So the characters basically played Russian Roulette for skills? Crime's a hard life!
I like the experience and jail cycle, but perhaps in a modern version "death" would just drop you out of character creation (either lost gang affiliation, or got injured, or whatever). Endlessly cycling through chargen until one doesn't die never amused the players I've known.
Gotta start somewhere. Simplified method to provide a character's backstory. Never had a problem with players rolling ad nauseum, since they only got one "shot" a night to create a character (Vancian character generation, so to speak).
How do you generate a wide variety and level of skills for characters for a play test, without just assigning them ? Players like to roll dice and make characters.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that this struck as somewhat Traveller-esque. That said, Traveller only had you risk death every four years, and you could usually choose a career where your stats made death a little less likely.
That said, I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of a 'lifepath' char-gen system for a 20's/30's RPG. It's something of a shame that we didn't see something along these lines make it's way into the final version of Gangbusters.
So the characters basically played Russian Roulette for skills? Crime's a hard life!
ReplyDeleteI like the experience and jail cycle, but perhaps in a modern version "death" would just drop you out of character creation (either lost gang affiliation, or got injured, or whatever). Endlessly cycling through chargen until one doesn't die never amused the players I've known.
"Endlessly cycling through chargen until one doesn't die never amused the players I've known."
ReplyDeleteObviously not old-time Traveller players then...
Gotta start somewhere. Simplified method to provide a character's backstory. Never had a problem with players rolling ad nauseum, since they only got one "shot" a night to create a character (Vancian character generation, so to speak).
ReplyDeleteHow do you generate a wide variety and level of skills for characters for a play test, without just assigning them ? Players like to roll dice and make characters.
I'm glad that I'm not the only one that this struck as somewhat Traveller-esque. That said, Traveller only had you risk death every four years, and you could usually choose a career where your stats made death a little less likely.
ReplyDeleteThat said, I'm definitely intrigued by the idea of a 'lifepath' char-gen system for a 20's/30's RPG. It's something of a shame that we didn't see something along these lines make it's way into the final version of Gangbusters.