Character Creation - Templates and Life Paths

[Gaigaia]

(sorry if I'm making too many posts, but I'm kind of excited with the system, and interested in testing it)


So, what about templates and life paths? Would those be in the new version of the game, or maybe in a player companion?

Having such templates could not only accelerate character creation, but also give ideas for both new and veteran players. Things like 'magical girl', 'ninja', 'samurai', 'Bounty hunter'. I know that the pre-made characters exist for that, but having templates would be better, I believe.

Also, life paths in the same way as Dark Heresy, Maid RPG or Battletech would be interesting. If you could add random generation tables, would be even more awesome.

I will try doing something like that to illustrate what I mean of that.

[Atmo]

Companion, and i would not be so excited as everyone here is waiting for the new book(s) to come, so... It will gonna be a solitaire ride...

[StarRaven]

Don't listen to him. I am here. I am always here. I always want to talk about OVA. Always.

Ahem. Anyway. I think it would be cool to do a bit of random generation. I'd like to do that for my own game, to be honest, to generate NPCs, maybe. Instead of working with something like templates or life paths (???), maybe do clusters of related skills like I did when I created a character recently for a friend's game: (sorry it's big -- this is from her roll20 character sheet)

[Gaigaia]

This is amazing, Raven. In fact, if there was an add-on booklet with 30 characters designed like that - with scrutinized abilities -, I would immediately buy it. It is very similar to the sheets for Raine, Auren and Miho, but it is short and concise. I like that. A booklet with characters for all anime/manga genres with illustrations would be quite an amusing idea, I say.

But, that is not exactly what I meant with templates and life paths. This is a detailed character sheet, with both Mechanics and Fluff explained. It is very good to see and even to read and give ideas for players, but the idea for Templates is for them to be more generic, a sort of building blocks.

You can have more detailed Templates (similar to d20, BRP, Savage Worlds, DAemon and Gurps), where you have the 'name' and the 'abilities' a template would have, or they can be more general (similar to 3det, Castle Falkenstein, Esoterrorists etc).

With templates, the idea is that you could theoretically 'add' them and make your character, or take them as basis. For example, want a Robot-Ronin? Add them together. A Nekomimi-Robot? All of the three? Just add them. I will show some example, where, for each ability listed, there is a weakness. Also, those are general templates. To have them as detailed, just have pre-made statistics. For example, Ronin could have Quick +1, Combat Expert +3, etc. I prefer them as general:

Nekomimi:
Abilities: Agile, Heightened Senses, Weapon– bite/claws, Quick; Tough
Weakness: Naive, Airhead, Bizarre Appearance, Stubborn, Ineptitude - People's costumes

Ronin -
Abilities: Agile, Quick, Combat Expert, Knowledge - some sort of art, Weapon - Sword
Weaknesses: Wanted - shogunate, Secret, Code of conduct, Emotionless/Airhead, Hatred/Pacifist

Robot -
Abilities: Endurance Reserve, Weapon - Robotic guns, Life Support, Strength;
Weaknesses: Ineptitude - People's costumes, Naive, Emotionless, Code of Conduct - What it has been programed for.

Psychic experiment:
Abilities: Telekines, Psychic, Willpower, Barrier, Sixth Sense
Weaknesses: Emotionless/Airhead, Hatred - Toward those different, Stranger, Arrogant/Stubborn, Wanted/Secret.


Now, let's say, for example, that I wan to create Kata Lucy, a nekomimi which whom was exprimentated by the Men in Black (MIB) to become a killer machine with psychic killing powers. After years of experimentation, she was able to escape and found a kind soul, master Kageyama, who trained her in the way of the sword. So, she is a Nekomimi + Ronin + Robot + Pyschic. Adding all of them, we have:

Kata Lucy, the neko robot ronin with a dark past

Abilities: Agile +2, Quick +2, Heightened Senses +1, Weapon – sword, bite/claws and robot guns +3, Tough +1, Combat Expert +1, Knowledge – Calligraphy +1, Endurance Reserve +1, Life Support +1, Strength +1, Telekines +1, Psychic +1, Willpower +1, Barrier +1, Sixth Sense +1

Weaknesses: naïve -2, Airhead -2, Bizarre Appearance -1, Stubborn -2, Ineptitude- People's Costumes -2, Wanted – Shogunate and MIB -2, Secret – killer weapon -1, Code of conduct – Way of the sword and program -2, Pacifits -1, Emotionless -2, Stranger -1, Hatred – Toward those who are happier than her -1.

Templates are very good for giving ideas and speeding character creation for those that are not yet versed in the system. You could also have templates for nature and demeanor, or have Positive and Negative templates, like:

Samurai (+): Agile, Combat Expert, Weapon- Sword

Ninja (+): Agile, Quick, Art of Invisibility

Detached person (-): Emotionless, Airhead, Languorous

Wanted Criminal (-): Wanted, Secret, Bad Reputation

All you have to do is combining Positives and Negatives. So: a Samurai Ninja who is a detached person and a wanted criminal – Agile +2, Quick +1, Combat Expert +1, Weapon – Sword +1, Art of Invisibility +1, Emotionless -1, Airhead -1, Languorous -1, Wanted -1, Secret -1, Bad Reputation -1.

Life paths are even more different. They describe specific events, like 'enlisted in the army (+1 Combat Expert)', 'Made enemies in the higher ups (-1 Wanted)', 'Found an allien creature who taught you telepathy (Psychic +1)', so on and so forth. They are interesting for random character generators and funny for players who like those kind of stuff. One very good demonstration of that is in the Maid Rpg.

[Atmo]

Don't listen to him. I am here. I am always here.

Gasai Yuno, is that you?
So, it is true that I want the book to resume my games, everything had stopped some weeks ago when... things happened. Now i want the full book to create more and read more new things.
Other than that, i doubt you can understand brazillian portuguese, but here it is: http://dihova.blogspot.com.br/search/label/Personagens

[Gaigaia]

Hum, por sorte, sei falar meia dúzia de línguas, entre elas o português. Consigo entender o que escreve. Esse 'Gear' é o que substituiu o 'Weapon'?

Interesting to see that OVA is well known elsewhere, it seems. = )

[StarRaven]

Ooh what I meant to show is how, for example, Sixth Sense and Jittery go together, or Iron-Willed/Stubborn, or Combat Expert/Overconfident, Endurance Reserve/Impaired Sense. If you roll randomly for "clusters" like these, then as long as those clusters are balanced, you will end up with a character with equal Abilities and Weaknesses, and whose Abilities and Weaknesses feel related rather than totally random.

Also thanks! I loooove to do this when making a character. It helps me figure them out~

[Gaigaia]

Well, if you eventually make many of them, think about having all of them collected in a document. It would be amazing, I believe.

[StarRaven]

That would be fun to do.

[Atmo]

Hum, por sorte, sei falar meia dúzia de línguas, entre elas o português. Consigo entender o que escreve. Esse 'Gear' é o que substituiu o 'Weapon'?

Interesting to see that OVA is well known elsewhere, it seems. = )

Sim, Weapon agora faz parte ou de Gear ou de algum Attack, ou de todos (como no playerbook da Miho). Ficou mais simples, e mais "perigoso" ao mesmo tempo: ser desarmado implica que tu pode perder vários bônus legais com uma única ação (sortuda e bem bolada) do oponente.

Yep, i funded it too and i'm sick for the book to come to my hands.

PS: Don't read the R-18 posts if you don't like R-18 things.

[Clay]

Templates were considered briefly for OVA once upon a time. I was always a huge fan of the ones included in the old d6 Star Wars games. They felt like so much more than a “job”...there was so much flavor built into them from the get go. Laconic Scout! Quixotic Jedi! Armchair Historian! And not all necessarily combat oriented either, which was an important goal of OVA, too.

But in the end, I felt like any attempt to create a list of templates for a category as broad as, well, EVERY ANIME EVER was self defeating, and since OVA is basically so easy to create characters for, it seemed like shortcuts weren’t as necessary as they are in other RPGs. I went for the sample characters instead to convey what you could do and left it at that.

Random generation cross my mind, too, but I never felt like it would generate usable results. But offering PACKAGES you can combine together at will, or even combine together randomly, is a really stellar idea I’ll have to think about.

Not for the main book. But it would make for an interesting supplement book, wouldn’t it?

(For what it’s worth, the newly expanded NPC section includes short character “blurbs” sort of like the templates you present here, Gaigaia.)

[Gaigaia]

Having such to be on a suplement, a companion book is a very interesting idea. It's true that making a collection for all the different anime/manga troupes would probably be impossible, but having the most used ones, with abilities and weaknesses signed to them (and maybe a possibility for a random generation roll) would be awesome. In a companion, such would take many pages, no doubt, and would be a very tiring and overwhelming work indeed. But it would be a gret work for reference, even for those that are not into OVA per se, I believe so.

Besides templates, a companion could also have sessions for specific genre's setting rules, something like 'playing pokemon', 'playing tokusatsu', 'playing games of shonen world fighting tournaments'. One interesting would be rules for playing a more 'realistic', Silent Hillesque vibe game.

I'm just spilling out ideas. I will probably eventually end up writing stuff like that for my group, as I tend to do on a regular basis when I play, and will share those with you when written. But, nevertheless, I believe a companion would be a great addition to be have for OVA eventually, specially after the sucess of the kickstarter funding. Maybe something for 2016-17ish.

Well, I'm digressing right now, so it's time to stop writing, ^^ .

[Pooftopay]

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