Character Generation

[Baron Wulfraed]

32 minutes ago, RandomNumber said:

Yes, my group found the concept of being newly minted characters being that accomplished (e.g. quite possibly having mastery of a primary skill) a turn-off.  We've nerfed the character generation rules to have the characters start off a little weaker but able to advance more quickly.  YGWV etc.  See attached for the latest version in case of interest.  I intend to figure out what this means for Step 2 (Family History) at some point but am most likely to leave it 'as is' since I rather admire it.

HouseRules.pdf 857.02 kB · 1 download

{blast -- I can't find a command to delete the attachment from the quote}

Well, there is the stuff on page 25

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Playing Inexperienced Adventurers

The default adventurer creation process generates adventurers that have already survived and experienced the opening moves of the Hero Wars. They are likely veterans of battle and may very well have mastered a skill.

The gamemaster and players may prefer to create inexperienced adventurers right after their initiation into adulthood (about 15 or 16 years old). In that case, players should not take any personal events in their adventurers’ family histories (because they were not adults until the start of play) and should skip Step 7: Personal Skill Bonuses.

For characters between 16 and 21, perhaps start with the above, then use some of the next section and page 81 (though that page works in chunks of 10 years and what is desired is something in "per year" adjustments -- a la RQ3 "occupation"). Perhaps just prorating all the skill additions (the 50% of Rune affinities, occupational skills, cult skills&spells [maybe not the cult lore, worship, and meditate values], and prorating the personal skill bonuses [5% per year for the four main skills, 2% per year for the 5 secondary skills -- no changing from year to year -- for each year]).

age  main  secondary
21   25%   10%
20   20%   8%
19   15%   6%
18   10%   4%
17   5%    2%
16   0%    0%
 

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, RandomNumber said:

I'm doing the same.. mostly as an exercise to relearn Excel VBA (which I last used about 10 years ago). I have a button press now that generates all the stats randomly, runes, skill mods, derived characteristics.

I'm tempted to do that with my Google Docs sheet, convert it to Excel and rewrite all the macros, but I don't really have an incentive to other than for the benefit of people who can't access Google (e.g. people in China).

Feel free to take any data you want from mine, it has all the cultures, occupations, cult skills, skill base chances, weapon stats. Most of the sheets are hidden.

[Sid Vicarious]

15 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

I've had feedback that my online character creation spreadsheet is particularly helpful

 

 

You are too modest, Mr. Hibbs. My group might never have got past character creation without those sheets.  Now we use them as the default for creating and maintaining Adventurers, only adding an additional tally sheet for skill improvements from each adventure and season. Its now just a long and fiddly  process, rather than a very long and very fiddly process. Cant quite get get values for Spirit Combat Damage though.

 

 

[RandomNumber]

5 hours ago, PhilHibbs said:

Feel free to take any data you want from mine, it has all the cultures, occupations, cult skills, skill base chances, weapon stats. Most of the sheets are hidden.

Thank you - I will take a look. 

[Marc]

21 hours ago, Arcadiagt5 said:

Once you get used to it though… I've found that the player typing in family history events in the Roll20 bio page in edit mode whilst I also have the sheet open at the same time to enter the acquired passions/skills is surprisingly efficient.

 

I hadn't thought of trying that.  I had them enter all that in the Events section of the Family tab.  Since everyone looking at the "sheet" sees the same page, that doesn't allow the passions and skills to be entered at the same time. 

 

I'm going to try your method of putting the family history in the Bio&Info section next time

[Arcadiagt5]

6 minutes ago, Marc said:

I hadn't thought of trying that.  I had them enter all that in the Events section of the Family tab.  Since everyone looking at the "sheet" sees the same page, that doesn't allow the passions and skills to be entered at the same time. 

 

I'm going to try your method of putting the family history in the Bio&Info section next time

I hope it helps! It only works because the Bio & Info are only available in Edit mode, so the player can only see that, while the GM can only see the rest of the sheet. One appeal of it for me is that having all the "story" elements of the family history on the Bio & Info page can encourage the player to write them up as a story. 

[Marc]

I will say that, when I started my Roll20 game( 2 1/2 years ago, hard to believe! ) I had 6 players, and did a character generation session with all of them doing it together.  'Cause that's how I did the character generation in my original RQ2 campaign back in the early '80's.  It was awful.  Some of the players had the rules, some didn't.  Of the ones that had the rules, some  interpreted them the same way as I did, some didn't.  I don't remember how long it took, but I do remember it was a chaotic CF! 

Never again.  I now get on with a new( to my game ) player one-on-one, at some time other than the normal game time, and  go through most of the character generation.  I leave as a "homework assignment" spell selection, personal skill bonuses, etc.  So far, that has seemed to work fairly well for me.

[Bill the barbarian]

13 minutes ago, Marc said:

Never again.  I now get on with a new( to my game ) player one-on-one, at some time other than the normal game time, and  go through most of the character generation.  I leave as a "homework assignment" spell selection, personal skill bonuses, etc.  So far, that has seemed to work fairly well for me.

So let’s turn to my original question then, Marc. Any new players to RQ before the change? How did the new folk fare? After you got rid of the CF and made it one player at a time how long did it take you to roll ‘em up, was it better for the newcomers... ?

So there was an original question here... enquiring minds and all. Some great thoughts  and tips have made there way to this thread so keep it up but...

Quote

How long are people finding it to takes to finish Char Gen first time out? Enquiring minds want to know.

 

 

Cheers

Edited June 26, 2021 by Bill the barbarian

[Nick Brooke]

On 6/24/2021 at 10:58 PM, Bill the barbarian said:

Rolling an adventurer for a brand new player to RQ. I like to go through the rules as I roll and I am finding it to take longer that I expected. I mean, with a party that knows the game it usually takes about 2 to 3 hours to tackle the 8 steps shown in the rules to make 2 characters. Of course I am not teaching as I go with the experienced...

How long are people finding it to takes to finish Char Gen first time out? Enquiring minds want to know.

We did character generation as part of Session Zero. Back in the Before Times, we used to meet in person and game from maybe 11 am until 5 or 6 pm, with a social break for lunch around 1 pm. Both my groups had four players, with a spectrum of RQ history from total noobs to veterans. This was our first RQG session, and nobody had done any pre-work for character creation outside the group: it was important to me that family history should be done as a collective activity, not with lots of private backstory scribbled in notebooks that no-one else would know about.

So, say one hour for the routine Session Zero, getting-to-know-you, here's what I'll be running, table courtesy, lines-and-veils type discussion. These were both brand new groups of people who hadn't played together before, so getting a consensus on this stuff is obviously essential. Also, I needed everyone to accept that this wouldn't be a sandbox campaign: we were there to playtest scenarios or play through published stuff, not to go off-piste.

Two or three hours (inc. snack lunch time) to get four characters fully fleshed out, working through sections together and keeping pace, including family history (with me flagging up historic events on the big poster map, and everyone looking for opportunities for their adventurers or their families to meet up).

Finally, a couple of hours to run through the Clearwine opening scene of "The Smoking Ruin," easing them into character and getting the hang of things.

[soltakss]

I put together a Google Sheet to make it easier for me.

This cuts the process down to about 30 minutes, excluding Family History, as it does all the calculations for me and allows me to choose the skills I want to increase through Culture/Profession/Cult/Personal Boosts etc.

I have a Google Questionnaire for the Family History that populates a sheet, but have not yet added automation to build the skills up.

[Stephen L]

We played character generation as a session 1 in its own right.

It's rather good fun, and shouldn't be rushed.  Everyone sat round the table, rolling on the family history, hoping for something exciting to happen to them.  It's more fun if your doing as a group, as you play off each other's rolls, and also it means that, statistically, something really interesting would happen to somebody round the table for each year.  And also you could see how your own character could have interacted with some of the others.

My players are young (or their mums).  I don't think they'd twigged that you couldn't die at this stage, so there was real suspense in the rolls.  Which of course I fed... 

For some reason, the duck's parents being eaten by the crimson duck was deemed to be hilarious.  Not the tragedy when it was one of the human adventurers forebears.

So, we spent the entire first session just on character generation.  But it definitely felt like session 1, the start of the fun, and not Session 0, something to be done before you get to the good stuff.

I'd guess we spent a good 4 hours or so, but its a while ago now.  Before lock down when we sat at the same table.

[Marc]

12 hours ago, Bill the barbarian said:

So let’s turn to my original question then, Marc. Any new players to RQ before the change? How did the new folk fare? After you got rid of the CF and made it one player at a time how long did it take you to roll ‘em up, was it better for the newcomers... ?

So there was an original question here... enquiring minds and all. Some great thoughts  and tips have made there way to this thread so keep it up but...

 

Cheers

So, back to that original question.  There were several players new to RQ, both in that initial group, and since then.  In general, they did fairly well.  One major benefit with the one-on-one sessions was that I could go into more detail for the new players on some of the consequences of various occupation and cult choices.  For example, one person was considering Chalana Arroy, so I made sure he understood the requirement for the oath to never harm an intelligent creature, or needlessly cause pain to any living thing.  He ended up making a different choice. 

In general, the one-on-one sessions took a couple of hours. I definitely think being able to spend the time talking about the rules, and mentioning things that could aid or hinder the advancement of their character was useful for new players.  One thing I think I might have been able to do better at is talk about how the system works.  That would be done via messages before a character generation session.  A couple of examples.  One player was VERY interested in Glorantha.  He'd played the King of Dragon Pass video game, and really liked the setting.  However, he ended up leaving the game because Runequest is too crunchy for him.  I did suggest to him that he look into 13G or HQG, as my impression( I've never actually read the rules ), is that they are less crunchy. Another was the player that never really got the idea of the SoI, and whenever I asked him for his, he would tell me, and start rolling dice.  He ended up leaving as well, but I think part of that was my game style.  He'd created a light infantry spearman, and we'd had 2 or 3 sessions that didn't have any combat.  If I had done a better job, before character generation, of explaining how the system worked, and what my style of play is( not actually sure I HAVE a single style ), they might have figured out sooner that the game( or at least, my version of it ) wasn't for them.  No telling, really.

 

Hope that helped some.