Making a Hell Night character
Hell Night by Gavriel Quiroga is a "doom biker roleplaying game" and is an ultra-grimy grindhouse-style game about devil bikers leaving hell to hunt demonic fugitives in the real world. You're playing those bikers from "Mandy", essentially. I adore this book and flipping through it is being transported into another, horrible and awesome world. But I've never played or even made a character for it. So let's change that.
Character creation
Like many of my favorite games, Hell Night has a lot of randomization in creating characters, which I think is especially good for a game with such a unique and distinct tone and voice such as this. Really helps to guide you into the right vibe.
Page 27 has a scary face and the title "Character creation". It also has a checklist:
- Name your character.
- Set Guts, Style and Brains to 5, then distribute another 6 points among them.
- Select Duty. Roll on the tables. Fill in your gear.
- Choose an Edge and a Ritual if you deserve them. (I like this, I hope it's not like there's a mechanical reason my PC would deserve it but rather if I as a person feel like I'm deserving of the good stuff)
- Sum up your attitude with a motto and describe your Style.
- Ride beyond and behold.
I'll admit, I don't really know what a lot of these things are. Duty, Edge, Ritual. But I'm excited to find out.
1. Name
Hell Night doesn't seem to have a table for names which is a damn shame. It does, however, have a very good name table for your rides. I'll get to that later. But in the meantime, I think I'll wait with the name of my character until I know a bit more about them.
2. Guts, Style and Brains
Alright so these appear to be stats. Guts is "muscle, brawn and overall badassness", so Strength/Endurance. Style is "how damn awesome you look and move", kind of a combination between Dex and Charisma. Brains is "Grey matter", so intelligence. There's also Grit which is mental resilience, but that is derived from Brains. Like Hit Points are derived from Guts. I'll make my character's statline as such: Guts 8, Style 7, Brains 6. Strong and quick but not that bright. This gives me 8 Hit Points and 3 Grit. Now, onto duty!
3. Duty
I figured it out, duties are classes. "Every demon in hell has a duty, and he'd better take care of it. Otherwise, he may be dismissed as rabble, a term reserved for the infernal hierarchy's lowest scum". Well I don't wanna be rabble or scum so I better get that duty. Looks like there's five duties: Slayers, Reapers, Usurpers, Revenants and Fallen. There's no randomizing duties but I want to do that so I roll a d10 and get a four, which makes me a Reaper. They're described as such: "Notable witches and warlocks earn a place in Hell's hierarchy after their mortal expiration. These deathlords are soul hunters responsible for taking unrepentant sinners to their eternal damnation. Reapers wield impressive infernal powers and are somewhat creepy to have around. They own Hellrides."
It also says "All reapers are pale, gaunt and somewhat skeletal. Extremely sinister dudes."
Flaw
I start with a random Flaw. A d6 gives me Wickedness, meaning I have to test Brains or commit unthinkable horrors at every opportunity. What an incentive to lean into the game's tone and theme. I'm just bad.
Weapon
There's also a weapon. Another d6 and I have a bladed boomerang, Mad Max style. Oh, the backlit, menacing poses I can strike with this thing.
Clothing
Yet another d6 table. I get 3: Strange fur coat, "looks like the hide of a mutated polar bear". Gives me the ability to resist cold, which I assume is handy when riding along the frozen highways of hell.
Background
Interesting to see what I used to be. I roll a d6 and get Traveling magician and philanderer, who gambled too much for my own good. I think I was a street magician who somehow learned real, actual magic fueled by demonic power and used this to scam and seduce. Maybe I struck a deal with a devil for material wealth and pleasures, on the condition that I'd serve as a soul reaper for all eternity after death. I just didn't read that last part that closely. Then I got got after a gambling incident with the wrong crowd. And here we are.
Infernal Powers
These are a bunch of spells, essentially, that I can use by spending 1 Grit. Now I realize I should've spent more points on Brains, since I get one Power for every point in Brains over 5, but you take what you can. I get one Power, at least, and again I'm going to randomly select one even if it says to choose. I roll a d6 and get Detect Sin, letting me determine mortal sinners' proximity and direction. I can smell sin, essentially.
💀. Hellride
The book has a section on generating hellrides, and since my duty specified that I own one, I figure I should probably roll one up. They're described as demonic entities in vehicular form that can be injured like any creature and has biomechanical internal organs. Now, let's see what bike I ride. There are three tables: Powers, Personality Trait and Name. There's also a warning: "All hellrides are carnivores". Good to know. For Power I roll 5 on a d12: Explodes on command. Sensible. Personality trait turns out to be Territorial. Likes to piss and leave his pungent oil mark everywhere. Names is a d20 table and since I roll 18 I get the subtle name Motherfucker. Motherfucker, the pissing, exploding bike from hell. Let's ride.
4. Edges and Rituals
Edges
So Edges are special abilities and boons that you can start with, to give you an extra... edge. If you manage to pass a Style test after picking one, you get to pick another. Again, I will not choose but randomly select one using the power of random number generators. This gives me Infernal Lawyer, meaning I get a bonus on any test involving the law in any way, shape or form. I assume this sleazeball magician/womanizer learned every corner of the law to find loopholes and hoops to jump and escape through. Testing Style, I roll 2d6 and try to get equal or lower than my stat which is 7. I succeed and get to pick another Edge. This time, the RNG gives me Pesky. I constantly stir shit and let everyone else suffer my consequences. This one is fun: it means any time I have a complication (an additional problem because I rolled double ones or double sixes on a test), another gang member suffers it instead of me. Sorry, team.
Rituals
Rituals are complex incantations that can grant powerful boons if performed correctly—and recited correctly (the player can only read the incantation once and must remember to repeat it correctly in play). But in order to get one, I need to pass a Brains test which I, of course, didn't. So no ritual for me this time. Maybe this is something my piece of shit character can aim to obtain during the game. He strikes me as a seeker of occult knowledge.
5. Sum it up
So what I gather from this is that I'm a despicable, shit-stirring, extremely wicked magician who tricks innocent people to obtain wealth and pleasure, and who has an inhuman understanding of the law. He can smell sin and rides a sentient, oil-pissing bike from hell called Motherfucker, that can explode on command. I carry a bladed boomerang and wear a strange, white fur coat. I think my name is Cagnazzo, taken from one of the Malebranche demons in The Divine Comedy. His motto is "they'll believe anything".
There are a lot of other really fun tables to spark imagination for adventure and campaigns. Let me roll on a few of them to see in what context we can place this character:
The gang emerges from an unreal maze of dark, thick wilderness. They are looking for the gentle trophy collector, last said to be traversing the dark rubber palace. While on the hunt for this collector, we get another quest: a cambion has found a way to open a portal and is using it to gain favour and influence in the mortal world. Put his audacity to an end.
Our biker gang name is LUCIFERIAN OGRES. Let's go.