Welcome back to Stat Sheets, the feature where some of our more gaming inclined Mutants indulge in the pastime of statting out characters from our favorite movies and TV shows using our preferred tabletop role-playing game systems. This time around we’ll be covering the show that was The X-Files before The X-Files was The X-Files, only with 94.37% more Seventies-ness, Kolchak: The Night Stalker. If you need a refresher on what all those numbers and terms mean regarding Savage Worlds, you can go back to the first installment of this series.

Carl Kolchak

• Traits: Agility d6, Smarts d8, Spirit d8, Strength d6, Vigor d6
• Skills: Academics d6, Athletics d6, Common Knowledge d8, Driving d6, Fighting d4, Notice d10, Occult d6, Persuasion d6, Repair d4, Research d10, Shooting d4, Stealth d6, Taunt d10, Thievery d4
• Hindrances: Bad Luck, Curious, Driven (major, exposing the truth), Outsider (minor), Poverty
• Edges: Alertness, Connections (fellow journalists and various low lifes), Fleet-Footed, Gallows Humor*, Investigator, Retort
• Pace: 8 Parry: 4 Toughness: 5

* Featured in the Savage Worlds Horror Companion

This time around I’m using the Call of Cthulhu roleplaying game from Chaosium, as the themes in this specific RPG fit the world of Carl Kolchak very well. Call of Cthulhu, or CoC, is one of the oldest RPGs in existence, having first been published in 1981. It was based on the writings of horror author H.P. Lovecraft, whose macabre tales were staples of 1920s pulp fiction. In the game the player characters, here called Investigators, look into mysterious happenings that often lead them to discover dreaded things that man was not meant to know… and thus, in a first in the RPG world, are at the risk of succumbing to madness and insanity.

Investigators in CoC are rarely as combative as they are in many other games, since guns and blades are often of little use against the creatures of Lovecraft’s works. Instead, the characters would find themselves gathering clues and researching arcane rituals that might banish their dreaded nemeses back to their respective realms.

Which sounds like any given episode of The Night Stalker!

Call of Cthulhu is a fairly straight-forward system that has changed little since its first edition. Skill rolls are percentile-based, using two ten-sided dice. One die is the “tens,” representing 10, 20, 30, etc., while the other die represents a single digit. So a roll of a 4 on the tens die and a 2 on the singles die would be a 42. If that number is under your skill score, then your roll is a success! Some modifiers can come into play, but in general it’s just that easy.

The Carl Kolchak shown here is a beginning character, portrayed as of The Night Stalker television movie in 1972, although the gear listed is what he was shown to use in the TV series. He’s a veteran reporter who is just about to unwittingly run head-first into the supernatural. Needless to say, his Occult skill will be getting quite a boost over the next few years…

He was created using the 7th edition rules of Call of Cthulhu.

Carl Kolchak

• Occupation: Reporter Age: 50
• Attributes: Strength 50 Appearance 50 Constitution 55 Intelligence 70 Size 65 Power 65 Dexterity 45 Education 70 Luck 60 Hit Points: 12
• Skills: Art/Craft (Photography) 50%, Art/Craft (Writer) 55%, Climb 30%, Credit Rating 20%, Dodge 51%, Drive Auto 35%, Fast Talk 63%, History 45%, Library Use 50%, Listen 42%, Own Language (English) 70%, Occult 20%, Psychology 50%, Sleight of Hand 35%, Stealth 41%
• Gear: Ford Mustang convertible, Rollei 16 camera, portable cassette recorder, seersucker suit, black tie, straw hat