Some Thoughts on Character Creation

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Currently you can spend starting character points on four things: stats, traits, profession, and skills. In-game, the player has a very limited ability to raise their stats, and most of the traits are difficult or impossible to acquire. Therefore, the best and often only way to get them is to buy them when you generate a character.

By comparison, the remaining two tabs give professions (items and skills and a few other things like addictions) and skills. These can all be acquired in gameplay, often easily (unless there are some items that only spawn with professions; I’ve never seen a clown suit for example.)

Personally I find myself never putting any points in skills because you’re going from 0->2 which is typically quite easy to do in-game, and because 2->4 is also generally easy but is also very expensive at chargen. I also usually take shower victim because I tend to find clothing on the first Z I kill anyway (and because the cheaper professions are fairly annoying to deal with at the start.)

I understand that this is just a consequence of my own power-gaming neurosis, and there are people who put points in skills at the beginning to obviate crafting 20 digging sticks or bandanas or whatever, so there isn’t necessarily a problem here. If this is intended, or just needs minor tweaking that’s fine. The trope of having players get an advantage early but lose out in the long-run (which is generally easier to survive) is fairly common, I guess.

Nevertheless, I have a suggestion: new characters have points, maybe fewer than currently, to spend on stats and traits. In addition, they choose a profession. Then, depending on the profession chosen, they get some skill points to distribute. Stronger professions like survivalist would get fewer free skill points than disadvantageous ones like coke addict or unemployed. So basically, split the point pool between permanent effects - stats and traits - and starting effects - professions and skills.

Another alternative is to give flat or no floating skill points, roll professions into the forthcoming scenario thing and don’t attempt to balance them, instead making them unlockable (get tailoring to 6 to unlock tailor, forge a sword to unlock blacksmith, etc) with most of the scenarios just being mostly the same as unemployed except for skills and equipment. I don’t know how scenarios are going to work exactly so maybe this isn’t feasible.

In any case, I personally feel like something like this would make players more likely to choose quirkier professions without feeling like they were taking a long-term handicap, which would make the early game more diverse and interesting for those players.

2

This is a neat idea.

3

So basically break down character aspects into short term and long term, and have separate pools for each. This is the more traditional route, and it’s a solid one.

I like the idea of professions (which should be called “background” or similar, we’re pretty bad about naming things sometimes) leaving you a certain number of points instead of just being part of the advantage/disadvantage pool. So the “best” backgrounds wouldn’t leave you any points, and the “worst” would leave you with a large pool of points to spend on short-term things like skills.

4

Yes good idea. I never invest in any skills or good professions because of this.

So we would have attribute points (for stats and traits) and skill points (for professions and skills) as separate pools. Do we leave room for hard professions to somehow give long-term benefits? So maybe hobo gives you 3 skill points and 1 attribute point? Nethack sort of does this with the “tourist” profession. They are awful early game but have a really nice skill tree and artifact for late game. This way of shaping the game difficulty through some type of “character class” choice is pretty ubiquitous in RPGs. We could do without it just to be different, but it does have some fun advantages to promoting different play styles.

I will say I’m spoiled with STR 14 hobos, and if this gets implemented I think we will be closing the door on that somewhat. Stats are used to open and close game features right now, like strength determines what bow you can use and intelligence determines what bionics you can install. Mutations can boost stats, though I hate the negative traits, and bionics can also boost stats if you already have high intelligence. Is there a plan to allow any other mechanism for slowly improving stats? I don’t think characters should all become 18 18 18 18 stat characters (like Nethack characters become), but it might be cool to slowly gain the “strong” trait if you eat healthy and do a lot of physical activity for 2 seasons. After surviving a year in the Cataclysm world, I would think I would be stronger, more perceptive, etc.

5

I really like the dual-points idea.

Removes that whole issue of having to sacrifice attributes to take a decent profession and such.

6

Only problem I’ve got with it is this:

maybe fewer than currently

I like the point spread the way it is. No need to reduce the amount of points available for the stuff I like just so you can push the stuff I don’t need.

7

If this were the case then characters would be more powerful across the board (because you get professions/skills for “free”.) I don’t have any opinion one way or the other on this, but I assume that the current starting characters are roughly as powerful as they are intended to be.

Of course it’s easy to change starting character points via the debug menu, although granted it makes me feel a bit bad to do so.

8

I don’t have a problem with a power increase. Otherwise, you’d be imposing the decision to take a profession–take one, or you come off worse by playing that version, since you lost (default) char points.

With the problems people have recently had with allowing Options (SET TO DEFAULT AND REMOVE), reducing a default isn’t something I’d appreciate.

Thanks.

9

Definitely in favor of… uh… sweeping changes in Chargen. Right now it kinda rewards min-maxing a bit.

There are some good ideas in here, for sure. Though why stop at professions? I kind of like the way Mount & Blade handled Chargen, where you would build a background by selecting a combination of choices that describe your life from childhood to adulthood, each of which gave you stats and skills. Obviously this multiplies the possible ‘builds’ by quite a bit, and at the end you would distribute additional stat and skill points. That kind of thing could work for this suggestion as well; Each ‘step’ of the chargen adds a number of attribute points, skills, traits, and additional ‘free points.’ It lets y ou build a background, and generate more unique characters, rather than just lumping it all into selecting a single background.

10

In the end: at the beginning everyone is a noob, later on you make chars that got no issues with the first few days. You start to think ‘long term’ by yourself.

11

This morning I was thinking about this thread to myself, and I came up with another idea.

Instead of the ability to buy skills at the beginning, perhaps professions could come with their related skillset.

Wow, I thought I had a lot more than just that this morning. :stuck_out_tongue:

12

The problem with questionaire type chargen is it requres careful planning, writing, and a non trivial amount of code to implement. Also it doesn’t extend very well, since all the questions are integrated together in the questionaire, unless you have a question for every alternative, or some kind of inteligent system that assigns various values to the presets and asks questions until it has enough info to make a decision.

tl;dr a lot of work to implement, and doesn’t integrate well with our ad-hoc development model.

Longer term, I’m more interested in something like letting you pick plusses minuses ala carte, and it evaluates the combination to let you know how survivable your character is (basically summing up the existing points), so instead of having a hard “default” target, it just gives you feedback on the difficulty level.

13
Personally I find myself never putting any points in skills because you're going from 0->2 which is typically quite easy to do in-game, and because 2->4 is also generally easy but is also very expensive at chargen. I also usually take shower victim because I tend to find clothing on the first Z I kill anyway (and because the cheaper professions are fairly annoying to deal with at the start.)
You're absolutely right as far as you intensively use one particular skill. Fast Learner trait helps, but it's capped at 3pts. If you pick a 12/12/0 weapon there's great gain to it but only when you attain some ammount to dodge and pick your gear accordingly. In case you like precision, you'll pick ranged and rarely engage in melee. This renders you fairly prone to suprises and (possibly) more concentrated on perception and intelligence for more sophisticated of skills, as you find yourself buffed with drugs, first-aid and various kinds of expeditious gadgets. If you think that knowing your way around tools from the start is cheap - then fine. I can only remind you that you need as much as five days in-game to push Mechanics to a practical level, and a whole lot of gameplay hours just to get the raws and start doing something fine with all the arsenal you've compounded in your lair.
I understand that this is just a consequence of my own power-gaming neurosis, and there are people who put points in skills at the beginning to obviate crafting 20 digging sticks or bandanas or whatever, so there isn't necessarily a problem here. If this is intended, or just needs minor tweaking that's fine. The trope of having players get an advantage early but lose out in the long-run (which is generally easier to survive) is fairly common, I guess.
Well, it tends to be that way... for example, there's a lot of scrap items, and a bunch of recipes. But that doesn't mean that you'll be unwrapping and wrapping your flashlight with Electronics lvl.3 (no gain). A long-run actually means being winded when a Hulk takes you into an account in the core of the city. It kinda makes sense then what you're all about, if you had faster legwork and sorts... And then you also wish for a fur coat with 40+ damage reduction, moaning about all the reinforced socks. It's easy to think of your character as a hero here, not bleeding whilst battling a horde. If you enjoyed your long run skill-wise, you'll stun a couple of them with your CBM and run far enough to set them ablaze from afar if you were expeditious enough to craft such a tool. My point is - there are no ifs and buts with skills neither. You're either Bear Ready(R) or Bear No-Ready(also (R)), you're a weiner to him nevermind your 25 Dexterity.

I dunno if the skills and professions should be valued the same, but then - I always looked at professions as game features, just for kicks and happy hours. I wave on the tie of abilities and skills, moreso with points. The real deal is playing either Random or the same with slight adjustments, if the player’s character is what you’re about, that peg-legged swordsman.

14

I guess one of the issues is that time doesn’t really matter to me very much. Basically you can claim a house, clear 2-3 tiles around it, and if the windows are still and door around the bedroom are still intact you can live in it for at least a week and usually much, much more with very little trouble. Limiting toilet water was a step in the right direction (assuming the right direction is to make survivalistic concerns more prevalent) but there are a lot of toilets in the gameworld

If I get a close library/school, for example, I’ll frequently raid it and spend a week or so just reading books, crafting, and going outside to rock/crowbar a couple of squirrels/wolves to death so I can keep eating. Then I’ll either probe deeper into the city, find a car, or make stuff to sleep on the road as I walk to the next town. Some skills, like electronics and computers, are impractical to raise except through books (at least that’s my impression) so raiding civilization is generally the route you want to go

I remember playing a daily where cauterizing with sharp objects didn’t work (just soldering irons), and feeling like it introduced a lot of tension and pressure to explore aggressively if you got bitten, which was fun. Obviously most of this is tangential to character development; my point is basically that once you’ve got a foothold in the game world, as it stands, it’s pretty easy to get your skills up to a workable level, especially with books, which means your initial points aren’t very useful past the early game, which itself isn’t that difficult

Well, it tends to be that way... for example, there's a lot of scrap items, and a bunch of recipes. But that doesn't mean that you'll be unwrapping and wrapping your flashlight with Electronics lvl.3 (no gain). A long-run actually means being winded when a Hulk takes you into an account in the core of the city. It kinda makes sense then what you're all about, if you had faster legwork and sorts... And then you also wish for a fur coat with 40+ damage reduction, moaning about all the reinforced socks. It's easy to think of your character as a hero here, not bleeding whilst battling a horde. If you enjoyed your long run skill-wise, you'll stun a couple of them with your CBM and run far enough to set them ablaze from afar if you were expeditious enough to craft such a tool. My point is - there are no ifs and buts with skills neither. You're either Bear Ready(R) or Bear No-Ready(also (R)), you're a weiner to him nevermind your 25 Dexterity.

I’m not sure exactly what you’re saying here. Hulks are quite rare, and being in a situation where you are forced to contend with one (or forced to fight a bear) is even rarer. I mean, if this were a win rate % competition, then maybe putting points in starting skills would be a good idea (I’m still not convinced) but even characters with 2 dodge and 2 melee have pretty bad odds against a hulk, and the majority of enemies in Cataclysm are not that dangerous if you treat them properly (barring really bad spawns like next-to-swamp.)

I dunno if the skills and professions should be valued the same, but then - I always looked at professions as game features, just for kicks and happy hours. I wave on the tie of abilities and skills, moreso with points. The real deal is playing either [i]Random[/i] or the same with slight adjustments, if the player's character is what you're about, that peg-legged swordsman.

Currently (based on the handful of random games I’ve played in .8) random never appears to gives you any skills or professions. I think random would be a lot more fun if it did (in addition to randomized traits and attributes)

As for roleplaying, I think it would be helped by not assuming that however skilled the player was in the pre-apocalypse, they were weak/stupid/slow/blind

15
I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here. Hulks are quite rare, and being in a situation where you are forced to contend with one (or forced to fight a bear) is even rarer. I mean, if this were a win rate % competition, then maybe putting points in starting skills would be a good idea (I'm still not convinced) but even characters with 2 dodge and 2 melee have pretty bad odds against a hulk, and the majority of enemies in Cataclysm are not that dangerous if you treat them properly (barring really bad spawns like next-to-swamp.)
That was an example of sorts, and since the game serves you the same generated world once you die, it kinda sticks to its place. You can introduce your next character based off a hunch, like what direction your game will be going to. This way you can grab a "bad" trait or two and push the surplus points towards more rapid skill development, even in a scenario where such as yourself see them as achieveable.
As for roleplaying, I think it would be helped by not assuming that however skilled the player was in the pre-apocalypse, they were weak/stupid/slow/blind
I agree that's more of a genuine RL atmosphere, but point to you that's the exact reason pricing exists. I mean, if you had only scissors upon the start, wouldn't you at least wish for cardboard walls? That's the thing with the common roguelike, you get to be the Priest with all the restrictions only when you actually have a slot or two for some spell of sorts; you get to spawn with some bionics if you pick the according trait; you'll know how to heal and buff yourself from the start if there's a point or two into Cooking and First Aid skills.

Now I know there’s much to be said about leveling adjustments, yet there’s no clarification on the actual plot development (you actually level up so to be able and confront much bigger challenges) when magic isn’t the key. See this, you have this imaginative force that steers the knowledge of magic and it’s absent in this game. That means no staffs, rejuvenation potions and mana pools - no gargantuan danger to oppose whilst in full body armor wielding the bastard sword with 25 STR. In fact, in classic RPG gaming only heroic characters gain on stats - your henchmen upgrade on skill basis’. You’d actually have to come up with a reason behind upgrading STR/INT/DEX/PER and so on (if applicable) in this game. Is a specific class more perceptive, even stronger, more intuitive while the character develops - maybe so, but in current, professions’ case - I really cannot answer. I mean, is your tailor better than mine, and why so?; police officer in your town may be an excellent marksmen, but is he an all-around fighter character? There is a real basket-o-questions to be answered and only a handful of roleplaying systems to draw similarities from.

I can see only this happening, really - once you push a certain set of skills to a specific level you start developing “attainable” traits; a real quantity of interlocking feats (you may call 'em such, for them to differ a bit) gets you a possibility that the character can be considered more “intelligent” or “stronger” for that matter. Look at martial artists, for example - there are those that hone their skills toward more specific of tasks such as splitting stacks of bricks, and everyone in the world agrees it builds up their stamina greatly. But what stacks up with fascinating stamina to improve on real-life strength?

16

[quote=“One-Eyed Jack, post:1, topic:3104”]Currently you can spend starting character points on four things: stats, traits, profession, and skills. In-game, the player has a very limited ability to raise their stats, and most of the traits are difficult or impossible to acquire. Therefore, the best and often only way to get them is to buy them when you generate a character.

By comparison, the remaining two tabs give professions (items and skills and a few other things like addictions) and skills. These can all be acquired in gameplay, often easily (unless there are some items that only spawn with professions; I’ve never seen a clown suit for example.)

Personally I find myself never putting any points in skills because you’re going from 0->2 which is typically quite easy to do in-game, and because 2->4 is also generally easy but is also very expensive at chargen. I also usually take shower victim because I tend to find clothing on the first Z I kill anyway (and because the cheaper professions are fairly annoying to deal with at the start.)

I understand that this is just a consequence of my own power-gaming neurosis, and there are people who put points in skills at the beginning to obviate crafting 20 digging sticks or bandanas or whatever, so there isn’t necessarily a problem here. If this is intended, or just needs minor tweaking that’s fine. The trope of having players get an advantage early but lose out in the long-run (which is generally easier to survive) is fairly common, I guess.

Nevertheless, I have a suggestion: new characters have points, maybe fewer than currently, to spend on stats and traits. In addition, they choose a profession. Then, depending on the profession chosen, they get some skill points to distribute. Stronger professions like survivalist would get fewer free skill points than disadvantageous ones like coke addict or unemployed. So basically, split the point pool between permanent effects - stats and traits - and starting effects - professions and skills.

Another alternative is to give flat or no floating skill points, roll professions into the forthcoming scenario thing and don’t attempt to balance them, instead making them unlockable (get tailoring to 6 to unlock tailor, forge a sword to unlock blacksmith, etc) with most of the scenarios just being mostly the same as unemployed except for skills and equipment. I don’t know how scenarios are going to work exactly so maybe this isn’t feasible.

In any case, I personally feel like something like this would make players more likely to choose quirkier professions without feeling like they were taking a long-term handicap, which would make the early game more diverse and interesting for those players.[/quote]

Solid idea.

But

My problem with it is.

It takes away replayability and trades it for standardization.

17

[quote=“StoneCacti, post:16, topic:3104”]Solid idea.

But

My problem with it is.

It takes away replayability and trades it for standardization.[/quote]

Gotta second SC on this.

18

[quote=“StoneCacti, post:16, topic:3104”]My problem with it is.

It takes away replayability and trades it for standardization.[/quote]

Could you elaborate? My intention was to do exactly the opposite.

19

I like the concept but I can also think of three or four ways to implement it, and not all of them are so great. I’m guessing the issue is how professions are currently implemented versus how they might be implemented here, all the differences are not spelled out in detail.

I’m also not entirely sure what is meant by ‘standardization’, the system as suggested sounds like it’d add more choices to chargen, but I’m making a few assumptions about implementation.

20

I think it’s a solid idea. Let me relate some experiences as a pen and paper GM to explain:

Dungeons and Dragons has a character setup that is like this. You have points you have to spend on attributes. You have points you have to spend on skills. You have to pick one (and only one) class and a feat. When you take 6 random people and you put them in front of the game, whether they know nothing about it or are experts, you end up with 6 characters that are all pretty even in terms of effectiveness and diversity and you can build the rest of the world around them knowing roughly where they all stand.

In Shadowrun, you get one pool of points to spend on everything. If you take 6 random people with a variety of meta-knowledge you’re going to wind up with some crazily different characters. Some super powered, some completely useless. Building a world that is fun for all of them is nigh impossible…

…but what’s interested to note is that if you take 6 players who are all EXPERTS, you are going to wind up with 6 characters that are all super strong for those same points, but on an even level with one another. You CAN build a world around them that they all fit in, but only because everyone has learned how to game the character creator into giving them the most powerful character they can get.

Cataclysm falls into that Shadowrun category, where you CAN build a character however you want (and don’t get me wrong, I love freedom) but you can SORT OF build a character “wrong”. A character that is going to have a ridiculously difficult time navigating the standard challenges of the world he’s in. Knowing this, there winds up being a wealth of options that your advanced players will never pick because they know it doesn’t give them as much of an advantage. You wind up with dead options, which is bad design.

Worse yet, though, is now you’re trying to balance a game between two very diverse lots. On one hand you have these “free range” characters that new players don’t know better than to avoid, or experts are playing just for fun. On the other hand you have the minmaxed expert characters ripping your game apart. Which crowd do you balance around? Do you shrug off the complaints of the newer players and tell them to stop picking the dead options, or do you tell the experts the reason they’re bored with things is because they’re trying too hard?

It’s a real problem I’ve experienced around the game table a lot over the years. Standardizing it (while crushing out some of that freedom) does have some great advantages both to the players and the people designing the world, as it were.

EDIT: I think Shadowrun’s priority system would be great to borrow from for Cataclysm. It lets you decide which aspect of your character is the most important to you, and invest the most heavily in that, but it still requires you to end up investing a little in each aspect of the game and prevents you from putting all your points into one thing.