Alt CharGen Life Paths - Draft 1 - Open Discussion

Wed, 2013-05-22 13:28

#2

Octomorph

Lifepath first scan

I just took a quick look and I think you guys have done a nice job. At first glance, it looks like events are more heavily weighted to modifiers to attributes and gaining traits, as compared to story hooks. I'd like to see more of those, as well as more solid contacts to put a face on generic rep - e.g. if you gain rep with a faction, actually personify who the character might be contacting. Will try and take a more detailed look later.

Wed, 2013-05-22 23:18

#3

Slightlylyons Slightlylyons's picture

Advanced age table

Are the negatives on the advanced age table, aside from immortality blues, intended to be morph traits representing the morphs age, or are you saying loss of physical abilities with age is inherent to the ego?

Thu, 2013-05-23 12:41

#4

RobBoyle

These would be negative to

These would be negative to the ego. Thanks for bringing this up, this was actually something i meant to address in the playtest Qs. This does raise the possibility that advanced age can still negatively impact characters, despite the advances in human longevity. Mostly we wanted there to be some potential downsides to taking an older character, in addition to the potential bonuses. We think it can be explained away as longevity and resleeving tech still being fairly young, and so older characters as the alpha testers may have encountered some glitches along the way, especially with the early versions of the tech. Anyway, we're interested in feedback on this point.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Thu, 2013-05-23 12:49

#5

RobBoyle

On the Playtest Qs thread,

On the Playtest Qs thread, polyinfomorphism said: "however getting randomly really screwed always kind of sucks no matter what the game (or maybe i'm just brainwashed into equality thinking!). Maybe the more negative traits/events could come with customization CP, representing the learning or skills that the character came out of the situation with" The goal with the life event tables is to have a roughly 50/50 chance of getting a positive or negative outcome. When you take potential Moxie re-rolls into account, there's already a built-in drift towards more positive results. If we did give a CP or other bonus with every negative result, there would be a decided bias towards characters ending up with higher CP total characters. That said, we have been considering adding a Moxie point along with some of the heavier (30 CP) negative traits, to alleviate some of the pain. I'm also looking at making some more events that are trade-offs: bonus in one area, negative to another. Some of these may still be unbalanced, but as we noted, the intent for this system is to create unbalanced characters.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Thu, 2013-05-23 13:35

#6

polyinfomorphism polyinfomorphism's picture

I like the idea of adding a

I like the idea of adding a Moxie point with certain disadvantages, as it makes good story sense. If you do decide to add customization CP points it would be nice if they still played into the Life Path concept somehow rather than being a blank check. Anyway, overall I really love this character generation system as it has the potential to give so much inspiration for players who struggle with developing their personas, or who have trouble breaking away from their typical character type. It also looks like a great GM tool!

Thu, 2013-05-23 18:11

#7

MephitJames MephitJames's picture

Questions About Lifepath Tables

I started making a character with this lifepath system and, first of all, it's awesome. The results are something I never would have thought of before since I had to retaionalize a number of disparate results. She's an AGI from before the Fall who determined in retrospect, and having been witness to the horrors of New Mumbai, that digital lifeforms were fundamentally flawed and pure humanity was the safest form of transhumanity. She is a bioconservative who has tried to rework her mental architecture to become fully human, even had a kid a few years ago and is sleeved into a biomorph with a lot of exposure to psychology and child therapy. I really want to play this chica. That said, one thing I ran into was AGIs and Social skills in the package system. When you get ranks from a background in a Social skill, do you only get half of the normal ranks?

Thu, 2013-05-23 19:10

#8

RobBoyle

MephitJames wrote:one thing I

MephitJames wrote:
one thing I ran into was AGIs and Social skills in the package system. When you get ranks from a background in a Social skill, do you only get half of the normal ranks?

For simplicity, we left that (and also that they get computer skills at half price) out of both systems, thinking it would balance out. It gets a little wonky trying to do that with other packs. That said, maybe I'll add a sidebar about it.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Thu, 2013-05-23 22:29

#9

Slightlylyons Slightlylyons's picture

Thanks for the reply. I think

Thanks for the reply. I think your logic makes sense mechanically as morph negatives are easily disposed of. Some sort of fluff excuse is probably necessary to make it work story wise. I also think the -10 mod is kinda harsh. I also wan't too say I love the system so far. I don't know if I'll actually use it for chargen but with the d10 and d100 tables it's a wealth of potential demographic data on the world. For example it seems as if in Eclipse Phase there are a lot of people at the top with 10-20% being scions or medias, it seems 50% are middle class or better, and a shocking 20-30% are indentures. Is this intended to reflect the world or just be a balanced chargen system? I of course would prefer it too. If anything I would suggest adding more positive results that aren't "Your rich" and reduce media/scion to one result on a d10 randomizing between them.

Thu, 2013-05-23 23:26

#10

RobBoyle

Actually those tables at

Actually those tables at least are weighted to reflect the likelihood they survived the Fall. Most of the survivors were already off Earth to begin with, or they were wealthy/privileged enough to get off world before things went really bad. A significant % of those already off-Earth were indentured laborers building the habitats and so on, so that's why they're present in such high #s.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Thu, 2013-05-23 23:42

#11

sysop

I'd been curious about how

I'd been curious about how that came out that way - thank you for filling that bit of the thought process in! :)

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Fri, 2013-05-24 15:46

#12

BeauTheOctopus BeauTheOctopus's picture

On Step 3

So I was building through a character and hit a bit of confusion on the third step: I was supposed to pick two youth paths, and when I rolled I got two different ones, with the same pack (Re-instated: Civilian Casualty). What would a player do in that situation? Re-roll as though they had gotten the same path twice? Take the 1 PP for that pack twice? Split the difference between the 1 PP and 3 PP levels?

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Fri, 2013-05-24 17:11

#13

RobBoyle

Yeah you can't take packs

Yeah you can't take packs twice, so re-roll any time that happens. Will make that more clear.

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Rob Boyle :: Posthuman Studios

Wed, 2013-05-29 18:57

#14

Quincey Forder Quincey Forder's picture

step 3, not step 2 :)

I noticed that when you count the amount of PP spent, the guide says to check steps 2, 6 and 9 (which got two entries, a faction and a focus) to see if you reach 10 Well, shouldn't it be step 3 (youth and background) instead of step 2 (language)? I love the Lifepath system, it's really neat and clean and provides characters that wouldn't normally be explored willingly. well that's a big strong. I mean that it wouldn't be the first idea of any player to create a character really down on his luck who's been living through shtako -hs slang for shit, from an old show his father liked to watch on SyFy VOD Classics- every step of the way The one I created with the LP system really belongs to that category. A survivor in the truest sense of the world, he lived through all the shtako life has thrown at him Grew up pretty normally as part of an early migrant fleet, 40 BC, but then got indentured early in his adult life, before finally getting freed...only to become involved with the organized crime as a hacker (funny enough, even though general interface is more or less foreign to him -no interface skill point, none! He'll leave it to his muse, once the gear packs are available) he's pretty good with infosec and programming, so I reckon he knows his way around the hardware and how to program drivers for it, and divert security). After the fall, he got infected by the Watts McCloud, and developed a keen sense of observation beyond the scope of a normal transhuman, and learned about memetics as he went. He traveled a lot, learned languages (Mandarin and Hindi) before settling for a while among Ringers where he worked as technician for diverse mining had-oc groups, earning a decent rep among the Autonomist but also got noticed by science crews, which led him to be recruited for an expedition through the Pandora Gates. He found a "nice" six legged puppy (though it looked more like a squirel, climbing trees on Blue Wood and a deft catcher.) he named him Bumbry -being a San Diego Padres fan- However poor guy never seems to be able to catch a break, leaving him in a near constant cloud of depression followed by intense exitation when make a break through on a project, thanks and because his overactive empathy and ability to read people on a level that freaks out even himself. A quote for an old movie, Pre-Fall, helps to keep on going, though. "Why do we fall? To learn to get back up" In his nearly 60 years of life, this has been his continuous leitmotiv. I think I'm going to make a synthesized sheet following each steps, one by one, so after it's easier to fill the character sheet itself, it will help streamline the whole process

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Wed, 2013-06-19 21:58

#15

BlackJaw

A little rough, but I like it

Ok, so I just tried re-making my existing octomorph thief using the life path system. I was expecting it to go a bit odd, but the plan was to use the "choose or roll" system to mostly choose, so I could get options that work around my concept. Essentially I wanted to use the Lifepath system as a framework for building a character with a concept, and maybe add in some twists without going too random. Overall, I liked the system, but I have a couple of ideas for it: Age can be better integrated into the early steps. While AGIs and Lost skip all the pre-fall stuff, Some uplift types should have limits or modifiers to Age rolls, and similarly some of the colonial and earth backgrounds might include age modifiers on the table as well. Extropia Founders might get a modifier or variant roll aimed at higher values, for example. You could also therefore include more founder/original colonist type options that include age modifiers or variant age rolls. When determining where a player is (or is from), I'd like to see interesting environments, like Ceres's aquatic habitat, show up and include minimal adaptive gear or implants to fit those locations. For example, if a character ends up in Ceres, they need to be able to breathe there, including the toxic nature of the ocean. There are flight orientated habitats for avian uplifts, VR only habitats, etc. These are cool locations, and being in or from one wouldn't necessarily be anything like the general areas around them. Living as a Belter isn't the same as swimming through Ceres, and it needs special morphs or implants. For events: Aside from Gatecrashing and TITAN outbreaks, what about the other oddness? Meet with Factors? Work on the surface of Venus? Get forked napped by a crime syndicate, and congrats: your the illegal fork!