2025 Character Creation Challenge, Day 30: The Bombastic Buzzard

It's day thirty of the challenge, the finish line is in sight, and I'm just throwing stuff at the wall at this point. It's been established that ships are characters for the purpose of this blog. Let's make another ship using Bucket of Bolts.

The Bombastic Buzzard

Previously featured on day seventeen, Bucket of Bolts is a solo journal RPG by Jack Harrison of Mousehole Press. Even without playing through the journaling part of the game, Bucket of Bolts is handy for coming up with ships and backgrounds in a hurry. The implied setting is vague enough for these ships to fit in many space games. The core assumptions are that space commerce is common enough for private ownership of spacecraft. And that spacecraft about the size of modern aircraft can operate independently.

Bucket of Bolts includes software that generates a name and picture of a ship. There are also rules in the book for naming and drawing a ship, but a mouse click is the kind of minimal effort that I can get into. That stated, some of the images generated by the software feature ship parts that don't seem attached to the ship. They just float nearby. It's easy enough to fix - just generate another ship image.

Figuring out three traits for the ship mostly involves staring at the picture until words came to mind. In this case: rugged, reliable, and outdated.

Finally, the backstory:

Hera Quixada gazed over the inventory languishing in the back of the spaceship lot. Tucker was busy hitting the salvage yards looking for a hulk with some life in it. Neither held out much hope, but there was no other ticket off this rock.

Quixada's eyes lighted in a crude looking brick of a ship. The model name and number escaped her, but she recognized the design. It was built to hold up to rough handling and frontier conditions. The systems were a generation out of date, but they were easy to maintain and spare parts were plentiful.

A ship like this is exactly what they needed. She spoke into her communicator, telling Tucker to drop what he was doing and rush on over. He would be able to size up the ship. Then they could make a deal in the lot offices.

In the meantime, The Bombastic Buzzard waited.

Bucket of Bolts is available on itch.io.

2025 Character Creation Challenge, Day 17: The Scimitar, Medium Modular Cargo Hauler

Here's my entry for day 17 of the challenge. I usually make these the night before and schedule them for posting on my blog in the morning. Unfortunately, I'm not feeling the best as I write this. Rather than putting it off, I'm cheating twice to get something out with the least effort possible. The first cheat is one I've done before - making a ship as a character. The second cheat is to pick a mechanically simple game.

The Scimitar, medium modular cargo hauler.

Bucket of Bolts is a solo journaling RPG by Jack Harrison of Mousehole Press. The narrative focuses on a modest cargo carrying spaceship from its days just out of the factory to its inevitable fate. Ships in Bucket of Bolts have some level of intelligence, but still need a captain and crew. As the ship grows more worn, it will outlast its first captain. And the next. But one captain will someday be a ship's final one. And so the story of a ship will be told.

Creating a ship in Bucket of Bolts is straightforward. The rules call for naming and drawing a ship, but the game download includes software that generates a name and picture of a ship. Thus, The Scimitar.

The next step is to come up with three traits describing the ship. I decided on:

• Ungainly.
• Utilitarian.
• Exposed.

So fresh from the factory that the cockpit still has that new ship smell, The Scimitar belongs to one of a bewildering array of mid-sized freighter designs. The eye slides away from its utilitarian appearance in favor of the sleek yachts and sporting craft elsewhere in the lot. However, The Scimitar's ungainly modular construction and exposed components make for an adaptable ship. A captain and crew handy with technology could make much of such a ship.

UN-73 considered the possibilities as the ship waited for its first captain.

Bucket of Bolts is available on itch.io.