Go, go Power Rangers! It’s time to live out your multicolored, powered hero fantasy! There are already games on Start Playing Games you can join. Now, all you need is to make a character! Don’t worry if you have no idea what you’re doing. I’m here to help. 

Essence Points And Scores

So this section is first in this article because you’re going to read the words essence points, essence scores etc. before getting to the part where you actually use them, but I think its important for you to know exactly what they mean as you’re reading! 

When you create your character, you start with 12 Essence Points to spend between your four scores: Strength, Speed, Smarts, and Social. The most common “spread” is 4,3,3,2. As your character levels up, you will get more Essence Points. 

Essence Scores dictate the core element of your character. These scores can range from 1-10 and sometimes 15 in extraordinary circumstances. Strength is your collective physical potential. Speed is your natural leaning toward agility. Smarts is your capacity for learning, understanding logic, and problem-solving. Social is your instincts toward natural charm and charisma. 

Character Concept

Okay, important question: who is your character? If you’ve never played a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG) before, that question can seem kind of daunting but it’s not I promise. Is your Ranger a protector of the innocent? Do they dedicate their life to martial arts? Are they a natural leader? Obsessed with technology? 

When making your character, there are four major contributors: origin, role, influence, and essence points. 

Choosing An Origin 

Origin is who your character was before they became a Power Ranger. This is best described as your character’s base personality and persona. This is who they are known as when they are out and about in everyday life in their normal identities. There are ten origins: athletic, brainy, comedic, curious, cynical, kind, oddball, popular, rebellious, and tragic.

Each origin gives you specific traits, including your starting health, bonus skill levels, ground movement, languages, essence increase options (improving your stats), and an origin benefit.

Choosing Roles

Your role is your Power Ranger color. Each of the different colors gives you a general description of what a typical ranger of that color is like, your essence adjustments, and your power capacity growth (power capacity are points that you use to activate special abilities and zord powers, and your growth is based on the type of Ranger you are). Black Rangers are skilled, charming warriors. Blue Rangers are clever technological experts. Green Rangers excel at surviving against all odds. Pink Rangers are eagle-eyed sharpshooters. Red Rangers have a strong fighting spirit. Yellow Rangers are fast and nimble. 

Choosing Influences

Influences are what your background was growing up, You might have been a part of your school’s theater department, maybe even the lead. Or you used to volunteer at a retirement home or veterinary clinic. Whatever it is your Influences helped shape you into the person you are today. When choosing influences, there are four questions to ask yourself:

•  What was your first experience with this influence? 
• How have you pursued it throughout your life? 
• Who do you share these influences with (either other player characters or NPCs)? 
•  What part of this influence keeps you coming back for more?

Each influence gives your character an Influence Perk that benefits you when your influences come into play. Each influence also suggests personal characteristics that you can use as a basis of creating your character's story and personality.

There are 10 Influences: artisan, caretaker, community helper, small-town roots, martial artist, nomad, not from around here, student, survivor, and teacher. If these Influences don’t quite fit what you’re looking for, you can tweak them to fit your character or the campaign setting. 

Choosing Skills

While a character’s Essence Abilities set their potentials, it truly is their Skills and subsequent Specializations that show the character’s ability to use that potential. Skills represent everything a character can do proficiently, as well as a few additional aspects of a character’s life. Each skill is tied to a specific Essence Score. Each point that you have in an Essence Score will allow you to learn or increase your rank in a particular Skill. 

Most skills have Specializations. These show an area of expertise and allow you to roll more dice when it comes into play. The way you get a specialization is by putting one point into a skill and then choosing to use a point to specialize. 

There are 19 skills, atheltics, brawn, and might (Strength based), acrobatics, driving, finesse, infiltration, initiative, targeting (Speed based), alertness, culture, science, survival, technology (Smarts based), animal handling, deception, performance, persuasion, streetwise (Social based). 

Equipment

Each character starts with equipment, detailed in your Role description and added to by other character creation choices. You get all the items you had in your previous life (check in with your GM about what is and isn’t allowed), and you’ll get a weapon, potentially a useful tool, armor, and other protective equipment. 

Describing Your Character

One thing left, assuming you didn’t already do it because this can happen whenever you want really, fleshing out your character! You’re gonna want to name the character, decide what they look like, and choose the style of your suit (Might Morphin Power Rangers, Zeo Suit, etc.) and what you look like when you’re not wearing it.

And that’s it! It’s Morphin’ Time! You’re ready to fight the forces of evil to protect people! 

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V.J. Harris (they/he/something funny) is a professional TTRPG designer and full-time game master. Play with V.J. here.