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Author Topic: life path thoughts  (Read 963 times)

Maarzan

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life path thoughts
« on: April 18, 2016, 02:21:09 AM »
Having seen some interest here expressed regarding life path character generation I want to inquery a little bit regarding details. Having some lone evenings in a land far far awy I will probably start to look at my notes for designing my own RPG, which is intended to be including a life path at its core, to restart working on it.
So this thread is for a little bit brainstorming and sorting ideas. (I hope I will get enough internet to read the answers during my stay there)

A) What makes you (if this is the case) preferring life path generation to other character generation methods?
I like to get a personal contact to my characters life and allowing skills that look much more natural than point buy or leveling.  
It should give you a personal history with social integration, not just an adiabate migrating fighter/cleric/wizard/rouge called Bob.



B) What are your problems/do you feel missing with/in existing life path generation systems (and do you have ideas for solution)?

The kind of life the character is nominally living at some check time often has no relation to the resulting random events.
(mauled by a bear in an urban cloister school?)  
The number of events are much to low. With 30 you probably have had every illness in the realm and lost 3 personal fathers and 5 mothers and met at least one random god in person ... .
There results often give effects that different characters should have had very different chances to handle.
The results often do not fit with the way the character would act or doesn´t consider general behaviour (risk taking vs. risk avoiding, law abiding or ignoring ...) or social standing.
Different characters from the same (sometimes rather small) area are experiencing some very different meta events (war or no war, famine, plaque, gold rush ...)
Family and social bindings take a too small role in my opinion.
Education and cultural value conditioning should make a difference - even if you rebel against it (which should probably also have its roots from somewhere in the life path).


C) What unsolved problems do you see generally?
If the life path is rather detailed and following the place of living it sometimes is problematic to get the char to the start point of the game "naturally".
I would like to include/start with the family of the character into the life path too, but then I get the problem of having to go with the flow of time to make sense, but don´t know where to start from, especially in a dynamic and thus more interesting environment with lots of migration or social change happening.

Spinachcat

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life path thoughts
« Reply #1 on: April 18, 2016, 04:10:09 AM »
Hunt down Jaquays's Central Casting books or PDFs. Very worth reading for what you are attempting.

Manzanaro

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« Reply #2 on: April 18, 2016, 04:27:04 AM »
While I like the Central Casting books they can be hard to find, and they also create backgrounds that are all over the place, from the most exciting thing happening being that a PC started a stamp collection, to events so wild that you almost have to build your setting to allow for them. Also the backgrounds don't tend to generate a lot of wizard types, and include events like getting buggered by evil dwarves or becoming a hot mess with mental illnesses and so on that can really start to snowball. Good old Paul Jaquays...

One system that I have had great success with in terms of background generation is Legendary Lives. Everyone gets 5 events from the list starting on page 120.

There is also stuff on social background though it is not quite as easily adaptable. And a table of random personality traits that is quite excellent even for on the fly NPCs (and is limited to just one or two traits per character if you do use it).

Here is a link to the pdf offered free from the creator:

http://www.hauntedattic.org/legendarylives/LegendaryLives.pdf
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Maarzan

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« Reply #3 on: April 18, 2016, 04:50:47 AM »
I am not looking for examples - I have both legendary lives and the fantasy/Sf central casting books - but your personal ideas/take on the topic.

Xanther

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life path thoughts
« Reply #4 on: April 23, 2016, 01:43:53 AM »
Quote from: Maarzan;892423
.....

A) What makes you (if this is the case) preferring life path generation to other character generation methods?

I like them as optional generators, maybe with points you can use to influence them to get outcomes you want, but view them primarily as substitutes for crafting a reasonable backstory with the referee.  I really like to use them in a totally random fashion, then exercise my brain to fit all the pieces together into a coherent back story.


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I like to get a personal contact to my characters life and allowing skills that look much more natural than point buy or leveling.
I think you are asking rules to do what you can do yourself or asking for rules to stop players from doing something you don't like.  Point buy is total freedom, you are free to make a unnatural character as you are a natural one.  I don't get the comment on leveling.  Leveling, as I take it, gives little choice and has the natural aspect baked in.

In any case you can influence things to "natural" skill sets by giving cost reductions for certain synergistic skill sets (the "natural" ones), or by having prerequisites, that is basically link mechanically the skills you want to appear together.  If you get too much into this you should just consider classes with skill packages.  I do it by rewarding certain constellations (groups) of skills, you get them all at a certain level and you rank up and get benefits/perks.  You can buy any skill you want at no penalty, but the benefits require at least a core of "natural" skills.  

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It should give you a personal history with social integration, not just an adiabate migrating fighter/cleric/wizard/rouge called Bob.
 Agree, loved the flavor in how Pendragon and Bushido did it.  Again, really just well though out tables for your setting.


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B) What are your problems/do you feel missing with/in existing life path generation systems (and do you have ideas for solution)?

Nothing is missing.  I've seen several that work great in all flavors.  I'd find a pre-existing one you like and follow the format.  There really is little to reinvent here from what I see.  I like when you can spend build points to craft background or better yet your skill build impacts background, contacts, etc.

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The kind of life the character is nominally living at some check time often has no relation to the resulting random events.
(mauled by a bear in an urban cloister school?)

I actually love that kind of thing.  You have to work to think of a chain of events, although perhaps improbable, are none the less interesting and likely formative.

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The number of events are much to low. With 30 you probably have had every illness in the realm and lost 3 personal fathers and 5 mothers and met at least one random god in person ... .
Only if you write the tables that way.  If that is from some real game I'd just call it bad design by that person, many other people have got it the way you want it.  

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There results often give effects that different characters should have had very different chances to handle.

They do?  There exist ones where you can use your current skill to affect the random rolls.  You can always easily bolt such a system on.  Sounds like you are talking a life path system more akin to Traveller here.

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The results often do not fit with the way the character would act or doesn´t consider general behaviour (risk taking vs. risk avoiding, law abiding or ignoring ...) or social standing.
 I think this is just a lack of your sample size.  Many do and in fact many such systems let you choose if you are going to take that risk; i.e. let you choose which table to roll on.

 
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Different characters from the same (sometimes rather small) area are experiencing some very different meta events (war or no war, famine, plaque, gold rush ...)
Now that is just a result of turning your brain off as a referee.  If your tables are going to proclaim on such large meta-events (that is also serve as world generators) then you just have to ensure consistency.  Or get very creative like saying sure there was a "war" but this guy got "no war" cause his daddy got him a safe position in the national guard.  No random table with major meta events is immune from a referee turning off their common sense.


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Family and social bindings take a too small role in my opinion.

Again depends on the tables you been looking at.  In some settings this would be important, maybe everything, in others it may mean nothing.

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Education and cultural value conditioning should make a difference - even if you rebel against it (which should probably also have its roots from somewhere in the life path).
 That's all in the tables and bias.  I'd never have a table tell me I rebelled.  Rather, a players "rebellion" could just be rolling on the improper table, not one good farmers use.  Rebellion is often simply seeking something the rules of society say you can't have.  Sometimes it's just teenagers seeking kicks, other times it's a people seeking food and freedom.


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C) What unsolved problems do you see generally?

None really.  I've seen all these problems solved in one system or another.  These things are mostly flavor, so the devil is in the details of the flavor text and if the flavor matches your setting concept.  Never expect them to match your concept unless you write them yourselves, but you can copy the mechanistic approach used.


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If the life path is rather detailed and following the place of living it sometimes is problematic to get the char to the start point of the game "naturally".
 Again that word, naturally. What do you mean, that it falls out of the tables?  Getting to the start point should never be an issue.  State it simply as thus to your players.  We are all here to play this game right?  You want these kinds of adventures / experiences.  Work together to think of a reason why you have met and are working together so we can start this game.  Don't be asses about it and keep it loose.  Otherwise I'll just come up with some potentially cliché beginning and we'll get going.  We are here to play this game.  If we can't get past this simple hurdle maybe we should just paly a board game.


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I would like to include/start with the family of the character into the life path too, but then I get the problem of having to go with the flow of time to make sense, but don´t know where to start from, especially in a dynamic and thus more interesting environment with lots of migration or social change happening.
 At some point you always have to get off the life path wheel and just play the game.  This life path is really just back story.  The more you have the players be able to interact and influence it the more it becomes a mini-game in its own right.  You can keep it simple for family, small, medium, large, intact or not.  Small, medium, large, would be defined by the status/background/region/ time period.  Same for chances intact or not.  Deaths / sickness in the family?  None, few, some, many.  Numerically what does that mean?  Well that would also be defined by  status/background/region/ time period.  Also like, never moved, moved some, migrated, refugee, etc.  Simply use relative terms in the generation with numerical and specifics tied to status/background/region/ time period, etc. all those things you want to matter.

In the beginning, you are born to a family of status x, of region y, of size z.  Over time you lived in (i) and now you family is intact/not with (i) numbers of deaths/illnesses.  You grew up supposed to learn a, b and c, and you stayed true (gaining allies in a, b or c) or you rebelled seeking to know e, f and g (making some new friends in e, f or g).  Add skill generation/buy in between event risk/choices/table choices.  Add tables of different risk; but beware, do you wish to have characters die in character creation?  Are your players mature enough to accept the bad consequences without whining?
« Last Edit: April 23, 2016, 01:46:20 AM by Xanther »
 

Maarzan

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life path thoughts
« Reply #5 on: April 23, 2016, 10:50:20 PM »
If you say details are already done, then I get interested in anme and how it is done after all.

And yes, I am looking for a system that doesn´t leave everything to "good" players or GMs but makes the difference for medicore or less ones to get good results.
With "good" (which often means homeogenously tasted) ones to start you are already golden.

Xanther

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« Reply #6 on: April 28, 2016, 02:58:39 PM »
If you are looking for names of games, as I'm not exactly sure what you are looking for, ones I have seen that I like are in Bushido, Pendragon and Traveller.  Bushido and Pendragon are very much tailored to the setting, as any good one will be.  Traveller is lighter as there is no hard and fast setting and it greatly abstracts your whole background into social standing.  If you can get a copy of Space Opera it has hands down the best homeworld typing and descriptions I've seen that give you detail without locking you into a setting.
 

Maarzan

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« Reply #7 on: April 28, 2016, 05:42:44 PM »
No, I dont look generally for names, but when you are mentioning that there are games that have already solved some issues, then it would be interesting to hear some names AND get some hints what/how they are doing it.

Xanther

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« Reply #8 on: April 29, 2016, 09:53:34 AM »
Quote from: Maarzan;894617
No, I dont look generally for names, but when you are mentioning that there are games that have already solved some issues, then it would be interesting to hear some names AND get some hints what/how they are doing it.


Sorry about that. Misread your last post.   I don't have a copy of Bushido or Pendragon any more but i really like how they embedded you in the social fabric of the setting.  IIRC one or both of them had a historically more accurate background ( ie your likely going to be a farmer) and one more skewed to adventure tastes.  I think you also had some points to modify rolls.   Traveller, at least how we used it, allowed you to choose to a degree the table you rolled for skills and there were mods to that based on stats rank etc.  on mission type we let you mod for more dangerous missions.  The system had mods to your survival roll based on stats and skills.   We modded death to be a permanent loss of 1 point of some attribute instead of death and no skills.   On a 2-12 range one point pretty big deal.  

Space Opera had like 15-18 home world types and they explained weather skills animals etc.  The variations are the combinations of position in habitable zone , orbital eccentricity, and axial tilt.   The a few categories for asteroid belt, has giant, hot rock, icy rock.
 

ArrozConLeche

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life path thoughts
« Reply #9 on: April 29, 2016, 01:03:43 PM »
Quote from: Maarzan;892423

A) What makes you (if this is the case) preferring life path generation to other character generation methods?
.

I don’t know if I prefer it, but I really dig it, for reasons similar to what you stated. I like:

* the way that the events tie your character’s history to the setting
* not having to think up a biography from scratch
* being surprised by the backstory as I’m rolling for it (I think it shares some of the fun aspects of random stats)
* having some seeds created in addition to setting background

Quote from: Maarzan;892423

B) What are your problems/do you feel missing with/in existing life path generation systems (and do you have ideas for solution)?

I think that after a while, like random tables, the life path events could start getting old. The solution could be to do what Zak S does, which is for the GM to scratch a life event out and replace it as soon as it comes up in a campaign.

Some of the problems you mention probably come down to how well thought out those events are in relation to the setting.


Quote from: Maarzan;892423

C) What unsolved problems do you see generally?
If the life path is rather detailed and following the place of living it sometimes is problematic to get the char to the start point of the game "naturally".
I would like to include/start with the family of the character into the life path too, but then I get the problem of having to go with the flow of time to make sense, but don´t know where to start from, especially in a dynamic and thus more interesting environment with lots of migration or social change happening.

I think that generally the player and GM will want to synthesize and build logical bridges between each of the life events. I think of them a bit as Rorschach ink blots that you have to interpret into a sort of logical pattern.

Bren

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life path thoughts
« Reply #10 on: April 30, 2016, 03:26:04 PM »
Quote from: Xanther;894768
I don't have a copy of Bushido or Pendragon any more but i really like how they embedded you in the social fabric of the setting.  IIRC one or both of them had a historically more accurate background ( ie your likely going to be a farmer) and one more skewed to adventure tastes.
Pendragon is a game about playing knights in the England of Arthurian/Mallorean myth. As such, everybody is a knight. (At least everybody in the first three or so editions.)

Quote from: ArrozConLeche;894801
I think that generally the player and GM will want to synthesize and build logical bridges between each of the life events. I think of them a bit as Rorschach ink blots that you have to interpret into a sort of logical pattern.
Weaving random selections from tables into a coherent life path is a lot like interpreting an ink blot.
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Brandybuck

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life path thoughts
« Reply #11 on: June 15, 2016, 08:24:03 AM »
When I've read "life path thoughts" I've instantly though of this article http://bestrpg.net/life. But you don't talk about actual "life path" i guess :rolleyes:

Bren

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« Reply #12 on: June 15, 2016, 12:25:23 PM »
Quote from: Brandybuck;903524
When I've read "life path thoughts" I've instantly though of this article http://bestrpg.net/life. But you don't talk about actual "life path" i guess :rolleyes:
Real Life 1.0. :)
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Brandybuck

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« Reply #13 on: June 15, 2016, 01:57:20 PM »
Wondering if Real Life even has versions :D

JesterRaiin

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« Reply #14 on: June 16, 2016, 03:35:27 AM »
Quote from: Brandybuck;903577
Wondering if Real Life even has versions :D

Yeah, they are called "generations". There are problems with edition switch - you're usually sentenced to play the one you picked first to the rest of your life. technically you can go back to some earlier editions, but it requires moving to a place where everyone plays according to "old rules", like for example Mormons. :D
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