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[RPG] Your favorite chargen/lifepath system?
VacuumJockey
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
My favorite old-school chargen is the one from Traveller. Any chargen system that can kill your character is badass!
Presently, I think that Reign is the king of chargen. Roll 11d10 sequence the events, and there's your character. Bonus coolness: there's an online generator...
Yours?
Presently, I think that Reign is the king of chargen. Roll 11d10 sequence the events, and there's your character. Bonus coolness: there's an online generator...
Yours?
PSN: VacuumJockey
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!"
~ Dr. Emilio Lizardo
"Laugh while you can, monkey-boy!"
~ Dr. Emilio Lizardo
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I also like Legend of the Five Rings since family lineage plays large part in that setting, you can roll so that your ancestors fucked up royally and because of that, YOU'RE the one that's looked down on.
Chargen starts with picking (rolling) for your culture. Second you roll up both parents: social level, occupation, lineage. Lineage is the most important as its the first point at which your default stats and abilities change.
Once you know your parents you move on to the characters birth: star sign, good and or bad omens and childhood (first 16 years). All of which modify your stats and/or give you gifts (think powers) or bindings (think disadvantages; greed, doubt, fears etc.)
At that point your an adult and the actual real events start. For each year (GM decides how many, but the default is 5) you roll on an event chart (good , bad, real nasty, real good, or major event) which gives you bonuses, penalties, contacts, enemies, kills off your family and helps you define your history. Once the event is resolved you have points to spend to buy stats and skills appropriate to your career (which starts as one of your parents but can change as you or the events you roll dictate). The career system is only used in char gen and is simply to provide some focus and sensible skill groupings, after that its a more free-form experience (this aint no WHFRP).
One item I've always appreciated is that the social level of different careers differs from culture to culture and this changes what carers are open to a character (you can only move to ones of equal or lower SL without an appropriate event).
The whole system integrates nicely with the history of the setting (parental lineages), the mythology (star signs and omens) and the recent history of the campaign (events).
I think I've done 8 or 9 characters for players and each one has come out of the chargen with a decent background that it's been possible to integrate in to a sensible consistent whole.
I won't even try to explain them, the stuff must be read.
One of the results is "nude".
So the game tells you to have your character run around naked.
It's not perfect, but it gets the job done for what it tries to do.
You can make a highly specialized character, or a relative generalist.
Between merits and specialization, there is plenty of room to customize (and new merits can always be made if you can't find one to appropriate for your needs).
You can have a character ready to go in just a few minutes. Even with a supernatural template involved, character creation isn't very complicated.
And once you become familiar with the core system and the supernatural system you're using, things are even faster.
Of course, I'll always have a soft spot for Thrash. Creating and naming special moves is great fun.
Mekton's is most likely based off of Cyberpunk's. Aren't they made by the same company?
Making Spirit of the Century characters with your group is just as fun as playing the game. If not more fun, in some situations.
I'm looking for a lifepath system for a game I plan on running for some friends. I want it to generate some characters that end up rather normal, (or at least have the option), since the game is set in modern day here. Less spec ops ninjas and jungle hunters, and more "Waitress" or "Detective".
I'm running a GURPS game, and the players don't need to know the system, but they'd still want impact on their characters in some way--so I figure they'd do the lifepath and I'd do the chargen. I'm wanting something mainly like Mechwarrior 3e's system, where players have a lot of choice, but random occurrence happens during them. I was converting MW3, but if people were going to be normal, I think everyone would be White Collar or Blue Collar then school then civvie, police, or crime jobs.
So are there any that anybody can suggest for a modern setting? All the online random generators seem to do the whole thing instead of letting you choose how you grew up, whether you went to school or not, etc.
Anima is hilariously complicated and allows you to create absurdly overpowered characters, which is lots of fun, but it's definitely not good.
I don't think I've ever played a game besides Mutant Chronicles that did a real lifepath type character creation, but that was mildly entertaining(my GM made me redo my character three times since I kept ending up being recruited into the supermagicgodmonks)
"Go up, thou bald head." -2 Kings 2:23