02-15-2021, 09:25 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Dec 2004
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Re: TFT Life History Character Generation
Quote:
"Perhaps one person in 50 will have some small ability with magic. Fewer than 1 in 300 will be true “wizards” within the meaning of this game. This is due mainly to the length and difficulty of magical training. A good comparison would be to doctors or engineers on our Earth." Italics are mine. |
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02-16-2021, 12:15 AM | #22 |
Join Date: Jun 2019
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Re: TFT Life History Character Generation
The percentage of wizards in the general population of a world setting really isn't coupled to the percentage of wizards appearing in play, making it a moot point in character generation and game mechanics.
Parties of PCs are normally comprised of whatever characters the players want to play, regardless of what the census bureau might say.
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"I'm not arguing. I'm just explaining why I'm right." |
03-09-2021, 07:27 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jul 2018
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Re: TFT Life History Character Generation
My intuition is that whatever Traveller-y life path system you develop, it would work best with TFT if the standard procedure is to spit them out and play them as PCs at whatever point they get to 32 attributes, rather than at a set age. You might end up with young up and coming heroes mixed in with older late bloomers, which seems to fit with how 'naturally grown' PC parties tend to look (that is, what players come up with on their own) and gives more diverse life stories and perspectives.
You'd probably want to let them fill out any 'missing' talent points, too, and generally aim for an expected 3-4 talent points to be missing, so that any character can become a new fighter or pick up some social skills that aren't too tied to professions/life history per se. Of course you could probably use the same setup to develop more experienced characters, but I think most players like the 32-34 pt period enough to play it out rather than incentivize maxing out the life path game (as a lot of Traveller players end up doing - it works within the very different system + setting, I don't think it would be as fun in TFT). |
03-11-2021, 12:57 AM | #24 |
Join Date: Jan 2018
Location: Sydney, Australia
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Re: TFT Life History Character Generation
In my experience complicated backgrounds for characters tends to be generated and then forgotten. There's a few reasons for this:
So how could we make player backgrounds relevant? This approach is to ask the players to say how their character interacted with the most interesting and relevant events of the setting's history. I call this the "What did you do in the war, Daddy?" system. The GM divides a period before play into a series of eras. Each era is described by a notable event that occurred during it. Each player character is expected to say what they did in that era, including how the defining events of that era affected them. Some of those events will be randomly determined. Others will be chosen by the GM as elements of the setting and of the arc plot of the campaign. The players don't know which is which. The eras for example, with player responses, might be:
Has anyone seen anything like this? What was your experience with it? I think there's a member of the FATE family that does it? |
03-13-2021, 10:46 AM | #25 |
Join Date: May 2019
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Re: TFT Life History Character Generation
Doesn't FATE also encourage the back-stories to include and overlap with other characters - thus creating a narrative which binds the characters together from the beginning with grudges, debts and shared friends/enemies?
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