-- ReginaldGusto - 08 Nov 2015

So now that you’ve got an idea of the setting, the question is what kind of character you want to play. I usually find it easiest to come up with a quick one sentence description first: a (age)(gender)(profession) who is a (Kaiju subgenre and some details) who needs to (achieve a goal). “A 16 year old high school boy who is secretly a Giant octopus with laser eyes who needs to balance his school life, home life, and extracurricular activities without causing any major damage to the town around him when he loses control.” “An over the hill, hard-nosed corrupt cop who got turned into a dinosaur-man Guardian with claws, teeth, and bullet-proof skin, who is now trying to protect his former partner from the mob.” “A military Explosive Ordinance Disposal robot Construct whose artificial intelligence gained sentience and is now a prisoner of the Military for refusing to take part in war anymore.”

You get the idea.

The Touchstone

If the Kaiju is not a “permanence,” start with just the Human, and give that Human a problem: a banker who is about to be indicted for tax fraud, a priest who has seen too much violence in a war-torn dictatorship, a child trying to find his voice in an adult world, or whatever. Ask yourself who this person is, where he or she comes from, what his or her goals in life are, hopes, fears, family, enemies, obstacles, and so on.
A good place to start for that is what some roleplayers call “the 20 questions.” Versions of this exist for a great many RPG’s, and there is no shortage of character questionaires if you google them. I decided to take a crack at creating my own 20 questions, just for this game. This is what I came up with:
1. What does your character see when he or she looks in the mirror? Does he or she like what they see? Do they love it? Are they repulsed by it? Afraid or ashamed or sorry for it? At peace with it? Why?
2. What is your character’s highest ambition for himself or herself? Is it attainable? How? Why or why not? What is he or she willing or not willing to do to achieve it?
3. What obligations does the character have? Does he or she live up to them? How, or why not?
4. What is your character’s greatest success? Greatest failure?
5. How is the character’s relationship with his or her family? Is he or she satisfied by it? If not, what happened? What is he or she willing or not willing to do to repair or maintain the relationship?
6. What goal is currently front and center for the character? What is he or she willing or not willing to do to achieve it? How does he or she feel about it? What if the goal is achieved? What if it isn’t?
7. What do other people think of your character? Is he or she okay with that? What is he or she willing or not willing to do for the image he or she wants?
8. What is your character’s greatest fear? What is he or she willing or not willing to do to avoid it?
9. What was/is your character like in school? On the job? At home? At play?
10. What does your character do to unwind? What are his or her hobbies?
11. Is your character religious?
12. What is/are key rules your character lives by, always follows, or espouses to others?
13. What does your character need that he or she does not have?
14. What problems, situations, responsibilities, or tasks was your character built to handle?
15. What is your character’s romantic life like? What would your character do or not do differently out of love that he or she would not do that way for any other reason?
16. What is your character’s greatest joy? What makes your character feel well and truly alive?
17. How will your character face death? How would your character want to face death? What would get your character to truly risk his or her life?
18. What would it take to break your character? To heal him or her after breaking?
19. How does your character feel about Kaiju? About Celestials? Where was he or she when Balder erupted?
20. What is most precious to your character?

The Numbers

So by now, you’ve got a concept for a Human. Now we start in with the numbers. To begin with, grab a piece of paper and start by writing down five numbers:

Trait Points (TP): 13 (you will not use this number if you are playing a permanence)
Kaiju Trait Points (KTP): 19
Skill Points (SP): 100
Feature Points (FP): 8
Kaiju Points (KP): 8

Now, this is probably the best place to remind you of the scale you’ll be dealing with when using these numbers, so I’ll put the general explanation here. For more detail, see “The Tarafore System” section.

1: Infantile
4: Child
7: Youth, inexperience, or feeble
10: Average
13: Professional
16: Elite
19: Best alive
22: Best ever
25: Supernatural

To start with, we’re just going to work with the first number, your Trait Points (TP). Keep the other ones handy, though. They’ll come into play later.
Next, write down your six Human stats:

PRO: 10
STR: 10
ATH: 10
AWA: 10
WIL: 10
ROG: 10

Note that they all start at exactly average. This is where your Trait Points come into play. You may now assign your trait points freely among your traits. Notice the odd number of TP. The theory behind this number is that with 12 TP, you could evenly buy all your traits up to 12 if you wanted to. The odd point is to give you a “natural gift,” a primary trait that you were just always gifted in. Of course you’ll probably want to divide them up with more focus in some traits than in others, but the options are plentiful.
If you wish, you can “buy down” a trait lower than ten, to use those points somewhere else, but be aware of the potential consequences for that. It is not advised, but it can work for some character concepts. For example, a child would have STR less than 10. If your character is a pacifist, he or she might buy down PRO and attribute it to atrophy of those skills due to non-use. If your character is obese, he might have a lower ATH or ROG.
This is also the time to buy specializations if you want them. To that purpose, you have two options: A) convert 1 TP into 3 points of specialization, or B) buy down a specialization to use those points elsewhere. For example, maybe your character has a code against hitting women. In that event, you might take a “-3 vs. Women” under PRO, and use those points for a +3 in some other specialization somewhere else.
Two specializations that you might be wondering about which are not obvious have to do with combat: initiative, and toughness. Initiative is usually a specialization under either PRO or AWA. If you don’t choose to buy up or down a specialization in initiative, it might still be worthwhile to note it under whichever of those two traits you choose. Toughness is a specialty under STR, and is denoted by two numbers separated by a slash: stun/wound. By default, your toughness is STR/STR. If you choose to buy up or down a specialization in toughness, you would buy both numbers as if they were one. For example, if I wanted to buy +3 to my toughness, I would note that as “Toughness +3/+3” under my STR. This notation means that, when an attacker successfully lands a hit on me, I would roll STR +3 vs his Stun roll, and STR +3 vs his Wound roll.

Skills

You now have 100 points to alot to skills. There is no list of skills, because in most cases you are buying your skills up from zero. However, remember that some skills start at 5, not zero, because of cultural prevalence. It is at this point a good idea for your GM to resolve some of the more common ones that fit this description. A few suggestions that come to mind are:

Driving
Firearms
Cooking
History
Civics
Law
Computer use

Others may come up, from game to game. Don’t be afraid to amend the list as you play and new ideas or needs become apparent.
The next step then is to make a list of skills your character might have based on his or her day to day life. For example, if your character is a dentist, you might need Dentistry, Medical, Accounting, Diplomacy/Customer Service, Management, or others. If he or she also happens to have a hobby, you might list some skills from that hobby as well, in the same fashion. Skills picked up in other phases of his or her life could be applied here. For example, if your character was ex-military, he or she might have additional skills in firearms, command structures, strategy, politics, or others.
Now, assign your skill points to these skills. In the example above, you already know the score for his or her Dentistry. He or she is, by definition, professional. Therefore, you know his or her Dentistry skill is at least 13. A good rule of thumb for peripheral skills related to the profession is between 10 and 13, and for hobbies is between 7 and 10. Of course these numbers can vary depending on how good you really are.
Also keep in mind that some skills are not readily apparent as skills. For example, what if your character has some probability of knowing a random person in a given field, say, medical research? You might take a skill called “Connections—Medical research: 13.” You would use this skill, for example, when meeting a random Medical researcher, to see if you already know this person from a convention, symposium, or other event in the past. Your GM would assign a difficulty based on how likely he thinks it is that you’ve met this person before, and you would roll as normal. Also as usual, the roll could result in special or exceptional results, with additional consequences because of it.

Features

Finally, to round out the Human side of your character, purchase features. These features are small advantages and disadvantages that may affect your game-play in narrative ways rather than in rolls of the dice. The Feature Point (FP) cost of each feature is listed next to the feature name, and its description. Think about what your character’s life is like. What advantages or disadvantages does he or she deal with every day?
Even if you are playing a permanence, you should take skills and features. It is up to the GM to say what skills and features are still available to a character during eruption.

The Kaiju

Now that you have established your numbers as a Human, you now get to play with the fun stuff.
The first and most important question you have to ask yourself is what subgenre of Kaiju are you? Look back through the subgenre section and see which template best suits your character concept. Here, it might be a good idea to brainstorm a physical description, because it may help in selecting powers and traits later.
What is your Kaiju’s name? How did he or she get/choose that name? How did he or she first erupt? What happened? What happened after? Is it a secret that he or she is a Kaiju, or is it generally known? How do her friends and family feel about it? Has he or she erupted since then? What happened? How often? How hard or easy is it for him or her to control or steer the eruption? Does he or she have Kaiju friends/family? How does he or she feel about other Kaiju? The Celestials? Humans? The Diaspora? Other Kaiju groups?

Creating a “multi-class” Kaiju

Those among my readers who have played Advanced Dungeons and Dragons remember what a nightmare is was to play or create a multi-class character. For those of you not initiated in that august tradition, suffice it to say the numbers got a lot more complicated when you wanted to play a fighter-thief than they ever were playing just a fighter or just a thief.
In this system, however, it is generally expected the subgenres will overlap with each other somewhat. For example, take Marvel’s Incredible Hulk. He was obviously a True Form, but wasn’t he also a Guardian, and a Giant? John Carpenter’s Pinhead was a clear Bogeyman, but didn’t he also qualify as an Elder God? For those whose concept is essentially a “multi-class” Kaiju, I offer the following steps:

1: Pick the main template, the one whose initial features and manifestation definitely fit as part of your concept.
2: Using your Kaiju Points (KP, see below), purchase the powers and drawbacks from the other subgenres that fit.
3: Resolve conflicts. For example, if you want to play a Giant-Messenger, your two Throat Chakra powers are going to conflict. If you picked Giant as your main template, you can’t take Powerful Throat Chakra. But if you take Messenger as your main template, you can still take Giant Size and just not take the Anemic Throat Chakra.
4: Play the character whatever way you want.

The Numbers again

As before, write down your six traits:

PRO: 10
STR: 10/35
ATH: 10
AWA: 10
WIL: 10
ROG: 10

Notice that this time there are two choices for your STR stat. That is because 10 is the average STR for non Giant-Size Kaiju, but 35 is the average STR for Giants or other Kaiju with Giant Size. Because of that, we’re going to skip ahead just a little on this one step. If you chose the Giant subgenre, you’ve already got Giant Size. If you’re not playing a Kaiju of the Giant subgenre, you should decide now how big you want your Kaiju to be. If you choose normal size, start with STR 10. Otherwise, start with STR 35.
As before, there is an odd number of Kaiju Trait Points (KTP) for you to spend. You have 19 KTP to spend freely, and as before, you can buy down traits if you wish, and buy up or down specializations.

Super-Powers

To round out your character sheet, you have 8 KP to spend on super-powers. These are the narrative meat of your Kaiju, the benefits and drawbacks that make him what he is. Benefits cost KP to purchase, and drawbacks give you extra KP to spend for taking them (noted by a “Gain x KP” cost). Each one is a trope, a building block that gives monsters their character. Look through and pick the ones that will express in physical terms who and what your Kaiju is. At this step, you are spending your Kaiju Points (KP).

Equipment and possessions

Most RPG’s have a system for determining how much wealth you have, and thereby, what kind of equipment you can afford. There is usually a process for “purchasing” equipment at the beginning of the game. Your GM would be welcome to implement something like that if he or she wishes, but I personally think it interferes with the tone of the game. My recommendation is to just assume your character has anything he or she might reasonably have for his or her station in life. Unless you took the feature Homeless, he or she has a house or apartment with a reasonable selection of things like a TV, a computer, a cell phone, a functioning kitchen, basic toiletries, and enough clothes to get through a work week. If you took the feature “Wealthy,” you probably have a more generous living situation. You should also assume you have some basic mementos and comfort items, and items pertaining to your hobbies. Of course, these assumptions can be tweaked. For example, if part of your character’s narrative is that he or she is poor, you might have a lower standard of living, which creates a challenge for you by making you figure out how to be presentable at work with only three sets of clothes and no laundry machine or a busted water heater at home.

Starting energy scores

Finally, fill in your Primal and Celestial energy. As a general rule, you should start the game with one Celestial energy and at least one Primal energy, but it’s not a hard and fast rule. You and your GM should decide together how much primal energy you start with. Has your character just come off an eruption or walking abroad? If so, he or she would have zero. Is he or she on the verge of erupting for some reason? If so, you might have 10 or more.