Ghost49X
2015-05-22, 12:14 AM
So I've been musing over an idea lately and wanted to pitch it to the forums and see what other people think.
Character Gen for Shadowrun (4E), I've had quite a lot of experience playing the system and I have several times tried running low street level campaigns that never seem to work out because most of the players I've had don't seem to feel secure if they don't have bucketfulls of dice to chuck at the table, even if I repeatedly reassure them that they won't be needing an exceptional dice pools to beat challenges I plan to set up for them. Also I know the BP-CGen and karma systems favors min-maxing and penalizes people who don't take advantage of it. I've tried to use Karma Gen but players went down the same route of min-maxing what they could. I've also tried to adjust the BP or CGen karma and it didn't change much. I was thinking about using the following for my next game and I thought that bouncing it off the forum could tell me if it's worth trying out or not.
Biographical Character Gen
Instead of asking players for a character sheet and a background, all I'd ask for is a background. I don't require an essay, point form is fine but the background should cover most of the character's life. I would afterwards read through it and ask some questions if the details are lacking and arbitrarily assign stats that I deem appropriate while trying to balance things out amongst the group. After starting, players would be free to spend karma as they wished (though I might ask them to provide with a reasonable explanation as to how they are learning new skills or training old ones.)
My question is how would this affect your enjoyment of the game if you were one of the players?
-Johnny D
Was born to a poor family
Father was a Taxi driver, Mother worked at a Stuffershack
Grew up in the Renton district of Seattle
Went to public school where he was mostly a loner
Learned to defend himself against bullies
His Mother was murdered while he was in middle school, he father never recovered from the shock and slowly became addicted to BTLs
Was pressured by his romantic interest to learn first-aid, originally aspired to become a paramedic
Didn't get the girl, so his interest in higher schooling dropped and he joined a go-gang
After a hit against a rival gang he salvaged used cyberware from a dieing rival go-ganger and got a street doc to install his new second-hand wired reflexes
A gang war erupted and he survived when most of his friends died, however he was able to salvage some decent quality cybereyes at some point
He didn't get along with the new gang-leader so he left, found a fixer that was willing to hire him as extra muscle to work the shadows
Character Gen for Shadowrun (4E), I've had quite a lot of experience playing the system and I have several times tried running low street level campaigns that never seem to work out because most of the players I've had don't seem to feel secure if they don't have bucketfulls of dice to chuck at the table, even if I repeatedly reassure them that they won't be needing an exceptional dice pools to beat challenges I plan to set up for them. Also I know the BP-CGen and karma systems favors min-maxing and penalizes people who don't take advantage of it. I've tried to use Karma Gen but players went down the same route of min-maxing what they could. I've also tried to adjust the BP or CGen karma and it didn't change much. I was thinking about using the following for my next game and I thought that bouncing it off the forum could tell me if it's worth trying out or not.
Biographical Character Gen
Instead of asking players for a character sheet and a background, all I'd ask for is a background. I don't require an essay, point form is fine but the background should cover most of the character's life. I would afterwards read through it and ask some questions if the details are lacking and arbitrarily assign stats that I deem appropriate while trying to balance things out amongst the group. After starting, players would be free to spend karma as they wished (though I might ask them to provide with a reasonable explanation as to how they are learning new skills or training old ones.)
My question is how would this affect your enjoyment of the game if you were one of the players?
-Johnny D
Was born to a poor family
Father was a Taxi driver, Mother worked at a Stuffershack
Grew up in the Renton district of Seattle
Went to public school where he was mostly a loner
Learned to defend himself against bullies
His Mother was murdered while he was in middle school, he father never recovered from the shock and slowly became addicted to BTLs
Was pressured by his romantic interest to learn first-aid, originally aspired to become a paramedic
Didn't get the girl, so his interest in higher schooling dropped and he joined a go-gang
After a hit against a rival gang he salvaged used cyberware from a dieing rival go-ganger and got a street doc to install his new second-hand wired reflexes
A gang war erupted and he survived when most of his friends died, however he was able to salvage some decent quality cybereyes at some point
He didn't get along with the new gang-leader so he left, found a fixer that was willing to hire him as extra muscle to work the shadows