A way to generate characters by stepping them through a lifepath. I.e. how did they get to the point of being proficient with pointy sticks, or casting spells, or speaking four languages...?
It's about taking that first step from ordinary to extraordinary.
Or maybe it's about recognizing that you (the character) even have the potential to become extraordinary.
But in this world it's about (a) providing an alternate chargen system for newbies who don't have strong feelings on any of the 50+ decisions that need to be made at creation-time and (b) creating a reserve pool of interesting NPCs with backgrounds for a GM.
For players, trying to provide a middle ground between blank-sheet chargen and pregens.
"How does your game do this?" In the best of 70's-era RPGing, it's through extensive use of tables =) (Not that extensive: I've fit Traveller's all onto one side of an A4 sheet, and would aim to do the same with ZtH.)
More abstractly, it's by reducing the decision-set to just a few options at a time, played out in non-sequential order.
I.e., we're not assigning all stats, then figuring AC, then, then, then.... (With all the going back and adjusting things post facto.) It's much more of a bootstrapping/spiraling upward feel.
[In ZtH these tables would include things like attribute bumps, HD bumps, spellcasting (as an ability), spell slots, weapon proficiencies, armor, skills, equipment, &c. Basically, all the things that make a class.]
So during your first 4-yr tour you spent time both in artillery and on the bridge, becoming an Ensign (commission) in the process. In your spare time it was Capoera classes (+1 DEX)?
TAS is traveler's aid society--membership in a club with a presence on most inhabited worlds. Instant connections, plot hooks =)
"High" stands for a voucher for "high class" starship travel. Free passage of X light years every month. Also saleable for a pretty good sum. (10K, IIRC)
In a classic Traveller game each player rolls up three or four characters, then picks one they'd like to play. The other (3*players) make a nice pool of NPCs.
@BESW Not that bad... you just had the chance of death or injury during life events, and the option to keep rolling (longer time, more improvements) or finish
@Adeptus It's a replacement for choosing a class, and all the features and so forth you pick at chargen, and it also gives you a backstory at the same time.
My vague idea is to start as a person, who acquires skills/proficiencies/features/ASIs through apprenticeship/journeyman experiences.
If, at the end of that, the constellation you've assembles contains everything in a PHB class, you're a L1 class name.
If you don't quite have everything, perhaps you start as a level 0 [closest-to-complete class name]? Without the level 1 features of your class! But after 300 XP you'll hit L1 (when "proper" characters hit L2) and "complete" your class-stratification.
And, of course, you can roll up a few until you get one you like. And the rest devolve to me, for use as NPCs with pretty-cool backstories that are easy to build upon.
The problem I've been having (since PHB1e p.30, TBH) is the darned Monk.
@BESW also presumably less chance of total permanent disability followed by impending death followed by actual definitely confirmed death during character creation. (Of the one character.)
I've always liked in-creation death as a spur to think carefully about reaching too far during chargen, but it seems like such a waste of a viable NPC.
For ZtH I'm bandying about the idea of just limiting terms by rule. Then there could still be mortality, but there's a limit to the "reaching" one could do, so the mortality rates could be lower.
@Shalvenay Any way I seem to break down the number of "things" one needs to acquire to assemble a L1 character, the monk ends up needing ~half as many as anyone else.
@nitsua60 mostly "you're dead now" during chargen just means you've wasted the person's time. People don't like having their time wasted so they'll probably ignore it and step back or reroll until they get what they want or modify your thing to not have death options.
deadEarth chargen is bad not just because of the bigotry and stupidity, but because it often asks you to roll 200+ d6, then re-roll them, sometimes more than once, and then kills your character.
Character death is a fun result when there's investment in the character and their death is meaningful and dramatic, for example. Not so much if it just means "toss out your past five/ten minutes of work."
Maybe here's the hack: everyone has a limit of X terms. No survival roll. (If we know enough about you to know your backstory, you make it into the world.) But if you bug out early you get a bit more from "mustering"?
I'd rather chargen options say "proceed to the next step, don't keep rolling in this one" than "your character's dead now" if you give me the option to push for more.
It's the old Chris Rock line: "I dropped out in the 10th grade. That means I'm exactly as qualified for a job as the kid who dropped out in the FOURTH grade! Less! 'Cause he's got six years' experience on me!"
@nitsua60 if your goal is to give me a character generator, your promise to me should be I'll get an actual playable character at the end of it. If it wastes my time I just won't use it for character generation.
But in this world it's about (a) providing an alternate chargen system for newbies who don't have strong feelings on any of the 50+ decisions that need to be made at creation-time and (b) creating a reserve pool of interesting NPCs with backgrounds for a GM.
(In response to "what is the point of this game?")
@nitsua60 The thing is, the kind of player who doesn't want to make those choices themselves probably wants to spend less time on character creation, not more.
I don't know... I do a lot of introducing people to dnd, and it's generally not that they don't want to spend time or make the choices, it's that they have no informed way to make them, know that their choices can have big consequences, know that they're missing relevant info (out of a 200-pp. rulebook), &c. &c. &c.
"I have these attributes: it's easy to see I'd be best at this sort of character, but this second sort might be okay, and these other sorts would be a real uphill battle."
I don't think end results of "your character is now not playable" are satisfying outcomes that would have me want to re-use a character generator again. Death and "they're an NPC" are unacceptable results that I would ignore or which would turn me off using your thing a second time. Your generator for newbies needs to give those newbies a character - guaranteed. That's why they're using it.
Your generator for GMs should focus, meanwhile, on a GM's many and varied goals. If the NPC generator can focus on NPCs for the GM, it can make suggestions like job (including "villain" or "evil sidekick") which wouldn't be appropriate in a player character generator.
When chargen can be done in 5 minutes and sometimes results in things I'd not have thought of I find it a fun little thing to do. In the five minutes while someone's drawing a map, or explaining save proficiencies to someone else.
sure--those are the original results from Classic Traveller. I haven't gotten my tables to the point where I can code up a simulator and run ten thousand chargens, see how many are "deficient," what those deficiencies look like, &c.
@doppelgreener There are some Fate iterations where the group creates places, designs faces for each place, and then players choose faces to play as PCs. "Consigned to NPC" is kind of a backwards form of that.
One other idea floated was just that a "deficient" character starts at L0, and at first XP level gets the rest of the class features "backfilled."
So you'd start a little "behind" on the XP-curve, but we all know 5e's numbers are pretty-tolerant of that.
Or perhaps at end of generation all the class's features are granted as part of mustering; anything gained not on the class-path is pure bonus... I'd have to run ten thousand to see how bad the "inflation" gets; again, I'm not there yet.
(This is the first time I've spoken any of this out loud.)
@nitsua60 From a mathematical perspective, they are. But having anyone in the party a lower level than everyone else kinda sucks, and it would especially suck for a new player.
Also, note that although a lot of new-style game design avoids total failure, there's a noticeable contingent of RPGers (see OSR) for whom semi-randomised failure stakes (whether death or disadvantage) are engaging play elements.
But think about the sort of thing we could be talking about (which I know is hard, since you can't see inside my head). A Ftr who's missing light armor proficiency (though 'e has medium and heavy.) A Rogue with one less language. Or skill. Or a Druid missing a save proficiency.
Right. I don't know how Traveller works, but I was reading this as a chargen system that was also going to be applied to D&D 5e, where chargen doesn't usually result in failure.
For example, when a group reaches a new level, there's often a 5-10 minute break while everyone levels up. Meanwhile, player who was unlucky in char gen just sits there. Half an hour later, when the group gets a bit more XP, player who was unlucky in chargen is frantically trying to level up as fast as they can, because either the group is waiting for them, or the group isn't.
@Miniman I've got lots of split-level parties, since my students are very erratic about how often/consistently they come. We don't do any XP or leveling mid-session.
@nitsua60 Sure, you can work around it. But that was just an example. There's lots of little reasons why split-level parties are annoying, especially for the person on the wrong side of the split.
@doppelgreener (a) to cut fifty choices down to few. ("what branch?" "which table" possibly a dozen times, "keep pushing?" at most a half-dozen times.)
I started force-levelling everyone in my D&D games to stay at the same level because the power discrepancy meant folks who couldn't make it every session were deciding to just not come at all. But I know groups where that's not an issue.
At my tables I've got plenty of people sitting on enough XP to jump 2 or 3 levels, but who haven't bothered to level. They're not bothered by having lower "power" than their table-mates.
Stupid question I probably should have asked, oh, hours ago: I assume there exist character generators for the various "crunchy" systems, yes? (Remember, I'm new to the RPG+digital realm--I'm not being sarcastic.) If you've used them, what are the reasons you did?
@doppelgreener I'm working on creating a chargen system/alternate in the style of CT for 5e.
Ok. So, for 5e, I don't understand why you'd randomly generate level variation which tends to create various types of extra work or frustration for GMs and players, as opposed to "ask the GM what level you should start at". I mean, you could just have that last thing with a suggestion to roll a d4 if you'd rather randomise your starting level.
@doppelgreener That's a possible fix to the creation of non-viable characters. It's not a desired outcome, just a consequence of trying to get at some of the other desired outcomes.
@Miniman which miniman appears to be talking about here, and you're saying "sure but that's not a problem for us" which is fair but doesn't necessarily make it a good feature of a generator for others' use
And perhaps it's so unpleasant/unlikeable as to be a death knell. I don't feel like I'll know until I get this system to the point where I can code it and run thousands.
Right. I wasn't concerned about non-viable characters - a well designed generator won't allow that to really happen, and I have trust in your know-how. All that stuff I was saying was just about results that terminated your work somewhere along the way and would make you have to go for a second character generation pass, because the generator says your character can't be used as your character and you're back at square zero.
@Miniman I'm not foresightful enough to know if I set the "promotion" roll in one particular column at 6+ whether that means 2% or 20% or 90% of attempts won't get the requisite number of skills to make it to L1. In that sense there is some discovery to be had.
@doppelgreener no, you're right to be worrying about those things. I'm talking about a system that could, at its end, yield you a "deficient" character. A druid with one less cantrip than other druids, or a rogue with heavy armor proficiency (probably not, actually), or a sorceror with no save proficiencies. What I haven't thought about until tonight is "step omega-plus-one": if, to be "well-designed" we must come out with a L1 PC, what's the step that brings one from "deficient" to L1?
Or is it that one can play with a "deficient" character, and there's some method in-game whereby that deficiency is (fairly quickly) remedied? That was the suggestion that the first XP-threshold perhaps would "backfill" deficiencies.
(I've got about ten minutes until I turn into a pumpkin/berry.)
@nitsua60 Maybe a meta currency that is defined as the difference between L1 features and a PC's starting features, spendable by players to fill in choices during play.
@BESW Like, say, if becoming a L1 Bard takes 19 "things," but this proto-Bard only has 17, they get 2 tokens. Which are used any time inspiration might be used, but the narrative of the action both has to conform to the missing "thing" and backfills it?
@BESW The thing is, if everyone's guaranteed the number of things they need, but the randomization means that they might get something "off-list," then that character by necessity is then missing something "on-list."
Isn't there a set of "on-list" choices larger than the slots available (eg, feat or spell choices)?
So your wizard could wind up with the right number of spells and skills and feats, but exactly which ones would be random.
And if he dropped out of chargen early, he'd instead be able to pick some of them himself during play.
That'd mean customised lists per class (and early chargen would involve determining class), but if you weren't planning on making that anyway, then why would off-list choices be something new to the concept?
@nitsua60 honestly if it was a situation like this, I'd have the wizard at first roll for at least X features in the Wizard set of skills. So they do get some wizardy things. Then past X they start rolling on the whole list.
@Miniman two or three. (a) my first thought was to have six "branches", not 12. That way rolling you on the "nature" branch could net you a druid, or a ranger, or a druid with a favored terrain, or a ranger with 1 druid cantrip available. This ties back to my hopes to move toward a classless world, or at least toward the "stick-guy, sparkle-guy, skill-guy" paradigm.
(b) simplicity: let the newbs choose from among six descriptively-named branches, not 12 classes that have multi-page definitions.
(c) simulationism
(d) a little bit of the "challenge" of chargen I enjoyed in old editions. I played a 1e bard. Once. 5-8 levels ftr, 5-9 levels thief, enough quests for Wishes to get 4 stats up to 15.... It took forever, and I had to work with my GM to make it happen, and when I got there it... kinda sucked. 'Cause really all I had was a not-so-good fighter, not-so-good thief, and some low-level druid magic. I totally get that's not at all the ethos of any editions of the last 20 years.
But I still roll 3d6 down the line for my characters. (Even though it's not even an allowed method anymore.)
have them make the choices once, then run several iterations of the process with those choices and let them pick what they feel is the result that best fits their choices/desires?
@Miniman @doppelgreener it's completely possible I just haven't yet learned for myself the lessons of the last two decades. I'm talking about using a system published in 1977 to move toward my preferences set in the mid-80s on an edition published in 2014 played by kids born after 2001. I'm aware of that. But I'll let you know how it goes =)
Oh, I know. I've got a co-worker with a few more dice, slightly-grayer beard, slightly less hair, .... =)
Sariously: thanks everyone--you've gotten me to think about a few new things. I'll let you know if/when I make some progress. (Since this sits at about #106 on my priority list, not likely to be soon.)
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Not a bar, but plays one on TV