July Preview

Greetings Tier 3 Mythicists! I hope your July has been chock full of good solo adventures :)

For this month's preview, I want to talk about the Meaning Tables in Mythic RPG 2e. Above are a couple of new ones in the Character Creation chapter. There are, right now, 22 tables for chargen which you can use to generate a completely random character, or to help inspire ideas for your character, or for making NPCs.

There are numerous skills and abilities table. The one above, Areas of Knowledge, is if you want a specific skill.

There are no standard attributes for characters in MRPG2e. You can include attributes that are setting specific among your Descriptors, and the book encourages that at least two Descriptors be attributes of some kind. The Attributes table can be used to help decide what a character's strong points are. Again, the same tables are used for PC and NPCs.

Rolling on Meaning Tables in MRPG2e is done a little differently than in the GME. Instead of always rolling for a two word pair, you roll anywhere from one to three words. If the first word inspires an instant idea, you're done. If not, then roll a second and combine them like usual. If it's still unclear, then roll a third word for extra inspiration.

In my playtesting, two words is still usually rolled because you get lots of good combinations that way. However, sometimes the first word lands so perfectly that it's all you need, and sometimes a third word helps.

Shifting to a one-to-three word approach also allows me to make Meaning Tables that have more specific results in them, like the tables above. It's likely you would only have to roll once on the Attributes table, unless you roll a qualifying word like "High", in which case you might roll a second word to see what attribute is high.

To take the tables for a spin, I'm thinking of a character in a cyberpunk setting. I want to go with a random character, at least to start with, so I roll on the Attributes table for inspiration for a notable trait. I get Acuity. I write this as a Descriptor: "Acuity: They are sharp and perceptive." I want a second attribute and roll Comprehension. I interpret this as, "Language Module: Implant allows understanding of nearly all languages." I took some liberty with that interpretation, but it feels right to me.

This sounds like a brainy or tech oriented character. I want to let their area of expertise be random, so I roll on Areas of Knowledge and get Object. That's not enough to inspire me, so I roll for a second word and get Creatures. A meaning still isn't jumping out at me so I roll a third word and get Myth. This gives me an idea. I go with the "object" being another implant, which helps identify evidence of animals, especially mutated laboratory experiments that have escaped their confines. This connects well with their language implant - their cybernetics don't just help with understanding human language but also with the detection and tracking of escaped abominations. I write this as a Descriptor of "Creature Detection: Implant aids in the detection and analysis of creatures, especially mutated abominations that have been downloaded to the database."

This now gives me a picture of who this character is. They are a cyberpunk equivalent of a monster hunter, tracking escaped laboratory experiments. I would probably stop with random determination at this point and finish my character with descriptors that fit well, like weapon skills, maybe a high degree of toughness, a vehicle skill, and a descriptor about professional contacts that lead to hunting jobs.

If the idea of rolling one to three times on meaning tables intrigues you, I encourage you to try it in your Mythic games and feel free to post about your experiences with it. It gives a slightly different feel to Mythic.

Happy adventuring! :)