Random roll character gen can still be faster. I'm looking at systems like WFRP, which can random roll your backstory and appearance as well as your stats, skills and equipment, and ORE systems like reign which can do all of that in a single roll along with your stats, skills and most of your equipment, just requiring a quick flick for one or two items or spells. Wouldn't really work for Shadowrun though.

A modular plugin to character generation would be handy for introducing new players though, 100BP or so packages that represent backgrounds like former miltiary and contain the baseline skills and stats required to fill that role.

I suppose I'm probably the only person around here that actually liked the old Priority Chart. Don't suppose we're ever likely to see that again, huh?

-paws

Not the old one, no.

Another way of speeding up character gen is having a rough template in your head regarding the general build.

Example: If I know I'm playing an adept, I already know I'm going to spend this much on tech, that much on stats and so on.

The particulars will vary based on the theme and quirks of the character, but the numbers themselves are more or less the same.

It's when you start customizing the character's toe-nail polish you tend to get bogged down.

-Siege

Speed isn't the only factor, but it's one of the defining ones. Ease of use, ease of understanding, consistency, and layout quality are also factors in a good character creation system. Additionally, the ability to fix mistakes in a build without going back to the beginning is part of a good build system. Wushu can generate narrative-driven characters within seconds. However, it's a different type of game. Let's stick to games of medium crunch or higher. I wouldn't call it simpler, however.

Under Rifts, you can build a character that's slightly more complex than the average shadowrunner within 45 min-1hr. Under Savage Worlds, you can build an equivalent character within 15 min or less. Hero takes two hours, about the low end of the same time frame. GURPS depends on the amount of points you're spending, but a 100-point character usually takes about 90 min.

The SR4 system is loaded with errors, and has significant layout issues. My pet peeve is the fact that the Edges/Flaws section is smack dab in the middle of the chapter. You can't go from one section to another without having to divert through 30 pages of qualities.



I'm sorry, but that's just not the case. The Build Point system from SR2-3 was a 125 point system with fewer caps, and really only 4 things to purchase. The SR4 monstrosity has almost four times as many points to fiddle with, with the accompaning increase in granularity. and to my eye, over three times as many things to buy. That alone would make the system more complex and more difficult to use; but the addition of arbitrary caps, wildly varying costs, and a total dependance on Edges/Flaws makes it a whole new ballgame.

So, the correct statement is: "If, as a veteran player, you are familiar and experienced with ludicirously overcomplicated, obtuse, and complex Point systems, the SR4 Build Point system should be no real leap."

I had the urge to correct your statement.

Except you got it wrong.

Not one person in this thread has said that SR4 chargen is any faster than a template system. They say they might like it better, but that doesn't mean it's any faster, smoother, or easier. Even Synner's statements amount to: "It's not *that* much worse."

SR4 is not an easy system. And that's the case for everyone.

.
As usual you are entitled to your opinion, since after all it is only your opinion and mileage does vary and some people have more difficulty with the system than others.

My SR4 playtest (3) players were all SR2/3 veterans who used the Point system almost exclusively. They drew up their first SR4 characters less than 3 hours from their first ever contact with the SR4 rules without my assistance or direction. Meanwhile I was walking 2 complete SR newbies through the basic rules and character creation. Once my regulars finished their characters they started helping the newbies and within 4 hours of initial contact with the rules everyone had characters ready. Maybe your experience is different but I haven't had chargen take up more than an hour in more than two years of play (and that's only when newcomers are involved). Had they only used the Priority system in SR3, I'm certain this would not have been the case.

Yes, tweaking did go on during the first couple of sessions, as the players got a hang of how augmentations and stats have changed and how they now affect play, but one of those characters remains active today with the only significant changes being retrofitted when Augmentation came out (a street sam named Alex Machine, featured in Corp Enclaves).

These days, anyone of them can turn out a brand spanking new character with a full load of gear and implants in under 45 minutes - one thats within 1-3 dice from the top of their specialty and still covers all the basics they know they'll require in my game.

In my experience the single element of Shadowrun chargen that is inevitably time-consuming regardless of how familiar and comfortable you are with remaining steps is gear and augmentation selection. That's what happens when you have so many crunchy options. There are ways of speeding this up, and we will be addressing them in future products. Meanwhile, my players have even implemented time-saving gimmicks like "basic running gear packages" and "basic commlink/software packages" that have pregenerated costs and all the characters pick up.


I'd rather you stop misinterpreting my words, I said nothing to that effect.

If I were to compare, and using as reference my group has played on a semi-regular basis and we're familiar with, I've found SR4 chargen (among both regular players and newbies) to run faster than Rifts, Hero, Fuzion, Tribe 8, GURPS, Underground, and Kult. On par with CoC, Mage: the Awakening, (Aeon) Trinity (non-D20), (original) Deadlands, Cyberpunk2020, and some of the D20 Modern stuff. And slightly slower than Exalted (1E), Vampire (2E), and Ars Magica 2E.

No, not for everyone. SR4 is by far the simplest. I guess if SR was your main game for years, the versions which shall remain unnamed might be simpler. From a purely mechanical perspective (i.e. without any preconceptions from years of playing it another way) SR4 is far simpler, just by the simple removal of variable target numbers a whole level of needless complexity was removed. I have to agree that the layout could have been better, but honestly it's not half the pain in the ass the old stuff was. My players like it a hell of a lot more, and really don't mind the extra couple of minutes to make a character (if its taking over 20 minutes to make a 100 point character in Gurps your players have issues that no amount of discussion will resolve, ditto for Palladium). Lastly I find it quicker for putting together unique NPC's that are not carbon copies of each other. So no BP is not faster than template generation, but the time difference is something that is clearly being exaggerated to the point of absurdity. Also a lot of people don't mind the minor sacrifice in time to get away from the ability to look at a new character and know exactly what priorities were picked.

And right there I would stop you. SR4 is an easy system. I taught 3 new players this weekend (2 who played D&D exclusively, 1 who had played SR3 and some OWoD). They had characters ready to go in an hour. I had a table copy of SR4 for each of them to use, so there was no waiting on books which can certainly slow the process down.

In between helping them make characters, I tinkered with my own. Admittedly, we could post any of these characters here and people would say "drop this, add that" but each of them was balanced and capable of doing what they want. So their dice pools are in the 8-10 category--that's perfectly acceptable to a lot of people.

I suppose I'll find out tonight, first hand. My wife and I are going to be sitting down to make her character. We're making it from scratch since none of the sample character really fit her character.

Her Shadowrun experience prior to meeting me was: choose an archetype, play for an adventure or two, move on to another game. That dated back as far as early SR2. When I ran SR3, she still picked an archetype, but the game lasted more than a couple sessions and she got into it.

I'm going to let her do most of the work, answering questions and maybe making some suggestions, if needed.

-paws

Any chance of sharing them? I am always interested in what everyone feels is the 'must haves' of the Gear section.

On Paladium, IIRC (It's been a few years since picking up any Rifts stuff) that requires some rolling as part of creation, right? TO me, that has always taken much longer than point buy, simply because I have to go through and look at what assigning each roll would mean for each stat whereas with point buy I just look at what I want to do and go from there.

On Shadowrun, the longest part of any character is Gear. No need to fear if you've got the gear is an oft used statement and it is absolutely correct. On the first half of creation I spend maybe 20 minutes, but when it comes to gear I can spend upwards of 90 just to spend, sell back and respend so that every eventuality is covered & every weapon remains loaded throughout the first 3 missions. Of course, that is probably just me being a gear freak, but so what

So, even the implacable Synner can't get characters generated in less than three hours. Gotcha.

I've heard of 45 minute working characters, but I've never actually seen one. It's like the Canadian girlfriend: You never see her, 'cause she's in Canada. But here's a few pics! The closest I've seen were characters that had huge gaping flaws in them, such as no perception skill, no contacts, or missing essential gear/stats. When final tweaking is done, the total time spent IMS is at least two hours, and usually a lot more. Time spent doing gear templates also counts against the total time.

Bottom line: no one has ever put their money where their mouth is, and proven that they can create a SR4 character in under two hours. Not even the line developer. Meanwhile, newer systems such as Savage Worlds and ToG 4.0 can pull together characters in less than half that time. In comparison to them, SR4 is slow, clunky, obtuse, and confusing.

Cain, he's talking about people who never seen the rules before. You conveniently omitted that part in your highlighting.

-paws

Do you actually read peoples' posts? Or do you just stop reading when you pick up on something that out of context seems to validate your position?

Here, let me reemphasize for your benefit...


Get it now? This was their first ever contact with the SR4 ruleset. Which is why a few lines down you can read (if you were of a mind to actually pay attention to what people posted):

Cain--I could spend 45 minutes putting a character together, and then post it. The problem is that there is no way for me to prove beyond any doubt, that I put it together in that time period rather than grabbing a cup of coffee and then copying and pasting a character that I made previously.

I was being nice. I also omitted this part:

Which means that they found the regular process so time consuming, they had to make shortcuts. Unfortunately, that's like saying character creation is fast because you can use a program. Just because you had to cut corners, doesn't mean the basic system is any faster, smoother, or easier.

I can safely say that in all of the systems mentioned in this thread that I've played, I don't count timesavers in my total time to character. I can also say that while SR4 isn't the slowest, it's right up there. It also offers fewer options than similar point-buy systems. I honestly am amazed that people seem to think that a one-two hour character is acceptable in the new game market.

So it looks like what the problem here is that you can't min/max a character in under two hours. How exactly is that a problem?

People, once familiar with a process, tend to create shortcuts. This is especially true of people that do repetitive things. Its natural, especially when they feel like they need to save time.

Faulting a game because its not trying to shoehorn someone into the game designer's own odd way of doing things makes me wonder if you're slow at work today.



The new game market? Oh, please.

-paws

some of us spend a lot of time on creating characters because we consider it part of the fun. taking a long time for such individuals is not necessarily so much a matter of poor system design as it is the player choosing to spend more time tweaking things.

Well, since you put it that way and since you cite me personally. I'm willing to prove it and I'm willing to so publically.

I have said more than once (including one time above) that I can produce a fully viable character in less than two hours. I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Choose a public real-time chat, we can invite anyone who wants to sit in and watch. We'll have someone independent (or as many someones as you like) time me. Plus you get to present the character concept that I have to build at the start of the chat, so we're all sure I have no prior preparation, no forewarning, or gimmicks up my sleaves.

How's that sound?

Actually what my team considers "basic gear" is representative of the way I play things at my table and will definitely vary considerably from what any other group finds essential. When they got used to the system in SR3, my players realized (all on their lonesome) that there was some items of gear that they almost always picked up no matter what character they were playing, so they came up with gear packs with those "essentials" already added up to save chargen time. When we shifted to SR4 it wasn't long before they figured they might as well do the same thing, plus they added commlinks and relevants softs into the basic load out. The only team member who didn't take the "basic kit" was the magician.

Note that the same applies for "essential skill sets". The group themselves have imposed minimum skill levels on characters (again no intervention of my own). For instance, no one at my table (5 players) has Infiltration or Perception at less than 3 and with a couple of notable exceptions (rigger and magician) they all also have the Athletics Skill Group at 3-4 (though they do break it up after chargen).

All that said, you'll be pleased to know that something official is in the works that is more versatile and easy to use. More on that when I have something solid to offer.

Honestly, you should just be ignoring him at this point. You do this, and regardless of what you come up with, he will find some kind of flaw (probably related to min-maxing) & claim the character is not complete. Not worth the hassle.

EDIT: I am also fairly certain Cain is the only one on these boards that would fault you for backing down.

I know that you should take anything said on the Internet with a grain of salt unless it's really credible, but after looking through the rules, I was able to create three characters in an hour. I mostly did it in my head. Knowing what the character is ahead of time really helps, ex. a gunslinging street samurai, a hacker, a buff troll, etc.

Of course it only takes 20 minutes to make a playable character. Apparently for some that is not good enough. For these few a playable character is one who has squeezed every BP for every last drop of effectiveness, and made a character without flaws. Min/max to the max or why bother.

Nah, Synner should actually do this. If Cain starts nitpicking at the result he will make himself even more of an ass, which is highly amusing to people like me.

True, that's been his usual tactic. But as is usual for me, I'm willing to take up the gauntlet for the benefit of anyone who might misconstrue Cain's statements as reality.

Cain simply said:

Cain made one of his trademark broad sweeping statements and has made the mistake of mentioning me (that would be the "line developer" bit for anyone joining us now.) It's a statement that I feel I can objectively disprove. He also made no specifications (Cain rarely does, it leaves him room to find flaw with one detail or another down the line and out of admitting defeat). Note also Cain made no prerequisite of a min-maxed, milked to the last die character. What Cain said is simply that no one has "proven that they can create an SR4 character in under two hours." So I'm calling him on the statement he made. For everyone's benefit, I'll even throw in that it has to be a viable, well-rounded specialist character within that 2 hour time frame. I could probably even do it in under 1 hour, but I'm giving myself some leeway since I'm giving him the opportunity of dictating the character concept.

My characters pick automatic weapons and Wired Reflexes, because their idea of fun is killing everyone. (Bonus if you play the Iggy Pop song while running a combat!)

Easy does not have to equal "fun." As long as the group has fun with character generation and the game, I don't see the problem for them.

Now, an alternate template system for SR4 that is fast and easy could help players like you to get done with chargen fast and get right to the action! Probably involving skills, abilities, spells, etc., that cost a certain amount of BP, which you deduct from your total BP, and the rest is left for you to customize.

Good grief. My gang takes an entire session (around three hours) to put together a group, and we're mostly veterans. Of course, we're building the entire team, deciding on a back-story, and deciding what kind of story it's going to be, but still.

Er ... I made the technomancer that I'm using for one of these boards in under 45 minutes, from scratch, using nothing by my handy HP-48sx calculator and a sheet of graph paper. Complete with personality and history, I might add.

I have heard that character generation is quite long, but I managed to get the hang of it by making several characters in my free time. I believe that making character generation faster can immensely help many groups.

To add to this: I used a certain person's rather brilliant demo guide and taught the game to people in under half an hour, no cheat sheets, no step-by-step instructions, and they learned about gunfighting, hacking, and magic.

LOL crunching the numbers for character creation does not take that long for me and mine. It is the darned backgrounds that take even longer. I tend to create long very detailed backgrounds for my characters sometimes research takes days for me to get that done.

WMS

Ahh the booth demo--that was a lot of fun.

I've said it before: it was very well written.

Actually, i made my specifications earlier in this thread. I will toss in that you can't cheat and use a program, spreadsheet, or other shortcuts. It goes without saying that you'll be providing a running commentary alongside the process.

What video chat programs do you use, and what times do you have available? I work weekends, so those are out.

I taught new players Wushu, complete with character creation, inside of five minutes, with no books at all. That's an easy system. SR4 doesn't even come close.

Granted, easy isn't the only aspect of a system, but don't go about thinking that because it's theoretically possible to create a character in two hours, the game is easy.

Alright, Cain, you want an easy system, because you want quick character generation and not having to flip through pages. Now, some people find juggling numbers easy. However, what matters most if said system impacts your fun and enjoyment of the game. Now, if one were to make a quicker version of character generation, perhaps as "templates" with listed BP, then players like Cain will probably be satisfied.

To answer the original post, I'd like to see an entire chapter devoted to cyber-genitalia. This would cause Cain's head to spontaneously explode, and we wouldn't have to keep re-hashing these tired arguments.

If you mean this (which was posted as a reply to a query on what constituted a "working character" to you):

That's fully acceptable, although you did not mention any such criteria in your blanket statement above.


I have no chargen program installed or spreadsheet, but I require clarification on what you qualify as "shortcuts."

For instance, I keep an expanded/annotated version of the table on p.88 SR4 (actually a couple of pages long these days) which I use as a hand-out. It includes such things as precalculated BP costs for Atts at various levels, the full list of Qualities from all the books up to and including Unwired (since I know someone is going to ask, something of the sort is planned as an official release once we have all the core books out) and page refs for certain specific character-type information (ie. for metatype att table see p. 73, SR4; for hacker commlinks, OSs, and peripherals, see p.319; for cyberware see p. 330, SR4 and p. 31, Augmentation - tables on pp.170-171; for foci see p. 191, SR4 - tables on p.340). All of which is information available in the various indexes or tables at the back of the books, but which I've gathered (just like any good GM could) in a quick reference sheet (expanded from the one in the book) . Does that constitute a shortcut? Note that strictly speaking I don't need it, the indexes and tables will suffice - it is simply a timesaver and avoids to avoid wear on my hardcopy at the table.

This is something anyone can put together the very first time they build a character - I can't even claim the idea is mine. During our first few playtest sessions one of my players started annotating the photocopy of p.88 that I handed out. When I looked at his notes I thought they made sense and started doing it myself to help future players.

The quick reference sheet above does not include our group's "basic commlink & software," "basic running gear," or "modded weapons" pre-calculated packages though.


I do have Skype installed, but I do not use its video chat function because I don't possess a webcam and have no intention of picking one up in the near future. Normal voice or text chat will have to do. It's slower to post stuff as you work, than just scribble down on paper, but I think I can do it. I work two jobs (including full time at Catalyst) during the week so we may have a problem with the scheduling, though I'm willing to work around it. At the moment I don't have a couple of hours to spare except at weekends, but I'm confident that will change in a couple of weeks - it's just a question of setting a date and time.

Please, if you really do that, put a log on the HP. I don't want to miss that, because it is really easy to build a Character in under 2h.

cya
Tycho

What will take time is equipment imho. You can easily bang out a complete character aside from his equipment list in 15 minutes.

The equipment list takes forever though because you need to look up all this inane crap like how much does a spare clip cost, what mods count as optical so I can fit them into my mage sight goggles blah, blah, blah, blah.

Basically, anything that doesn't come directly from the books. The handy tables you built sound nice, but unless you count the time to takes to compile them into your total, they're a shortcut. You're right that anyone could create such a thing, but doing so in the middle of character creation won't save any time on that character. In the interest of fairness, I suggest that you work solely with the books, a few sheets of paper, and a pen.


Now, this is a problem. How can we be sure that you're not just feeding us a line of patter, and then posting a character you created last week? I'm sure you can find a way to deal with this.


Fair enough. Keep us appraised.

I *do* find it interesting that you and your ilk claim that a character is possible in 45 minutes, but you still want a couple of hours for the process, though.

We've discussed this issue numerous times in playtesting and among the developers, and as I mentioned previously, the consensus is that as much as 75% of the time used for character generation goes to selecting the "right combo" of augmentations and gear (though actually applying the modifications seems to be rather fast). The situation isn't helped by the fact that the gear and augmentation lists available to any character in Shadowrun are up there with the most complete and diverse of any game on the market and are spread over 4 (soon to be 5) books — and when every option has an effect it's only natural that things take time.

This situation has prompted some of our core freelancers to come up with an interesting concept to help facilitate chargen, one which Catalyst plans on developing as a product. More on that when we can announce something solid.

The biggest problem is actually when an item of equipment requires assembly.

For example SMG is easy. You write down 'Ingram Smartgun X' and then you're done, because it is the best SMG. Similarly the game has two assault rifles.

With the new annoying Arsenal rules however, armour is a huge pain in the butt. You have to find some combination of armour, the stuff that counts as 1/2 body and stacks, and securetech PPP and armour modifications that maxes out your body capacity while getting the highest total, while distributing all your mods over both sets of armour so you don't exceed the capacity and focusing on the securetech and half body stuff so it can be re-used.

That actually takes 20+ minutes all by itself unless you know the answer from last time you did it.

Indeed it won't save you time with that first character (though the relevance of your experience building your first character to the current discussion is beyond me since quite obviously this isn't the first character I've built), but put something of the sort together the first time, and it will certainly save time and serve you well with every other character you build thereafter and it will help everyone else at the table who uses it (including, get this, people building their SR4 characters for the first time).

But as I said, it's a crutch I don't need. I can achieve the same result by printing out the SR4 index and tables at the back of the other books and not having to flip back and forth - I assume you won't qualify that as a "shortcut" since they'll be printouts of my books/PDFs.


Because, as I have offered, you're the one who will be providing the character concept. I have no idea what you'll be asking me to create going in. If you believe I have a stack of pre-generated characters on hand to cover any concept that you might propose, then yes we have a problem since I have no intention whatsoever of buying a webcam just to prove a point on a webforum (and if I did there would still be a half dozen ways I could "cheat" - putting stuff offscreen, cribbing in pencil, etc).


As I noted above, I'm giving myself space to handle any curve balls you might introduce into the equation. Furthermore (even judging by numerous posts to this very thread) what constitutes an acceptable and viable character at most people's tables is obviously insufficient for you and I fully expect you to find flaw with whatever I post. Ultimatley it's a win-win situation for me, because I have no doubt I can produce a chawithing the alotted time proving to anyone interested that a character can be built in the timeframe you've clearly state you don't believe possible, plus whether you accept the character as valid/viable by your criteria or not, I have no doubt that the people here will recognize the character is indeed viable and acceptable in their games - proving my argument to them if not to you (since, to be perfectly frank, they are the only reason I'm bothering with this exercise, I've long passed the point where I am in the least bit preocupied with what you might learn from being shown you are incorrect).

This would be very nice to see. Keep us appraised as to when you can say something.

I can think of a dozen people here on Dumpshock who do that very thing. They already have characters to cover each and every concieveable niche. I don't know your proclivity for creating characters, but for the sake of this argument and your credibility, I'd like to see this be pure. Remember, *you* were the one who threw down the gauntlet.

And I'm going to stick with books only. That's what most of us use, it'd be unfair to do anything else.


That's actually interesting, because no one has ever asked what I consider to be a viable character. But in the interest of fairness, let's start with you. What do you consider to be a viable character?

At any event, curve balls or not, you sound supremely confident that you can accomplish this in under two hours. Why not up the ante? Do this on your lunch break, 30 min or less. If you really think you're that infallible, this shouldn't be a problem.

As for me, let's just say that you learn a lot about a person by both how they treat their yes-men and their constructive criticism. Just because I don't go: "SR4, Rah Rah Rah!" means I get a lot of flack from people who do. Sorry, SR4 is not perfect holy canon, and people who believe otherwise go nuts whenever their Bible is shown to be just another book.

Agreed. The more options that are possible the more complicated and time consuming it becomes.


Fortunately I've only got one player who always defaults to the same guns because "they are the best". Happily he also came up with a precalculated standard "package of mods" which all the combat characters get for their automatic weapons and long arms—though I only allow weapon and vehicle customization at chargen if PCs have either the required skill set or qualified contacts.


Yup, the calculations when there's customization are a handful. Having just written up full character stats for a dozen characters in a Cast of Shadows I understand where you're coming from perfectly. There are "tricks" though, like knowing which what Agility is needed for some common armor combos.


That's essentially the gimmick my group started using, they started taking note and these became their "basic gear packages."