#waffle-sorter

"Ivan, let me up."

"No."

"Ivan, if you don't let me up, I'll tell Aunt Alys who broke Empress Kareen's vase."

"If Mamére really cared, she'd've asked Illyan, and he'd just check the security footage. Also, that was three years go. No."

"...Let me up and I'll let you see the advance copy of Dendarii Rebels 2."

That got Ivan to look up from the handheld game he'd been playing. "That doesn't come out until next winter."

Miles looked smug, underneath all the paleness and the tube in his nose. "They sent an early copy to the censors for, you know, screening for unpatriotic stuff - remember, Ezar was in the trailer? And Uncle Simon gave it to me this morning because he feels bad that I'm sick again." He lifted his gaze and added virtuously, "Of course, I'm not supposed to show it to anyone else. Never mind - you should probably pretend I didn't even say anything."

Ivan bit his lip with indecision. Even at the ripe age of twelve, he could recognize typical Milesian tactics: constant annoying badgering, mostly empty threats, and finally, when you were pushed to some sort of breaking point, the biggest carrot you could imagine.

But he'd been given a mission. He leaned back in his bedside chair, stretched his legs out a little further, and restarted his game. "Nope. Aunt Cordelia said to sit on you if that's what it took to keep you in bed, and that's what I'm doing."

Miles pounded on Ivan's legs, stretched perpendicularly across Miles's lower abdomen, with one thin-boned, frustrated fist. "You're crushing me, is what you're doing!"

This, too, made Ivan sit up - careful to shift his weight such that the amount pressing down on Miles's skinny little form never changed. He took careful stock. It was just his legs that were draped across Miles's stomach, resting no more weight that he would on a footrest. Less, even, since his feet were on Miles' far side. And they were safely below the actually illness-contest part of him, the lungs still being fed by that oxygen tube up his nose - though honestly, from his years of Miles-watching, Ivan was pretty sure they could take the tube out now and he would be fine. For a few hours at least. Long enough to have some fun.

Which was how Ivan knew that he was not, in fact, crushing his cousin in any except maybe spirit. Which was pretty much fair game. And, ultimate trump card, Lady Cordelia really had told him to do it.

He settled back with his game. "Nope."

Miles groaned theatrically, and flopped back on his cushions (another sure sign that he was feeling better.) Typically, it was barely 30 seconds before he picked up his own handheld again - though he was using it for reading, because Miles' reaction to getting sick was to do more schoolwork, instead of take the universally justified vacation.

(Of course, if one got as sick as often as Miles...)

After a carefully calculated 7 minutes, Ivan said, quite casually, "But I'll stop sitting on you if you put Dendarii Rebels 2 up on the wall projector."

It’s tough to pick just one - different tools for different purposes, and all that - but a few standouts from my collection include:

Danger Patrol - Character sheets are split into halves. When play begins, each player chooses or is assigned a left half and a right half, tapes them together, and that’s their character; in this manner, they might end up playing an Atomic Professor or a Psychic Robot - or, with equal likelihood, a Psychic Professor or an Atomic Robot.

In a Wicked Age - Character creation and scenario creation are the same thing. At the start of each session, the group draws plot seeds from a set of cards called “Oracles”, and brainstorms a scenario based on those seeds; you then make a list of characters whose existence is implied by the scenario, and everyone picks from that list to play.

Lords of Gossamer and Shadow - Character creation is a group process in which the GM introduces an attribute (e.g., Warfare), explains why that attribute is the most important attribute in the game, then literally auctions that attribute off; the players bid against each other for their character to be the best at that attribute.

Nobilis 3rd Edition - Character creation begins with constructing a mind-map using the correspondences of an invented floriography (i.e., language of flowers). Not all of the flowers have real-world counterparts; one character type’s floriography involves a flower that grows backwards in time, for example.

Paranoia Red Clearance Edition - Many games have competitive character creation, but this is one of the few really well-done examples of actively adversarial chargen I can think of. Skills are chosen in a round-robin fashion, and each pick screws the player to your left; for example, if you take a skill at +3, the player to your left automatically gets it at -3.

Run Robot Red - Character creation is largely conventional within any given session; the twist is that there are multiple character creation methods depending on what factory that session’s characters were made at, ranging from buying components from a catalogue, to taking turns picking from a pile of paper cutouts in the middle of the table.

Spooktacular - Nothing special here: it’s just straight-up random chargen. I’m putting it on the list because it’s basically my favourite example of the type; it has an amazing random skill list, including such entries as “Screaming”, “Doing Paperwork” and “Unnerving Straights”.

W.... okay wow I was not expecting that, I’d say brotp I guess? I brotp like basically every possible combination of everything tbh, if two characters don’t know each other or are from different media then there’s a 99% chance I want them to be best friends

You made me curious too so I tried it! Sorry it took forever, I coloured him 3-4 times before something finally looked good hahaha

It was available at release for me through my podcast app - I use Podcast Republic. I also see it in the feed on Google Play - dunno about iTunes, I don’t have any Apple devices. Weirdly it’s not linked on their social media like always - they’ve been at DragonCon all weekend and I’m betting it just got overlooked. I asked on Twitter if they could link it for the people having trouble.