I died in c-gen!

[pyat]

I rolled up two Traveller characters the other day. It was an interesting process. The first one was a Scout Service Bureaucrat with medical training, and the second an Imperium Naval Gunner.

The first guy (a pudgy blue collar genius) died at the age of 29 during assignment to a field mission. The second (a burly, though clumsy, fellow from the upper classes) died at the age of 22, during a planetary siege.

Ah, fun times.

Comments

Re: Wow

[jordangreywolf.livejournal.com]

Well, it was missing in the traditional random-roll systems like D&D and Palladium as well: There, you roll the dice, you get your stuff. Not really much of a gamble - just luck of the draw to start off.

At least in theory, I can respect the "gambling" aspect of a system like this.

But as a GM and player, I've been in campaigns where great PC power disparity was a point of contention. (E.g., PCs who can do everything everyone else can do - only better - by virtue of an amazingly lucky roll they made ... and usually while nobody was looking, and it wouldn't be proper to question the veracity of the player's claims.)

So, I can really see the appeal of point-based, too.

Re: Wow

[pxtl.livejournal.com]

Oh, I agree - I was saying that the gamble was interesting, whereas I consider point-based games to be the default. And in D&D/Palladium, the stats were dull anyways. I know in Palladium 99% of stats didn't matter at all unless you had a value over 16.

I mean the fun of having a player aspect that's actually a gamble, where you start with a midding player and can push your luck.

And yes, I've had campaigns - ones where dice never entered into it, where players designed their own characters from scratch - where I've had one whiny-assed player who complained about his crappy character from day 1. And dice just make it worse.