Balance... whatever it is

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Kloster

Don't forget that in RQ III, all chargen rolls and tables are described with 'Choose or Roll', including the age!!
If you don't want to play a farmer, don't roll, and choose something else.

The way we play it is Choose.
If the GM don't validate your choice, you have the possibility to either make another choice or force a roll, and everybody (player and GM) has to accept the result of the dices. In almost 20 years, I've never seen a dice for this, as everybody prefers choosing something that fits his style and expectations (and we've seen farmers).

Runequestement votre,

Kloster

I have to point out that if you chose age in addition to profession, the argument about replacement characters starts to become progressively moot; even a 27 year old RQ3 character (assuming you're still forcing them into the range that is potentially rollable) in one of the more adventuring professions is a relatively advanced character. With a decent attack modifier, for example, and using one's cultural weapons, the military professions could quite easily start at age 27 with their main weapons skills at 80% or higher; short of Gloranthan style runelords, that was already approaching as good as most RQ3 combatants were going to get barring a very long period of play.

So at some point if you are allowing too much manipulation here, the concept of "starting character" becomes essentially meaningless.

[drohem]

Wow, I guess our group was more random than most. In our RQ3 games, we used completely random character generation. Consequently, we had a lot of herders and farmers turn adventurers. It was satisfying to have these characters develop into competent warriors and adventurers. Also, it made the rare priest and sorcerer all that more cool to play.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

I have to point out that if you chose age in addition to profession, the argument about replacement characters starts to become progressively moot; even a 27 year old RQ3 character (assuming you're still forcing them into the range that is potentially rollable) in one of the more adventuring professions is a relatively advanced character. With a decent attack modifier, for example, and using one's cultural weapons, the military professions could quite easily start at age 27 with their main weapons skills at 80% or higher; short of Gloranthan style runelords, that was already approaching as good as most RQ3 combatants were going to get barring a very long period of play.

So at some point if you are allowing too much manipulation here, the concept of "starting character" becomes essentially meaningless.

Depends on how important character advancement is. Some RPGs give the players experienced starting character but tend to have slower learning curves. FASA Star Trek, LUG Star Trek, CORPS, and EABA are all examples of this. Original Traveler didn't have an experience/improvement system at all! Spirit of the Century doesn't either,although it has suggestions for one. Superheor games are anoteher genre where characters stay roughly the same. Spiderman and Batman haven't really changed much.


It all depends on playing style and group goals.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by drohem

Wow, I guess our group was more random than most. In our RQ3 games, we used completely random character generation. Consequently, we had a lot of herders and farmers turn adventurers. It was satisfying to have these characters develop into competent warriors and adventurers. Also, it made the rare priest and sorcerer all that more cool to play.

This gets back to how much it matters other PCs are simply better than you; most people I ever played with were just going to wonder why they were there if they ended up with a 17 year old farmer and someone else got a 27 year old warrior.

Its why I was much fonder of the RQ4/RQ:AIG approach which made profession part of a managed purchase system, and made quality within profession a campaign setup choice rather than random.

[Nightshade]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Depends on how important character advancement is.

Not really my point; I was noting it in regard to the discussion Rurik's had about starting new characters after character death as beginners; if you are using RQ3 and don't random roll, this ends up being a kind of meaningless phrase.

[drohem]

Originally Posted by Nightshade

This gets back to how much it matters other PCs are simply better than you; most people I ever played with were just going to wonder why they were there if they ended up with a 17 year old farmer and someone else got a 27 year old warrior.

Its why I was much fonder of the RQ4/RQ:AIG approach which made profession part of a managed purchase system, and made quality within profession a campaign setup choice rather than random.

Yeah, it was never an issue with our group; we just dealt with it. There is the Quick Experience rules for RQ3 where you get 30 percentiles per year over 15. We just never used it and stuck with random rolls. It made getting certain professions all the more cooler; like when you got a civilized thief or sailor.

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by drohem

Yeah, it was never an issue with our group; we just dealt with it. There is the Quick Experience rules for RQ3 where you get 30 percentiles per year over 15. We just never used it and stuck with random rolls. It made getting certain professions all the more cooler; like when you got a civilized thief or sailor.

I remember one player being sort of grumpy that he got a fisher, and most of his wealth was in dired fish. A few session later when the group was starving those fish came in handle. THe gaff hook made a nice grapnel, and when the group needed to boat across the water, the fisherman was pretty useful.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by drohem

Wow, I guess our group was more random than most. In our RQ3 games, we used completely random character generation. Consequently, we had a lot of herders and farmers turn adventurers. It was satisfying to have these characters develop into competent warriors and adventurers. Also, it made the rare priest and sorcerer all that more cool to play.

We did it by the book for a while, but i'm pretty sure eventually it just became a 'spend 200 points kind of thing'. I thought that was an option in there somewhere but maybe it was a houserule.

I think RQ3 by the book has a more variation in starting character ability than any other game I ever played (excepting maybe Traveller), and it mostly depended on that 2d6 age roll.

[drohem]

Originally Posted by Rurik

We did it by the book for a while, but i'm pretty sure eventually it just became a 'spend 200 points kind of thing'. I thought that was an option in there somewhere but maybe it was a houserule.

RQ3 did have an alternate character generation method to Experience by Occupation: the Quick Experience rules. You picked your age and got 30 percentiles per year over 15-years-old. Boxed skills couldn't be improved past 75% and no-box skills couldn't be raised over 100%. Magic skills had some special rules for development.

[RMS]

Originally Posted by Rurik

I long ago gave up the random background tables. The novelty of playing farmers did indeed wear off in short order. Also, it seems based heavily on real world demographics, but certainly certain backgrounds are more prone to adventuring than others - and farmer just sin't one that comes to mind (unless of course someone wanted to play a farmer). I've typically allowed either choosing background or more often used the assign a certain number of skill points yourself approach. In RQ3 if I recall right your age roll has a major effect on starting skills in the default method, which again I have not used in a while.

If you're doing that, then you aren't doing anything different than me. Allowing someone to simply pick a 27 year old from a warrior background, automatically makes them an experienced veteran character (something akin to letting someone pick a 7th or 8th level D&D character...to keep the analogies going). To me, that's nowhere near a "starting" character, or "starting over", and in many cases is going to be more powerful than the other PCs at the table.

Btw, I don't use those tables randomly either and never have...at least completely. It's fun at times to make people roll background with X years, then explain why they "left the farm" and let them develop several more years as a <insert exciting background> before play.

I like the MRQ chargen approach a lot. Choose a background, choose a profession, assign your free points.

I've actually gone to letting players just fill in the character they want to play on the character sheet: total freeform character creation. Everyone has to know the rules and background for this to really work, and you have to trust your players to be reasonable. Interestingly, I've found that putting so much trust on them has lead to less minmaxed characters, and I spend more time upping character's abilities than lowering them.