You can read more about Cosmic Dark in this earlier post about running the game.
In Graham Walmsley’s not-yet-released Cosmic Dark, a weird space horror game based on the ruleset of his earlier Cthulhu Dark, character creation is almost entirely done through role-play. The one thing not established through role-play is a character’s occupation — their Specialism in the language of the game — which is defined by the role they’ve been trained for by the mega-corporation the character employees work for. As an example, in the introductory scenario “Extraction,” the employee specialisms are Medical Officer, Mining Engineer, Geologist, Communications Officer, and Team Leader.
Players choose their character by responding to the intercom page as their shuttle is descending to the asteroid they’ll spend the next year mining. The GM asks the medical officer to respond, and repeats the request until someone does. They’re the medical officer. These specialisms are defined by the scenario.
Likewise, as I explain in the earlier post, each character has only one stat: Their Changed score, which starts at 1.
So, how are the characters developed? Through role-play flashbacks. After the players quickly define their home planet upon which they all grew up together, each character gets two brief scenes. The GM sets up the scene and asks the players to play it out. For example, two characters, I imagine them as tweens in this scene, are in the school yard, and one says to the other, “You know what I’m better at than you?” and then the GM turns it over to the two players.
It’s simple and quick, but it establishes parameters about who these characters are and what their relationships to each other are. Having played a PC employee and run three separate games, this is enough character development to let the players play those characters who, of course, further develop through the course of the scenario. (Or campaign if you run all five scenarios as a campaign.)
As I’m writing this, I realize — I can’t believe I haven’t made this connection before — that Graham has designed Cosmic Dark on the Forget the Tavern twin principles of starting the game in media res and with a shared group history. The twin principles are obvious solutions to common problems for anyone who thinks about the challenges of starting a campaign, and I note in the start of that series, they’re ideas I stole from others.
