ghelmberger

That's another thing I was thinking. Oral histories can get pretty fanciful once they get beyond living memory (and even before then!) and this is essentially the Urdak creation myth -- basically they spent a long time in a place they thought of as paradise and got kicked out due to past misdeeds. But since I was saying it in a lyrical style from their point of view, I couldn't just come right out and say that.

True. :-) Maybe that's why they got their asses kicked by the Gerelani?

32 generations is a long time. I don't necessarily think it would have made them any softer than living next to the Chinese for 800 years (roughly the time span in question) made the Mongols soft and civilized. When the Mongols took the Chinese over, yes, they quickly became assimilated, but even that analogy is imprecise in this case because (at the end) the Urdak destroy the civilization they conquer instead of just taking over as a ruling class. They are moving toward civilization though, which is one of the central conflicts in the game. These are good points. I was going for a semi-lyrical tone, sort of as recited by a bard, but I'm unsure as to how well it necessarily came out. As for the second point, that's a good thing to point out. I was viewing this as more of a "capsule" history and I was planning to do a longer version, but I hadn't necessarily been planning to expand greatly on the deeds of heroes. I will now though. :-)

One thing I wasn't at all sure about was how to balance Luck and Idea roll bonuses/penalties with skill bonuses/penalties. I gave them +/-5% and skills generally +/-10%, but I'm curious what people think about that. Skills can be raised relatively easily, but your Luck and Idea rolls are fixed (again though my Advantage/Disadvantage and Renown systems will allow them to be moved up or down).

I have, and that is exactly what I'm using as a model.

The Birth Omen table is just the first part of the process (though it's the only part I have done). There will also be a steps for generating family status, childhood events, and for events of each of the previous five years of the character's life, with incremental bonuses along the way to stats, skills, other abilities (I'm putting together an Advantages/Disadvantages system) or equipment. My target when I'm done is to give an average character another 50-75 or so points and a couple of stat bonuses as well as some things that can influence their social aspects (though of course if you have truly bad luck going through the tables you might get less, or even end up gimped -- GM discretion must prevail, I think) and maybe an exceptional bit of gear or two. I was going to use the Dominating Influences in the Allegiance system I'm putting together but I can certainly look at expanding the role of it.

One relevant piece of information I neglected to add was that the game will be starting out a little stronger than Heroic and moving up into Epic with experience and other systems I intend to put in place (an Advantage/Disadvantage system, a Renown system that allows characters to increase attributes and abilities, and a modified Allegiance system that gives mechanical and social benefits).

In putting together my fantasy game (more information can be found here) I've decided to cobble together some new systems to supplement what's in the basic book. Since I really like life paths, I decided to come up with a system to do that for my game. Here's the beginning of it. There will be a lot more after that too, but I wanted to check with people smarter than me about the mechanical bonuses/penalties I was giving out. Are they too strong? Too weak to matter? Any guidance would be helpful. Ignore the last table; obviously that section isn't done yet. :-)

As I've mentioned on these boards, I'm working on a fantasy game that I intend to play VOI/VTT and (hopefully) podcast. I'm also thinking about putting the setting out as a monograph/published product if it comes together as well as it's started to. I hope to use these forums as a sounding board to help me make my game better, and I'd love your feedback as things progress. Basically, I'm not shooting for a "standard fantasy" setting with knights and orcs and whatnot. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just not what I want. Instead I'm going for a Heroic Age feeling, like The Iliad or Beowulf. The PCs are members of a people called the Urdak, who are horse-nomads (reminiscent of the Magyar, the Mongols, the Huns, the Sioux, etc.) who've conquered a rich river plain. They're on the cusp between barbarian and civilized, retaining the mentality and attitudes of barbarian warriors even as they grow into the responsibilities imposed by having rich land and subject peoples. There are nonhuman races in this setting but they're not the "humans in funny costumes" a lot of fantasy games use -- they're alien, so different from humans that their motivations are difficult to comprehend, and some of them go back hundreds of thousands of years or more (I freely admit I cribbed this bit from Cook and Erikson). Here's the history document that the players will see. I elected to write it in a semi-lyrical style rather than the straightforward way setting histories normally get written, focusing on the things the Urdak themselves would consider important (such as the feats and fates of great heroes) and not providing any "objective truth" on the events. This is their history as they see it. The problem is I'm not 100% sure whether it worked or not and I'd love some feedback on it. Please let me know what you think.

Looking at Pendragon, I see that the Glory system provides for the opportunity to "buy" things in an interesting way. Since one of the things I'm looking to emulate in this game is the sort of wild lust for glory that is present in the eddas and sagas, I think this could be a useful sort of mechanic. W points of Glory or Renown or whatever I choose to call it can buy X, but if you want to wait and accumulate more, you can spend Y points to get the more useful ability Z.

I am looking at adapting the Allegiance system to non-divine applications, so I could easily say that one social group can teach X, and another can teach Y. That does dovetail nicely with my idea that each one gives a different benefit.

Actually, foregoing X improvement rolls had occurred to me as a way of controlling the expansion of powers -- say, for every spell you ticked, you had to forego two non-spell ticks. This looks like it might not be necessary if spells are more or less self-balancing against other skills, especially if Fate Points are factored in.

Ah, interesting! I'll check those out and mine them for ideas.

Interesting, I will take a look at that. Can you give me some hints about what they suggest?

That's pretty much the classic RQ way of approaching it though, right?