Connecting Worldbuilding to System (Part 4)

Just when I thought I was getting momentum, life gets in the way again. I've spent most of the last few days in hospital with my wife, or taking her to medical appointments.  

I've had some ideas in recent months about the way lower classes are forced to struggle so they don't have time to tell their stories, and how it's only the elite who have the privilege of time to share their narrative, and the social capital to spread that narrative to reinforce the cultural norms, even though the wider experience of life doesn't necessary reflect the stories that are constantly pumped out. It's something that fits into Familiar, and ironically it's the very lack of time to work on Familiar, and the lack of social capital to get it noticed that has kept the stories within it from being completed. It's a game about social systems and rebelling against them, while those very social systems are keeping it down, and it's going to take an act of rebellion to get it where it needs to be. However, this is a post about the unnamed Pirate game.

Walkabout's life path generation system is loosely based on a common cultural convention across Australian Aboriginal groups where people mature in 12 year cycles, that match a 12 years weather cycle of El Nino and La Nina winds and their influence on the Australian climate. If you're born in the year when the wet summers came, you achieve the next stage of maturity when the wet summers come again. I divided things into 6 year increments of Infancy (0-6), Childhood (7-12), Teenage (13-18), Young adulthood (19-24), then mature adulthood (25+) which is the point where characters generally have enough control over their lives that they are ready to leave home and take on their full adult responsibilities. The character generation process starts very guided as the characters are moulded by the people around them, then provides more agency and choices as they get older. The lifepath reflects the character's diegetic development, and integrates them into the wider community as choices are made. That's what the game is all about, so it makes sense to integrate this right from the beginning of a character's story.

Familiar uses a tarot spread to quickly generate characters. We don't necessarily follow their life from birth to adventuring, instead we have a whole heap of gaps that can be explored as flashback through play. We get fully formed characters but we don't necessary know how or why they were formed that way. The tarot cards also echo the magical and mystical nature of the game.

At his stage, I'm thinking that the pirate game's characters will have two stages of development, somewhere between the Walkabout and Familiar options. Where step one will be the infancy/childhood/teenage steps (where the character's future is generally moulded bu the people around them, and where their choices are limited), followed by the young/mature adult steps (where the characters make decisions for themselves, for better of worse).

It will all be about rolling dice, much like the Walkabout lifepaths (and a bit like the equipment options in Sceletus... everything is connected). We're looking to typically add two attribute points, four to six ability points, two advantages, and at least half a dozen relationships. I might throw in some basic starting equipment in the character generation system, because that won't really unbalance things between characters and it offers the opportunity for some story hooks. Basic equipment is pretty easy to get in SNAFU, it doesn't really involve accounting or spending gold pieces... it's only the more advanced equipment that has significant diegetic and non-diegetic costs. 

So here's an idea that helps players get into the mood, and learn a bit of the game rules as they develop their character. 

1. Roll one of each of the five die types... d4, d6, d8.d10 and d12... then write the results down. Consult a chart using these values to determine elements of your character. 

 

	Bloodline	Culture	Attribute	Ability	Advantage
1	Nullan	Outcast	No Bonus	No Bonus	Bloodline Only
2-3	Nullan	Common for Bloodline	Common pair for Bloodline	4 common for Bloodline	Culture Only
4-5	Wyldkin	Settler	Common pair for Culture	4 common for Culture	Choose Bloodline or Culture
6-7	Faeblood	Imperial	1 common for Bloodline, 1 for Culture	4 choices from Bloodline  or/ Culture	Choose a Base Occupation
8-9	Dhampyr	Native	Increase any 2 of Phy, Soc, or Men by 1 point each.	Any 4 Common, Bloodline or Culture abilities	Choose Bloodline, Culture or Base Occupation
10-11	Avatar	Pirate or Corsair	Increase any 2 attributes by 1 point each	Any 4 Common, Bloodline or Culture abilities (or you may spend points upgrade an ability)	Choose Bloodline, Culture, Base Occupation, or Calling
12	Incarnate / Pureblood	Cult	Increase any single attribute by 2 points	Any 4 Common, Bloodline or Culture abilities (or you may spend points to upgrade an ability)	Choose Bloodline, Culture, Base Occupation, or Calling

It basically works like the choices in some of the early iterations of Shadowrun.If you're lucky enough to roll a 12 on the d12, you get access to some of the rarer character types... but you only get to choose one of those high end results. If you roll 10s on the d10 and the d12, you might have two options that are among those that are pretty rare. The lower the number, the more common the result. There's nothing inherently more powerful about those rare types, they just have more unusual abilities and probably have less of a support network due to the fact there just aren't as many of them. 

If you roll a 1, you can just throw the result into the bloodline of "Nullan" who are the most common folks on the island without really suffering any kind of penalty. If you roll multiple 1s, that where things get messy.

The majority of die rolls should be between 3 and 6 with enough variations between them to allow some choices for players.

That's the step of the character generation process that's fairly fixed in the game. After that point players get more say over the specifics. They roll 10 dice in total, but may choose what type of dice they roll. The lower the dice they roll, the more they stay with their family and the people they grew up with (and this often leaves them as a stereotype of their people). The higher the die they roll, the further afield they travel and the wider the influences on their life (we don't know what that influence might be...yet).

I'll return in the next couple of days to detail this...