CharGen: Hacking FATE and Unisystem

[1point618]

Hi all.

So, I am doing something that I hate when other people do: I'm making a first post without being a long-time lurker. Sure, I've had an account for a month or so, and knew about and even browsed 1km1kt before getting the account, but I've not actually poked around enough or stuck around enough at all, so am unaware of the cultural customs and mores of 1km1kt. I apologize. My only excuse is that I mostly use /r/RPG on reddit for my online RPG fix, and just now came up with the sort of question that I think would work better here than there. I'm hoping that posting it will get me coming back to this site often enough to become a regular, because you guys seem pretty awesome and I need that first push.

So, enough about my shortcomings; on to the real question.

I'm starting an RPG soon. It'll be my first time GMing, and I've only been RPing for about a year now. I've played a year-long campaign in a homebrew DnD 4e setting, a short-lived homebrew alt history Unisystem campaign, and Spirit of the Century. The game I'm running will be a homebrew space opera game (mostly because I couldn't find any space opera RPGs to my liking: Sufficiently Advanced came closest), with pared-down Unisystem rules being the framework. I like Unisystem a lot because of the way that it simulates a game world and characters, while leaving the storytelling bits less mechanical. However, there are two issues with this choice: 1) I really love SotC's character generation scheme, and since chargen in Unisystem usually takes a whole session's worth of time anyway, it makes me miss it even more. 2) Unisystem, especially when the characters start as Inspired or Survivors, offers little room for character development by stats. After only a few sessions, soon the character is always succeeding on his/her most common rolls.

Over the past week I've developed a decent SotC-style chargen session for my Unisystem game. In doing so, I realized that with a little more work, I could also patch on something that might fix the second problem, a sort of mixture of FATE's aspects and Unisystem's Drama Points. I'll shortly describe the chargen, then this new addition, because while my questions are all about the second bit, it all makes more sense with the first.

I'll assume everyone knows how chargen in SotC works, even if not from experience, because this seems like the kind of place where I can assume that. I've broken it into five stages for my needs. The first stage is to pick a profession -- similar to picking a character archetype in SotC. I'm going to give my players a list of some, and help them come up with their own if they want to, then tell each of them to pick one adjective that describes their character. The adjective + profession (Lonely Pilot, Pacifist Security Officer, Risk-seeking Anthropologist, etc.) will be something the players should refer back to throughout the session to help them make a consistent character.

Next, the early life history. They'll come up with a short character history before they went into space. What planet did the grow up on, what was their early life like, what kind of family did they come from, what sort of technologies were important, etc.? They will also buy attributes at this stage.

Thirdly, the space round. The players come up with the circumstances for their being in space, the reasons they wanted to become explorers (they are in the official human exploration corps at the beginning of the game), and describe their adult life some. After this, they buy their qualities and drawbacks.

Then there is the most fun round, the story. I'm going to ask the players to come up with the story that their character tells whenever (s)he's drunk, in a storytelling mood, asked about him/herself, etc.. The story that defines them, in their own eyes. And, in the player's eyes, defines the character and how they want to play it. I might even end up role-playing the story with the player as they come up with it, to help them with the world and because there are several new RPers. After this, they will buy at least some of their skills based on what they do in the story.

When this is done, it's time for the final round. Players pass along their stories in a circle, so that they each get someone else's, and then write themselves into the story as a supporting character, with the main questions being how they helped the main character succeed in his/her goal and what their relationship is. After this, they will have to buy some more skills based on what they did in this story. They will also have two pre-defined relationships with existing characters, one where they are impressive, and one where they are impressed by someone else, and will be able to vouch for both those characters (which is important in the setting). Otherwise, it won't have any specific mechanical component to this round.

Or, wouldn't have been if I hadn't decided I wanted to add something unstable on top of what I think is currently a pretty good hack. Pretty much, what I'm thinking of doing is to also have the characters pick "aspects" at each round but the first. They would look just as FATE's aspects look: a descriptive word or phrase of some sort that is associated with the character. My plan for solving issue (2) with Unisystem is to give out new aspects rather than offering typical Unisystem development points (and I will let a qualities, drawbacks, and skills change based on roll-play, not any mechanical system, which is what I was planning on anyway). But what do they do?

When the player gets an aspect, they must choose one of the following four things to use it for:

1) Once a session, get +2 to a roll for that aspect. They must be doing something that falls in line with the aspect, and the aspect must have both positive and negative connotations (so that as GM I can throw a monkey wrench their way).

2) Get an extra quality point, with the caveat that they must spend that point on something that relates to the aspect.

3) Get an extra +1 (rather than +2) skill specialization.

4) Acquire an important item of some sort, or have an important item upgraded in some way (to be decided by me and player based on aspect, what the player wants, and what I think it appropriate).

So, that's it. I think it's sound. I don't think it will destabilize Unisystem too much. In fact, I think it will allow my players to grow their character both mechanically and literarily in the ways that they want to: whether that is through gaining more and better skills, by getting more cool toys, by adding more complexity to the character, or by allowing the character to get lucky more often.

I'm curious, though, if there are any huge things that I'm missing, since I will have to do this quite soon. Comments on either the aspect or chargen system are welcome, for I'm pretty new at this and I assume that I'm not doing things optimally. Opinions would be appreciated on how frequently I should doll out aspects, how I should, how many the characters should start with (my idea is probably four), what else aspects might be used for, whether they are currently unstable because one option is so much better than the others, or whatever, really. If anyone actually slogs through this whole thing, understands it, and has advice to offer, I'll be pleasantly surprised and totally stoked. If not, no worries, and I look forward to interacting with people more frequently and lurking moar.

Thanks!

[Chainsaw Aardvark]

Welcome to 1km1kt.net, we've got fun and games. Honey, we know the names We are the people that can find Whatever you may need...

No, wait, thats Guns N Roses. We just have the games. Mostly.

I can't necessarily claim to have answers for you, but I do have some potentially meaningful questions to guide you.

What were your criteria for for your space opera and how many other games did you consider? I could think of a few that didn't require such tinkering. D6 is now open and has been used for StarWars officially. One of the OGL books is "D6 space" and cold be at least a template for some of your ideas. Star Frontiers is another good choice, as could ICAR, Examplar, Septimus, and actually ... For that matter, why not just use vanilla FATE or FUDGE?

Have you lurked a bit on ? I'm pretty sure they've come up with at least a few things that might fit your ideas. I know there is a "Ghosts of Mars" fan supplement for AFMBE, and possibly a few conversions of B5, starwars etc. that could help.

I don't know what aspects you're expecting in this space opera, but alterations could be a bit more organic to the unisystem. Witchcraft is available for free, and has rules for casting in numbers of power (ie 3, 7, 11 etc people). You could make the characters as norms or low-powered magic users a small selection of the available metaphysics standing in for aspects. You can use the aforementioned group casting rule to encourage teamwork, or have them pull off stunts together. It balances that more powerful abilities can be used less due to power use (depending on the metaphysic used anyway)

The multi-step character process looks good. I really like the last two - In Vino Veritas and how they knew each other beforehand.

As to the four option presented - some are one use per game, while others are more broadly applicable multiple use elements. This doesn't quite seem balanced, and you should probably drop the first one which in the most limited.

If anything, I'd say limit yourself to the fourth option, as a piece of signature equipment and perhaps the story behind it could be a good way to further characterization. For example, a player might carry his great grandfather's flash blindness goggles from back when space to space combat was fought with fusion bombs - this tells about the setting, is a unique physical description, and might be useful if they need to do some welding. This also continues the pattern of character creation - a story told when drunk, a story told by a friend, and a story told by your possessions.

Overall, it looks like your on the right track. I think you may be attempting to reinvent the wheel by adding aspects to unisystem when qualities already fill that role, but I don't know how you run your games so that observation could be in error. If I can think of anything else, I'll let you know.

[SheikhJahbooty]

I was also thinking, "Is he proposing to use attributes, qualities, drawback, and aspects (which is SotC's attributes, qualities and drawbacks)? And the aspects are of limited use. It looks like he's attaching each aspect to a stunt. So he's got attributes, qualities, drawbacks, aspects, stunts, and skills. Those are complicated characters."

If your players are excited, go with it. That's cool. But if they have trouble deciding what to put where, maybe drop qualities and drawbacks, or not ask players to decide how the aspects would see use. Aspects are actually really versatile in SotC, even without stunts.

Maybe check out . Aspects in FATE 2 had check boxes to signify how often they could be cited, so the whole fate point thingie was simpler. So if you took Risk-seeking and Anthropologist as your first phase aspects, in a later phase, you could take Anthropologist again. So you could get your anthropologist spotlight bonus twice between refreshes. And there were no stunts (or rather stunts was just an idea presented in the back of the book to help people develop magic systems that would fit the world they were creating).

I also like the in vino veritas phases. It fits the setting (speaking as someone who plays a lot of Oolite, and drinks a lot of Rizalaian lethal brandy) just as well as the dime novel phase fits the pulp era.

[1point618]

Hi all!

Thanks for the replies. They've been helpful as I'm working through this. Ended up not playtesting last weekend because I had to work overtime, so this Sunday is the date, which is good.

To answer questions: I looked at a lot of different RPGs before deciding to roll up my own. I would have preferred to use something pregen, but it just wasn't forthcoming. First, I wanted an exploration game, something big and sandboxy enough that the players could, at any time, feel that the entire galaxy was theirs to explore. Second, I wanted a system I liked: I tend not to enjoy dice-pool systems because they take so much focus to read the results of the dice and are hard to set difficulties for. Third, I wanted the game to be somewhat focused on the characters' reactions to the new and strange. I'd been coming up with my own far-future world anyway for a while as a fun worldbuilding exercise, and figured I may as well just use that, and then use the system I've enjoyed the best so far -- Unisystem.

At this point, I'll admit that I'm struggling on the Aspects issues. On one hand, it would be nice that they have some sort of mechanical benefit, but it does unbalance the system a bit to include them. After mulling it over, this is my new solution:

1) Aspects have one mechanical benefit: they add +2 to any roll, if determined beforehand. Once an aspect is used, it cannot be used again that session. Multiple aspects can be used on a single roll. Aspects are used by role-playing first, then announcing intention to use the aspect, then rolling the dice. Aspects are a way for the player to say "it is important to me that this roll come out in my favor", a sort of character-defining mechanism that rewards them for so defining the character. They should be a mix of good and bad, such that I can work in negative consequences for having used one.

2) Development points are given with an average frequency of one per session. Each development point confers one and only one of the following upon the player: (a) One new aspect. (b) One skill point. (c) 1/2 a quality point*. (d) 3 ship points**.

* Development points can be saved, and two must be used to purchase a single quality point. Qualities can also be changed through role-play if appropriate. Similarly, development points must be saved for purchasing above certain skill levels, or levels in specialty skills.

** There is a mechanic for building and upgrading ships in Unisystem that I've left almost completely alone, with the addition of a few new possible components and a structured minigame for buying components when the players can't agree on what they want.

Items will be handled separately, but in general if a character gets a new item in a session, then no development point will be forthcoming.


Anyway, that's what I think I'll be using. I'll report back on exactly what I did and how it turned out. I'm planning on being flexible during chargen, and might screw with the number of quality points I give the players to begin with due to the aspects thing -- however, I'd like aspects taken to differ from the types of things you see as qualities, to let the players come up with more specific character traits with them.