Runequest alternative character creation attempt

[Chao]

I run a large drop-in-drop-out style game in which we have newcomers every couple of sessions, and as such I've become quite familiar with the lengthy character creation process, and the difficulties it presents to new players. The length of character creation has always been one of my gripes with Runequest, and I've been thinking for a long time about how it could be improved. As I see it there are a number of key issues with the process:

• There is a lot of referring to tables and simply copying over information from the rulebook, e.g. homeland base skills, ability modifiers, HP calculations.
• Interdependent parts of character creation are not situated next to each other, the most glaring instance of this is the cult selection appearing on step 6, while rune affinities are selected on step 3, long before the player knows what runes they will be needing for their cult.
• The most interesting and important parts of a character are chosen towards the end, which can result in the player feeling rushed through what should be their most thoughtful decisions.

Over time I've reordered and made changes to the character creation process, however after a recent particularly laborious character creation, I decided to have a go at making some more far reaching and radical changes. I've written them down in a step by step process, however It's a little too long to comfortably fit in a forum post, so I've attached it as a PDF to the post.

For the most part it's a reordering of existing steps, however I have also made some changes to the way that things are calculated to try and strip away the reliance on tables. You'll also notice I don't mention the family history section. Personally I haven't found this section to be all that interesting, however I'm sure others disagree, and it shouldn't cause any trouble to add it on as an extra step at the beginning of the process. I've definitely made some rather far reaching decisions on some of these steps, so will do my best to explain the motivation behind each of them below.

I am yet to try this with any actual newcomers, however running through it myself it took me around 30 mins, which is a lot less than the usual hour+

 

I'll write these comments assuming you've got the PDF open, I don't expect they'll make much sense otherwise 🙂

1 - Choosing homeland, cult and occupation right at the beginning makes sense to me, as these three choices fundamentally define who your character is going to be, so should be taken into account right from the start. Assigning cult runes here is mostly just a matter of making sure they satisfy the requirements of entry to their chosen cult.

2 - I find that very few starting players end up sacrificing extra POW for more rune points, so I've made it an explicit choice here to highlight that it's an option. We play with the common rune magic list tacked onto the special rune magic of each god rather than it's own permanently available thing, hence the reference to the common rune spells here. Also, the magic selection is here because magic is cool, and should be a thought out process of selection rather than rushed at the end.

6 - I've been thinking about ways to improve the player characteristic generation system for a while, and this is my latest attempt at simplifying it. INT and SIZ both have base 3 to get their averages close to their rules as written (2d6 + 6 avg is 13, 3d6 + 3 avg is 14.5), while also ensuring that they can not fall much lower than the rules as written minimum.

7 - I like giving starting characters access to all weapons rather than restricting them to their homeland choice, as I feel it produces a much more interesting variety. Really though it's because I got sick of everyone using broadsword and shield.

11 - These formulas are all rough estimates of the tables that they are replacing. For a while now there's been a running joke in my groups that one should be wary about increasing their characteristics, as hitting a skill breakpoint will result in recalculating all of your skills. After a couple years of running the system, I am no longer sure if this is a joke, so I've had a go at creating some formulas to remove the necessity of consulting the modifiers table every season change. Also, you might be wondering why this is after skill selection. We often play with our skill modifiers not added to our skills, and add them together when we're actually doing the roll, however if you don't do this putting it before skill selection would be a good idea.

12 - I like putting all these calculations right at the very end, since they're the least interesting part of the whole process. A lot of this is just tables copied out from the book, but I have simplified some of them into formulas.

Alt Character Creation.pdf

[RandomNumber]

For my group, we're toying with far fewer skills and basing skill category mods on runes, not stats. I counted about 100 skills on the character sheet that could easily be reduced to about 20-30. For example, Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate, Orate and even Intrigue could map to "Influence".  Those are Communication skills which have an affinity with the Earth rune (pp.48-49). Currently the base chance and skill category mod are separate. We're fiddling around with combining them into a single innate ability based on the elemental Rune correspondence. For example, Influence could start at (say) 5% + (Rune / 5)%.  Early days but the idea is to make the Runes more important and reduce the crunch. NB in our house rules, characters are generated with more randomisation in Runes percentiles and will be non-zero in all elemental Runes. WIP...

 

 

[Chao]

18 hours ago, RandomNumber said:

For my group, we're toying with far fewer skills and basing skill category mods on runes, not stats. I counted about 100 skills on the character sheet that could easily be reduced to about 20-30. For example, Charm, Fast Talk, Intimidate, Orate and even Intrigue could map to "Influence".  Those are Communication skills which have an affinity with the Earth rune (pp.48-49). Currently the base chance and skill category mod are separate. We're fiddling around with combining them into a single innate ability based on the elemental Rune correspondence. For example, Influence could start at (say) 5% + (Rune / 5)%.  Early days but the idea is to make the Runes more important and reduce the crunch. NB in our house rules, characters are generated with more randomisation in Runes percentiles and will be non-zero in all elemental Runes. WIP...

We've always just taken the excessive amount of skills as a part of that anachronistic Runequest charm, but yeah I can see how the sheer quantity of them could get annoying. I kind of like the idea of keeping the skills and personality aspects of characters relatively separate, making the moments where they do cross over all that more magical. We get a lot of augments in my group, which in my opinion is a great use of the runes. When things get really intense we'll often just roll straight on runes or passions, for instance we've had Storm Bull wrestling rituals where all the participants are just rolling on their beast runes.

[radmonger]

How about a short list of skill verbs, but instead of tying runes to skills, and have the rune used to augment a skill determine the flavour and details of what the skill does.

So influence augmented with movement is fast talk,  with life is charm, with death is intimidate, and so on. detect augmented with beast is scan; you are using your senses. But detect augmented with man is investigate; you are using logical deduction.

 

 

[PhilHibbs]

1 hour ago, radmonger said:

How about a short list of skill verbs, but instead of tying runes to skills, and have the rune used to augment a skill determine the flavour and details of what the skill does.

So influence augmented with movement is fast talk,  with life is charm, with death is intimidate, and so on. detect augmented with beast is scan; you are using your senses. But detect augmented with man is investigate; you are using logical deduction.

You'd have to do away with augment limits, adjust the numbers so that augments are a normal part of the process rather than an exception. But that would increase the complexity, if every skill roll involved either a rune roll or a fixed rune-based addition. Or a more complex character sheet with base skills and rune-derived skills that are all updated when skill ticks are done.

Edited January 9, 2023 by PhilHibbs

[radmonger]

Using runes _instead of_ stats is not a net increase in complexity. But yes, this is more a seed idea for an entirely different game system than a drop-in house rule.

[PhilHibbs]

8 hours ago, radmonger said:

Using runes _instead of_ stats is not a net increase in complexity. But yes, this is more a seed idea for an entirely different game system than a drop-in house rule.

Gotcha. But that's not "augment" the way we use it now, hence my misunderstanding.

[Scotty]

Don't forget the Quick Adventurer Creation on the RQ Wiki.

[Chao]

17 hours ago, Scotty said:

Don't forget the Quick Adventurer Creation on the RQ Wiki.

Oh yeah, this is nice, though it still has a bunch of the number copying busywork I'm trying to avoid. Another idea I've had is to create different character sheets for all the different homelands with the base skills already filled in. Still would require copying down the occupation skills, but it would help make it a little faster.

[PhilHibbs]

Or you could use an online tool that does all the numbers, then print out the final sheet.

I'm sure you already considered this, and it's not everyone's cup of tea, just shameless advertising really!

Edited January 11, 2023 by PhilHibbs

[Chao]

On 1/11/2023 at 8:03 PM, PhilHibbs said:

Or you could use an online tool that does all the numbers, then print out the final sheet.

I'm sure you already considered this, and it's not everyone's cup of tea, just shameless advertising really!

Oh wow, I actually was not aware of this, thanks! I'll definitely have to try it out next time I'm making a character, looks like it'd speed things up a lot.

[PhilHibbs]

23 hours ago, Chao said:

Oh wow, I actually was not aware of this, thanks! I'll definitely have to try it out next time I'm making a character, looks like it'd speed things up a lot.

Bear in mind that you still need to have the rule book to hand for some details like cultural or occupation weapon choices, and how many personal/cult skill choices you get. It fills in a lot of the numbers automatically and adds them all up though. It even calculates your fumble, special, and critical chances.

That's more or less deliberate actually. I didn't want to create something that removed the need for the rules, I felt that would be treading on Chaosium's toes.

Edited January 13, 2023 by PhilHibbs