The Red Dwarf RPG

RED DWARF

Red Dwarf is a British sci-fi comedy program created by Grant Naylor (two, two, two men in one). The show features the exploits of a group of space bums aboard a city-sized spaceship marooned in deep space after 3 million years of travel.

CHARACTER CREATION!

A straightforward talking appliance character might look like this:

Talkie Toaster

Description: Short, chrome-plated. Personality glitch makes him

obsess over toast and toasted bread products, to the point

of asking others constantly, "Would you like some toast?"

Clichés: Intelligent Appliance (4), Trivia-head (2), Armless Annoyance (3), Singer (1)

SOME SAMPLE CLICHÉS (AND WHAT THEY'RE GOOD FOR)

Deluded Adventurer (Stabbing things, swinging from ropes, sailing, romance)

GELF (Beating things up, drinking, whoring, grunting, sweating)

Mechanoid (Following orders, looking stern, following orders, getting Droid Rot, following orders)

Psionicist (Reading minds, Hex-vision, sock-puppetry)

Space Corps Navigator (Piloting spaceships, not puking in zero-gee)

Space-Biker (Riding Harley, brawling, being Invisible to other motorists)

Space Corps Fighter Pilot (Dogfighting, not blacking out at high-Gs, bragging)

OPTIONS, RECOMMENDED AND OTHERWISE

PSIONICS

The base requirement for using Psionics in RD is the Cliché Psionicist. On top of that, a character may purchase one or more Powers (Clichés which show various mental powers the character has). These include:

ESP (smelling through walls, hearing across town and seeing through any manner of personal undergarment)

Hew-vision (sending blasts of energy from your eyes, handling sock puppets)

Mind Reading (guessing any number 1-10 correct 5 times out of 6)

Telepathy (sending other people dirty images across great distances...a lot like the Internet)

To use a Psionic Power, you must spend one die from your Psionicist Cliché. In addition to this, you may spend additional dice from your Psionicist Cliché and/or your Willpower Cliché (see below) and add these dice to your Power Cliché for that roll. Then roll. If the roll is unopposed and you need an idea for a target number, I suggest the table in Jason Puckett's excellent Risus Magic document.

Psi On-the-fly: If you need to attempt a use of a Psionic power you don't have a Cliché for, you may use your Psionicist trait as your Power (assuming your GM allows this). However you still have to spend a die from Psionicist first.

WILLPOWER

Relax, you don't have to buy this one. To determine a character's Willpower Cliché, simply average his total Clichés. At the GMs discretion, you can add one die for every significant mental Cliché the character has (but really, how likely is it that these guys will have mental Clichés?).

What's it good for? Well, tests of will, stare-downs, concentration, Psionics, etc.