And once again you are being offensive. I was asking a question and providing my viewpoint. You are trying to put words in my mouth that I did not say. Leave it alone Thorya.

Nonsensical character are the result of randomness, which I was commenting upon. Randomness is bad for concept characters. Live with it.
And point buy is the grail of Concept characters (You have complete and total control). So why would I tell anyone that it does not play well.

Ah, Dark Heresy. Got my copy of that floating around somewhere...

Strictly speaking, purpose built is perfectly accurate - with the concept being the purpose to which everything is built.

Yes and no.

You do not, typically get to make informed decisions on how smart you are, your genetic likelihood to become Lance Armstrong, or how rich/privileged the family you were born into is. Unless you possessed a particularly iron will and unusually free reign, your environment shaped a lot of who you became as well.

And right now, those are the only totally random stats on display in this system - which, as the title implies, is evolving with input. Even yours.

The trick here is making a canonically accurate method of applying skills and resources without blowing the entire idea of a "real" runner out of the water. That's first challenge in skills and resourcing., and frankly the biggest hurdle to this.

Maybe add in some background packages or some such.

It lies in also capturing the fact that despite the ability to make informed decisions, people sometimes make sub-optimal decisions. We've all met the guy who maybe should have chosen a different career. Or the fat person who knows all the ways to be fit but just doesn't do it. Or the lottery winner who ends up bankrupt in two years. So forth and so on. Just because he's a Sammy doesn't mean he'll spend two weeks a month at the range, or feel free to chop off his arms for those sweet AGI 9, STR 9 limbs.

Likewise any magical user worth their salt would realize their single greatest advantage - and likely their entire quality of life - is wrapped up in being good at magic. But that takes work. Ambition. Drive. An environment that supports them. And, taking a look at the world, their are plenty of very gifted people who piss away a lot of that potential because of the factors above or others.

How do you design a system that accommodates that?

Still, an excellent observation.

for an accurate depiction of skill, I still say creating a skill package is the best way to go, otherwise you'll end up with a hacker with no hacking skills & sammies who can only use pistols, or even a Magic 1 mage without spellcasting skill, once these packages are made you can assign random variables.

As far as any of the 40k games (there are several): they are more ingrained with the local lore than say...D&D or other such games, you play a space marine, you need to know more about the Space Marines & the factors that created them than you do playing a fighter, because those factors change with each faction & so you need to know what traits are passed on in your creation. same can be said for psykers & others as well.

One point of clarification, Concept characters doesn't play well with randomness, only if you have the Concept beforehand. There is nothing about a randomly generated character that prevents you from having a Concept for the character. (stepping back a second I see what you meant, Randomness does not play well with picking things for a character to fit a pre-chosen concept, not that a randomly generated character can't have a unifying concept).

But, you know what, you're right. I don't have much patients for you normally and on 4 hours of sleep every night for the past 5 days just makes you more irritating than normal, so I'm going to drop it.

I'll give you that... So, Hmmmm... Purpose built, but not Optimally built. Not exactly sure what you would call that, then.
So... yeah, I got nothin'.

Good Points... And you are right, your genetics are a lottery in which you play but do not have any input.
And I have no issues with that, honestly. Almost everything else is a direct result (good or bad) of a decision that was made somewhere along the way.

I also think that Skill Packages are the way to go. Again... PACKS (both versions) has a lot of excellent examples for such things.

System design is hard... Which is why when I do such work (occasionally contribute to at least one small independent company in San Antonio, though I have gotten away from it since I moved to Colorado), I generally tend to align my endeavors towards systems that promote a Points buy system rather than a level based progression. I like such systems because of their sheer versatility. Yes, they can be abused, and tortured well beyond their limits. And yes, I am guilty of doing so, in most cases to either stretch the system or break it. I like most games out there that I have tried, though each of them have their issues.

And I am rambling... so I will stop.

Well, I can honestly say that I have no experience with Warhammer 40K. I have Warhammer Fantasy, but not the same, I am sure.
Thanks for the information Dolanar.

I will grant you that Thorya... Random and Preconceived Concept are incompatible... completely.

As for the lack of sleep, I totally understand. For the last 4 months or so, I have apparently been subconsciously punishing myself for something, as I average about 2-4 Hours of sleep per night (a week ago I had only a piddling 14.5 hours sleep (8 of which was in one night)). Some weeks, I don't sleep at all for days in a row (2 to 3, sometimes). So no worries.

While random generation is interesting, it's not what I was expecting when I opened this thread. I was looking forward to seeing a character gen system where you build your character by choosing elements of his or her past.

The biggest problem with random Attributes, to me, is that Attributes are just so darn important in Shadowrun. They are a big component of dice pools as well as determining things like initiative, damage boxes you can soak, etc. If you keep them random, you might consider additional rules such as limiting how many Attributes of base 4 or better that you can get for a single character. Or maybe rolling a low Attribute gives you a slight bonus on your next roll, while a high Attribute gives you a penalty on your next roll, so that you don't have as many characters with nothing but low Attributes, or lots of high Attributes.

For metatypes - if you are making them truly random, and they don't cost anything, you might want to consider giving them actual negative modifiers, rather than merely lower maximums. In other words, give that dwarf a -1 to Reaction as well as a +1 Body, +2 Strength, and +1 Willpower.

For skills, I agree that PACKS-like skill packages based on vocation (data entry clerk, factory worker, street person, etc.) would be the best way to go. Maybe you could give the players an additional small pool of points to get other skills - maybe 20 points, no skill higher than 2, for example, so that someone with no runner skills can at least get the bare bones of, for example, pistols: 2, dodge: 2, and unarmed: 1. Also, you might consider giving everyone an etiquette of 1 (with a specialization related to their job) and perception: 2 for free, as skills that any man or woman on the street would have.

I played a game of Dark Heresy with one of the developers. I was disappointed they didn't know the rules, or remember the sample adventure, and they'd never played it. Kinda shattered my illusion of an RPG developer. Indeed in Dark Heresy (and WFRP from which it is based) character gen is random, I think entirely.


Onto this system though. I think it's important to get the right bits random. Race and attributes are genetic, so random is fine. Skills are partially natural, but also developed according to social, environmental etc. factors. Especially if the characters are running, they're going to equip themselves for that environment.

I think skills could be effectively done similarly to knowledge skills but with different values. I'd suggest as an example having skillpoints equal to attribute x 2 for each attribute, and the points have to be spend on skills linked to that attribute. So if I have 3 strength I can spend 6 skillpoints on strength linked skills. This represents the 'natural' part of the skill, and also the tendency of people to develop what they're good at (stupid people don't try and be hackers). The numbers probably need tweaking as I've just guessed at something reasonable to demonstrate the idea.

Also you probably want to edit the OP to reflect any changes. Currently categories are all still missing the 00 value

Thank you, will do.

1 point to the idea that people aren't random. While it is true people don't really randomly decide on their path(outside genetics etc as discussed above) if you were to remove the reasons and just break people down into stats and skills people might look pretty damn random. Why did I get into weight lifting, well I needed to lose weight and dieting is not my strong suit so I went with muscle gain and got my body fat % down to a more normal level. If you just looked at my stats though there would be nothing to indicate why someone with my scrawny genetics has a above average strength. Is high blood pressure a non-random reason to get into shape, sure. But in Shadowrun land it might not make any sense on your hermetic mage preconceived build. But reacting to things like poor health does happen, they aren't random(outside that genetic thing) but they also don't fit most concept characters.

The fun in random characters is finding that hook for why the mage has that high strength, why he has a 1 agility etc.

yes, but its hard to account for reactionary measures in a character build unless you build him from some sort of simulator that simulates his life ti that point, even with randomness.

but at the point you're talking about its more about rationalizing a feature of your person than calling it a quirk sometimes.

How does this sound?

All attributes start at 2.

Metatype:

1-4 Human.
5 elf
6 dwarf.

Early childhood:

1 Slums. You grew up on the streets, where only the toughest survive. +1 strength, body or willpower.
2 Street Rat: You lived through cunning and guile. +1 intuition, agility or reaction
3 Lower class: Your parents were wage-slaves, and not high-earning ones. Gain national SIN, low lifestyle and +1 body, intuition or willpower.
4 middle class: Your parents were Joe Citizen. Gain either a national or limited corporate SIN, Medium lifestyle and +1 Logic, intuition or charisma.
5 Silver Spoon: your parents were well off. Gain either a national or Corporate SIN, High lifestyle and +1 Logic, willpower or Charisma.
6 Born into privilege. Your parents were high rollers. Gain a corporate SIN, Luxury lifestyle and +2 to an attribute of your choice, but also reduce the opposite attribute by 1 (Body=willpower, strength=charisma, reaction=intuition, agility=logic)

UGE: Roll only if you rolled human for metatype.
1-3 nothing.
4-5 during your teen years you undergo UGE and become an Orc
6 During your teen years you undergo UGE and become a Troll

And so on, with rolls for various stages and events in your life either increasing or decreasing your attributes and skills. Thoughts?

I think UGE was an earlier phenomenon in the Shadowrun timeline. It still occasionally happens, but most orks and trolls now are the offspring of other orks and trolls. I think metatype would be better as either a percentage roll, or several d6 with metatypes as the outlyers on the bell curve. Even compared to the relatively numerous orks, humans should be far and away the most common metatype.