Rememorex Character Sheets Explained

Nephi's Sheet Template

I'm going to do my best to explain the character sheets without copying the Rememorex guide.  The guide is fairly brief because the system is a simple one. So let's get down to the sheet.

While the first item on the sheet is your character's name - this isn't always the first thing you want to pick when creating a character.  Sometimes this comes later after you've fleshed out some details. I'm not going to get into details about this because a character's name is pretty self explanatory.

Their age can be broken into one of 3 general categories: Adult, Teen, or Kid; or it can be defined with a number.  The GM gets to decide how they want to do it, and also gets to define the number spread for each category.

Let's get into the fun stuff; the stuff that makes your character tick.

Type, Training, and Talent

These are the 3 elements on your sheet that will dictate your character's actions and their dice pools.  (This will become clearer as we go on, I promise)

Type

Your Type, or Archetype if it makes it easier to think of, describes what or who your character is.  There are 5 Types in Rememorex. Think of them like classes.

The 5 Types are: Athlete, Brain, Basket Case, Criminal, and Prince/Princess.  Now you can make up your own if you feel that your character just does not fit into any of these categories. Just have a decent descriptor in there and you should be fine.

Athlete - these are the warrior jocks of the game.  Selecting this time means that you will always have at least 1 physical trait to pull from when trying to decide what your dice pool will be for a given action.

Brain - these are the intellectuals of the game.  Now, that doesn't mean that all of the other Types are stupid.  This just means that you will always have at least 1 intellectual trait to pull from.

Basket Case - these are the weirdo oddballs in the game.  That doesn't mean that this Type needs to be negatively weird or odd.  Their base trait is a social trait, but it is indirect or odd. So they will always have a unique social trait to pull from to influence the game, but it might not always turn out the way you think it will.  These are also the people who underestimated and can surprise you.

Criminal - these are the rule-breaking rebels in the game.  These are always great to have because they are the ones who are willing to break the rules to get things done.  While there isn't a specific name for this kind of a trait, a criminal is far more likely to be able to pick a lock or hotwire a car than a Brain would be.  Think of these like Rogues.

Princes and Princesses - these are the high level socialites.  Much like the Basket Cases - they are social influencers; however these characters are far more likely to be able to directly influence people in a predictable way.  These are the people who are able to throw their weight around and are recognized.

When selecting your type, you want to make your character unique.  To the name of your Type, you add a descriptor or descriptive phrase.  Let me give you some examples.

A Prince of Fools is going to be much different than a Trickster Prince.

A Badass Athlete is going to be different from a Frustrated Athlete.

An Unknown Criminal will be different than a Criminal Mastermind.

So when selecting your Type, be sure that this Type truly represents who and what your character is down to their core.

Training

Training is a skillset or overall appraisal of knowledge that your character possesses.  These are completely player created. You want something that very broadly but very clearly expresses what your character has spent their life to date learning.

These can be mental, physical, or social.  With some creativity, you can cover more than one of those with a single Training set.  Here are some examples

Mental

Techie

Journalist

Know-It-All

Rules Lawyer

Physical

Team Captain

Heavyweight Champ

Concert Violinist

Military Brat (this is one of those that might also cover mental such as military intelligence)

Social

Wall Streeter

High School Hero

Inspirational Commander

Resourceful Loner

As you can see, these very broad and yet very telling phrases can be used in many different situations.  You don't want to get too specific with these. You want to leave them broad and a bit vague in order to allow you to spin these creatively during game play and use them both actively and ively (more on that later, stay with me).

Talent

This is one unique ability that is specific to your character alone.  You can have 2 or more High School Heros in a game, but if each of them possesses different Talents they are going to be better at each of these individual Talents than the other and have a better chance at succeeding during dice rolls.

These are also player created, so again, the only limit is your imagination.  You can use some of the examples from Training as they may also apply. A Natural Brain may have the Training of Military Brat but also has a Talent of Student Body President.  With those three elements in place, you have a character in place who is highly knowledgeable and able to learn things quickly, knowledgeable in some minor military tactics and procedures, is strong, and has social influence and access at school.

Now what?

Once you've picked your Type, Training, and Talent; it's time to assign some active and ive numbers to each of these.  First, let me explain the difference between active and ive use - as this may change how you decide to distribute your dice.

An Active element use is you purposely applying your Type, Training, or Talent to an action.  "I want to use this to try to do this."

A ive element use is collateral use of your Type, Training, or Talent.  "I want do to this. Would any of my elements work for this?"

Example:

Let's take the Talent: Eagleeyes.

Active: "I want to use my Eagleeyes Talent to see the flaws in the wallpaper pattern to check for a secret wall or ."

ive:  "Do I see anything out of place in the room?"

Example:

Let's take the Type: Musical Brain

Active: "I need to create a quick three minute freestyle - I want to use Musical Brain for that."

ive: "Can I read and play the notes on the back of this crazy pirate treasure map my friends and I found in the attic?"

So now that you have a better idea of active and ive use, let's get back to prioritizing your elements.

For your most important element, you get 8 points to distribute any way you like between active and ive.  If your Type is the most important, you get 8 points to split there. If your Training is the most important, you get 8 points to split there.  If your Talent is most important...you get the idea. These numbers will dictate how many dice (D6) you roll during an active or ive action attempt.  (see - I told you the dice thing would make sense soon)

The second most important element on your sheet, you get 6 points, and the least important element you only get 4 points.

Here's what an example character sheet might look like.  We're going to use a very well-known example right from the book so everyone recognizes it, but I'm going to change the order found in the Rememorex source book.  I'm also going to walk you through my reasoning as I go.

Example: Optimus Prime

Type: Autobot Brain

Training: Inspiring Commander

Talent: Transform and Roll Out

I think the MOST important part of Optimus Prime is his leadership skills.  Without those, no one would listen to him. So I'm going to put 8 points in Training.  While Transform and Roll Out is REALLY useful, I think that a dumb leader will soon lose his following.  So I'm going to say the second more important element is his Type and put 6 points there. The last element - his Talent - gets only 4.

Now, I know how I play leader types, and I feel like my presence and command should really be more indirect and just kind of felt, but I don't want people questioning my orders.  So my split is going to go 2 / 4; 2 points of active and 4 points of ive for a total of 6 points.

When it come to his intelligence, I think that exactly the opposite is true.  I want him to be seen as smart, not assumed so. So for my split on this, I'm going to go 7 / 1.

His Talent of Transform and Roll out is something I want an even hand on and don't want to take a chance that my ive rolls on this will fail.  So I'm going to split the 4 points evenly with 2 / 2.

This is our Optimus Prime sheet so far:

Name: Optimus Prime

Type: Autobot Brain

2 / 4

Training: Inspiring Leader

7 / 1

Talent: Transform and Roll Out

2 / 2

You're more than welcome to split your dice pools evenly if you want to play it safe.  For the sake of this example, I wanted some variety.

Got it!  Next!

The next 3 elements on your sheet are truths that your character does not act against.  These are written in stone. Think of these as alignments if alignments were something you had to obey at all costs and never ever changed.  While I'm explaining these, we're going to continue using our Optimus Prime example.

First - I love that...

This is something positive that your character believes in.  It doesn't have to define their whole being.

Name: Optimus Prime

Type: Autobot Brain

2 / 4

Training: Inspiring Leader

7 / 1

Talent: Transform and Roll Out

2 / 2

I love that... there is always a chance if you don't lose hope.

Seems legit.  Very Prime-like.

I hate that...

This is the exact opposite.  This is something negative that can sometimes taint their judgement and perspective.  Again, this doesn't need to be all-defining.

Name: Optimus Prime

Type: Autobot Brain

2 / 4

Training: Inspiring Leader

7 / 1

Talent: Transform and Roll Out

2 / 2

I love that... there is always a chance if you don't lose hope.

I hate that... there will always be something or someone who needs my protection.

Ooooo very dark, but probably a very real perspective that Optimus Prime holds on to.  Probably fairly depressing in certain moments, and maybe even tiring.

I can count on...

This is the last truth that your character holds dear.  This isn't as much about belief as it is about facts from their perspective.  Oh Optimus.....

Name: Optimus Prime

Type: Autobot Brain

2 / 4

Training: Inspiring Leader

7 / 1

Talent: Transform and Roll Out

2 / 2

I love that... there is always a chance if you don't lose hope.

I hate that... there will always be something who needs my protection.

I can count on... the Autobots to always rise to the occasion and do what what is right.

Yes.  YAAAAAAS.  While he may question their methods or even their motivation, he never questions that they are going to do the right thing in times of doubt or when under pressure.

The rest of the sheet

Your character's looks, like their name is pretty self explanatory.  The notes section is - of course - for you to document items of note about your character.  This may include items - literally - or relationships that they have with other players.

Rememorex provides a series of tables that can randomly dictate the relationships between characters in a game.  To use these you roll 1D6 to establish the nature of the relationship, and a second D6 to get specifics. I'm not going to reproduce all the tables here because 1. that might be copyright infringement, and 2. tables can be generated by each GM on their own.  The GM is also free to allow all the characters to establish relationships of their own choosing. However, I will tell you the initial example rolls and 1 example for each of the age groups - these are from the Rememorex Sourcebook.

Adults:

1 - Criminal, 5 - Knows what you did.

2 - Friendship, 6 - Enemies

3 - Love, 1 - Secret Lovers

4 - Recreation, 4 - Social Drinkers

5 - School, 3 - Same College

6 - Work, 2 - Boss/Employee

Teens:

1 - Criminal, 6 - Committed a Crime

2 - Friendship, 5 - Study Group

3 - Job, 4 - Work Flirtation

4 - Love, 3 - Still Friends

5 - School, 2 - Cut Class

6 - Sports, 1 - Teammates

Kids:

1 - Criminal, 2 - Fellow Delinquent

2 - Extra-Curricular, 3 - Skateboarding

3 - Friendship, 4 - Force Friendship

4 - Love, 5 - Hurt Feelings

5 - School, 6 - Student/Tudor

6 - Sports, 1 - Star/Fan

So if you were playing a Kid, and you were rolling to establish a relationship and rolled a 3 then a 4 then you and the other player know each other because you have a forced friendship.  Maybe your character's mothers are friends and make you play with each other.

Scraped?  Injured? CRITICAL?!?

The last item on the sheet from the book is a health tracker.  Generally speaking - each time your character fails to defend themselves against an attack, they take 1 level of damage unless an item is used that increases the lethal nature of the attack.  Then it's up to the GM how many points you lose (or if you die).

The End

So that is a break down of how to make a character sheet and what you need to know about the character sheet.  I'll create another post about the combat systems and added fun stuff that makes Rememorex such an amazingly simple game another time.

Until then...

May your rolls be critical, and your Dungeon Masters Merciful!