Preview of “optional methods of characteristic generation”?

[daskindt]

We used point buy for our new campaign. I hate random character generation.

I ended up giving each player 98 points to buy their characteristics. I used the 92+3 method as a baseline, but I also charged a little extra for stats approaching max, so I gave the 3 extra points to account for that altered cost.

For the 3D6 stats, they paid 1 point per point in a stat up to 15. They paid 2 points for each point from 16-18. So 16/17/18 cost 17/19/21 points.

For the 2D6+6 stats, they paid 1 point per point in a stat up to 16. They paid 2 points for each point from 17-18. So 17/18 cost 18/20 points.

Modifiers from Runes and/or Homelands came after.

We ended up with very similar characteristics as the pregen characters in the book. Most of the pregens are within a point or two of the point buy system we used.

They was some min/max-ing, but not an excessive amount. I’m sure part of that was all the players are new to RuneQuest and Glorantha. The Skill Modifiers certainly contribute to point thresholds and some points of attributes being more valuable than others. I’d prefer a system much more like RQ3 where each point can help or hurt the modifier.

[jps]

I really like the system as it's working now: I'm allowing my players to take all of the optional rules (reroll 1s, reroll when the stat is lower than 9 or 6). It's working for us.

One more thing I almost forgot since I've been house ruling that since I got RQ in the mid-80s: roll 3D6 five times and dispatch amongst STR, CON, DEX, POW and CHA, then roll 2D6+6 twice to distribute between SIZ and INT.

When I was GMing RQ3 my players would roll the dice then allocate the results between their various stats,  we would then calculate the total and if it was lower than 91 they could distribute the difference between their stats (not exceeding the max range at character creation). So that an 84 total would give you 7 points to allocate in the stats you chose.

[Rob Darvall]

Character creation in our first game of RQG was a ball. We did straight random gen for everything and the six players (ages 7 to 50) had to make up backstories to fit. The youngest is a scribe (who just evaluated Polybius's Books of Elephantis in time to stop the Llama rider from pulping them) exiled to Pavis for unspecified offenses in Boldhome and the others are similarly interesting, including the bagpipe playing berserk who looks like becoming a trickster eventually. If you've not got a specific story in mind random rolls can throw up delightful ideas.

[21st Century Moose]

My system was to keep re-rolling until you got something you were happy with.

This comes up regularly enough, and something that's often overlooked is that in RQ initial characteristics are really not that important. A few play sessions and with disease spirits, POW gain, training, etc you're going to be totally different. 

So yeah, roll or pick, it's actually not as big a deal as in other systems. 

[Mugen]

A system I like is to roll 1d6+7 (varies according to species) for all stats, in order, then spend X points among them, with a maximum of 5 points per stat.

It gives a different distributions than the standard 2d6+6 for SIZ & INT, 3d6 for others, but I prefer to have the same range for all stats for humans.