Author: Corey (---.rbza.com)
Date: 03-31-2000 12:14
Mr. Forbeck,
The Brave New World main book hinted at a system of character creation that would allow for more flexibility and individuality in character design. Will we ever see that?
The only guideline provided for GMs has been, "if the character your player creates is better than the templates provided, it's probably unbalanced". While I'm also a fan of the Champions system, I appreciate your efforts to make a "quick-n'-dirty" system that allows a group to start playing immediately. However as time goes on, your character will, presumably, learn all the tricks associated with his template and it's at that point that he starts to look like every other Blaster, Flyer, Bouncer, Defender or what-have-you.
I agree that you shouldn't try and go the Champions route with power advantages and disadvantages that apply positive or negative multipliers to the power cost which are then added or subtracted, ad infinitum, until your calculator explodes. But there must be a happy medium between the one-trick pony hero and the mathematically perfect uber-hero.
Also, the templates lately seem somewhat uninspired. Should a computer Hacker really be classified as a delta? Isn't it more of a skill that could be learned with time and experience rather than a genetic mutation for which you're hunted down and considered non-human?
Overall, Brave New World fast and fun but I think many players like to feel their characters are unique. An optional and simple point-based character generation system, based on the current templates, might offer that while saving the GM the trouble of comparing every original character to all of the existing templates for the sake preserving "game balance".
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