Making a Slugblaster Character
Let's make a character for Slugblaster, a game by Wilkie's Candy Lab released in 2022 (at least the version I have).
Like many of the games I buy, I picked up Slugblaster because of the cover art and the premise: "teenage hoverboarders sneak into other dimensions to explore, film tricks, go viral, and get away from the problems at home. It’s dangerous. It’s stupid. It’s got parent groups in a panic. And it’s the coolest thing ever."
I've flipped through it, thought "Wow this is cool, too bad I won't ever play it" and put it back onto the shelf. But now, I'll at least make a character for it. So that if anyone asks if I wanna go slugblasting, I'll be ready. Let's go.
Creating a character
Page 38 has a page titled "Make yourself" and a very short list of items to create your character:
- Pick your personality
- Pick your signature
- Name yourself That's it! Then there's a chapter about making your crew, and I think I'll do that too, just in case. Let's begin with item 1:
1. Personality
Slugblaster has five Personalities which are playbooks/classes and they all come with specific gear, traits etc. There are five to choose from (I will roll): The Grit, The Guts, The Smarts, The Heart and the Chill. I roll a d5 and become The Chill! Page 48 describes it as "effortlessness, zen, and going with the flow. You do stuff by feel, press buttons to see what happens, and somehow make even the simplest hoverboard tricks look steezey." ... "Play as The Chill if you want to crack jokes, eat some snacks, let problems solve themselves, and not think too much". Sounds fucking ideal if you ask me. Let's be chill. My style bonus is "Get +1 style after runs where you show ease or flow". The other Personalities have similar ones that encourages playing according to their concept. I also get an Attitude, which seems to be a way to mechanically differentiate the various Personalities. Mine is "Sit back, relax and get +1d6 to all your actions. Things just tend to work out.". Sort of a jack-of-all-trades situation, it seems.
Look, family, bond and vibe
There are a few tables here to personalize your character. Look, family and bond are general and vibe is Personality-specific. I roll a d66 for Look at get 5 and 1: All black. The Family d66 gives me Unstable and the Bond d6, Natural Chemistry. This is my connection to another character. My vibe becomes kisses their mom on the lips and isn't weird about it which is really charming and fun. So my slugblaster keeps it stylish and simple with all black attire, comes from a somewhat unstable family (good reason to escape to other dimensions from time to time with your friends) and there's one person in the gang that they just share a natural chemistry with. Sounds good to me.
Trait
Traits are powers based on the Personality, and as I play, I can unlock more of these. Every Personality has a "Trait Beat" which is an action they need to perform (costing something called Style points which you get when you do tricks and other cool things) to get more traits. These Trait Beats all seem to accentuate the Personalities' concept and, well.. personality. The Chill's, for example, is Just vibin', meaning I get a new trait during downtime if I spent some time "just being me. Playing video games, sleeping, eatin' chips, chasing butterflies, whatever." If I understand this correctly, I can spend Style points to have a scene during play to do chill stuff, and that will give me another Trait when we've finished the adventure and get some downtime. Maybe it's evident that I'm making a character before reading the rules of the game but that's the format of this haha.
Anyway, I randomly roll for a Trait and get Umm... Guys? that let's me accidentally notice things everyone else misses, "like hidden panels, perfect skate spots, looming monsters, etc.". That's fun and very on-theme.
Gear
Every character starts with a phone, a raygun, a hoverboard and one special personality item. I rolled and got a Pet. Neat! Let's have a dog. I'll bring in my real-life dog into the game: Goblin, the french bulldog. He'll fit right in. I also get to choose (roll) two more pieces of gear from page 64. There are 31 items and rolling some magic dice I get The Fust® Mix and a AWF Bracelet (pronounced "off bracelet"). The former is a "quantum compact disc" with remixes and covers curated by FUST music snobs. I'll always have the right song for any occasion. The latter is an "Anti-Wet generator" that repels water using diamagnetics. So I can keep slugs, slime, tentacles and stuff away. Seems like a good thing to have when going into weird alien dimensions.
Any excuse to share a pic of my dog, I guess.
My raygun
Oh look, there are tables to customize my raygun. Two sets of d66 later and I know mine is a Gravity Glove. I immediately think of a mix between the NES Power Glove combined with the Half Life Gravity Gun. A chunky piece of tech that can dramatically manipulate gravity to make objects literally fall into it and then shoot in a desired direction. Ammo is everywhere!
My hoverboard
Another spread with a bunch of wonderful tables, determining the board's grip color and cut, deck graphic and general board shape. I grab my dice and get a "bigfoot" deck (one of those fat, old-school, missile-shaped decks) with white grip tape with a word cut. I think it says something like "EASY". The deck's graphic is described as a cool image. So obviously a shark with sunglasses. The graphic also says "EASY", in the shark's speech bubble. So, the ideal board, in other words. Just look at this image I don't own:
More tables!
Ok so I found another page with random tables hidden in the Gear chapter. These are for making additional things like pins, patches and stickers to further personalize my character. Let's roll some. I have an enamel pin that I made myself, with the words Own the Zone. I put it on my hat. I also get an iron-on patch that someone gave to me, with Allie Gater doing a kickflip in a wedding dress. This iconic image will go on my back. I think it's a giant pack patch, because Allie is a legend. Who really owned the zone. No wait, I'll put my enamel pin also on my back, on top of the back patch so that it looks like Allie's saying it. Like the shark said "Easy" on my board. My character really likes speech bubbles.
2. Signature
So the next step is to create what's called a Signature, and is my favorite device that I "love the most and spend the most time tinkering with". A character-defining piece of technology that will be my main tool to interact with the world and solve problems with, I guess. Let's see what I get. Looks like there's 12 different ones, so I roll d12 and get 9: Hyperoptic Visor. Essentially an RCD, for the cultured out there. I have a big visor that let's me access information, take pictures and shoot video, send text, play games and everything else that a phone could do.
Looks
Each signature has a list of possible looks and then there's a d66 table with general modifiers to give it a bit of extra style. Rolling some of those dice I get mask (ok so they're not just a visor, it's an entire face mask) and dirty/worn. I mean I've been using this mask forever and we've been to some nasty places and I don't really clean well, so... Makes sense.
Mods
Each signature has a bunch of possible mods, and they cost components of various kinds. I get to choose one starting mod costing 2 components. That gives me four possible options, so a d4. I get Powered Crunk Filter. This gives me extra style points when I take dope pictures of videos. I thought it was going to be some kind of breathing filter, but no, it's a photo filter. Makes sense.
3. Name
All games should have a name generator. But you know what, this is easy. My character's name will be just that, Easy. It even says so on my board.
Creating a crew
Fuck it, let's make a whole crew too. There are some nice tables for that, and I enjoy rolling on those.
1. Brand
First up, I need to decide the general style of the crew, what stereotype we fit into or what vibe we give off. I roll a d9 and get Shredders, which gives us bonus points after runs where we race, chase or land extreme tricks. Hell yeah!
2. Hangouts
Another d66 determines where we hang out whenever we're not in another reality shredding: a church basement. Interesting. I wonder if it's because the church is abandoned, or because someone in the crew has special access to it somehow. Family? Or maybe just a janitor job? I'm leaning toward the former, the church is abandoned and we crash in its basement.
3-5. Starting Perk, Factions and Map
I'll skip these, and jump straight onto
6 Crew Name
This is a page with a ton of tables to give you ideas on what to name your crew. I'll roll for them all and see what we get. Magenta, A, Army/mafia (suffix) and a random Wikipedia topic. Using WikiRoulette I get New Blood (Yellow Claw album). These sparks make it very easy to come up with our crew name: Magenta Claw MafiA (the capital A at the end is important and central to the way we tag our name).
For some reason, the paper closest at hand was green. It will have to do.
Summary
So there I have my character and his crew: The incredibly relaxed Easy and his frenchie Goblin. Dressed all in black, with the exception of his dirty hyperoptic mask, he rides a white-gripped bigfoot board with his name on it (said by a cool shark with shades) and wears a gravity glove. Staying dry with the AWF bracelet and always with the right song at hand in his quantum cd mixtape, Easy is just easy to have around. Hence why the other shredders in the Magenta Claw MafiA loves hanging with him, in the church basement base or in whatever weird dimension they're slugblasting in next.