Character Building Guidelines

There are many things that are important to keep in mind for character creation, from the style of the game to what your character's roll in the group is. There are many more factors that may also come into play depending on the specific campaign.

General Guidelines

For All Games

What follows are some general pieces of advise to follow.

Building characters as a Group

There are many benefits to building characters as a group. It lets you help brainstorm ideas, ensures that you aren't unintentionally stepping on another characters goals, and all round helps build a solid groundwork for the game to come.

For further details on how best to benefit from building characters as a group, take a look at this pdf.

Backgrounds

Many people have different approaches to developing character backgrounds. Some people like writing small novels, while others like to have their characters start off as a blank slate that they can fill out through play. Either way, there are a few background issues that are important for the GM.

• A bit of info about a living, non-enemy NPC who is important to the PC.
• Something the PC is passionate about (an ideal; a person, place or thing; a goal).
• A living rival or enemy NPC (or organization).

Depending on the campaign there may be more or less asked of you, but in most cases you'll want to be able to give these three pieces of information.

Clearly Labelling Your Core Character Role - Three up, Three down

From Without Which Not.

Consider the first three things that you want people to remember about your character, and the last three things you would let anybody forget. For Example:

Ajimiru ‘King Blade’ for Armageddon Engines (a game of giant robot anime)

Three up, three down:

• He’s a hotshot ‘engine pilot who’s never lost a battle.
• He has a tragically scarred, older brother who disappeared in epic battle (and secretly went over to the other side).
• His kitten goes everywhere with him.

and

• He has the morals of an alley cat.
• Ajimiru is strikingly handsome.
• He’s an idealistic ‘good guy’ out to avenge his brother, regain his family name, and have a rockin’ good time.

Doing this will help to ensure that the GM knows whats important about your character, and can help to give you spotlight moments. In addition this helps to differentiate between characters that might be otherwise similar or who fill the same role in the party.

For Roleplaying Intensive Games

Roleplaying Intensive games put even more focus on who your character is than what he can do. This means extra time should be spent on elements such as Three Up, Three Down and Backgrounds.

More details to follow at a later date....

Campaign Specific Guidelines

RIFTS - City Rats

The City Rats Adventure will be a roleplaying intensive game focused on a gang of City Rats in the Ch-Town Burbs. I've laid out the basics for the district that the game will be taking place in, but it will be up to the players to fill in bulk of the empty space. Now that doesn't mean that you'll need to come up with an entire district during character creation, just one small corner of it, the area that relates to your character and to the party. The rest will come as the game is played.

This game will not focus on combat. That is not to say that there won't be any physical confrontations within the game, just that they will most likely be in the form of a barroom brawl, a silent assassination, or fleeing from the wrath of the CS unit that just discovered your black market ring. The players will be out-gunned by all of the major factions around them, and will need to make use of what other resources they may have.

Group Development

The game is focused on the gang of city rats, not any individual character, therefore it is important that the group as a whole takes a high importance during character development. Unlike high combat games, building the party around a mix of Defenders, Strikers, Leaders and Controllers is not important. However ensuring that each character has some niche to fill and fits in with the group dynamics is much more important. I highly recommend everybody read the pdf I linked on the topic.

It is also important to develop the gang as a whole. What is the gangs name? Its colours? Its favourite hang out? How do you all know each other? What is your purpose for forming the gang? How did you go about acquiring the funds to purchase MD Arms and Armour? What do you all desire to do in the future, both near and far? Of course not all these questions need answers, and you may think up some interesting information that's beyond their scope, but they should be a good starting point to figure out who and what you are.

Classes and Roles

For this game I would like the majority of players to roll a Teenage Human City Rat. They are a flexible class with a wide range of potential niches to fill. Any other Human Scholar or Adventure class will likely be approved, assuming the player has a good reason for why the character would be hanging out and adventuring with a gang of City Rats. Non-Humans, Men at Arms, Practitioners of Magic and Psychics may be approved, but only with a truly epic concept which won't steal the spotlight from other characters, and a good explanation for why they haven't been sought out and corpsified by the Coalition States.

Example Concepts and Roles

In addition to the Thug, Hero, Assassin, and Hacker types described in the City Rat OCC description, here are a few other possible concepts:

• Wannabe Deadboy - Many people truly believe the CS propaganda, and desire to enlist in the CS Army.
• Reprogrammer - This specialized hacker has gotten his hands on damage Skelbot and is trying to restore it under his control.
• Cyberjacker - Somebody who steals cybernetics from other people to sell on the black market. If a large number of party members play a character with this roll then a Cyber Doc could be an interesting addition to the party.

More to come as I think of them.

Background

Character background will take on a very large role for this game. In addition to the three basic pieces of background information detailed above, and the various questions mentioned about the gang as a whole, the following is also requested:

• An ally or other useful contact, including what's helpful about him and why he's willing to help out your character.
• A bit of information about where your character lives. In an apartment? With her rich parents in their large house? With one of the other PCs?
• Does any part of your concept / skill list require anything to be included in the surrounding environment. For example a character with boxing as a skill spends at least eight hours per week in the boxing gym. This requires there to be a boxing gym in the nearby area.

There are also many other aspects of your character that should be developed, though these need not be determined at creation time.

• What is your opinion of the Coalition States? Do you believe the propaganda? If no, then why not?
• Do you desire citizenship and access to the city of Chi-Town? Why / why not?
• Do you have a criminal record? If so are you aware that you will have to reapply for citizenship?
• What are your opinions on Dimensional Beings(D-Bees)? Have you ever encountered one?

Rules and Other Crunchy Bits

We'll be using the Ultimate Edition City Rat OCC, as well as the penalties for ability scores below 8. I've also put together a combat system which contains the core system, modified by what I consider to be the best variant rules and a few house rulings to fill in the inconsistencies that are left, as well as simplify the whole affair.

Stat generation will be 3d6, rearrange as you choose, with a bonus 1d6 added to any roll of 16+, and a second bonus 1d6 added if the first bonus die was a six. Any attribute below eight can be raised to eight to avoid penalties, though any character with one or more attribute below eight will get a small bonus to apply to any attribute of their choice, as per the Ultimate Edition ruling. Any non-human simply rolls whatever they get in their racial entry, with no special modifications or rearrangements.

Secondary Skills will be chosen from the list in Rifts Ultimate Edition, regardless of the class chosen. They are meant to represent hobbies and add flavour, so use them as such. Don't just save them to spend on WPs and Physical Skills :P

Skills will have three standard difficulties: Easy, Average and Difficult. Easy checks are rolled at twice your skill, but still capped at 98%, (so a 60% is doubled to 120%, and reduced to the cap of 98%). Average checks are rolled as normal (so a 60% stays at 60%). Difficult checks are rolled at half your skill, rounded up (so a 60% is halved to 30%). Some tasks may have a different difficulty based on the skill used. For example fixing a busted plasma cannon may be a difficult task for a character with General Repair and Maintenance, whereas it would be an average or easy check for a Weapons Engineer.

Experience points will be awarded on an ad hoc basis, determined by how epic and in character the stuff you do is. If you do something in character that makes everybody at the table burst out in laughter, or sit back and say wow, you've just earned yourself a bunch of extra xp. The more fun everybody is having and the more everybody is into things, the freer the XP will flow.

Recommended Reading

Besides those articles already linked to, and of course the content on the wiki related to the adventure, there are a few bits that are important to read to give a better idea of what to expect in the game. The first few items are pretty much essential, whereas later items on the list (bionics source book and down) are just for those who feel like spending some extra time reading.

• Rifts Main Book
  • pg 73-74, City Rat OCC
  • pg 140, The Burbs
• Rifts Ultimate Edition
  • pg 88-89, City Rat OCC - Cleaned up better than the main book version with a few mechanical changes, but flavour is the same.
• Rifts Source Book 5, Bionics Source Book
  • pg 15-28, City Rats Defined
• Rifts World Book 11, Coalition War Campaign
  • pg46, The Average Coalition Citizen
  • pg197-200, The Burbs
• Rifts Aftermath
  • pg134-141, The Coalition States. This gives a good updated overview of the CS in 109 PA, the year the game will be taking place. pg 138 and 139 contain the most relevant information.
• Rifts Adventure Source Book, Chi-Town Burbs
  • pg 7-25, Lots of information about Chi-Town burbs. Nothing here is really essential to play as the specifics will all be covered in the setting info posted on the wiki.

Closing Remarks

I hope that the above has given you guys a good idea of what kind of game I'm going for, and what I'll be looking for during character creation (which will, of course, take a whole session). If you've got any questions or comments feel free to post on the discussion section, or pester me in person, preferably both.

Over the next while I'll be adding more details to the setting, and would like all who participate in the game to contribute as well. The wiki allows anybody to edit it for a reason, so that you can do a write up on the pool hall that your uncle owns, or add some extra touches to the CS outpost that make things feel more real.

I'm really looking forward to running this game, and hope you're all just as excited about playing it.

RIFTS - Megaversal Legion

In this game all players will be members of the Megaversal Legion. They can be as diverse or specialized as players like, as long as the following guidelines are followed:

• Characters that are ridiculously powerful are not allowed. For example, no Cosmo Knights or Splugorth.
• Characters with a large renewable source of offence are not allowed. Low renewable offence or Large expendable offence is OK.
• Characters with large renewable defence are discouraged.
• Characters must be able to fit in a ten man High Speed Hover APC, along with room for the other party members and gearmo, or be able to keep up with it.
• Characters who fill too many niches are not allowed. Please try to specialize in one area so that other players may have something to do, AKA No Amazon Cyber Knights.
• Ensure that your character has a reason for joining the Megaversal Legion and that they would have a reason to accept you.
• I would like one character to play a standard Human Megaversal Trooper, of level and rank slightly higher than the rest of the party. This trooper will be the sergeant in charge of the new recruits and responsible for training them, managing resources, allocating tasks and other such fun.
• I would like no more than one other character to be a standard Megaversal Legion trooper, from either race or Borg. The rest should be some type of something awesome and new.

More will come when I have more time to work on it.

DnD 4e - Gothric

All the players will start off as prisoners sentenced to death in a prison in [Kahabro, the City of Lights]. However due to your exceptional abilities you have been offered (and presumable accepted, otherwise you'd be dead) service as members of the Kargat.

Important things to consider for your character:

• What heinous crime did you commit that got you sentenced to death?
• Why would you commit such a crime?

Characters will be standard 4e with the following modifications (making it no so standard any more) Human only, no Clerics, Wizards or Warlocks allowed, and no magic items. Players will start Early Paragon Teir (You can choose your own level as long as it's between 11 and 13). More details on houserules, etc... will follow at some point later in the future.