Random characters

The other day, me and my gaming group started of a short campaign using the game Reign. Since I was the only one that had much knowledge about the system, we decided to use the random character generation system instead of designing the characters with the points-buy system.

It was a blast!

There is something with random character generation systems. They can lead you in directions it wouldn't occur to you to pick otherwise. They might add a twist to your character that you would overlook.


In this case, the characters became different, but with some really nice connections. It didn't take long for the group to decide that they wanted to have a company that dealt with information, basically a spy-network. It all fit together very nicely, the process added a couple of both patrons and enemies, and gave me a number of sub-plots to incorporate.

Why do I mention this? Thing is, I think that the last couple of years, random character generation has gotten kind of a bad rep. Different kinds of point-buy systems are the norm, as is different kinds of class-picking (and often a combination of these). And, while I definately see the charm in custom-building your character sometimes it's just as fun to roll the dice, and then use your creativity to make sense of whatever was rolled.

One game I remember fondly was the old Golden Heroes superhero-game from Games Workshop. You rolled up all your powers, and then you had to come up with a background and theme fitting those powers. The powers you couldn't fit into that background you hade to forfeit. A couple of my most memorable characters was made using that system.

That's why I'm glad that there are a couple of games that return to random chargen. One of these is Reign. If you are using Wild Talents, there is an official webb-download with a similar random generation system for superhe.. sorry... talents. The upcoming game Icons! also uses a random system.

So, consider this post a small praise for the interesting, challenging and wonky characters you can get from using random character generation.

One-roll Talents

One of the many super-hero roleplaying games to appear the last couple of years is Wild Talents. It's a more gritty game compared to many others. It also uses the ORE-system, as found in Godlike and Reign, among other games.

Now, one of the nifty things in the ORE-games is that they usually contain One Roll Generators. That is charts and systems for generating characters, monsters, nations etc with a single roll of a number of 10-sided dice. One of the things that are missing from Wild Talents is a One Roll Talent generator.

However, the good mr Stolze have fixed this, by uploading PDF's with just that, a way to build a Talent from a single roll of a pool of dice.

They can be found at the Nemesis website downloads section

Push the players with triggers and phases

This is, to some extent, a development of my previous post where I talked about how to add "combat rounds" to other things, and in other time scales, than just combat.

In this post, I want to add two more ideas/ concepts. The first one is Phases, and the second one is Triggers.

Phases

A phase is a part of a module, adventure or story. When you go from one Phase to another, something in the world or the story must change. In order to motivate a phase-change, it should be something significant. For instance, in a game with a vampire as the antagonist, the first Phase might be about investigating strange deaths. After a couple of hours, the vampire learns that the players are on it's tail, and acts indirectly against them. This would be the second Phase. In this Phase, perhaps, the vampire has gotten some control over the local police, the keeper of the vast library that otherwise could be useful etc. In the third Phase, the confrontation is more direct. This is where the players (or the vampire) seeks out the enemy.

One could add in meta-rules as well, rules that dictate not only changes in the story, but also if something is allowed to happen or not. For instance, in our vampire-example, you could say that no major character in the game can die in the first two Phases. It's only when the story proceeds to Phase 3 anyone can die (both the players and the vampire).

Triggers

Instead of having the Phases occur at set, predetermined times, you could let the players actions decide when to go from one Phase to another. Some actions doesn't advance the Phases and, unless the GM says otherwise, could be done an infinite number of times without advancing the plot (mind you, this has the slight disadvantage of not.. you know... advancing the plot). However, certain actions advance the plot to the next Phase. Let's say that you can do an infinite number of library research, but you can only talk to three people before rumors spread and the vampire hears of you (thus advancing the adventure to Phase 2). So, the players can basically decide when they want to further the plot, but they do so by raising the stakes.

More structure for more creativity

I've stated before that I think that the most important game balance is time/spotlight balance from player to player. Ironically, this is in a way most enforced in combat, for one simple reason: Each player at least has his go. Every turn, each player get to do something. Of course, this "something" might vary quite a lot, and not all game system are particulare good at this, but all players still have their turn to do something.

Now, what would happen if we kept the round-system, but increased the scale. Let's say that we are playing an investigative game. I know that in 8 hours the next murder will happen, unless the players do something. So, instead of just asking the players "What do you do?", I make them roll for initiative (perhaps using a more fitting stat then usual), and ask, in turn, what each character do this hour. I also make sure to tell them that other things happen that hour as well.

Why do I think this could be an interesting idea?

The main reason is, it gives all characters and players a better chance to tell the the group what they are doing. Of course, they have that chance anyway. My experience, however, is that the louder members of the group often dominates the talk.

And NO, I won't just be satisfied with "then the shy guy has to speak up". Nope, gaming should cater to all personality types, and this gives all types a better chance to tell the group what he wants to do.

Also, if the GM starts to count the hours, it can give a sense of urgency to the group.

When using this solution, I believe that the GM should be fairly generous with clues about what happens. Just as in combat, the goal and (at least some of) the premises should be clear. Tell the players what the basic structure is. If needed, give them some ideas of what they can do each time-slot.

Whatever the players say they do, make it matter! It may not be as effective as they would like (compare, once again with combat... an attack might miss or do less damage), but for each time slot, each and every player should have a chance to contribute to the development of the situation.

Mystery adventures - a few tips

One of my major weak spots is that I'm less than stellar at writing and running mystery adventures. This isn't that surprising, considering that these kinds of adventures can be quite tricky. I have written a few other posts that touches upon the subject, but today I thought I'd just point you towards a couple of links that gives helpful advice.

First is a thread from rpg.net, where a player asks about help to run an murder-mystery-adventure.

My favorite from that thread was the "three methods (quoted from the thread):

The Agatha Christie method: The victim was a snot - Murder is murder, but the Victim was a genuinely nasty person who had it coming. Maybe Victim wasn't a criminal, but he/she made the lives of people around him/her absolute misery. Every NPC within Victim's circle (family, business, social) had an excellent reason to hate him/her and is a potential suspect. Solving the mystery involves unraveling the NPCs' relationships with Victim and each other to determine who hated Victim most and had the opportunity to do him/her in. Some of the NPCs will be openly bitter. Others may be sympathetic sufferers. Christie usually gave the culprit at least one kindly trait to throw readers off.

The Doc Savage method: The culprit comes after the PCs - The victim was probably a nice person, since he/she was a friend/associate/acquaintance of the PCs. The culprit is so sure that the adventurers will give him (or her) grief over the murder that he starts trying to off them as soon as the crime is committed. The PCs' friend was somehow tangled up in a much larger conspiracy; as they attempt to defend themselves against their assailants and investigate their friend's death, they'll uncover a web of clues that will inevitably lead to the villain.

The Sam Spade/Philip Marlow method: Never trust a client - No client or assignment is what he/it seems to be. The PCs are hired to watch or find somebody who doesn't want the attention. The more they pursue their quarry the more goons and corrupt officials come out of the woodwork, and the bodies start stacking up as not-nice parties with conflicting agendas "remove" people who have given/might give info to the PCs. They typically have to fend off/avoid the police while they hunt down the culprit(s). It's not unusual to have different victims slain by different villains, all of whom are trying to conceal the Big Secret that the heroes are threatening to uncover.

Another good place is an essay written by Justin Alexander where he (among other things) talks about the three-clue-rule, where he says that the GM should have at least three clues for piece of information he wants the players to find. Well worth a read!