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awa
2013-08-27, 08:49 PM
I'm curious do any other games (particularly fantasy ones) use a character creation method like this rolling for events that happen to you before game play starts?

elliott20
2013-08-27, 09:35 PM
burning wheel for orcs has a portion where every phase above 4 (I think), you roll to see if you lost a body part growing up. It's pretty amusing, but no where near the randomness that traveler has, where your character can die in generation.

CarpeGuitarrem
2013-08-27, 09:42 PM
Pendragon has you roll up your entire family's history! It's also one of the greatest games around (and is an oldie-but-goodie).

TuggyNE
2013-08-28, 12:29 AM
I'm curious do any other games (particularly fantasy ones) use a character creation method like this rolling for events that happen to you before game play starts?

deadEarth does, more or less. It does Traveller one better, in fact, in that not only are you really rather likely to end up with a dead character partway through creation, but you can only ever make three characters.

Mutazoia
2013-08-28, 12:32 AM
Well there is always Central Casting: Hero's of Legend (http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/52823/central-casting-heroes-of-legend-second-edition) which does exactly what you are wanting. It's generic so it can be adapted to any system. There are also Hero's-now (http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/53010/central-casting-heroes-now) and Hero's for Tomorrow (http://rpggeek.com/rpgitem/50498/central-casting-heroes-for-tomorrow)

All three are used to generate backgrounds for your characters (or NPCs) starting with their birth and going on through to their adult (just before starting the campaign) life.

While they are out of print there are still a few places to pick them up. If you like, PM me and I'll point you in the right direction...

Rhynn
2013-08-28, 01:57 PM
Cyberpunk 2020, Sengoku, and most especially the awesome Artesia: Adventures in the Known World all use the Fuzion Lifepath system (as does Bubblegum Crisis, and Cyberpunk 2013 and Cyberpunk 203X to a degree). Twilight 2013 doesn't quite, unless you take Hazardous Duty phases (where you choose the level of risk, which determines the magnitude of both the rewards and penalties you may get), but it (just like Twilight 2000) does have you create your character as a career path.

A:AKW is the one that makes the strongest use of lifepaths. Everything about your character is determined by the lifepath, including basic attribute scores: they're a function of your randomly rolled lineages, star sign, and birth omens, and modified by many events of your life. I also found that players who rarely roleplay got pretty deep into their mostly-random characters because of the nature of the lifepath system, and you can't help but see plot hooks all over.

awa
2013-08-28, 05:08 PM
okay bit of a modification to the question do any of these have free online versions or even just sample lets call it careers.
I only care about the character creation part not the game itself.

Grod_The_Giant
2013-08-28, 05:36 PM
deadEarth does, more or less. It does Traveller one better, in fact, in that not only are you really rather likely to end up with a dead character partway through creation, but you can only ever make three characters.
And the award for "most frequently ignored RPG rule" goes to...

(Seriously, how does that even work?)

TuggyNE
2013-08-28, 09:50 PM
And the award for "most frequently ignored RPG rule" goes to...

(Seriously, how does that even work?)

Very poorly (http://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/downloads-games/deadearth-resources/).

For what it's worth, though, deadEarth is freely and legally available on the web.

Rhynn
2013-08-29, 12:14 AM
deadEarth does, more or less.

DeadEarth doesn't at all, actually. You roll for mutations, not for events. The mutations can kill you. It has nothing at all to do with lifepath/career path character creation, even remotely.

awa: Google "Fuzion lifepath", "Atomik lifepath", "Fuzion", etc. for examples of the Fuzion lifepath system. None of the others live up to A:AKW's implementation, though.

Black Jester
2013-08-29, 04:34 AM
There is a lifepath-based character creation system for fantasy characters in Savage Worlds and it really upgrades that system up to a point where it actually might be worth playing.

I also sat down one day and decided to write one for Legend of the Five Rings. In my humble opinion, it's a great update of that system as well, but I can't claim to be neutral about this particular game aid (it was well received in the one-shots and the minor campaign we used it for, though).

awa
2013-08-29, 11:36 AM
I got a lot more responses then i could have hoped for thanks for that