist they actually are?
• Will our character require any special equipment or skills in order to achieve their primary goal, or will they be capable of concocting weapons of destruction on the go?
• Do we want our character to focus more on their Alchemy skill, or their spell casting ability? Which one gets top priority?

Continue reading→