"Side-Topic" Post Week of 03/03/2014

Rolemaster 1E: "A masterful set of guidelines for fantasy role playing character development. ~ 19 character classes with both potential & temporary stats. ~ Unique trait development system allows all characters to increase their ability in any area of skill. ~ Trait advancement costs vary according to character class -- but there are no absolute restrictions." Super fun (and time consuming) to roll up a character... and then they die... but hey its Rolemaster:

I think I'm going to go with TSR's old version of the Marvel Superheroes RPG (often called FASERIP). There were tons of options to choose from, letting you come up with great themed superheroes. Or you could go the often hilarious route of using random rolls to choose all your abilities. When you roll up a robot with prehensile hair for a power and sports medicine as a talent you know you've got something fun.

My own game... The Adventure Game. I don't know of any other games where you use the distance dice are thrown to randomize attributes/ability scores. ^_^

HoneyBadger said: My own game... The Adventure Game. I don't know of any other games where you use the distance dice are thrown to randomize attributes/ability scores. ^_^ Its harder than it sounds...

I'm going to sound like a broken record, but my favorite system for character creation is Fate Accelerated. Creatings your character is simply asking yourself, "Who is this character? What gets them in trouble all the time? And what three other things separates them from the rest of the crowd?" Then the rest of the character sheet just falls into place once you got those five aspects set in stone. I also love how easy it is to socket it into whatever genre you want to play. I'm a narrative junkie at heart.

I really enjoy Pendragon's system. Its take on alignment using personality traits and passions is the best I have ever seen.

Traveller by Mongoose. It's had 30+ years of development behind it, and you generally choose sort of what you want, but it doesn't always work out, but it is interesting, like life. Every player I've regularly played Mongoose Traveller with has commented "It feels like a real person, I can really love playing this guy / girl." It's also skill based so you don't have to start out as 1st level new guy fighter age 14. You can start with a ship, gear, skills, enemies, allies, etc.

GURPS for flexibility and tweaky bits and always leaving the player hungry for just a few more CP... and then a few more... 1e Traveller for the sheer entropy and, of course, killing your character before you finish generating it. And not a PnP (but it should be), but Darklands (1992) for its character-birthright-and-career-choices-as-building mechanic.

13th Age, with things like broad scope backgrounds instead of narrow skills, icon relationships, and one unique thing you can make almost anything you want and still have a pretty balanced fantasy game.

I like the character creation in Unknown Armies . It's pretty dang simple. X points (value of X is dependent on campaign level) to distribute between 4 attributes. A small handful of skills handed out for free* under each attribute. Increase those skills or buy new skills** with Y points in each attribute (where Y=attribute's value). Decide what your character is obsessed with, and associate that with a skill (Adepts must link the obsession to their school of magic, but the way magic works in the setting, it isn't possible to do magic without being obsessed with it in the first place). Pick a Rage, Noble, and Fear trigger. Link the Fear trigger to one of the five stress tracks. Done. * Free skills are at 15, except Initiative which is 1/2 of Speed ** New skills can be literally anything, and free skills can be re-named. Avatar characters and Adept characters must have their Avatar skills/Adept school. "Anything" really does mean anything. "Making Gobs of Money" is a skill on a canon NPC. Unknown Ponies , a MLP-spinoff of UA, is even simpler, although the setting isn't for everyone: Set attributes to 40 (50 if starting play as adult characters) Pick a race (Earth Pony, Unicorn, Pegasus, Kelpie, Zebra) Add 10 to one attribute based on race choice (Optional) reduce one attribute by up to 20 points, to either increase another attribute by the same amount, or increase two other attributes by half that amount. Get 25 in each free skill except Initiative, which is 1/2 of Speed. (Earth Ponies/Zebras only) add 50 skill points to distribute between the free skills or to new skills (Alchemy is available only to Zebras) (Adult characters only) pick an obsession a special talent and link it to a skill.

Although it took a bit to create a character, I was always partial to the Hero System Champions RPG character creation. My attitude is that a player should have the ability to build the type of character they want to play, and a points system (with powers, advantages, disadvantages, etc.) made a lot more sense to me than rolling dice. Of course, this is ALSO the system where the combat was excruciatingly slow, so I guess one has to pick their poison...

Been very much digging character creation in FIASCO of late. As that's a game that really depends on people willing to tell great stories, I find it unique how willing I am to create somebody "doomed to fail" instead of other systems where I'm trying to juice stats out of whatever I'm playing. New topic up !