Bobby Porter, Victim Teenager (Beyond the Supernatural, Palladium Books)

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Preamble

School sucks. No, I suck at school. And that means I'm stuck in this town, and this town sucks. Well, at least I'm kinda good with my hands. And I can actually hit the books, not that it matters much. But if I don't then life will suck harder. I don't want to mow lawns and shovel snow for the rest of my life. Especially not for people like that ugly Johnson witch. I'm glad I don't have to go to the same church. Becky is creepy. Pretty, but creepy. No wonder with a mom like that. And that fat bastard Pete Williams sitting on his front porch guzzling lite beers and yelling at me while I mow. Nothing's wrong with him. He looks strong enough, even if he does look kinda like a frog.

That's what went through Bobby Porter's head over and over again in an infinite number of variations. He thought about the demonstrator Nintendo in the Hobby World store at the Grand Central Mall and how much he had saved from odd jobs, knowing it was only going to be enough to buy Christmas presents. If he biked out to Danish Crossing early enough in haying season, he might get to stack bales on the farmers' wagons as the baler pitched them out. But he'd have to start peddling at dawn, and it would be dark by the time he got back. Those fields were huge, there was no shoulder on the roads, and the county didn't cut back the brush so the ditches were full of alders and small pines encroaching on the dark back roads.

Character

Class: Victim, Teenager (59 on d%)

Age: 13 (12+1d6) Boy

Alignment: Self-Righteous 

Background: Wage Slavery Family

Attributes:

  • IQ: 7 (2d6)
  • ME: 6 (2d6)
  • MA: 7 (2d6)
  • PS: 6 (2d6)
  • PP: 8 (2d6)
  • PE: 4 (1d6) 
  • PB: 4 (2d6)
  • Spd: 15 (3d6)

Scores:

  • AR: 4
  • HP: 10
  • SDC:  0
  • PPE: 1 (1d6)
  • HF: N/A

Saving Throws:

  • Horror Factor: ±0
  • Poison: ±0
  • Disease: ±0
  • Coma/Death: ±0

Adjustments:

  • None

Skills

  • Carpentry (30% base +5%/level, -10% for victim) 

Weapons:

  • baseball bat, 1d6

Combat: 

  • attacks/actions: 1
  • none

Commentary:

Playing victim characters is actually fun going into a game knowing most or all of the characters will meet a horrible end. You need a GM that understands horror though and is able to adjust to players being genre aware. 

Victims should also not be mistaken for normals, mundanes, bystanders, or mooks. Those aren't options in Beyond the Supernatural, just my own definitions. Each of them fulfills a story purpose.

If I were to put together normals I think I'd have attributes and scores determined normally then adjusted downward by a few points to indicate growth potential. 

Per the rules, "victim" characters might have one useful practical skill versus the dozen or more that heroic characters have. Carpentry isn't a skill in the copy of Beyond the Supernatural on my shelf but appears in The Invid Invasion for the Robotech RPG by Palladium Books as a Wilderness category skill. I have simply taken it verbatim.

Victim character do not get the usual alignment options available in Palladium's games. Instead, they have Nice (Chump, Self-Righteous), Selfish (Self-Centered, Piggy), and Nasty (Practical Joker, Bully)

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