[Design] Character Creation

So, I finally got started with my Character Creation chapter.

When I was a kid, me and my equally-dorky friend used to make "our own RPGs", which usually consisted of stealing everything from our game of the moment, throwing away game balance, and adding in our own "art". So, we'd have a game in a fantasy future where characters made "runs" against corporations, using a Priority-based character creation scheme... and we'd give it some lame name, like "Shadow Heroes".

Nowadays, I'm much better at stealing ideas and passing them off as my own. It's what growing up is all about, I guess.

Of course, each time we'd get together and make up a game, we started (and usually finished) with the Character Creation chapter. To put it simply, creating a character is the fun part of any RPG book. It is always the first part of the book I look at, and it tends to be the most re-read part of the game.

If you look at many successful RPGs, you'll see that a huge part of the game is dedicated towards character creation. The Player's Handbook from D&D, for example, is FILLED with creation information - I'd wager about half the book is aimed towards creating a character or character-specific information (in pretty much any edition).

By "Character-Specific Information", I mean neat little things like skills, powers, spells, gear... things that a character can have and use. And if you look at the successful RPGs, many of them dedicate their product lines to expanding upon such Character-specific Information (i.e. "Splatbooks").

People like making characters. And they like options. Odds are, you never even thought about playing a half-blind mexican midget biker with crohn's disease and an aversion to cheese until you found that the "Lactose Intolerant" flaw in the latest splat gave you a +2 bonus to buttkicking, right?

So, now that I'm finally starting on the Creating a Character chapter, I'm trying to preserve that sense of fun, and keeping the options open - while limiting the amount of space dedicated to character-specific information. ALthough, to be honest, probably half my book will be character-specific info.

Character creation has a few major steps. First you come up with a character concept (I always encourage players to think of a concept before creating a character, to move away from the "pick from a shopping list of powers" syndrome). Then, you allocate 60 points among your four attribute (Body, Intelligence, Agility, and Spirit). All attributes begin at zero, and they can't go higher than +30. All attributes should be in multiples of five (for ease of math).

After this, you determine characteristics (derived values based on attributes, much like saves in D&D 3E) - right now, we have Dodge, Parry, Willpower, Health, and Wound Threshold. Each characteristic is based off an average of two attributes - Dodge, for example, is based off the average of your Agility and Intelligence. Characteristics can improve through gameplay, but only rarely.

After this, you determine your psychic power, in the traditional post-apocalyptic method... random rolling on an impartial power. The powers are not balanced against one another, nor should they be. But, unlike traditional post-apoc games, there are no disadvantages... no midget bikers in my game, unfortunately.

Next up, we have skills. You get one Primary (Expert) skill, two major skills, and three minor skills. Your primary skill gets a big (+30) bonus, and once you improve it to a base skill of 30 (you start at a base skill of 10, so after you improve it 20 times) you unlock a special power (other characters only improve their skills at base skill 20 and 40, and so miss the base skill 30 "level up"). The game is geared towards non-combat skills - the expert improvements for combat-based skills are less than the improvements for the more rarely-used skills.

Then you pick your gear, which is a very simple process (I'm aiming towards no more than 3 pages of gear).

Finally, you choose one adrenaline ability (a special ability like a 3E Feat that you can only activate with adrenaline points), and an aspect. Your aspect can grant you bonus on attribute checks (but not skill checks) if it comes up during play. So, a lawyer would get a bonus on any Intelligence check involving knowledge of the legal system, but he wouldn't get a bonus on using the Barter Skill. Also, if you roleplay out your aspect, you can get an adrenaline point out of the deal.

Currently, I'm thinking a character can be created in less than five minutes, which will be good, because the Awakening is gearing up towards being a very lethal RPG.