Asmor
First Post
I just got the new issue of Dragon, and the way of generating characters using Three Dragon Ante cards and a tarot-like layout is just too cool for school. Or maybe I'm just weird. I like unique ways of generating characters. >_>
For those that haven't checked it out yet, you lay out 11 cards. The inside 5 are in a cross, and the outside 6 point towards the center, 3 on each side. Those six represent your ability scores, with the left 3 being physical scores and the right 3 being mental scores. You stick a number of counters on the cards depending on the power level of the game, as with point buy, and then you go through them in order. Each card has a specific "ability" depending on where it's located, and eventually all the counters make their way to the outside six cards, the abilities, and then you buy your abilities as per point buy with the number of counters that end up on each one.
It doesn't leave any room for choice, which you may or may not like. Once the cards are layed out, that's that.
It allows you to generate an interesting background, too, which could be good if nothing else for coming up with unique NPCs. To use an example in the magazine, if you got a black dragon for your intelligence, it would end up stealing points from dexterity. You could explain this as when you were a child, you had a bad illness and were bedridden, and started reading a lot, but never fully recovered. Similarly, the overall look of things can give you ideas too... lots of good dragons meaning a good character, or evil dragons meaning an evil one.
Annoyingly, we're in the process of moving so my Three Dragon Ante deck's packed up (incidentally, I think it's an awesomely fun game in its own right), so I can't give it a try... There is a system shown for using a regular deck of cards, but that would just feel like cheating to me.
For those that haven't checked it out yet, you lay out 11 cards. The inside 5 are in a cross, and the outside 6 point towards the center, 3 on each side. Those six represent your ability scores, with the left 3 being physical scores and the right 3 being mental scores. You stick a number of counters on the cards depending on the power level of the game, as with point buy, and then you go through them in order. Each card has a specific "ability" depending on where it's located, and eventually all the counters make their way to the outside six cards, the abilities, and then you buy your abilities as per point buy with the number of counters that end up on each one.
It doesn't leave any room for choice, which you may or may not like. Once the cards are layed out, that's that.
It allows you to generate an interesting background, too, which could be good if nothing else for coming up with unique NPCs. To use an example in the magazine, if you got a black dragon for your intelligence, it would end up stealing points from dexterity. You could explain this as when you were a child, you had a bad illness and were bedridden, and started reading a lot, but never fully recovered. Similarly, the overall look of things can give you ideas too... lots of good dragons meaning a good character, or evil dragons meaning an evil one.
Annoyingly, we're in the process of moving so my Three Dragon Ante deck's packed up (incidentally, I think it's an awesomely fun game in its own right), so I can't give it a try... There is a system shown for using a regular deck of cards, but that would just feel like cheating to me.
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